That brings us to the affects of abortion on society as a whole. Simply put, there are none.

I don't believe that case is so clear. I'm pro-choice, but only because the price is worth paying, not because it does not exist.

A society's ethos is hard to particularize, but the particulars tend to bleed into the general. For example, I regret the passing of the military draft, and with it the sense of "duty" that accompanied it. A cultural ban on abortion bespeaks a cultural reverence for life. Not because a fetus is "alive," but because a fetus will become alive, and if we revere life, we will want to protect something with the potential to have it. I believe that by allowing abortion, we, knowingly or unknowingly, lessen our reverence for life; otherwise, we face the cognitive dissonance of supporting the right to extinguish a thing that, left alone, will become a thing we revere.

How can we be sure that our willingness to abort a future life doesn't harden us at all to the loss of actual life? Yes, we can make the distinction between the two, but the psyche is not so compartmentalized. Personal and societal self-esteem and integration may demand that we either oppose abortion or not care so much about the living, because the object of the one would, if left to its own devices, become the other.

Anyway, I don't think "simply put" gets the job done...