Certainly, women's rights are an important part of the discussion, even if we factor in whether or not the fetus has the right to live. Even if the fetus has the right to live, that does not necessarily mean that it has the right to live off the mother's body. If someone needed an organ donation to live and their mother was the only person who could donate, and she said no, it would be very frowned upon but would not be considered murder.
The question came up on this thread. I thought it was relatively uncontroversial that abortion is an equal rights issue. After all, that is the main motive for why feminists are the the most staunchly pro-abortion rights constituency in the country, and have been since the inception of the contemporary abortion rights debate.
Certainly there are people who say they support equal rights and yet do not support reproductive rights. Of course, a part of this is pro forma: very few people will seriously, outright admit to not supporting equal rights for women. Yet it is true that there are people who genuinely support equal rights for women who oppose abortion rights. But it has always been the contention of an overwhelming majority of United States women's rights activists that the right to an abortion is a core woman's right, and not only from a libertarian property-rights perspective, but also from a feminist and equal rights perspective.
Even though there are some people who believe in equal rights on everything except abortion, these are correlated. The firmest opponents of abortion are far more likely to be against women's equal rights across the board.
