@heraymo I was already preparing this comment and, as it pertains to what you wrote, I'll summon you in case it is of interest.
I perceive consciousness as the state of being, when the fetus starts to feel anything at all, starts to dream and becomes aware. For simplicity, we can say when it wakes up to life. Consciousness can develop as early as the 24th week, which is the end of the fifth month, but usually it manifests around the 30th week, which is beyond six and a half months. Personally, I'm for the right of a woman to choose to abort before the fetus reaches its state of consciousness, and I believe there should be limits to the right to choose the abortion after it, related to medical reasons (risk to life or of debilitating injury to the woman, deformity on the baby, new significant medical/psychiatric events in any of the parents), or if the sexual act or the insemination were forced upon the woman.
By curiosity, I went to check on a book. “Ethics in the Real World” is an accessible collection of thoughts by the philosopher Peter Singer, where he applies the ethical principles of philosophy to contemporary real world cases. And he has a brief chapter on abortion. Beyond other points, Singer states that the fallacy of the anti-abortion argument lies in the false equivalency between the scientific thesis that a fetus is a homo sapiens and the ethical thesis that the fetus has subsequently the same right to life than any other human. Belonging to the homo sapiens species isn’t enough to give an entity the right to live.
Singer argues that granting the right for a fetus to live on it being conscious or rational makes it invalid to kill plenty of other living beings, like cows, because cows have more conscious and rational capacity than a human fetus. However, the pro-life groups protesting against abortion seldom protest to save the animals and in favor of a vegan lifestyle.
It is plausible that we shouldn’t kill, against their will, self-conscious beings that wish to continue to live. However, why should the potential of a being to become self-conscious make it immoral to prevent their potential self-consciousness? We’re not bound to allow that any being with the potential to become self-conscious reaches that status of self-consciousness. When we have a conflict between the unknown interests of non-rational beings and the known interests of rational women, the women get the preference.
i'm going to be completely honest here.
banning abortion except in extreme cases of rape or when it'll kill the mother is a pretty good idea, you shouldn't be allowed to use abortion as a birth control because you couldn't keep your damn legs shut.
But of course, if you really want one, you can always go to a liberal state, it should be easy.
There's the issue that women who live in some abortion-banning states are still imprisoned if they travel to another state to perform the abortion. The location of the act is irrelevant for them.