I've watched my momcats with their litters of kittens and sometimes just after birth but before biting off the afterbirth membranes and cords, they explore one of the kittens and decide, for this or that mom-cat-reason, that this one is not destined to be in this world, and they push it to the side and do not free it from the afterbirth and do not nurse it, and it dies.
Personally, I'd support a similar bill for abortion rights for people, that up until the mother symbolically cuts the umbilical cord and declares her baby to be alive, it is not legally a person and she can declare it to be dead instead, and she should have that authority. God gave her that along with the power to bring life into the world in the first place, and that position of responsibility and its powers are the trade-off for a lifetime of PMS, periods, cramps, UTI infection susceptibility, breast cancer, and a variety of other things that women have to put up with that we guys don't have to deal with.
Of course it's killing. Of course it is human life. Get over it.
It isn't murder. Not all killing is murder. SOME abortion may sure as hell be murder but no one is ever in a better position than the pregnant woman to determine whether or not the sad event is necessary in this particular case. SOME women may be horrendously bad judges of such matters, but ultimately God put them in the position of being the gatekeepers of life and some are wise and some are fools; some make difficult decisions weighing all the complex factors with care and others treat the matter as a cavalier decision. Don't worry your souls about it -- as right to life people point out, those who have abortions for lightweight and transient reasons often suffer horrible guilt pangs and have nightmares about what they did.
But not because they had abortions; because they took a heavy and important matter lightly.
Room for compromise, you say? Sure. We need to reduce the abortion rate. All those unintended pregnancies are a sad thing, and abortion is a sad solution even if it is sometimes the best one, and one thing the conservative people who normally oppose abortion rights are totally right about is that teaching sex ed in the schools as if it were a simple matter of plumbing and how to prevent the sperms from getting to these ova over there is grossly irresponsible to our kids.
We should be exposing our children to adult discussion of sexuality. REAL adult, not the lewd filth for which "adult" is a sick euphemism. Discussions of how erotic interest and sensation feels emotionally. Discussions of falling in love, how personal feelings and sexual feelings for someone can mix together. Discussions of vulnerability as well as ecstasy. Discussions of how vulnerability brings up the issue of power in relationships.
Discussion of ambivalent feelings about sharing one's sexuality as opposed to feeling cautious about dragging something so important as to be holy through a sewer of nasty attitudes and exploitative experiences.
And I do believe sexuality is holy. I have a far far less reverential attitude towards marriage and would oppose teaching kids to wait for marriage, but I'm open to the idea that kids should hear from adults expressing various points of view about marriage as the proper container to hold and define human sexuality, and that's a compromise. (I will teach my own child that I believe marriage at this point to be an abomination in the eyes of God).
Obviously I am one of those people who are often referred to as "sexual liberals" by the religious conservatives, and I am also a "feminist" of course. However, I am certainly not a non-thinking slogan-wielding sheep and it will do neither of us any good for any of you to simply ridicule me as another "feminazi" or "liberal". No one else reading behind you will buy it. I have read and listened to the right to life perspective and will continue to listen to you, for I believe this issue is not a football game to be won and then we go home -- we all have to live with each other, and if you are here to seek compromises on the issue I will listen and participate.