Abortion is a complex issue involving two people... a woman and the baby inside her. Both parties have human rights. I am going to provide a high level civil and religious argument around it.
Abortion usually involves killing a human, but it does not always involve murder. Murder is a specific kind of killing. So, someone that "kills" in self-defense or war is not murdering the other person but they are killing them. Word choice is important.
We live in a society that is designed to reconcile conflicts between people's human rights through a legislative process when those rights cannot both be accommodated. Abortion is one of those instances.
In the case of abortion, the unborn baby's right to life cannot be accommodated along with the woman's right to pursue happiness when she does not want to have the baby. So, society must decide who has the prevailing right under what circumstances, which is why abortion laws can vary from state to state.
My only objection to those who argue in favor of a woman's right to an abortion, is with those who argue the baby is not human. That is an argument of convenience not grounded in science. If you need to make that argument, then you are largely hiding behind a delusion to feel okay about something you don't really feel okay about. Abortion is what it is, the termination of the life of an unborn human.
Christians will argue that even if a society decides a woman has a right to pursue happiness and that her right takes precedence over the baby's right to life, that a woman who carries the child to full term and allows the baby to be adopted by a loving family has shown "sacrificial" love towards the human inside her. Having run a large women's health group, if a woman knows she does not want to keep a baby after it is born for often good reasons, there are many couples wanting to adopt the baby and even compensate the woman for the expenses she incurred having the baby.
Every human is a sinner. Sinning at its heart means putting our own selfish desires ahead of others and service to God. At some level, abortion does that in most cases, so at some level it is sin.
But so, is eating too much when others in the world are starving. Not living for "self" is hard, it is something we all struggle with... abortion is often just one expression of that.
It is wrong to condemn a woman for having an abortion and wrong to deny that in most cases, the decision was based on "self", which is the definition of sin.
Because we are all guilty of sinning, we have evolved into thinking of things as "big" sins and "little" sins, but I don't think God views sin that way, I think He views sin as evidence of the fact that we are not perfect and need a Savior to be holy. As such, our holiness is a "gift" given and not earned.
