I see people say this a lot, but I always have a hard time understanding it. Of course, an abortion ban ultimately does result in a reduction in women's freedom - but is the end goal for banning abortion really specifically to limit women's freedom? Or is that just a side-effect of some other goal?

It just seems hard to believe that that is the goal in itself. It's not intuitive to me that people really want to control women as a goal in itself. And after all, a third of anti-choicers are women (gallup poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx), which, while obviously a minority, is a significant chunk.

For the record. I am staunchly pro-choice. But I also think that it'll be easier to refute anti-choicers' arguments if we have an accurate understanding of their motivations. And I'm just not sure that "the desire to control women" is really the true reason. Can you offer actual evidence of that, or is it just speculation?