@David While I think this is an interesting discussion question, as it is written it isn't a great fit for a SE, where questions have answers. If you can narrow it down through edits it can be easily reopened.

@CrabBucket See blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping It's very difficult, in my mind, to say "give me a good recommended starting place" where what makes a good starting place is so incredibly subjective and it isn't clear why you are looking for that starting place or where your points of confusion are. This is a common challenge in SE sites: "recommend something to me" is always difficult for the format and highly, highly subjective.

Putting this on hold to get a little bit more detail on it, as it stands this is a bit of a difficult question from a Q&A perspective since it encourages just lists or very broad opinion. Better would be to narrow what you think would make it "for beginners."

I've edited the title since, as others have pointed out, from the context that @David most likely means "Secular" when they say "Modern."

This appears to be a duplicate of Are Buddhists Against Abortion, which covers both when "life" from the standpoint of Buddhism begins and how abortion specifically is handled.

The question has been reopened based on community voting. The edit does help clarify things as well.