The answer to all of humanity’s problems is in changing hearts.  In fact, we wouldn’t need any laws if everyone would always do what is right instead of what is wrong.  But until that day comes, the role of the law is not to change hearts but to restrain the heartless.  As Martin Luther King once pointed out, the law could not make people love him but it could keep people from lynching him. 

Regarding abortion, our governmen4 has no right to allow its victims to be slaughtered waiting for the killers to have a change of heart.  Besides, if abortion is not murder we do not need a change of heart.  If it is murder, the law has no right to allow the heartless to do it. 

While it is true that the law can’t make an immoral person moral, to say that we don’t legislate morality is idiotic.  Every law passed is someone’s idea of right and wrong.  The law is the mechanism society uses to decide which behaviors it will and will not tolerate.  If those decisions are not going to be based on morality, what should they be based on?