[Michael]

Welcome, Stephen Kahn!

Stephen Kahn wrote

The universe follows "laws" of cause and effect. I bang a nail; it goes into a board.

You're lucky. I bang a nail, I just get holes in my dick.

Human beings are animals with complex brains. We are a product of evolution. We are the only animals (on planet earth) with full self awareness and full awareness of our mortality. There are other "intelligent animals" such as primates, elephants, whales, crows, octopuses, but none of them have full self awareness and realization of mortality.

Source?
It's likely there is a level of truth in this, but I am unaware of where you are getting this from, other than assuming it to be the case.
What makes you think they are unaware if their mortality? Similarily, when you see things like videos of dogs rescuing other dogs from the freeway, or staying vigil over an injured dog/animal, what do you think is going on?

As animals are chief drives are to survive and pass on our genes. As the excellent book DENIAL argues, only humans developed full intelligence because we are so good at lying. We lie to each other and to ourselves all the time. Our chief lie is, "I won't die." As clever liars we invented religion. Several of the chief lies include "I have a soul that will exist after my physical body dies, either through reincarnation (Karmic religions) or through Abrahmic Heaven/Hell. Life is not fair, so lie #2 is "good" will be rewarded and "evil" will be punished.

I would also add "fairness" to that list. A lot of theists I've spoken to will often appeal to a universal sense of "fairness".
'I've been good, therefore I deserve good things. Bad things happening to me are unfair.'
This idea of 'deserving' a certain level of treatment from the universe because of the way you live.
The universe doesn't owe you shit.

Theists generally thinking terminating a pregnancy means you deserve bad things to happen to you, which goes a long way to justifying the awful things some religious people will do to abortionists.

As far as abortion goes, words such as "pro-life" and "pro-choice" have little meaning and little usefulness.

The terms seem to only exist as a way to seperate the two basic ideologies apart. Of course, being 'pro choice' has no bearing on if you are or aren't 'pro-life', and being against abortion does not at all make you 'pro-life', yet the anti-abortion propaganda machine has made that their label, for political reasons.

Also, we have pretty much overpopulated the earth (though this is very subjective). Some cultures, -- particularly Communist China and to some extent Japan -- have used abortion as a method of "birth control." In my mind, it's not really "wrong," but I think it's not a very practical and sensible method of birth control, and I think contemporary China has backed away from the practice. As with most things, the general principles are fairly easy (in my opinion) to figure out, but (forgive me for a silly religious phrase) the "devil is in the details."

I have yet to be shown legitimate arguments against abortion as a population control method. Many will find that view cold, but that does not make it incorrect.

The arguments I do hear (though I admit it is not often) are usually the same ones used against abortion as a whole, and they are very weak, in my opinion.