Abortion should be illegal

Thank you Nuevo. I will begin by rebutting my opponents fifth contention before addressing the rest in the order they were given. I am doing this because it is central to the my refutation of his other points. 5) Question of Life- Con begins this argument by saying that people argue about this subject and it's possible that we are wrong about the scientific facts because science advances and our view changes. He then submits that we can't trust the scientific facts in play. This is illogical because we have to base debate of what we currently know otherwise debate is worthless. He then accepted the scientific consensus on the universal traits of a living organism. He then misunderstands the seventh qualifying factor and suggests that an embryo doesn't meet it. The ability to reproduce must be written into the DNA of an organism. This is not the same as readiness to reproduce. Reproductive systems take development but as long as they are part of the development that entity is considered possessing of the ability to reproduce. This is obvious when we consider that children who have not reached sexual maturity are not ready to reproduce yet are still considered living as their ability to do so is under development. This applies to embryos, thus human embryos still qualify as human life. He also breaks the rules by rebutting my argument directly. 1) Individual Autonomy- I think for the most part we agree here. Where our views diverge is that he argues that since a fetus naturally interferes with the mother's bodily autonomy to some extent, the woman has the right to kill it. This is obviously refuted when we acknowledge that the fetus was not given choice in his/her location. The woman is the one who decides this when she chooses to engage in sexual intercourse. This argument is like saying that if I invited someone into my house I can then kill them to protect myself because they "trespasses" on my property. Even in the instance of rape, it is not the fetus choosing to interfere with the woman's bodily autonomy. This would be like someone with a gun forcing his way into your house with a child hostage into your home. Then after wrecking your home he leaves and leaves the child. Are you then morally justified in killing the child for trespassing? Of course not. 2) Violation of Human Rights- I agree with the general premise here but I disagree with its application. He talks about how restricting restricts a necessary freedom that is directly tied to human rights. To explain the fault here I will suggest one simply replaces the word with abortion with killing or murder. I have successfully proven that killing an unborn baby is taking an innocent life and therefore abortion is simply a specific means of murder. Our human right to freedom, autonomy, and choice end where we start infringing on another's rights. Further, I explained in my last rebuttal that the child's right to life supersedes the right of bodily autonomy because the woman or rapist made the decision that lead to the woman's autonomy being compromised not the unborn child who is simply a victim of circumstance. 3) Desperate Mothers- My opponent talks about how pregnant women will still pursue abortions and will hurt themselves in the process. There are two ways to refute this: a) measuring lives lost vs lives saved and b) looking at the morality of protecting the offender a) Life for life: "In 1972 (the year before abortion was federally legalized), a total of 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions, and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions." (1) That's 39 lives lost due to the criminalization of abortion. Most likely some of those would have died from legal abortion anyway but let's pretend they would all have lived. Obviously it is tragic that these women died however, the problem of countless mothers dying as a result of black market abortion is obviously being overblown by the "pro-choice" side. Now let's compare that to how many lives are lost from legal abortion. In 2012 4 mothers died from legal abortion and over 1 million unborn babies. (1) Even if the numbers don't match up quite right due to the difference in time between when the statistics were gathered, there is no question that the numbers aren't even comparable. If even 1% of pregnant women are deterred from having an abortion due to it being illegal (this number would most likely be higher but I will be ridiculously conservative with my estimates) that saves 10,000 lives which is far more than would ever be lost in black market abortions. b) Protecting the offender over the victim: We should not seek to save the lives of women who take part in abortion (murder) at the cost of the life of the innocent unborn baby. This argument of "Well they will do it anyways so we should protect them while they commit heinous acts against others" is evil. Let's use a hypothetical world to illustrate my point. In this world there is a huge problem with murder. No matter how hard the law enforcement seeks to stop this, it keeps happening to some extent. However, there is another problem, when people murder others they have a chance of cutting themselves on their sword and dying as well. So in order to stop the deaths, the government legalized murder and offers all the murderers a big club to murder the innocent people they want without any negative consequences. Is this world a better place because the government legalized murder and gave everyone clubs? No, it's obviously worse because now the society embraces the evil they originally fought against in an attempt to save people from the negative consequences of evil things. (Sorry weird analogy but I hope you see my point.) Society should fight to protect victims of crimes not just legalize them to protect the criminals. 4) Jobless Teenagers- My opponent is essentially saying that it's hard for teenagers to have a job in order to support a child. First, women 19 and under only make up 11% of abortions. (1) Unless my opponent can prove the other 89% of abortions are justified, this is a fairly small societal harm. Second, there are huge waiting lists for people wanting to adopt babies in particular. Due to the fact that babies can be entirely raised by the adoptive parents and don't carry the same "baggage" (for lack of a better term) that older orphans and foster children do, babies are adopted very quickly. My wife's parents adopted two infants and have first hand experience with this. They waited for nearly a year each time before they were matched with a baby (they didn't really have specific requirements they were looking for either). If a teenager carries the baby to term and then offers the baby up for adoption this erases the need for her to find employment. It also benefits the families of those looking to adopt. Third, it is not impossible for the mother to find a job if need be. It makes things harder, for instance, I had my first child 5 months ago (when I was 19) and it's hard supporting him and my wife. But I chose what I did knowing the potential outcome. Additionally, there are countless programs to financially help poor, single mothers. Lastly, I have already proven an unborn baby has equal rights to any other person. If someone had a kid and was struggling to pay bills, he/she could not simply kill the child. Conclusion- I have detailed why unborn babies are scientifically classified as living human beings. Therefore to kill them is murder. The differences between an unborn baby and another human being do not justify murder. The mother's individual autonomy and right to freedom/choice does not mean she is guaranteed the right to murder an innocent person especially when she chooses to engage in sexual behavior knowing the risks. Protecting mother's seeking to murder their babies is not morally sound. There are other solutions for teens besides murder. Vote Pro. 1) http://www.abort73.com...