"Abortion decisions should be left up to individual conscience. Abortion is often an agonizing decision for the woman. We must leave her the freedom to make her own decision, in conscience, free from state interference."
These are noble sounding phrases, and it is understandable that people are impressed by them and brought to support a woman's right to make her own decision in conscience. They are psychologically plausible, but they are not logically and morally sound. The law that would give a woman this right to decide in conscience would thereby take away the child's legal right to equal protection under the law. The noble-sounding phrases veil the horror of the reality of abortion.
There are things that should be left up to individual conscience. There are other things that should not. Equal treatment of blacks in society is an obvious example. Equal treatment for preborn persons is another.
When it comes to questions of fundamental civil rights, laws that allow individual conscience to decide mean the surrender of some to the power of others to deprive them of these fundamental rights, including the power to destroy them.
"Abortion decisions should be left up to individual conscience. Abortion is often an agonizing decision for the woman. We must leave her the freedom to make her own decision, in conscience, free from state interference."