This is a particularly startling cultural fact. There are arguments for and against capital punishment. That nobody in elective politics is prepared to raise a principled voice against it speaks for a moral tyranny that has almost fascist overtones. It begins to carry the US away from any strong connection with the liberal politics of the European mainland and offshore island alike. There are other divergences.
Abortion is an unavoidable matter for public policy.
Here's an issue squarely within the frame of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, dynamically adventuring where science and profit dictate. That is part of a wider truth, glossed over even when the special relationship was at its most intimate. Britain since the war has been a seat of social democracy, not economic liberalism. Even Margaret Thatcher couldn't wipe that out. The welfare state was as big when she left office as when she entered it.