Abortion on Demand Should Be Illegal

I'm glad you agree that a fetus is a living human person at the moment of conception. It seems that if we both believe in the sanctity of human life, we should both be against abortions at this point. Your position seems to be very inconsistent. If it is okay to kill living human persons at 6 weeks, why not 6 months or six years? You said that you do not support abortion after around 20-21 weeks because that is when the child can feel pain. Why should pain matter when killing a person? If I cause you pain, is that worse than killing you? Is the amount of evil of murder dependant upon the pain an individual feels? If so, murdering individuals painlessly should be completely legal. If you don't agree (and I hope you don't), then pain cannot be the standard we use to decide whether someone get's to live or die. All human persons have intrinsic value. I get that from the belief in the existence of God, and I don't think you can consistently get it any other way. Be that as it may, I don't care how you justify the idea that human persons have intrinsic value, but I really hope you do. If you don't believe human persons necessarily have intrinsic value, why is it wrong to hurt them? You can't really justify any laws then apart from self-interest. "I feel like I'm being boxed into a contradiction with these questions, human life begins at the second the egg is fertilized, no more criteria is needed." Well, I was trying to pin down your position, and it seems that I have done that. Whether or not you agree with them, most pro-choice people I have encountered are pro-choice because they believe the fetus is not a person. Even most abortionists wouldn't go so far as to say you can kill it even if it is a person. "According to your point here, so would having sex and getting a girl pregnant. In fact, because thousands and thousands of embedded zygotes die when fertilization occurs does that make sex a case of thousands of involuntary manslaughters?" When a woman is impregnated, many sperm cells die, but these are not persons since they don't have the ability to become an adult human being. Only one egg is fertilized by one sperm cell; it is these two that form a person. Whether or not other sperm cells attach to this fertilized egg is irrelevant. There is still only one zygote. I was actually expecting you to bring up a more scientifically accurate version of that argument. It is quite often that an egg becomes fertilized and fails to implant itself in the uterus. The resultant zygote then dies; usually without the mother knowing about it. This is often provided as a reason not to be pro-life, but it is logically fallacious. Just because these zygotes may die naturally, it does not mean we can justly kill them. Just because adult human beings die, it doesn't mean we can justly kill them either. The natural deaths of children in the womb do not justify trying to kill them. "This pro-life argument is so fallacious, it would be like saying people who take medication to kill parasites such as tapeworm should be sentenced to death for it." Your analogy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument; perhaps you misunderstood it. My point was that we should not make acts legal based on the safety of those who commit those acts. We should not make murder legal, even if the law might hurt murderers. Similarly, if abortion should be illegal, that fact does not change if people might commit unsafe illegal abortions. I don't care about their safety, and I hope they are unsafe since they are killing human persons. Tapeworms are not human persons, so they do not have rights. Also, again, this has nothing to do with my point. "No, I don't think that is where the logic leads. There is a far leap and many bounds to get from exercising your right of choice over your own body to the legality of child rape, or any rape for that matter." Again, you misunderstood my argument. Again, IF abortion should be illegal, THEN that fact does not change if mothers might perform unsafe illegal abortions. I simply used rape to justify that same principle in order to address the point you brought up. I am not saying rape is as bad as abortion, in fact, it is much less evil. "Does this not discredit the entirety of your argument? if the fetus is going to die regardless, as you've admitted, why do we not ensure that it is legal and safe to prevent as many casualties as possible?" A fetus that is a victim of an illegal abortion would have died if abortions were legal. It does not logically follow that illegalizing abortion would not save some children. Firstly, as stated above, I don't want mothers to be safe when performing abortions. Secondly, if abortion was illegal, many mothers would have been prevented from killing their children. Some would not, and those children would have died regardless. There would still be a net increase in innocent lives saved. "Comparing the act of an adult murdering another (assumed, correct me if I'm wrong) adult to the act of aborting a non-developed fetus from your own womb." That was not the point being made. My point was that some rights are more important than other rights. Bodily autonomy is less important than the right to life. That's why my right to do what I want with my body ends when I try to use my body to kill another person. It is not that my rights are less important than the other person's rights; it is that right to life is more important than the right to bodily autonomy. Therefore, if the fetus is a living human person as you have agreed, then it's right to life is more important than the bodily autonomy of the mother. Also, while I'm addressing your point, we should not decide whether to kill people based on level of development. Unless you are going to argue that a child is less valuable than an adult, the level of development does not affect personhood or value. Therefore, we cannot use it when deciding whether or not to kill a living human person inside the womb. "Your right of convenience is less than an innocent insect's right not to be mercilessly slaughtered," No, my right to convenience is greater than the rights of animals. Insects are neither human nor persons, so they have no rights. Animals only have value because we assign them value. Humans are the only species that has intrinsic value, and we are the only species that has rights. "he right to abortion isn't a thing of convenience, it's the right to know that you're not forced to bring a child into a world where it can't be properly nourished, or not being forced to adopt out your child only for him/her to have a high risk of aging out of the system without proper parents, or not being forced to add to an already super-inflated population." Actually, you are the one who brought up the convenience of the mother, but I will address this argument. None of the reasons you listed could possibly justify killing them. We don't kill other children just because they may grow up in difficult conditions. If it is okay to kill people for these reasons, why not just kill children who are in those conditions. On the other hand, if this is not a good reason to kill older children, why is it a good reason to kill children in the womb? If we cannot kill older children to decrease the surplus population, why should we kill younger children for that reason? If the fetus is a person you cannot kill it, even if it may have a hard life. I really hope we can agree on this. "I have been presented with this argument times aplenty, and all I have to reply with is that forced abstinence doesn't work, and is not favorable if you want people to stop having abortions." I am not requiring abstinence; I am requiring people understand the risks and responsibilities. I don't want to prevent alcohol consumption, but people who do consume alcohol must accept the risks and responsibilities. "There is one glaring flaw here, you are undermining the fetuses rights." I am neither arguing for nor against the law you cited. I am simply pointing out that there is already an exception for the fetus built-in. The fetus is regarded legally as a person, so this law wouldn't even need to be modified. Since such an exception exists, this law has nothing to do with the debate. Also, again I am not making the fetus' rights greater, I am making the right to life greater. Forgive me for being picky about the wording, but it is important. "Comparing the brutality of forced human labor for no pay and the attempted extermination of an entire race of people to women exercising their right of choice is EXTREMELY disingenuous, and dare I say shameful for you to do." I don't think I went far enough. Abortion is not equal to those evils, it is greater than both. More human persons have been killed, and more innocent blood has been shed as a result of abortion than either slavery or the holocaust. If you do truly believe humans have intrinsic value, then you should believe the same. All three of these evils occurred because people redefined human life based on whether they wanted it to be human. This is exactly what you are doing, and it will inevitably lead to tragedy.