The late Justice John Paul Stevens: laws incorporating the view that potential life must be protected from the moment of conception are fundamentally theological, thus amounting to an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

(photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

This information from the New York Times article about the late Justice Stevens, who was a great (but not perfect) justice.

There is also the argument as follows: assume, for the moment, that the embryo (or fetus) is in fact a living human being with a “right” to life.  However, admit that the woman within whose body it gestates is unwilling to permit it to feed off of her for nine months and then force their way out of her body through a too-small opening…  and consider what would happen to the average person if he/she woke up one morning attached through intravenous lines and a cumbersome carry bag to another human being; and then that average unsuspecting person were told, “you are the only person who can save this other human being, whom you do not know and have not consented to being attached to… If you disengage yourself from this person, they will die, and no-one else can volunteer to take your place.”

Are you in fact, ethically required (not to mention legally) to save the life of another person based on enormous personal sacrifices when you do not know that person and have not given prior consent to this arrangement?  That is what a prohibition on abortion (under whatever circumstances) implies, and it is not so.  You are not required to save a person just because they have picked you to implant themselves within.  You can ethically tell them to take a hike and die, if you’re not willing to make a twenty-year commitment to bear and raise them at this time.

Those people may not like it, but… it’s not their baby.  True stories have been told about virulent anti-abortion activists who, when push came to shove, had an abortion personally (and secretly.)  It has happened.