Today’s pet peeve: Opposition to abortion isn’t religious

I wrote about a pet peeve yesterday, so why not tackle another one today? Here is Alexandra DeSanctis at National Review arguing that opposition to abortion isn't really based on religious beliefs:

One need not be religious to acknowledge biological reality: The unborn child is a distinct, living human being. Abortion therefore is an act of violence. It is a procedure that, when successful, kills that distinct, living human being. It should be obvious that attempting to restrict or abolish such a procedure does not require imposing God or religion on other citizens; it doesn’t even require belief in God.

This is so tiresome. For the past several decades the anti-abortion movement has been driven by the idea that "life begins at conception." That is, at the moment of conception the embryo becomes a human being who deserves the full protection of the law. But there's no special secular reason to choose conception as the dividing line. It could just as well be based on heartbeat or brain development or viability outside the womb or anything else. It's a gray area. The only reason to insist on conception is if you also believe this is the moment that the embryo acquires a soul from God.

But you hardly even need to bother with philosophical arguments, which will only lead you down a rabbit hole anyway. Just look at what real-life people actually think. According to a Pew survey, virtually everyone who opposes abortion believes strongly in God. And there's this:

Hardly any atheists believe abortion should be illegal. It's almost exclusively a belief held by religious folks, and the more religious they are the more they believe it. In real life, full-on opposition to abortion is very obviously a religious conviction.

DeSanctis is annoyed at people who think that striking down Roe v. Wade puts us on a path to theocracy. Fine. I understand. But at the same time, opposition to abortion from conception onward is very clearly a religious belief. Denying this leads conservative writers to tie themselves in knots, desperately trying to find secular arguments that just happen to produce exactly the conclusions that their particular religion teaches. You are treating your readers like idiots when you do this.