So the root of the christains pro-life view is one of ethics. Life begins somewhere between conception and birth. Ask 1000 people and you will probably get 1000 different answers as to when that is, exactly. They err to the earliest possible point. Everyone else will have a line in the sand somewhere else – and that is where the ethics questions lie.

One, not all abortions are surgery. Plenty of early abortions are nonsurgical.
I’m aware.

Also, sometimes contraception fails…
I appreciate your candor, alhough I was already aware of this one, too.

Abortions aren’t bad. People are better off when they have access to abortions.
Yes! This is why I never even came close to any other conclusion.

An abortion isn’t any worse than getting a cavity filled. (…) Framing it as a negative emotional experience is damaging because it puts pressure on women who don’t find it upsetting.

I don’t need to frame it as anything. Is an abortion also just as bad as getting an icky boo-boo on your finger?

One, not all abortions are surgery. Plenty of early abortions are nonsurgical.

An abortion isn’t any worse than getting a cavity filled. Sure, you’d rather not need a filling, but it’s best to get one if you need one.

Framing it as a negative emotional experience is damaging because it puts pressure on women who don’t find it upsetting. It encourages secrecy instead of openness, which damages families. 

Abortions aren’t bad. People are better off when they have access to abortions.

Also, sometimes contraception fails, and that doesn’t mean we fucked up somewhere as a society. Most women who have abortions already have children. (source: Guttmacher)

My reason for being pro-choice is simply this: Making abortion illegal does not stop it from happening, at least not entirely. But while it is legal, it at least has regulations that will be followed by the majority of providers. The doctors who provide abortions are held to a set of standards: ethically, procedurally, and educationally. There is a minimum standard of sanitation set for the location where the procedure is performed. When it is illegal, a woman who seeks an abortion does not necessarily have these protections, and certainly little recourse if those standards are not met. (Certainly without admitting her own criminal behavior in the process). Instead, it recreates a grey/black market where the quality of the procedure will be in question for those who cannot afford to go elsewhere to obtain it legally.

One of my great-aunts had an illegal abortion back in the 1930′s. She was 16 and unmarried. The resulting infection left her sterile for life. It could certainly be argued that she still could have gotten that same infection had the procedure been performed legally in a hospital – but if I were a betting woman, I’d say that odds are, her care would have been better in a hospital.

Long story short: However distasteful it may be to an individual person morally, at least by remaining a *legal* option, there are some sort of legal and ethical standards in place regarding the practice.

Abortions aren’t unethical, but they are bad, in the same sense as any other medical issue that should never have gotten to the point of surgery.

If not having abortions is at the top of your priority list, why not go back to the source and try to eliminate unwanted pregnancies?

“For 1972, the last full year before Roe, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died due to illegal abortion. (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.) That figure is low, thanks to underreporting, but in any case the number of deaths had been dropping sharply for the previous few years. A statistic perhaps more typical of the pre-Roe era was reported in a 1969 Scientific American article cowritten by Christopher Tietze, a senior fellow with the Population Council: ‘The National Center for Health Statistics listed 235 deaths from abortion in 1965. Total mortality from illegal abortions was undoubtedly larger than that figure, but in all likelihood it was under 1,000.’”

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2510/before-em-roe-em-v-em-wade-em-did-10-000-women-a-year-die-from-illegal-abortions

We should make no mistake, the republicans have made it very clear they will attack a woman’s right to choose if they are given more control even in cases of rape or when the woman’s life is in danger.

It’s bizarre how much “compassion” some conservatives muster for a zygote, but at the same time show so little care for people as soon as they leave the womb.

If they really cared for fetuses and the women that carry them, they’d support a single payer system for health care… but they don’t even bother to educate themselves on the system and instead parrot corporatist talking points like evil idiots.

Oh, that’s right… instead of proper health care, the downtrodden can get humiliating charity from churches that don’t meet their needs so they can putter along until they die while the Jeebus people think they are God’s gift to the fucking world.

So much suffering is caused by satanic conservative leaders and the dupes that follow them.  Sick.  Sick.  Sick.

It’s not as rosy a picture for teens though – lgbt youth are actually more likely to become pregnant (or impregnate someone else) than straight youth.  Counterintuitive, I know, but a lot of them are closeted and having sex to prove they’re straight…  they’re more likely to have risky sex.  They’re also more at risk for STIs.  Oh, and there’s always the fun thing where some people rape lesbians as an attempt to make them straight.

But yeah, barring really unpleasant things, most of the time same-sex couples don’t have to worry about unplanned pregnancies.  I was just joking about this last night – if my girlfriend and I get pregnant, everyone will know we did it on purpose.  :)

Getting an accurate count of anything that is the effect of doing something illegal is incredibly difficult, and more so when there’s a strong social stigma against it.

This election year, some of the candidates aren’t even bothering to hide their contempt for unsaved sinners like you and me, and these young victims of “doctors”.   They might as well die in a back alley as far as Santorum et al are concerned.

“Pregnancy was a chronic condition among the women of this class. Suggestions as to what to do for a girl who was “in trouble” or a married woman who was “caught” passed from mouth to mouth–herb teas, turpentine, steaming, rolling downstairs,inserting slippery elm, knitting needles, shoe­hooks… The doomed women implored me to reveal the “secret” rich people had, offering to pay me extra to tell them; many really believed I was holding back information for money. They asked everybody and tried anything, but nothing did them any good. On Saturday nights I have seen groups of from fifty to one hundred with their shawls over their heads waiting outside the office of a five­dollar abortionist. These were not merely “unfortunate conditions among the poor” such as we read about. I knew the women personally. They were living, breathing, human beings, with hopes, fears, and aspirations like my own, yet their weary, misshapen bodies, “always ailing, never failing, ” were destined to be thrown on the scrap heap before they were thirty-five…. No matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were vast as the sky.”

The conditions that led to Planned Parenthood have not changed. Women have always needed and wanted to control their fertility and to make choices about reproduction. Impoverished, vulnerable women must have those choices too. This is should not be a political issue. It should be a medical issue.