Legally regulating life and death in an open democratic society has inherent difficulties. I think of a New Testament parable in Matthew’s Gospel. (Matt 13:28-29)
When seeing weeds with the wheat in the field the servants asked Do you want us to go out and pull the weeds? No, he answered. You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time.
The current set of abortion laws is not perfect but in most cases they allow for women to make their own decisions about an individual pregnancy. Aborting it is one of those options but, while legal, for decades now, this option has declined in popularity. Even the Right to Life website tells us that the number of abortions in the USA has been dropping consistently to the point that the annual number of abortions is approaching the number performed per year before the Roe v Wade decision.
As a whole, Americans seem to be unenthusiastic about actually having abortions even if we are largely adamant that they be medically available for the distressed. I hope I never see the day that a young woman diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is denied treatment because she is pregnant or another with an ectopic pregnancy is left to die from a burst fallopian tube because we must maintain all pregnancies at all costs to the mother’s life and health.
Women may choose to risk their lives but they must not be required to