Does preventing the deaths of thousands of babies, mainly black ones, justify government restriction on abortion? I would agree yes.
At present there is no state interest I can think of with enough weight to override a woman's fundamental rights of privacy, bodily integrity and self-determination. If fertilized eggs and embryos are recognized as separate persons under the law, then every pregnant woman would be subject to others seeing her medical records or undergoing forced medical procedures against her will. Pregnant women would lose the freedom to determine their own lives; to choose things like what to eat, how to exercise or even where to go. Look at Alabama v. Jones. There is no point in pregnancy where a woman should ever lose her civil rights.
The main problem is that this should be a state issue, not a federal one.
Should slavery have been left up to the states too?
The justification for a federal limit on abortion is one grounded in mental gymnastics and frankly a non-scientific basis. Roe v Wade and PP v Casey is set on arbitrary terms that scientists don’t even agree on. Life either begins at conception or when the baby comes out of the mother, not at 20 weeks or wherever the limit is right now. There’s no middle ground. Which side do you want to be a part of?
Nobody disputes that life begins at conception. It's about determining the status of rights among the living at different stages of human development. Every single one of our rights designations is completely arbitrary. Why do people become legal adults with full citizenship rights at age 18? We literally just made that up. And we made up every single other qualification of legal rights and to whom they apply as well.
It makes sense to choose a benchmark for when fetal rights kick in just like we do with everything else. There is no exact science. Immigrants' rights don't kick in until certain conditions are met - proof that simply being human does not mean that everyone has the same legal status. Some logical proposals for when fetal rights begin include when it reaches a certain level of consciousness (~26 weeks) or when it can live by itself outside the womb (~ 22 weeks). To say that all humans should have the exact same rights and status at all times from the time they are conceived to the time they die is simply not a logical position.
Over time, new types of fetal surgery and other medical and scientific breakthroughs will raise more questions about the legality of abortion. For instance they're working on artificial wombs right now which is gonna make a ton of waves. There is no black and white when it comes to this issue. For instance if someone does IVF and discards the extra embryos (since they always retrieve and fertilize a bunch of eggs to send for genetic testing) does that mean the woman is a murderer? Obviously not, yet that's the position you would have to take to be consistent.
My body my choice doesn’t apply when your body isn’t in question. You have no right to harm the body of another distinct human being.
What about someone in a vegetative state or similar circumstance? That's another "arbitrary" designation where consciousness is used as a standard for when taking a human's life becomes a moral and/or legal option.
You have no right to dictate the medications or procedures that another person chooses to have done on their body whether they are pregnant or not. And if a fetus is a person, it should be entitled to things like child support, due process and citizenship. Arresting a pregnant woman would be a rights violation. After all it's illegal to detain someone without arraignment or trial. A fetus has not committed a crime and not been charged, so being a totally separate and distinct entity from the mother with rights of its own, it would be illegal to incarcerate a pregnant woman since doing so would confine a second person without due process. Right?
Anyway, I know you're aware that I started the baby making process. I've always been pro choice, but after some personal experiences this year I will say that I am now emphatically pro choice. Maybe we'll talk more about it some other time. I don't anticipate spending a lot of time on DART. I just feel really strongly about this topic.