If you think abortion is a simple issue, you have not thought deeply enough about it. I seem to be in the extreme minority of people who understand and sympathize with the arguments from both sides. However, most people on each side fail to realize just how morally difficult the issue of abortion is.
Both the pro-life and pro-choice positions are right in some sense. Women should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies, but the problem is they have another body inside their body—fetuses should have that same right. When does a sperm and egg cell become a human? There is no clear answer, which makes abortion an impossible issue to resolve. A fetus is a human but at the same time not quite a human, and abortion is murder but at the same time not quite murder. Both sides are right and wrong.
For decades, the compromise between the two sides was that abortion could be available as an option, but it would be rare. Abortions would only be performed in the early stages (days and weeks) of pregnancy. As soon as the fetus was developed enough to survive outside of the womb, it would be considered murder to abort it and therefore illegal. However, the pro-abortion side pushed this compromise to have abortions more frequently and later into the pregnancy.
This further angered the pro-life side, who believed that aborting a fetus early, even in the days or weeks after insemination, was still equivalent to murder because that fetus would turn into a baby. But does that mean taking a morning-after pill is murder? Is wearing a condom murder? Is masturbation murder? Is not having sex as often as possible murder? All that sperm could have eventually turned into a human child.
You cannot base ethics on hypothetical eventualities; you must deal with the present circumstances. If the fetus is just a clump of cells at the moment, it is just a clump of cells, and aborting the pregnancy at that phase is not murder in the same degree as a fully developed fetus—but neither is it as benign as masturbation. It is somewhere in-between—not quite bad, but not exactly good.
I don't quite know why the Left is so adamant about the right to abortion. They are correct that it should be "My body, my choice," but women make that choice when they choose to have sex and become pregnant—then it is no longer just their body, so it is no longer just their choice. It’s not that difficult to not get pregnant. If you don’t want a child, avoid becoming pregnant in the first place. Then again… should extraordinary extenuating circumstances prevail (rape, health threat, etc.), the option should be available (for a limited period of time) to abort a pregnancy. If legal, abortions should be avoided at all costs because it is such an ethically sticky area. Regardless, the State should have no role in subsidizing abortion.
Then again, again, if you truly believe all abortion is murder—as many religious people genuinely do—then how can you possibly compromise on that issue? Rare murder is still murder and should not be condoned. Again, I sympathize with them on this view. Though I disagree, I cannot say they are wrong. Which makes the issue impossible to resolve.
Because abortion is such a divisive issue in the United States, in which both sides are both right and wrong, the only possible resolution is to revert the issue to the states (which is what the overturning of Roe v. Wade does). Conservative states where the majority of people believe all abortion is murder should be able to outlaw all abortion. If you don’t like that policy, then move to a liberal state where abortion will remain legal. It’s silly to force two cultures that hold such vastly different values to abide by the same federal laws. Abortion is just one of many such issues on which the Left and Right vehemently disagree, and they should not have to fight each other and/or compromise. It is possible for each side to have its way; states' rights are the route to that end.
