"The Consistent Lesson of History"?

Bill Stuntz, in his thoughts responding to John Breen's recent papers, writes:

If a large number of young women want to end their pregnancies even if that means killing the soon-to-be children in their wombs, I do not believe any modern legal system can or will stop them from doing so without causing even greater loss of life in the process.  That is the consistent lesson of American history, including the history of abortion and abortion law itself.

With respect, I disagree.  This is not, in my view, the lesson of "the history of abortion and abortion law itself."  I do not believe that the facts support the claim that closer regulation (even prohibition) on elective abortions resulted, or would result, in "even greater loss of life" than a permissive, abortion-on-demand regime.  Joseph Dellapenna's book, "Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History", refuted quite thoroughly the purported premises of this claim.

That said, certainly, I agree with Prof. Stuntz (and St. Thomas!) that we need not -- and, in fact, should not -- criminalize every vice, or even every immorality.  But the current abortion-license involves, among other things, the singling out of a group of human persons for exclusion from the law's protection against private lethal violence.  The fact that the inclusion of these persons in the community of those protected by law against such violence would have some costs does not (as opposed to, say, the case of marijuana-legalization), in my view, warrant declining to include them.