I think what you are missing with all this is that Obama is not saying he’ll legislate any of his values, which is all I care about.

As for the remark about abortion never being a good thing, I think he means that in the sense that most people who get an abortion aren’t going to feel terribly happy about having the procedure done, not that it is morally wrong. The context that gives this away is his focus on the side being called pro-choice rather than pro-abortion. Pro-lifers frequently call pro-choicers pro-abortion, and most would not agree with this label. It isn’t the abortion that’s the good thing, but the fact that women are free to do as they please with their own bodies.

I just thought of another way of looking at Obama’s remarks.

Imagine if the topic had been euthanasia. I can see Obama saying, “That nobody is pro-death, losing a loved-one is never a good thing.”

Nothing in this statement says that euthanasia should be outlawed or that is not the best option in some instances.

Then by your own reasoning your death is a “good thing” since it is the option you would choose. However, I doubt that you would look at it that way. You would consider death the better option, but not necessarily a “good” option.

Has there ever been a woman who unambiguously looked forward to an abortion? I doubt it. The decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy or carry it to term is a difficult decision either way.

This may be an issue of semantics, but you focused on Obama’s description of abortion as “never a good thing.”

I think it’s clear that he meant that an abortion always has negative effects on the woman. Those effects may be substantially less than having a baby, but they exist just the same.

And no, pointing out that there are women who are not bothered by abortion is not the same thing as saying women who are bothered by abortion are defective or something.

As for your analogy, one of my greatest fears is immobilization. I’d rather be dead than immobilized. You disagree obviously as you’d choose amputation over death, but that does not negate my opinion that there are things far worse than death.

And that’s not a problem. The problem starts when either us wants to pass laws forcing our opinions on each other.

And as I said above - no one is denying that some people consider abortion to have moral implications. What’s being denied is that those same people have a right to take their moral implications out on the bodies of women which is where these discussions always end up - telling women they can’t abort because Person X thinks abortion is bad.

No, they don’t. They consider them the lesser of two unpleasant choices. If my choices are death or having my leg amputated, I will choose the amputation, but that doesn’t qualify it as a “good thing.”

A person can be fully supportive of a woman’s right to choose but also recognize that an abortion can be almost as terrible as carrying an unwanted baby to term.