Abortion should be illegal

DEFENSESa.) Safety and AbortionIn this argument, I would like to analyze the South African case, and move onto the "rights" test.The opposition says that "I would contend that abortion legalisation has coincided with an increase of the maternal mortality rate fourfold." This may be so, but that argument has nothing to do with abortion indeed. For, as the Human Rights Watch reports, "HIV/AIDS caused 43.7 percent of maternal deaths between 2005 and 2007." [1] The rate of death via abortion in South Africa, although still quite high, has reduced significantly since abortion becoming legal, with an 11% increase of women coming safe from abortions. [2] Hence, with this, we can conclude that in South Africa, liberal abortion policy did indeed save many lives.b.) Frequency of AbortionIn this argument, I shall like to analyze the New study, cited in R3 Citation 8. It seems here that the study concluded with the fact that in restrictive abortion states, the number of abortions decreased by 22.22%. However, I shall argue that the New study has serious flaws which could create further points of clashes.As Marshal H. Mendoff reports, "New failed to indicate in his article is that both the CDC and the GI abortion figures are reported only by the state in which the abortion was performed (state of occurrence) rather than by the state of residence of the women who had the abortion." This is significant, as many US women travel to other states with more liberal abortion laws to get their abortion performed, hence merely changing the location of the abortion, but not the frequency of the abortion. When the data was re-examined upon improved grounds, it was shown that " the incidence of abortion over the period 1985-2005 finds little empirical evidence that the decline in the number of abortions performed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision was due to the increase in the number of antiabortion laws enacted." [3]c.) Socio-Economic Effects of AbortionThe core of the opposition's rejection of this argument is based upon the fact that the same logic could be used to justify something else. This is "faulty comparison," for (a.) the same logic cannot indeed by used to justify something else, and (b.) even if it does, that takes nothing away from the argument.Let us analyze (a.). Pro says "the ‘goal’ is the elimination of problem-ridden persons from growing up in society." Is it? There is a difference between "undesired" and "problematic." If Jack and Jill were to have intercourse without intent of a baby, but one comes along, isn't the baby "undesired?" However, if Jack and Jill had intercourse with an intent of a baby, but one of them died from falling down a hill, doesn't that mean Jack and Jill's baby's childhood would be problematic? The goal here is to rid undesire children to prevent them from a problematic upbringing, not to get rid of unwanted ones. 92% of abortions are done within the first trimester, and those that happen in the third trimester is often justified using the opposition's policy (threat to life). [4]And even if so, (b.) provides us with a good reason why we should reject such comparisons as negating the argument. Isn't eating meat much like a psychopathic genocide i.e. "we kill because we like to eat them"? Such a practice is inhumane, yet a law criminalizing the meat industry would be unwanted. Isn't the government like God on Earth, punishing crimes that people sometimes do not deserve punishment? But if we were to do away with the government, then we'd be pretty much screwed over. HENCE, even if the same logic could be used to justify Holodomir or infanticide, the argument wouldn't be necessarily negated.OBJECTIONSa.) RightsHere, I would like to refute Pro's claim that the meaning of "person" actually pertains to fetuses. And I would also like to reassert that the Constitution still protects the right to privacy as fundamental, and does not indeed deserve to be neutralized by unprotected homo sapiens.Firstly, the opposition says that "[the references to "Persons" in the Constitution] can easily be explained [because] the vast majority of [Persons referenced in the document] have already been born, so it makes perfect sense that most references to persons within the constitution will be references to born humans." This suffers from two errors. The first being that the opposition's case does not contain any legal decisions which support it. This is an important point-for "person" in the Constitution must have only one definition unless stated otherwise. Moreover, when a definition of "Person" is established within a document, it should be taken to mean the same thing throughout the document, unless necessarily stated before. Apart from this, this argument as a whole does not further Pro's policy: for if all babies had the right to life, then does threatening the lives of their parents should not be considered for abortion.Secondly, Pro says that Con "affirmed the consequent." "All citizens of the United States are persons, but not all persons are citizens of the United States" is affirmed. However, "it is a fallacy to conclude that all citizens are born persons" is indeed vague. Moreover, the fact that citizenship starts with birth in the US is a rather established fact. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that "All person born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" after the US government attempted to restrict citizenship to an American-Chinese born in the United States. [5] Implications of this includes the mere fact that American citizenship starts with birth in the territories of the United States (or in other cases, birth in foreign territory with the requirements for American citizenship). Thirdly, the opposition says that "the 14th amendment is an 18th century text, written in a time where virtually nothing was known of foetal development." However, this was how the Supreme Court decided the case District of Columbia v. Heller, by applying the "18th Century" definitions to the 2nd Amendment, which ultimately concluded with the 2nd Amendment inclusion of the normal individual. [6] If we were to use the same logic, Webster's 1828, one of the dictionary used to decide District of Columbia v. Heller, we see that person meant a human being with a body and soul (rational, conscious etc.) [7] Apart from this, we must notice again that no Supreme Court decision whatsoever was used to support the claim that the Constitution extended pre-natally. And finally, the interpretation of the word "person" until the late 19th century has always been post-natally, leading the Supreme Court to declare that "that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn." [8]Lastly, upon a little side note, the ‘Unborn Victims of Violence Act’ 2004 did indeed exclude abortions, for although the fetus was now a legal victim via these laws, they were not a victim to abortion. As S.1841 C.1 says, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the prosecution of any person for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman, or a person authorized by law to act on her behalf, has been obtained or for which such consent is implied by law." [9]Hence, we can conclude here that the definition of 'Person' extends post-natally, as there has been Supreme Court case declaring the opposing (pre-natal) so. We can also conclude that the affirming the consequent is supported by Supreme Court decisions on citizenship, and that it would be legitimate to note that the 18th Century meaning would often be what is meant via the Constitution. Lastly, we can conclude that the 'Unborn Victims of Violence Act' 2004 does not pertain to abortion in anyway.b.) NAPCentral to Pro's assertion is some Enlightenment political philosophy claim: (1) that the government should use "principles" and "concepts" to policy-make (rather than facts and sociality), and (2) that the government ought to use the NAP as the Criterion. These two claims must be deconstructed.The first claim, that the government should use principles and concept during policy-making, is backed up with the claim of the state of nature. The opposition says that "the ‘state of nature’ is hypothetical." It must and can only be so-for the "state of nature" bases itself on several dangerous claims about human society, namely, that we humans have a "inherent nature," which will make the State of Nature flawed. I do not claim that humans are flawless, but I claim that humans, behaviour wise, are natureless. "What is it like to be a human" is answered quite easily-"it is like being a human." As all humans are different, we cannot use set rules to predict behaviour, for humans have different effects on these set rules. The NAP relies on the mere concept that humans are good-natured, as they will follow the laws emplaced by the government. The NAP also relies on the concept that humans will not take advantage of the law. However, both assertions are both true and false: some people take advantage of the law, others do not. What "principles" and "concepts" leads to is a destructive cycle of assumed automatas-for it assumes that all humans are one, and not another.The thing is that we should deny adherence to such principles and focus on reality-for different laws have different effects on others, and such essentialist "principles" or "rules" will ultimately ignore how different people react to different laws. CITATIONS:[1] http://bit.ly...[2] http://bit.ly...[3] http://bit.ly...[4] http://bit.ly...[5] http://bit.ly...[6] http://bit.ly...[7] http://bit.ly...[8] http://bit.ly...[9] http://1.usa.gov...