It’s almost as if he was trying to teach us something right from the very beginning ….

I’m thinking globally here, not merely nationally.
If the world population continues to grow, we will eventually hit a limit and then only one option will be left: massive death. That’s just ecology. This could happen through a pandemic or a war over resources, which is even more likely, considering the rate we already consume at. We don’t even have to grow and we’ll already face serious problems.
That is, of course, unless we lower the birth rate instead.
Like you, I’d prefer if we didn’t need abortion to accomplish this. But telling someone “don’t have sex,” or “don’t have a family, adopt instead” hasn’t proven successful in the past.
Between war and abortion, I’d say abortion is the more ethical one. And biologically speaking, fetuses are aborted when they’re unviable, aka not alive. So it’s not murder.

So the first thing to do to reduce abortion is to End The Drug War.

Second – outlawing abortion is just a feel good measure. It will not stop the practice. It will just drive it underground. They will just start having “menstrual extraction” parties again as was not unusual in the 60s. You can look it up. Or RU-485 parties. Or birth control pill parties – or ergot parties or who knows what else?

This can not be dealt with by law – you have to change women’s hearts. But passing laws – well not so difficult – except in South Dakota.

Oh yeah – with the economy tanking expect the abortion rate to rise.

And the Jewish view is that the baby is not a human (it is just a part of the mother) until it emerges from the womb. In Jewish Law killing a fetus was a misdemeanor and the punishment was a payment to the father of the child. The same as if you cut off a finger of another out of malice. This was based on the only section of the Torah dealing with an unborn child. You have to read it in the original Hebrew to get it right. Some of the translations got it wrong.

So Jews – even those who think abortions for anything other than the heath of the mother are wrong – don’t take it as seriously as some of our Christian friends. So you have to ask yourself – is legislating a particular religion’s view on the matter a good idea?

Now this is rank speculation – but perhaps the reason Jesus never addressed abortion was that he was satisfied with Jewish law on the matter.