[Siegmund]

Suppose we accept the premise that "abortion is murder because an embryo is a person." Does that automatically mean abortion is wrong?

No. It means abortion is something to be taken very seriously. That's a sentiment I think has significant support even in the pro-choice camp.

Almost everyone believes it is justified to kill in self-defense. It is not surprising a great many people support abortion when the mother's well being is endangered.

Some people believe in euthanasia for the terminally ill. Some people believe in testing for birth defects and aborting the defective. Some would go a step farther, and allow abortion of babies that would be born into a miserable existence - desperately poor, crack whore mothers, whatever - arguing that they are preventing suffering by aborting.

Some people believe in the death penalty. It's not obvious what the parallel would be here.

Some people believe that under the right circumstances, it's okay to declare war on people we don't like, or people who are trying to steal our resources or threatening our way of life. Some people might interpret another mouth to feed as stealing the parents' resources or threatening their carefree way of life. (Odd how even the philosophical warmongers seem to be squicked at the idea of using genocide of the living or forced abortion of the enemy's pregnant women, but it's been done.)

The parallels are not perfect. I am curious whether people's attitudes toward each of the issues involved line up at all with those parallels.