It seems like there's this perception or stereotype that being pro-life is a religious thing & I'm interested in trying to find out why this is.
I don't have specific examples, but it seems to be like a popular & standard media narrative.
There are plenty of religious folks who are for abortion rights, but I'm not sure if the notion is that those who are pro-life are just a subset of those who are religious.
I'm not religious, and lean towards being pro-life - or used to be, anyways & the reason I say this is because as a libertarian, I believe that people have the right to consume whatever they want. If a woman decides that she want to take a so-called "abortion pill", or drink some sort of herbal concoction that induces miscarriages, that shouldn't be a crime.
I used to take a radical pro-life position of being opposed to any intentional harm to an unborn child, whether it's through an abortion procedure at a facility involving an abortionist, or the so-called "abortion pill." I have to admit this is a stance I took from when I used to be religious, so perhaps there is some sort of association in a practical sense.
However, I don't think my change in position has anything to do with my move away from being religious; I changed my position because of a self-evaluation as a libertarian regarding my adherence to libertarian principles.
I don't take the position that life begins at conception; life began millions of years ago and has been an ongoing, continuous process. What does happen at conception is simply a new generation of life.
An abortion involves 2 things, not just one - termination of a pregnancy and termination of the life of the unborn child. If the goal of an abortion were to terminate a pregnancy, for whatever reason, and not to slaughter the unborn child (by removing it without harming it and placing it in an incubator, or perhaps transplanting it in a surrogate mother in a late part of fetal stage (not that the technology exists, yet - I'm just being hypothetical, here), then I wouldn't have a problem with it. It would a win-win situation, except for those who have some sort of bloodlust obsession with slaughtering unborn children & I don't care if they don't get their way.
When a pregnant woman takes the so-called "abortion pill," I don't see the difference between ending a pregnancy this way, and any other miscarriage. To me that's just another miscarriage. One might want to argue that the difference is that they know what the effect will be, so it's intentional. So what if it's intentional? How can it be determined when any miscarriage is the result of an intentional act or not? Who decides that?
To me, the libertarian principle that a person has the right to consume whatever they want makes it irrelevant whether or not there's any intent involved.
Another difference between consuming something that can or does induce a miscarriage and going to a facility to get an abortion is that there's a separate actor involved in an abortion procedure. In the case of a miscarriage, that's actually the mother's body that jettisons the fetus, regardless of whether or not the mother wishes to have a miscarriage. On the other hand, the abortionist is using tools and equipment to actively destroy and remove the fetus.
Anyhow, the reason I went through this is because if being pro-life only has to do with being religious, then it begs the question regarding why we have laws against murder and manslaughter (of adults, or anyone after they're born); do these laws exist only because religious folks are opposed to murder & manslaughter, and they created them?
If someone were to say "yes, and that's also a reason for repealing such laws along with laws banning abortion," then at least they'd be consistent; I think people would quickly realize, though, that there's a big problem with doing that.
Bottom line: is being against killing innocent human beings only a religious stance? To me, the answer is no.
