Abortion is an issue that is only simple for people at the extreme ends of the debate. Many leftists support abortion (and generally wants it to be taxpayer subsidised, of course) on the grounds it is a woman’s right to choose, which is ironic considering the left is dedicated to reducing personal choice in just about every other sphere. In truth I suspect many on the left support free abortion because so many conservatives oppose it.
Religious conservatives oppose abortion because of religious tenets, end of story, and many others oppose it because they feel that it is murder. And that is, of course, the issue. The issue of choice is moot until you deal with the issue of ‘is it murder?’ because we are not free to choose to murder people.
The way I see the debate is this: treating the chemical abortion of a cluster of cells a few days after conception as murder is preposterous (the general Christian position) because a potential person is not an actual person, but treating the abortion of a survivable unborn child a few days before delivery not as murder is also preposterous (yet that appears to be position of some Objectivists) .
Where does a reasonable person draw the line? I really do not know and upon that basis I think abortion should only be clearly illegal (i.e. murder) if it is late term even though I personally find the entire practice abhorrent. I am simply not prepared to support charging someone with murder unless I am certain a person has indeed been murdered. But how does one define a ‘person’? A two day old blob of human cells may be alive but is it a person? I think not but the devil is in the details. It is not an easy issue and as a result I do not regard my own position as fixed on this by any means.