We discussed this at dinner yesterday as DS1 and his friend group (mid twenties) are clearly concerned about the issue. They're broadly leftwing and largely buy into TWAW but are pro-choice. I explained that in my opinion, the pro-choice side in this fight has self-sabotaged to the point where I don't think they can mount an effective challenge. And they cannot argue against that, because they haven't even started to think this through.
If you cannot clearly and categorically state that this is about the right of women and girls to make their own choices concerning their bodies, and that the conflict here lies primarily in men's determination to control this choice, it's in my view not possible to argue the case.
We have sufficient evidence from past and present to show that denying us the right to choose whether to grow a baby inside our bodies or not is an act of oppression on the basis of our sex. A calculated, deliberate act not concerned with the life of the child.
If it was, anti-abortionists would campaign differently, focusing on supporting women and girls in poverty, which is still one of the main reasons why we make that difficult choice. Such efforts would reduce the need. But they don't.
Instead they continue. In the full knowledge that they cannot prevent abortions with their campaign. All they can prevent are legal and safe abortions. Wherever in the world we live, whatever our laws say, if you are desperate to have an abortion, there is a way. And the fact that we choose ways that may kill us should tell these campaigners something about our needs but they don't care about the mothers and they don't care about the children.
The only thing they care about is control.
And when we cannot get to the root of what that control is about, we cannot defend our right to choose.
"It's about people's right to choose what to do with their bodies and people don't have the right to stop other people from making that choice."
What the fuck kind of useless argument is that? Which people need that right? Which people aren't ever going to need that choice? If it's not about people's bodies but about the unborn alone, then why shouldn't the sperm-provider get a say?
As you say in your OP, CindyLouWho1, if you apologise to the people with penises - who have nothing to do with the issue - for leaving them out of the argument, you just can't fight this. You've already conceeded that men should have a say over women's rights to decide what happens to their own bodies.
How can we make our case when we give men that right from the outset?