Originally Posted by filtherton

Well, its a complex thing. It would nice if it were a simple matter of "every child carried to term is beneficial to the species" but that's not always the case. Beneficence is in the eye of the beholder. Clearly a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother isn't necessarily beneficial to the species, and a pregnancy that perhaps threatens the livelihood of the mother isn't necessarily beneficial to the species. Even an ideal pregnancy with ideal parents isn't necessarily beneficial to the species. In fact, there seems to be a natural predisposition by the species towards abortion if you count all the pregnancies that fail without abortions.

Speaking of natural predispositions, humanity seems to be spreading like wildfire. Nobody knows the earth's carrying capacity, but we do know that it must exist. It might be argued that the cause of species continuation might benefit from a decrease in the birth rate, which is something that the legalization of abortion accomplishes, though perhaps not to a very significant effect thus far.

But that isn't even necessarily that important. Until humanity reaches a point where the continuation of the species is threatened by abortion then your point is null.