dictate women what to do with their own bodies
I am a woman, and have been pregnant three times, so I can tell you with absolute certainty that: abortion is not about what you do with your own body - it is about what you do with the tiny little body whose life has been entrusted to your protection while it has no chance of protecting itself.
Woman actually CAN'T choose what happens with their bodies - lots of things happen to women that they have no control whatsoever over. They menstruate. They give birth. Even pregnancy itself is a huge example of something taking place within the woman's body, and she is not in control of that process. Nor is she meant to be - it is a natural process.
At the end of the day, she will live with her secision, no one else.
And that is as huge a problem as the termination of a life. Everyone around her will suggest abortion as the sensible option, but then they will all go home to their warm beds and families. And she will be the one left with the responsibility, and grief for the rest of her life, of never having seen her child's face.
Abortion is the biggest maltreatment of women around that I can think of. A significant number of women, however well they hide it, are very seriously affected emotionally, and many have problems with anxiety and other disorders to the end of their lives as a result of having gone ahead with a termination.
This isn't a simple subject. The woman's role as a mother, protector and nurturer of life, is completely undermined and trashed by abortion. This doesn't only have a catastrophic effect on the child, but also on the mother - and she is the one who has to go on living.
It is an unjustifiable act of, to my mind, extraordinary double standards, and it will no doubt be outlawed in decades or centuries to come, and looked upon as the grossest barbarity.
And, to be fair to Catholicism, this is exactly how the Church views it. The 'liberals' will work it out one day.