I had a friend and mentor, a Christian lady who was like a second mother to me. Ruth surprised me with this and many other thoughts on this subject a few years before she passed. :
Will those who shout and demonstrate against the agencies who help prevent pregnancy, when they convince an unwed person to have the child, put themselves on the line to take care of that mother and child? Or will they comfortably direct her to some "agency", and go on their way,enjoying their "mission", in the name of religion or of group hysteria, while her whole life may lie in ruins, and her child start at a disadvantage before it is even born?
Is there any moral difference between forcing a person to have an abortion, as in China, or in forbidding it, as in many other areas? Either way eliminates freedom of choice in the present life of the potential mother. The point is that anti-abortionists are not demonstrating to obtain freedom for themselves, but to limit the freedom of others...
Any person who opts to keep her child should be literally and materially helped to do so with some dignity by those who demand with such concern that she have it.
For many evangelicals, the abortion issued outweighed everything else, to the extremity of voting for someone who delights in lying and cheating for a living. What is consistent in their obsession with the subject is their unwillingness to take a realistic look at what they’re asking for.
I had a brief exchange on face book with one of these zealots. When I asked her how she would go about criminalizing doctors and women, she had no real response except to claim it wasn’t really a legal matter! And God was our judge, etc. When others pointed out to her that making it a legal matter was what this was about, she simply doubled down that it was God’s laws that matter and on and on.
My friend had this to say about “God’s laws”
The time at which life begins, before birth, is conjecture, not proven fact. The time at which a living soul enters the body is a matter of religious or personal conviction, and many feel that it does not occur until just before birth...
People agree that there is life in a fetus from the time of conception. Life, that is, not soul. Some believe there is life even in stone, and certainly in plants and animals.
The important point is, where or when does the soul enter in, that immortal part which proclaims it a human? The part that does not die with the receptacle called the body. Otherwise, the principle of “right to life” would forbid anyone to swat a fly...If anti-abortionists are so adamant about not destroying life, and rightly so, how can they approve and even vote for the execution of an adult body which does have a soul already? To kill a body after birth is murder. A person convicted of a crime has a known life and soul, and has the right to live and evolve, perhaps to repent. Given time, he might hopefully find salvation for that soul before passing from the earth.
Knowing that many Daily Kos readers have no interest in religious arguments, I nevertheless suggest that in talking with these evangelical voters, a few challenges of their so-called religious stand on abortion might be in order. A concluding thought from my dear friend:
Any right-to-life must also consider the subject of war. If they cherish life, then they must take a stand for peace as a means of preserving life. Thus: anyone's right to be called a "right-to-lifer" must, along with a stand against abortion, include just as an avid a stand against capital punishment, and against war, the worst killer of all. And follow-through care for the persuaded mother-to-be during the upbringing of her child.