Great Post.

Here is the most reasoned argument I have ever read regarding the pro-choice stance. I thought I would share:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-filipovic/questions-for-prolifers_b_58563.html

Seashell, "we" includes everyone who skews abortion into the false category of necessity for the great plurality of abortions. That is, abortion as birth control. Men and women are responsible directly or indirectly. No one is exempt.

However, another false reading needs to be corrected. You have assumed that by responsible, I in every case mean "held criminally responsible." I don't. Held responsible, yes, criminally, not necessarily. While homicide is a crime in many cases, not everyone has the mental state for murder who engages in abortion. Some do.

For the majority of couples, or individuals if the other isn't aware, there are more effective ways for taking abortion off of the table of options than merely outlawing it by criminal threat. Finding the best means requires a joint effort, however, that isn't going to happen so long as the extremes try to fix an intricate clock with left and right handed hammers which is the status quo now...on the left the hammer is abortion itself, a brutal and blunt killing response to the intricate and amazing reality of the existence of a new life connected to two people in the world. On the other is strict criminal liability: a hammer of fear in an emotional, moral and physical situation of great intricacy and intimacy that deserves a much more refined and flexible set of non-lethal alternatives to abortion.

I'm ignoring your contraception arguments because contraception is already fully legal and highly promoted, yet abortions continue in the millions per year. A better and more permanent solution than relying on pills or petroleum product technology is much needed. The contraceptive argument is so 70's; so disco. They've been around longer than that and still, here we are. Over forty years of contraceptive education hasn't brought abortion to the trickle it should be if contraception use was the solution for most people of a mind to get an abortion. Rather, the attitude for most of those years on the part of organizations promoting contraceptives has been pro-abortion as contraception's insurance policy.

The most effective future course for controlling the number of births is educating and training men and women that they are fully capable in their faculties, by their freedom, and especially together as a cooperative society of genders, of choosing not to engage in sex, and especially as a means of exercising reverence for life. This is the truly progressive view, believing that all are capable of this and that putting the bulk of resources behind raising the bar will inspire people to adapt their thinking and willpower to the higher standard over time. In addition, help-resources must be part of that.

In this approach, society will attach a greater reverence on life and intimate relationships that makes both non-disposable in the foundational ethics of most people. Putting the spotlight on men for a moment: it is a fact that men who are not trained in this sort of reverence for life are also not very reverent about the innate value of women. Many, many such men I've seen fleeing relationships, common law marriages, marriages and child support obligations because they've grown up hearing the BS argument that sex is just sex and it doesn't mean you have to consider a relationship with the person you have it with. The twistedness and near sociopathy of this false belief has led to countless broken homes and cynical feelings among too many of entire nation of innately special people. It is a disfigurement.

Ultimately we are most cynical about that which we've given up on about ourselves...that which we think we can't handle when we really can.

I don't address contraceptives because most people who obtain elective abortions to avoid the material and financial inconvenience of raising children already know about them. Either they chose not to use them or they chose to risk their failure in the case of the greatest number of pregnancies. There is nothing more to be done about that unless perhaps we manufacture beds that shock people who don't have contraceptives on their bodies -- and this absurd example highlights the technological dependence angle of majoring on the contraceptive argument. That angle holds human beings to the lowest common denominator treatment and expectation -- that a leash or a cage or a contraceptive is all that will work with them. Some counterbalance to their undeveloped will and conscience...and that's a recipe for perpetual stagnation in progress -- it is anti-progressive.

On the supply side, too many bluebloods (not all, that's for sure) on the right really don't want to end abortion because they see it as a means of controlling the "rabble" and the tax dollars they require of the corporate state, or in the alternative, make it a scandal for the rich and famous to be held to a common standard with everyone else should they get pregnant via an "indiscretion" that pollutes the line. They also need the religious fundamentalists in campaigns to retain party-affiliate power. There's no room in a constitutional democracy for such people, and yet there they are, warping our system to fit their monied will in more areas than just abortion. Mercenary war comes to mind; that war which postpones the responsibility to act on alternative patents when the ugly possibility of OPEC manipulation reared its head over thirty years ago merely to maximize exploitation of remaining fossil fuels left in the ground.