Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."
Yes, I read that story as well. My reaction? Well, abortion is a process by which the body either spontaneously or with assistance rids itself of unwanted tissue. The notion that one can be for or against a nasty natural process is just a bit irrational.
Abortion of even the smallest amount of fethal tissue is unpleasant. So what's to like? Most of us women don't even like thinking about the elimination of tissues that don't contain a fertilized egg. And, yes, every one of those cells is alive or living or contains life, until it is dead. To argue about the beginning of a particular life is to go back to the beginning of organic existence on the planet. What's the point, unless you happen to be a paleobiologist?
One would hope that a political leader in the twenty-first century would not be fixated on such esoteric stuff. There was a time when a man such as Thomas Jefferson could amuse himself with philosophic speculation and agricultural research because the population was much smaller and the demands on his time were less.
Given the limited amount of time in every day that is available to deal with real-time problems, badgering a candidate about the origins of life is just another distraction to keep us from looking at what is really going on behind the closed doors of the current administration.