It is not a matter of "being discarded because they are unable to fend for themselves".
Yes, it is. That's exactly the argument you made about when someone becomes a person. If you were consistent, you would argue that abortion deliberately robs innocents of life an is therefore more evil than a war that is not intended to harm innocents.
War, you would add, is also evil because it harms innocents unavoidably.
I completely disagree. It is all about who chooses. Both war and abortion are almost always wrong - who chooses is all that is left.
To be consistent, since war is evil, also resulting in the death of innocents, then does it not matter who chooses that?
Our constitution prescribes that the country's decision to go to war must be made by the congress. Our founding fathers must have felt that who chooses makes a difference. It is interesting that the process has been perverted. It was mostly our president who took us to war in Iraq - congress did not declare war, it just resolved to snivel off that responsibility to the president.
It might be good to get the process for war decisions corrected before we meddle with family and personal decisions in circumstances we know little or nothing about.
There are a great many people in this country that see the responsibility for an abortion decision to be with the woman who is pregnant. They will vote to preserve that choice and that may result in leadership that will do substantial harm to this country. It may be counterproductive to make abortion a political issue.