As a general rule, I avoid this topic, as it evokes strong emotions on both sides, and–here is a principle that just occurred to me–YOU CAN’T DEBATE EMOTIONS.
What a topic like this needs, and would much benefit from, is emotional intelligence. It would benefit from both sides relating empathetically to the other, recognizing that both sides have valid points.
Personally, I think most European nations have a reasonably good balance. As I understand it, most of them have legal abortion up to 15 weeks or so, and it is illegal for doctors to perform it after that.
What has happened in this country is that one side is utterly convinced that life starts at conception, and that the rest of us have a moral duty to protect that life from murder from that moment forward.
The other side, reacting to this view, has gradually evolved into justifying infanticide, in all senses of the word. As I have commented from time to time, Obama voted, in the Illinois Senate, against a law (which was passed, by the way, if memory serves), which made illegal the practice of putting viable babies who were born but unwanted in cold rooms until they died, and calling that “abortion”.
At the root of all this is really the understanding of what it means to be human, and–to use one sides recurring phrase–the value of human life.
Personally, I think killing what are for all intents and purposes intact, viable, human beings–infanticide–has to be morally and thus legally wrong. A baby does not become a human being simply because it is wanted, or stop being a human being because–for some inexplicable reason–the mother chose until the last possible second to kill it.
At the same time, women do get pregnant unintentionally, and sometimes as a result of violent actions, including rape and incest. Some legal provision needs to be made for them not to give birth to children they don’t want.
So to my mind, there is a large gray area, which amounts to how many weeks a woman can carry a child and still legally rid herself of it.
Obviously, the answer to “my body, my choice” is that the baby is not her body. The baby is a living human being, who will most likely live much longer than its mother, making its own decisions and living its own life.
But PRACTICALLY we have to accept human reality, so again it defaults to the number of weeks. In my own subjective view, 6 weeks is too early. As someone pointed out, that is only one missed period, so it is possible for the woman not even to know she is pregnant.
But a heartbeat is a heartbeat.
There is no scientific answer to this, so the whole thing SHOULD in my view be debated and discussed in a morally and emotionally intelligent way. The fact that this is impossible is the reason States like Texas just say “fuck it” because they can, and because they cannot expect ANY compromise on the part of the other side. When you draw a hard line, then if the other side gets power, you get nothing.
And to point out the painfully obvious, the Bill of Rights CLEARLY does not protect abortion. Roe v. Wade was absolutely indefensible legally and Constitutionally. That much is in my view really not debatable.
The core legal argument originated in the 4th Amendment, then invoked the 14th or 15th Amendment for its generalization.
Here is the text of the 4th Amendment. If you can find a right to abortion in it, you have miraculous powers that have been denied to me:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.