1972 called and they'd like their debate back

When both a District Attorney and Justin Bieber are in the news discussing abortion, you know it is going to be quite a week for women's issues.
I stumbled upon the horrific story of the "abortion clinic" (I use quotation marks for a reason) in Philadelphia purely by accident when I was Googling for something entirely different. I started reading about the doctor involved and the crimes committed and, as though it were the proverbial train wreck, I couldn't look away. I was shocked at what I was reading.
When I got to the end of the articles though, my shock turned from the story itself to the commentary made by other readers. Please don't think me naive; I am aware that, to use the terminology coined by a friend of mine, commentators tend to be "the underbelly of the internet" (™Jennifer Richard). However, the discussion was not one of fury over the issues that allowed this "doctor" to commit the crimes that he had: poverty, poor healthcare, poor treatment of immigrants, neglect in the department that was supposed to be monitoring this clinic, etc. or even despair over the crimes themselves. No, the shallow and dichotomous discourse was over abortion and the laws regulating it.
Don't get me wrong - I am disturbed by the crimes of Dr. Gosnell and his staff, but the fact that people can't see the forest for the trees is incredibly disappointing. What this clinic was doing were not legal abortions, but rather reminiscent of the backroom procedures done before Roe-vs-Wade. The only part that abortion laws play in this situation is that they were not being enforced and the responsible parties didn't protect women who needed it.
Just to throw some fuel on the fire though, Justin Bieber, idol of millions of girls between the ages of nine and twenty-five, was quoted in Rolling Stone as having said that he believes abortion is "like killing a baby" and that everything, including rape, "happens for a reason." Ugh.