How to shut up people who are against abortion

[Sal]

The best examination of the subject of abortion I've ever read is chapter 15 of Carl Sagan's last book, "Billions & Billions." It's called "Abortion: Is It Possible to be Both 'Pro-Life' and 'Pro-Choice?'" I highly recommend it, and there's no point in me trying to re-phrase what was already said so well: http://2think.org/abortion.shtml

My own thoughts on the matter, that it should be permitted to a point and restricted after said point---and that when it's a medical issue moral issues take a back seat---are not groundbreaking or radical. As a personal matter, though, I do find casual abortion distasteful as a birth control method, and don't associate in an intimate way with women who are likely to use it as such. I take my stand on the morality of legal abortion, to whatever degree I take one, in this manner.

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

This is the view I most align with on part 1.

Sam Harris has the best position though, which I align also with:

Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.

We so callously defend a fetus, when our environment is literally burning up - shouldn't we, instead, simply have Family Planning and make sure this planet continues to be hospitable for humans? Just saying.

This isn't some Red Herring, if you're thinking that. We're 7 billion people, and if we don't weigh in what room there is for additional human beings and teach the gospel of Family Planning, we're only gonna increase suffering when the agricultural resources become stretched thin.