What if in 1860 Democrats Had Called for Slavery to Be "Safe, Legal and Rare"?

Jay Nordlinger, in the course of writing a review of the Charlie Gibson "20-20" inquisition of Sarah Palin, makes some good points about abortion in the United States:

Palin, and lots of other people, say, “We can all agree there should be fewer abortions in America. Everyone agrees on that.” I don’t believe that, for a minute. I think it’s baloney. There are plenty of people who don’t agree there should be fewer abortions. And why should they?

Plenty of people don’t regard abortion as murder, or tantamount to murder — they don’t even regard it as wrong. They think it’s akin to an appendectomy: You want or need something removed, and you have it taken care of. I don’t hear anyone calling for fewer appendectomies.

When I was growing up, there was a feminist slogan: A baby in its mother’s womb has no more standing than a hamburger in her stomach.

Later on, I never understood this “safe, legal, and rare” business — the line that Clinton put out. Safe, I get — safe for the mother. Legal, I understand entirely. But rare? Why rare? If abortion is not the wrongful taking of innocent life — who cares whether it’s rare or common? Whether there are 10 million abortions a year or ten?

In pre-abolition days, did they call for fewer slaves? Maybe they did: “Let us hope there is less slavery in 1847 than there has been in 1846.” But the arguments have to do with fundamental principles, do they not?

Jay is correct that the notion that there should be "fewer abortions" is a universal sentiment. It's clearly not. There's an entire abortion industry, fronted by Planned Parenthood, that makes its livelihood on the money generated by abortion and the last thing they want is for the number of abortions to decrease.

If something is wrong enough that we should work to make it "rare", why isn't it wrong enough to eliminate altogether?