Overturning the 1848 law requiring criminal penalties for abortion is a good act. Not only was it unconstitutional, it criminalized what is a non-criminal activity: a woman choosing to have an abortion.
The debate over abortion has been so mucked up by invective and fantasy that pro-life and pro-choice people will never agree on anything. The pro-life group sees itself as the equivalent of the abolitionists, with the fetus as the enslaved being; the pro- choice people are constitutionalists, defending the right of the mother's choice. There is no common ground in this fight because the two groups argue from completely different principles: one side focuses on the rights of the fetus (considering it a full person), one side focuses on the rights of the mother.
The abortion debate is not only about abortion: it's about the value of motherhood, the role of women, the need for control. But as far as I can see from the reading and talking I've done, the pro-choice people have a better argument. The fetus is not a full human being deserving of full constitutional rights. To say that it is to simply assert an opinion as fact. There's no way to definitively prove that a fetus is a human being except through Humpty Dumpty's logic: it's true because I say it is. To then argue that abortion is murder only compounds the fallacy.
Second, pro-life people wish to use the power of the state to interfere in a woman's life. The irony here is that this is the same power they say has no business telling people to buckle up, deposit their bottles and cans, or run their families. To use state power to force a woman to complete a pregnancy is to compel a woman to be a mother. We don't tolerate this kind of compulsion in other areas of American life; why should be it acceptable when applied to women?
The access to free and safe abortions recognizes the unique biological role of women. Until men can conceive, or babies are born outside the womb, women will have to have the babies. This fact has been used in countless ways to make sure that women are not free in the way men are free to achieve what they want in this society. If a woman does not want to have a child, then she should not be compelled to have one. This doesn't undermine the seriousness of the decision to seek an abortion, nor does it mean that we shouldn't continue to talk about self-responsibility, birth control, and sexual identities. It simply means that women must have a full complement of choices if they are to lead satisfying lives, just as men do, and the state should not interfere with those choices. Anything less than this is compulsion and a betrayal of our social and political values.
Personal Responsibility
Miami Revisited