This is the second part of a series in which I'll respond to commenters' questions, concerns or bafflement about previous columns. This week, I'm talking about abortion.

There were a lot of passionate responses to my piece last week, "My 28 week pregnancy and a 20-week abortion ban: why choice still matters." Comments ranged from the supportive to the horrified. One question came up several times, however: Am I actually arguing that there should be no legal limitations on abortion?

The short answer: yes.

I think abortion should be legal without any restrictions – no parental consent laws, no mandated ultrasounds, no waiting periods, no bans on late term abortions and no bans on federal funding for abortion. I also believe people should be able to become parents when they want, how they want and without interference from the government. (If you think restrictions on abortion and restrictions on parenthood are unrelated, you are wrong.)

If that were the law of the land, it would also mean an end to rape and incest exceptions – because we wouldn't need them. Women wouldn't (and shouldn't) have to prove that their abortion is of the "acceptable" variety. We wouldn't (and shouldn't) have to pretend that women who are forced into sex are somehow more deserving of medical care than women who chose to have sex. We could rid ourselves of the hierarchy of "good" and "bad" abortions.

The decision to have an abortion is personal and complicated, and any legislation that seeks to control such decisions is based on an anti-choice ideology that thinks very little of women. It assumes that women, if not kept in check by the government, are not to be trusted to make good decisions about their bodies and families.

Particularly when it comes to later term abortions, there is a myth that women are so evil, misguided or stupid that they go seven months into a pregnancy before deciding willy-nilly to end it. This is simply not true. (And yes, I wrote about the complicated moral feelings I have about later abortions – but those feelings don’t stop me from knowing that women need access to abortion at different stages in a pregnancy.)

While I don't think we need to make abortion "rare" – saying as much only reinforces the stigma against the procedure – I do believe that part of ending restrictions on abortion is making birth control widely available, cheap, covered by insurance and free for those who don’t have insurance. I also think ending legal limitations on abortion would mean women would get the care they need sooner, producing less later abortions.

The truth is that America only started to care about abortion for reasons of sexism and racism. Abortion was legal until the late 1800s, when concern over increased calls for women's suffrage and worry about immigrants' increasing birth rates sparked a movement to legislate the procedure and to get more white Protestant women procreating.

Just as making abortion illegal hurt women actively and tangibly – before Roe as many as 5,000 women a year died every year from unsafe abortions – restricted access to and public policy limiting abortion do the same.

At the end of the day, women's bodily integrity must trump politics. My belief that there should be no abortion restrictions is about fundamentally trusting women – trusting their choices, trusting them with their own bodies and trusting that they know what is best for them and their families.