To a CD, a fetus (even a fertilized egg) is a human being with a soul, and to kill it is murder. To a Reactionary, abortion facilitates the sexual freedom of women, which is an affront to God and a mortal threat to the traditional male-dominated social order. To a liberal, abortion is tied to both freedom and equality for women. They aspire to a kind of secular, tolerant, multi-cultural democracy that is reviled by the right.
Abortion is such a divisive issue because the ideological stakes for each of these factions could not be higher; they tread on ground that is not negotiable. The other message here is that Justice Ginsburg’s critique of the legal reasoning behind Roe has a lot of merit, because her argument that the decision should have been based on equal protection instead of a vague right to privacy has a basis in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and reflects the real sociopolitical objectives of the left, as described above.