If the best thing we do is look after each other, then the worst thing we do is pretend to look after each other when in fact we are doing something else.
--Adam Phillips
You can pretend life begins at conception, but there is a difference between cells and a person.
You can pretend sex is always a choice for which women are responsible, but thousands of years of rape and incest and homonal pressure prove otherwise.
You can pretend every pregnancy turns out perfectly, but miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and the still-born are that someone you know will have experienced such tragedies.
You can pretend an ancient text or your own good intentions justify your version of taking care of people, but if those people protest en masse against what you are doing you might at least put yourselves in their position for a few moments.
Because while you can pretend over-simplification and making a fetish of a fetus adds to the decency and safety and “life” of a culture, you only need to do cursory study of history or of other nations to see you are wrong.
And while you can pretend abortion is a simple issue and that ethics are always reductive, it is not and they rarely are.
You may fashion yourself as a foot soldier in god’s army, but even and especially then, to actually take care of people you need to do more than pretend.