Why I oppose legal restrictions on abortion even more than I oppose abortion

 I’ve read the draft resolution from Justice Alito, in which the 1973 Supreme Court Case Roe v Wade is attacked.  Let me propose several horrible and barbaric outcomes:

1. children who are unborn are killed (this is the outcome Alito is most concerned about; it's nearly his only concern).
2. The maturity and autonomy of women is dismissed by the coercive power of the state; so that instead of allowing women to seek their own spiritual guidance and consult medical opinions when making a decision about terminating a pregnancy, they must instead obey the coercive power of the state telling them what decisions they are allowed to make.
3. We could lose the right to privacy, a traditional right that was widely understood back even in the 17th century, and certainly in the 18th century when the philosopher-founders of our nation were drafting and approving the Constitution. Privacy was one of those rights not specifically named in the Constitution, but we had the Ninth Amendment in the Constitution to protect such rights.  That is, the rights that are spelled out and directly mentioned in the Constitution are not the entire set of all rights Americans have; they are just those rights specifically named in the Constitution.  Other rights exist, and belong to the people, and the general preference in Constitutional law and interpretation should be to assume that people have more rights, and the government has only a narrow scope in which to diminish those rights. The right to privacy, and the general idea that Americans have many rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, should be a basic assumption in the judiciary, and Alito’s argument against Roe v Wade, 1973 undermines this understanding of our rights.  
4. The state could violate the sacred relationship between a doctor and a patient. In general, I trust a medical profession more than I trust government bureaucrats and members of the legislature.  I’d rather allow the medical profession to make decisions about how and when abortions should be performed. I think professions should be self-governing and self-regulating, and the government should only bring in its coercive powers to ensure that the medical profession is respecting the rights of the citizens and treating patients in accordance with basic standards of fairness and safety.  That is, the government should have a limited role, mainly in oversight, and delegate to the professions and their leaders most of the decisions about how those professions should practice their skills. Laws restricting the medical use of abortions and removing the medical profession's opinion as a consideration is a gross overreach and tyrannical intrusion by coercive state power into realms where it does not belong.
5. An ethical dilemma that ought to be resolved by spiritual searching and examination, with decisions made through motives of love, will instead be resolved by force and coercion, with decisions made with motives of fear. 
6. In a question that has no objective scientific answer (when does the sacredness of life begin, as it must surely begin at some point between conception and the approximate time a fetus reaches viability?) will be decided by a decision that forces all citizens to conform to the assumptions of religions that are not even part of the spiritual life for a majority of Americans.  The idea that abortions must be banned is an idea promulgated by a religious minority in this country.  Most religions would allow for exceptions to a general rule forbidding abortions, or would not even have a general rule forbidding or discouraging abortions.  Most secular persons do not even agree that the life of the embryo or fetus has a status comparable with the preferences of the mother until late in the pregnancy anyway.  It would be a very bad situation for our country if our courts and legislatures tried to impose the religious beliefs of a minority on the whole society, and I believe Alito wants do exactly that.  If a political party dominated by Hindus came to power, and outlawed beef consumption, or an alliance of Jewish and Islamic political parties got into power and banned the use of pork in human foods, or if a group of vegans gained power in alliance with certain high-caste Hindus and strict Buddhists, and simply outlawed all consumption of animal-based foods, those situations would be wrong; and it's wrong for the people who believe human life—with attending human rights—begins when an egg is fertilized to force everyone to live by their idiosyncratic faith system.

I think Alito is correct when he suggests that abortions used for birth control in the second trimester are a barbarity. I suppose that abortions after the second week of gestation are probably a great moral harm to the mother when performed electively as a form of birth control. But, there are many other harms to consider in imposing laws that forbid abortions. Looking at the scientific evidence for how many fertilized eggs go on to develop into babies born in life births, it seems this universe is already set up in a situation where perhaps 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 “conceptions” do not lead to live births. This, therefore, seems to be a natural and common phenomenon, although of course the fact that it is natural does not make it a good situation.  Cancer is natural, as is heart disease.  

I’m for free choice in cases like this, where there is ambiguity and doubt about what harms are included in one of the possible choices. When the choice is abortion, this is probably a great harm to the unborn child who is a developing potential person, but I do not know how great a harm it really is.  Is it like murder?  I don’t think so.  And, there can be great harms to the mother if she is coerced into keeping the developing body inside her womb to give birth to it. 

Allowing abortion will allow tremendous moral harms, but taking away the right for women and doctors to decide to have an abortion creates even more moral harms. In modern, complex societies, we allow many things that cause harm to innocents. The USA practices war and helps other nations practice war, generally justifying war by pointing out that the targets of the war have done terrible things, and are likely to do more terrible things, and kill many innocent persons.  Yet, in our conduct of wars, even wars that are perhaps very justified and righteous (e.g., the war against Japanese imperialism and Nazi Fascism in the 1930s-1940s, the war to stop Communist aggression in Korea in the 1950s) many innocents will be harmed, possibly as bombs kill civilians, or as soldiers, even from the “good side,” commit atrocities and rapes on or near the battlefield. That is the nature of war, and we continue to tolerate an international world political system in which war is a frequent condition.  

There are other examples. We allow widespread use of personal vehicles, but tens of thousands of innocent persons are killed in car and truck accidents, which could be dramatically reduced if we devoted more public resources to public transport. We recognize a right to own guns, although every year many people die from gun-inflicted suicides, random gun violence, and mass shootings.  If we removed all guns, we would save many lives, but we value the right to own guns above the value of the lives that would be saved. We use chlorine in water treatment, although a number of persons die of cancers caused by some of the byproducts of this form of water treatment, but reverse osmosis purification of water is far more expensive, so we save money and allow a number of persons to die, sticking with chlorinated water instead of water distilled through reverse osmosis. The burning of coal kills a substantial number of persons through lung diseases, but economists and lawyers estimate the cost of not burning coal, and assign a value to each life lost, and decide that it’s okay to continue operating coal-fired power plants; we don’t need to shut them all down.

 So, like these situations, arguing that abortions should remain legal is an argument that there are things more valuable than the lives of the potential children that are lost (possibly as innocent human lives) in abortion. The Germans, Italians, Slovaks, and Hungarians could stop using Russian gas completely, and thus force Russia to end its war against Ukraine sooner.  But, the Germans and some other Europeans value the convenience of lower cost energy over the lives of innocent Ukrainians and the soldiers of Russia and Ukraine who perish in the Russian invasion and war of conquest against Ukraine. Deciding that something is more important than human life is often done in ways that are dubious.  With a political will we now lack, the USA could rescue people in Yemen and West Tigray from the genocidal wars and starvation that results in those war-torn lands There are thousands of lives at risk in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Haiti, South Sudan, Myanmar, the Congo, and so forth. Americans could save those lives by bringing tens of thousands of refugees into our country from those places, but we don’t do that. 

Normally, life and the preservation of life is the highest value.  But, there are times when the prolonging or preservation of life is not the highest value.  Ask a hospital ethicist about quality of life versus preservation of life, and you will hear some horror stories about lives prolonged too long. And, in the many examples I’ve given, human lives are not valued more than other aspects of life. In the case of banning abortion, the harms from imposing such bans are many.  I think it entirely reasonable that a person could cringe in horror at the thought of the barbarity of using abortion as a birth control method, and still strongly oppose legal attempts to restrict access to abortion, because such laws and their enforcement would impose even greater barbarities on society.