The information you quoted shows that tobacco is bad and alcohol is bad. No kidding. Of course smoking is a "significant factor" - but how significant and how commonly do pregnant women smoke? I still believe that miscarriages are usually not the woman's fault. It sometimes is, but not often enough that a miscarriage is 'suspicious.' I'm willing to change my position if you can find evidence to the contrary.

"The people who would oppose them"? I'm assuming that if you make it "illegal", then it would actually be, you know, "illegal". That means the power of the government would be enforcing this.

Yes - family members or friends who would be opposed to the woman having an illegal abortion. In other words - if abortion is illegal and a woman gets pregnant, she's probably not going to be so stupid as to go around telling everyone about the pregnancy before she gets her illegal abortion. Therefore if you hear that someone had a miscarriage, you're not reasonably going to think "oh it must really have been an abortion" - because if it was, why would you have even heard about it. Do you know anyone who has had a miscarriage? Did you suspect legal abortion? So why would it be different if abortion was illegal?

A woman's doctor might know she is pregnant before she does. In the situation you described, yes, the doctor would have an obligation to both patients. Say a doctor informs a woman she's pregnant and later she comes to him and he thinks she had an abortion - yes, he should report it. But if a woman who knows she's pregnant goes to the doctor, that's a pretty big clue that she intends to keep the baby. So this nightmare scenario you're trying to paint in which every single miscarriage is investigated by the police is wildly unrealistic.

"Not dangerous"? A woman who has an illegal abortion is likely to do it again.

"the needs of society"? So it's a good thing if we let serial killers loose? Is that because we don't value their victims as much as you claim?

"is likely not to believe abortion is murder"? If society has decided that the unborn are really people, her thinking this only makes her insane and *more* dangerous, not less.

You may have a point on the first one, but I'd need to see some numbers. I know women today frequently get multiple abortions, but I don't know how that might be different if abortion was harder to get.

As for the needs of society - what I mean is this. If abortion is outlawed and there are still millions of woman getting abortions (many people claim that outlawing abortion will not reduce its frequency at all), you can't very well throw millions of people in jail for years.

You seem to think "society" has one homogeneous view. Even if the anti abortion side wins legally that doesn't mean that all of society will magically decide that abortion is wrong. So even if abortion was illegal I would not say that those who believe abortion is morally acceptable are psychotic. I'd say they believe something illogical and morally indefensible, not that they are mentally ill.

Your argument about the KKK does make some sense, though. We don't let illogical beliefs about personhood and human rights excuse criminal actions in the one case. I'll have to think about whether abortion is a different situation or not.

And you're right - those who oppose abortion do need to think more about what we'd do if abortion was made illegal. It would create a lot of problems and force a lot of difficult choices. But if life begins at conception, almost anything is worth it. And I think it does. I'm not going to say "oh, wow, it'd be really inconvenient if abortion was the taking of an innocent life therefore it must not be!"