Ethics: out of Sight, out of mind?

I woke up this morning thinking about the "Chicken Statute", otherwise know as Proposition 2, that just passed in California. Proposition 2 requires that certain farm animals (egg laying hens, calves raised for veal, and pregnant pigs) be kept under conditions that allow them to turn in a full circle and extend their limbs. When I was considering this proposition, my thought process went something like this:
If I were raising an animal, let's say a chicken, for eggs or meat, would I confine it so that it could not even raise its wings? Absolutely not. I could never live with myself if I treated an animal so cruely. Does the fact that the hen that produces the eggs I will eat is being kept on a farm (egg factory) somewhere where I will never see it mean that the conditions in which it lives are irrelevant to me? I think not.
It seems to me that we not infrequently sidestep the moral implications of our choices and actions by mentally and physically disengaging ourselves. Examples are myriad. When we choose to leave a shopping cart loose in the parking lot of a store, we cheerfully choose to ignore the burden and inconvenience we are placing on someone else who will have to retrieve that cart. When we buy a cheap pair of shoes made in China we are happy with our bargain because we are not forced to see the miserable conditions in the sweat shop that produced them.
On a more serious note, a woman who chooses an elective abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy is insulated from the true nature of her choice by several distancing layers. In all probability, she will view her choice as "ending a pregnancy" (something abstract and a nuisance to her); since she does not see the beating heart and moving limbs within her, she can comfortably ignore the life she is ending. And since she herself will not perform the procedure that destroys that life, she can distance herself from its reality by viewing it as simply a medical procedure, the moral equivalent of having an unwanted mole removed. Were those layers of insulation removed, were she to see the life and be required to snuff it out herself, I suspect many women would make a different choice.
Because making truely moral decisions is hard and often very inconvenient, we frequently choose another route. We willingly wear blinders that allow us to see only what we choose to see.