A 14-year-old girl is raped by an uncle, and under a total abortion ban, she's forced to carry that pregnancy to term. That's not a hypothetical for thousands of girls every year. Legal access to abortion doesn't mean anyone is forced to have one, it means she gets a medical choice instead of a state-mandated one.
The core question is whether the government should have the power to compel a person to use their body to sustain another life. If we banned abortion, we'd be saying yes, even in cases of rape, incest, or fatal fetal abnormality. Anti-abortion arguments usually rest on treating a fertilized egg as a person with equal rights. But that's a philosophical claim, not a biological or legal fact, and enforcing it through law forces one specific belief onto everyone.
Legality is about harm reduction. Bans don't stop abortions, they just make them unsafe. We can't pretend otherwise.
11:04 AM