There are people who will disagree, but I'm sold on ABS. In normal use, you'll never know it's there. But in an "emergency", on less than perfect pavement, it will invariably stop you shorter and safer than all but a very, very few expert riders could do. Frankly, I'm not convinced even "expert" riders can stop you shorter than ABS on bad pavement or in slippery conditions.
Some of those who don't think ABS is better like to point to some controlled tests that show an expert rider can stop a non ABS bike a few feet shorter than an equivalent bike with ABS. What they ignore is that these tests were done on perfectly smooth, dry pavement, under conditions where the rider knows he's going to do maximum braking , and can practice the stop.
In the real world, none of those conditions is likely. By definition, you're not prepared, or you wouldn't have to stop so short. Public streets are almost never perfectly smooth and dry: they're cracked and broken, they have sand, oil, leaves, and other loose materials on them. Surface friction changes from place to place. It's a rare rider indeed who can compensate for all these variables, in ever changing combinations, dozens of times a second. An ABS system, OTOH, can do it easily.
Here are a couple of Suzuki videos showing the benefits of ABS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6nEDeIa78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bDFRriIls&feature=related
There are also some people who think ABS is bad because it's too complicated, and failure prone. But if there have been any ABS failures on STs, they're very rare.
But you do need to understand the limits of motorcycle ABS. It works great in a straight line, and it may help some if you're slightly leaned over. But if you're leaned over in a curve, and nail the brakes, you're still going to fall. The ABS doesn't know your leaned over, and can't cope with the loss of braking traction caused by the lean.
View ABS as a last ditch backup feature, not as something that will let you get away with stupid mistakes. Ideally, you'll never know it's there. In reality, it could save your bacon some day. Sort of like a full face helmet and ATTGATT, or seat belts and air bags in a car.