> Men and women have similar views on abortion

I never made any claim about support for abortion rights of men vs women. My point is only that men should be especially circumspect about restricting what a woman can do with her body.

> Abortion advocates

First of all, I'm not an abortion advocate. I'm an abortion-rights advocate. Let me lay out my position so that it is clear:

The way to reduce abortions is to reduce unintentional pregnancies and to better support women and mothers.

To wit, I want free and universal contraception and sex education. I want better birth control options for men (and I put my money where my mouth is by having a vasectomy after my wife and I had two children). I support a stronger social safety net than America provides.

I believe we can reduce second and third term abortions by making first term abortions easier. But should a woman, for whatever reason, need an abortion after the first term, that should be between her and her medical provider. I don't think any woman wants to have an abortion, especially one after the first trimester, and so I trust women to make that decision for themselves.

> are no different than any other kind of progressive advocate--they claim the mantle of an entire group to champion extreme positions that most members of the group don't support, while seeking to suppress the voices of other members of the group.

Supporting abortion rights is not an extreme position among men or women. A majority of Americans, men and women, support Roe and think abortion should be legal in "most or all cases":

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i...

I am not trying to suppress anyone's voice. I am arguing against those who aim to restrict what I believe is fundamentally a woman's right.

> In reality, all the people I know who oppose abortion are women.

This is neither here nor there, but I happen to think that women who "oppose abortion in most or all cases" have fortunately never had to face a decision like this:

https://joshandrebeccashrader.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/my-cr...

> And even before that, we will have legalized conduct that is immoral and wrong, even if it's rare. by your numbers, you're talking about over 40,000 second trimester abortions a year. Some of which I'm sure would be justified regardless due to fetal deformity or health risks, but you could still be talking about thousands of
monstrous acts a year where neither of those factors is implicated.

In Germany in 2020 there were 2,226 abortions in weeks 12 to 21. There were 648 at 22 and more weeks:

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Health...

Which of those were immoral and wrong? Which were monstrous acts? Who decides?

The vast majority of women who have abortions after the first trimester don't realize they are pregnant, don't have resources to get an abortion sooner, or there is a fetal deformity.

https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2013/11/who-seeks-a...

What's immoral and wrong is to decline them the right to decide for themselves.

> Leaving abortion to legislatures has worked just fine in the rest of the world.

The U.S is not the rest of the world. We either let state legislatures decide or leave it to Congress. It is immoral to leave it to the states because it will disproportionally harm women who do not have the means to travel or who wish or need to obtain an abortion confidentially. It will increase abortions after the first trimester.

Leaving it to Congress is anti-democratic due to the Senate. But say we do leave it to Congress, which presumably has the authority to grant or restrict abortion access under the Commerce Clause. Then we're right back to the Supreme Court to rule on that authority.

> It's fundamentally mistaken to view every social issue through the lens of segregation of Black people. [...] Contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion are completely different. [...] Liberals have used this mistaken analogy to segregation.

The analogy to segregation is because its supporters defended it as as states rights issue, just like supporters of restricting abortion access. Similarly for the other issues. These are all issues that should not be left to the states.

> Champion a view of the Supreme Court that wrests control of society's moral and cultural development away from the public and entrusts it to highly educated elites.

Do you think that Griswold, Loving, and Obergefell are also issues that should have (should still be?) left to the states?

Here's what I think: Only 6% of the country could vote when the country was founded. Since that time, we've been on a path to greater democracy. But the country still retains anti-democratic institutions, and they are currently held by conservatives and allow a minority viewpoint to restrict the rights of others. At the same time, I think the constitution and representative democracy are what protects us from mob rule.

If resting control away from the states by finding implied rights in the constitution in order to allow interracial marriage, gay marriage and so forth is what is required due to the particulars of America's government, so be it.

> Abortion is legal to 24 weeks not because the public wants it, but because a
bunch of libertarian-leaning Republican judges in the 1970s and 1980s did. Had Roe gone the other way, I strongly suspect we would have reached an equilibrium today.

America has highly conflicting views on abortion:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abo...

If Roe had gone the other way, I expect we'd be exactly where we're about to end up with restrictions varying by state, and with constant arguments over it in Congress.

> that reflects public opinion of supporting elective abortion in the first trimester, but only in exceptional cases after that.

Which is where we are as a practical matter in any case.