Just to chuck in my brace of dinari as a long-term Hitchens reader, he does believe that abortion is the premeditated taking of human life (and therefore abominable) and to confirm that he has a balanced view here, he's also very much against capital punishment. This is not to say that he rejects the Roe v. Wade decision as unconstitutional or wishes for it to be overturned as a matter of the nation's morals or is against the use of fetal tissue for science. Furthermore in god is not Great, he describes spontaneous abortion (that is to say the "natural" kind) as a genetic necessity for the species, in that the fitness of the mother and her other children would be abjectly affected in the forced care of a malformed or idiot child--surely not the opinion of an extreme right-to-lifer. He simply believes that the termination of a healthy pregnancy is a regrettable thing, not in the forcing of pregnant women to bring a child to term and commit the same to the state if the child is unwanted.