Swift
So, a mortgage company is taking away your rights by foclosing on your house? or the bank is taking away your rights when repoing your car for non payment? Nope, you went into that situation KNOWING what the consequences are for non payment.
Same with sex. EVERYONE knows that you can get pregnant from sex, so you're accepting that responsibility by engaging in sex.
Well I'm glad you're life's that simple (I guess the attraction of fundamentalism is just that - simplicity). My life on the other hand isn't, and since the subject is sensitive to many and practically a taboo in the U.S., and you rarely hear about it, I will make an exception and give you my recent and very personal experience with this subject (which has not changed my stance).
I've recently met the girl of my dreams, my soulmate, etc. When I met her, she was with another guy, but they had an open relationship. Initially, when I started talking (or rather chatting) with her, I was just curious. She is 7 years older than me, and I had up to that point never talked to someone who was in an open relationship before. We discovered pretty soon that we were kindred spirits to an almost worrying degree, an expeirence I hadn't come near to in 10 years. After two-three weeks of chatting, we just had to meet, and we hit it off in an amazing and earth-shattering way, physically, mentally, everything. I truly enjoyed spending time with her and didn't mind that she was already with someone else, grateful as I was for the time I could spend with her.
The relationship she was in up to that point had lasted 15 years, which wasn't going anywhere (they had convinced each other they didn't want kids, up to the point where he had sterilised himself), but it wasn't outright bad either - they were good friends. I myself had a few failing relationships behind me before that, where I've sacrificed a lot of myself to make the relationship work, which didn't work out. When we spent time together, we were both amazed with how giving we both were, which resulted in both of us being more at the receiving end a lot more than we were used to. When discussing kids, she clearly indicated that the idea scared her and she didn't want them, but I equally clearly indicated that I loved the idea of kids and also expressed that I couldn't think of anyone better than her to have them with, in love as I was with her genes.
I was actually the first guy she met who wanted kids, live together and so on, outside of her current relationship, and she was greatly moved by this. It made her question a lot of things, one of them her position on children.
On the second weekend, the condom broke. She suggested a morning after pill, and I found myself resisting the idea - I loved her so much, she seemed so much the perfect match, and the chance that two people get pregnant at this point in life seemed so small to me (I had actually been trying with another girl once before), that this one time I wanted to find out if where we seemed to match on all other areas, we matched here also. But I accepted her wish - considering the circumstances it made a lot of sense of course - and the morning after pill was taken. I also took an HIV test, especially since there was a third person involved here. Both she and he, by the way, are blood donors, and very careful.
We had another weekend together (every other weekend - her boyfriend also dated other women), and each weekend we rapidly drew closer. Then, a week or so after that, she discovered she was pregnant.
This opened our eyes to a lot of things. We took six days and a weekend together to seriously consider whether we should keep the child. I talked to everyone close to me, and as I had already planned to introduce her to my father we discussed this with him also. We fantasized endlessly about what it would be like, and what practical issues we needed to overcome. In the end, there were two great objections. I wouldn't be able to sell my house and change jobs quickly enough to be with her (cancelling her job wasn't an option, I'm still more flexible in that area), and when she discussed having a child with her boyfriend, he freaked out and couldn't bear it, said he would leave and never see her again if she went on with it. So keeping the child had two large objections. I couldn't be with her to support her, and she would destroy her relationship with the up to that point most important person in her life.
After a very tough decision, she decided to have the abortion. I still wanted to keep the child, but I respected her decision and did understand it was probably the best thing to do. It would have been far too much at once - after all, she didn't want children up to that point and the idea alone freaked her out; and I greatly respected also the bond she had with her boyfriend - fifteen years is not something you want to throw away just like that. The number of hurdles to be taken was huge - for her: break up, move out, overcome her fear of having children, etc.; for me: move to another place 200km away, change jobs, etc. And and each of them were big things that would have been better off if we'd do them one by one and take the time needed to overcome these steps emotionally. We also really only knew each other a few months, and up to that point had spent about 7 days together in total. In short, it was too much too soon.
At the same time though, we learnt a valuable lesson from this. She discovered that she might want children after all, and we both discovered that we were really good together. We went on a two-week holiday to my mother's place, and not one single hour we could get enough of each other. After the holiday we agreed to keep seeing each other like this for another half year, and then make some big decisions. She was slowly changing her mind on children, and started seeing everything, including her own youth, in a new light.
When she came home from the holiday, her boyfriend started questioning her. He felt that the way things were going, their relationship would die slowly, and he didn't want that to happen, and so he forced her to make a choice. Although I knew she wasnt really ready for that choice, but still a bit to my amazement, she told him that in that case, she would choose me. And so less than half a year after our first contact, I helpt her move to her own place, and I became the first man in her life. If all goes to plan, I will move in with her at some point later this year, and eventually (probably within a year) we will be starting to build a family under a lot better circumstances.
In short, neither the choice to have an abortion, nor the choice to have children, is one that should be taken lightly. The choice to have an abortion almost never is - both emotionally and physically, I have yet to meet any woman who has taken this decision lightly, and I have talked with several (I'm the kind of guy people like to talk to, I guess).
Whenever someone like you, Swift, is against abortion on grounds like you've given, this is just one of the many stories in my head that make me object to the naive simplicity underlying statements such as 'cells that have the potential to become a person are life and should be protected at the cost of everything else - except perhaps when someone was raped'. Such statements, to me, reveal an incredible underappreciation of what life, protecting, and suffering is on so many levels, it dazzles me.
Something that has the potential to become life is not life. But the people involved are very much so. They greatly and by a large margin come before whatever has the option to become life. I would go so far as to say that when two people decide to have an abortion, they often do so because they value, understand and respect life more than you do.
The sacrifices two people, but especially a woman, make when having a child, should be voluntarily at all times, and not just the result of an accident. Even if the result is from less care than we have taken (I even know someone who got pregant despite taking the pill and using a condom at the same time), human beings are partly governed by hormones and the flesh is sometimes stronger than the mind. But the decision to have children should be governed more by the mind than by the flesh. The success of mankind is, in part, a result of learning to control its environment, and that includes if and when to have children. Contrast, for that matter, Africa and the West.
In short, Swift, you do, indeed, sound like a broken record. You pretend to value life, but to be able to value life you have to understand what it is first. And I maintain you don't.
See how socially isolated you are becoming in this opinions forum. 
