First of all, I'm going to address this issue.
Out of curiosity, would you pull the plug on someone who is brain dead?
A person who is brain dead has no hope of recovery or any other life. An embryo does have hope for life. Even if brain activity hasn't started for an embryo, it will in short time. If you're brain dead, your brain isn't going to start back up.
Now, addressing Duckling's issues.
I doubt that most babies aborted are aborted because giving birth to the baby would kill or significantly harm the mother. Furthermore, I have absolutely no clue where you got the idea that babies
must be killed if the act of being delivered would harm the mother. Abortion is an option, not an absolute.
Getting pregnant is as much of a consequence of sexual intercourse as a bullet fired is a consequence of pulling the trigger of a gun. Perhaps you meant that society should view getting pregnant as a good thing that was planned out instead of an unexpected consequence, but the sad truth is, not all pregnancies are planned.
Apparently, our views on the morality or immorality of sexual intercourse are different. When birth control fails, other methods (abortion) doesn't have to take place. Actions may have undesired consequences. The consequences may be very unpleasant to deal with. However, if you are able to completely get away from all the consequences, you don't learn much of anything, and so you don't do much in the way of preventing the consequences from occurring again.
Overpopulation may be a problem in India or some other country with a ridiculously high population density. It isn’t anywhere near as big of a deal in America.
As I stated above, actions have consequences. Sometimes they are very unpleasant. However, the consequences are easily avoidable. For example, not having sexual intercourse before one has gotten the education they desire would take care of the problem of not being able to receive an education.
If someone has sexual intercourse, they are running the risk of getting pregnant. They should be prepared to accept the consequences. If not, they have a few months to get ready.
There are many disadvantages of being pregnant. This should be redundant by now, but pregnancy is avoidable, and if someone does get pregnant, it is probably because they made a choice. Your argument talks about the disadvantage for the mother. What about the disadvantages for the embryo? Do they not count at all in any way? One of the things I don’t like about abortion is that it lets the mother get away with being completely selfish. If the pregnancy is inconvenient for them, then they can just go ahead and kill the embryo. What if raising an existing child was inconvenient for a mother? What if the mother wasn’t really ready to be a mother? What if having to raise the existing child got in the way of the mother’s ambitions? Would it be right for the mother to kill the child? Of course not. Sometimes, you have to put other’s interests at the same level as your own, if not higher. People are born with a life instinct, and it doesn’t start at birth. It starts before that. The embryo wants to live; the mother wants it to die. Apparently, only the mother’s opinion counts.