As this thread has shown, just about everyone is pro-choice to a degree, and just about everyone is pro-life to a degree.
The differences, despite the hysterics and crazy hyperbole, are very minor.
Well, not when you consider hidden agendas, and that's really my point.
Abortion was legalized by the
Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. During the same decade, a cultural revolution occurred in this society ending thousands of years of patriarchy. Legalized abortion is a flash-point and an easy issue to rally around, but what most anti-abortion advocates are really upset about is that whole feminist revolution.
In the 1960s, my mother started her own small business in Texas. Because she was a married woman, my father had to co-sign all of the documents establishing ownership. A married woman could not legally own property in her own name in the state of Texas at that time.
An ex-girlfriend of mine, born in 1952, was a National Merit Scholar. However, she received no scholarship money, because all of it was reserved for boys.
No-fault divorce was first adopted in California in 1969 and did not become the law in every state until 1985.
In 1976, Nebraska became the first state to make marital rape a crime. Prior to that, a husband could rape his wife without legal consequences. It was not even grounds for a divorce.
The traditional, agrarian-age status of women was, as I said above, property. A girl was the property of her male relatives until marriage, at which point she became the property of her husbands. Almost never could a woman live without a master, and even then her status before the law was decidedly second-rate. This view of women is incorporated into all religions arising during the agrarian age (before the industrial revolution), and of course that includes Christianity. Overt statements endorsing female subordination are found throughout the Bible and in church teachings.
Of particularly chilling relevance is the passage in Genesis when Lot is visited by two angels. A lusty crowd gathers, crying out (in modern parlance) "Hey, Lot! Your guests are hot! What hot asses! Bring 'em out here and let us have a gang-bang."
Lot's response? "No, no, don't butt-**** my guests! Here, I have two terrified virgin daughters, go ahead and rape the hell out of them instead. They're only females."
And this is the guy that God found to be the one righteous man in Sodom! Apparently there was nothing wrong or unrighteous about handing virgin girls over to be gang-raped by drunken thugs.
Thus the traditional attitude towards women. It has changed. That change does not sit well with a certain segment of the population (not all male, interestingly). It conflicts with their religious views, which remain traditional Christian on this subject (or Jewish or Muslim or whatever). For the majority of the anti-abortion movement, reversing feminism is the real agenda, and anti-abortion is only a symbol of that, or a means to an end. That does not describe ALL of the anti-abortion movement; a minority of it is sincerely pro-life. But the question about whether to make an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape serves to distinguish between the two.