The thing about having hard, declared personal moral standards is sometimes they conflict with what you want or think. If you're truly committed to your moral standards, you have to change what you want or think when there's a conflict between the two sides. Morals are like Amendments to the Constitution. Yes, you can change or modify them, but it's a hard and long process and it's meant to be that way. Morals that can be easily created, modified or deleted are not morals at all.
Since I've had an opinion on abortion, it's been "pro-choice." I have always held the belief that life started at conception, however I also believed it was the woman's body. A few years ago, I started really looking into the standards and particulars on this subject. That being said, I'm not here to sell you, either way. I'm here to describe why I'm now 100% pro-life.
Take a through physical survey of yourself right now, at this moment. Look carefully at what (not "who") you are. Now, think about what you were an hour ago. With the exception of a catastrophic event (trauma, dismemberment, heart attack, etc.), You are 99.999% of the person you were an hour ago. Your weight might be a pound heavier or lighter if you have just eaten a meal or had a waste dump, but again for all intents and purposes, you're basically the same person and the two "you's" are indistinguishable.
Now continue that trend. Compare the you of one hour ago vs. you of two hours ago. Continue that process all the way up until you were 30 minutes old. During this whole time you are a considered a person. Now, go back one more hour to 30 minutes before you were born. According to the law at that minute, you are not a person. But is that really true? Like every hour span you've studied up until this point, the only significant difference is where you are, i.e. you're inside or outside your mother.
Now go all the way back, to that moment when you were 8 cells, or 4, or 2 or just one cell. Go back ten more seconds, when there was an egg and a sperm nearby trying to get into the egg. That moment, when the egg receives the DNA from the sperm and now has the ability to start growing. That moment, that second, when the egg and the sperm combined then divided, that is when you were born. This is that hour where there is a big difference between the start and end of that hour. From that moment until you left your mother's womb is just paperwork. Those who are heavily invested in abortion-on-demand would say, "It's not a baby, it's just a clump of cells." And, semantically, I have to agree with them. But every baby started this way. And like Ben Shapiro says, "Aren't we all, right now, just a clump of cells?"
Yes, we can't make the connection between the "us" now and the "us" at two cells. It's too big of a leap. I am saying it is us, you just have to look at it in that shorter time frame.
Looking throughout recorded history, the most heinous atrocities that mankind has committed has been the killing of babies and pregnant women. Killing men was no significant thing, killing women was worse, but still not very bad. But if you really, really wanted to piss off a tribe of people, kill an infant or pregnant woman. Destroy that promise of life.
So now I ask, why is abortion not just normalized, considered no big deal, even celebrated today? Remember, when Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, she was a racist and eugenicist. When the pro-abortion people use the phrase "For the health of the mother," uninformed people take that (reasonably) to mean, "the mother and/or baby will die if the baby is carried to term." What I found out is the term "health" encompasses physical, mental, financial and relationship health.
Think I'm blowing smoke? From Newsweek, Abortion: What the 'Health' Exemption Really Means. Quoting from the article:
...[I]n Doe v. Bolton, a companion case issued the same day as Roe, the court provided further guidance on what preserving the "health of the mother" entailed. "Medical judgment may be exercised in light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age--relevant to the wellbeing of the patient," the court wrote. "All these factors may relate to health." [emphasis mine]
So if a woman goes to an abortion clinic and tells them, "I can't have this baby. I'm trying to get my career started and I don't have the time or income to raise a child," that is enough reason for the doctor to proceed with an abortion to kill that baby. And ICYMI, the legal definition of "baby" is anyone before their twenty-first birthday, i.e., an adult. So, just in case it becomes legal to kill babies after birth, remember that.