Comment by rayiner

That's not really correct. "Conservatism" is a three-legged stool. It includes social conservatives, libertarians, and big business. Social conservatives have never been big on "individual rights and freedoms." They are on board with that insofar as there is a tradition in America of certain rights and freedoms, but they are not motivated by those things as ends for their own sake. To social conservatives, abortion really has nothing to do with "rights" and "freedoms," but about religion and the natural order, both of which assign a central role to reproduction and child rearing.