Thanks for your response. My comment was not in response to a moderate claim that, "an abortion carried out late in a pregnancy is almost never used as 'birth control'". My comment was in response to the claim that "Literally no woman in the history of time has ever done this." It sounds like you didn't mean the stronger statement and you acknowledge that some women have done this.

I think the welfare/food analogy is only going to persuade people who already agree with you. For people who don't agree with you--who believe that a baby that is viable outside the woman's body in the third trimester is a full human life--comparing cheating on welfare to ending a life that's viable outside the woman's body is not persuasive.

FWIW, it wasn't clear to me from your article whether you believe abortion in the third trimester should always be purely the woman's discretion (i.e., goes beyond Roe v. Wade), or whether it's only allowed in cases of medical need for the mother or the baby and with the doctor's consent.

I believe that the reason abortion is such a nettlesome issue is that both sides are right. It is the woman's body, and she should have the right to choose AND the fetus clearly becomes a human at some point, and ending a human life is morally reprehensible. Both sides argue this issue as though the other side is completely wrong, but I believe that both sides are mostly right.