Abortion is generally wrong.

As this is his first debate here on Debate. org, I'd like to welcome him to the site and hopes that he sticks around for a while. With that being said, his response seems out of place (most probably by unknowing of the site's workings). As I stated the first round was for acceptance, and not argumentation, then his first round should just be read as a long "I accept". If my opponent wishes, he may copy and paste his argument into the next round, if he wishes to use the same line of reason. With that said, I'll go ahead and jump right in. The entire debate around the ethics of abortion have been blown entirely out of proportion. In the understandable attempt to find the game-winning argument that proves your side 100% of the time, we as debaters have delved out of the realistic zone of our world and delved into argumentation that hardly applies to our modern society, if ever. The answer to the question of whether abortion should be allowed in our society, in my opinion, is rather simple. It comes down to one principle that I feel we acknowledge exists without ever giving it thought:Treat others how you wish to be treated. Yes, the Golden Rule. It's a very simple principle that states taht when you consider taking an action to or against another person, that you ought to consider if you were in their place, and they in yours, if you would want them to take that action to or against you. If you would want it to happen to you, then the action would be more likely than not a good action. If you wouldn't want that action taken or directed at you, then it would be more likely than not a bad action. Now how does this apply to the conundrum of abortion? Before we consider consenting to the act of abortion, we need to visualize ourself as the unborn baby. Would you want to be aborted, regardless of the reason? Nine times out of ten, any person would answer that question with a solid 'no'. Right there we should be able to see that regardless of whether the baby is a person or not, that abortion is generally a bad action. Of course, there are often situations that arise in life that aren't always clear cut on what is the right action. I'll adress a few of them here:Rape:If a girl/woman is raped and is impregnated with the raper's child, should she be allowed to get an abortion? Even in this situation, it would seem wrong to kill a baby-to-be, regardless of whose it is. Even if she did not wish to have the baby be raised by her, she could simply give the baby up for adoption to a host family or to the foster system. There are plenty of other avenues of action to get around having to abort a human life. Even here, abortion would still be wrong. Teenage Pregnancy:If a teenager fools around with her boyfriend a bit (who doesn't? ) and ends up getting pregnant, should she be able to abort the baby? One would be able to logically, and reasonably, deduce that she wouldn't be able to effectively care for the baby herself, so would the baby really be in worse pain than if one were to abort it? Again, the golden rule applies here as well, as one wouldn't want to be aborted, regardless of who our mother was. If the ability to raise the baby is called into question significantly, it may be possible to allow the baby to be rasied by a family member or relative, or to give the baby up for adoption, as to allow the baby to live until the mother is capable of raising the baby on her own. So even here, abortion wouldn't be the correct choice. Disease:One might say "Well what if the baby is going to have Down Syndrome or Autism? Wouldn't it be okay to abort the baby then? " I still don't think that in the case of a mental or sociological disorder, such as Autism or Down Syndrome, that it would be permissible to abort the baby. Many avenues of treatment exist for these forms of disorders, and many children born with the disease grow up to be active, productive members of society. It may be more trying on the parent to raise a child with a disorder, as compared to a child without a disorder, but that is hardly a good enough excuse to have the baby aborted. Another objection on the disease front is "Well what if the baby will have some horrible disease that will cause the baby tons and tons of pain throughout their life? Wouldn't we be saving the baby from more pain by aborting it? " And this line of reasoning carries some weight to it. But I feel that it ignores the possibility of a) a misdiagnosis from a sonogram (which are actually more common than one would like to believe), or b) technological and/or medical advances that allow us to find a cure for the disease and prevent the baby's suffering without having to abort the child. While these technological or medical abilties do not exist in our current society, we must always keep the future in mind when deciding on policy. Having said this, this may be the sole reason where an abortion would be permissible, given that the diagnosis is correct. Even still, the ability to access abortion treatments should be restricted, as to prevent the situations where a baby is thought to have some horrible disease and upon still birth (giving birth to a dead baby), the doctors find out that the baby wouldn't have had any disease. So we can see that by just placing oneself in the baby's shoes, that having an abortion is, 9.5 out of 10 times, the wrong course of action to take, and that there are better avenues of action to take in specific situations that may be outside the normal. With that, I turn the floor over to my opponent.