I had a similar thought to Prudence's, but slightly different, and I'm curious to hear your take.

My personal perspective on abortion is that it's like smashing a bird's egg. It's sad and dark, but if a pet bird was pulling out its feathers from stress and depression and I knew its recently-laid eggs were the culprit and getting rid of them would fix it, I'd smash them.

That's abortion to me--not guilt-free, not evil, but rather, the lesser of two evils. Acknowledging that you're severing a thing on track to becoming life doesn't have to mean placing it above the mother's right to her own body.

Another example: imagine you had a time machine and could stop someone from being born. Would that be killing them? Where you stand in the past, they don't exist, and they can't feel. But the politics, the need to prevent society from controlling bodies and lives, doesn't exist here, and I think it's clear that making that move to sever a thing on track to life is not meaningless.

To summarize, even though the currently living person is far more important, doesn't "if allowed to continue, this will one day be a living person" have meaning?