Abortion

So Pro, the Instigator, is arguing that abortion is fine. As Pro, it is his responsibility to prove this and my responsibility to show that it is bad. In review of the rules he laid out, I will construct my own case in R2 and rebuttal in R3. In this debate I shall first establish that the unborn child is alive and that killing is is bad. I will also prove that abortion is harmful to women. Firstly lets define the terms. Fine: Choice, excellent, or admirable: Bad: Having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible Kill: To deprive of life in any manner; cause the death of; slay. (1) Life: Living matter and, as such, matter that shows certain attributes that include responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation and reproduction. (2) So using these definitions lets run through the logic. Killing an innocent being, is generally accepted to be bad. So, if the unborn child is alive, then killing it, would be bad. So we must determine if an unborn child is alive or not. It is well accepted that a fetus can respond to stimuli (3), similarly I don't think we need to debate that it is growing. Embryo's have metabolism within one or two days of conception (4) so we can move on to energy transformation. Much like metabolism and growth, this happens almost instantly as an embryo will transfer chemical energy into minor movements, new cells and general growth. At first glance, one may say that an unborn child lacks the ability to reproduce and thus is not alive. However this is only true if you misinterpret what the definition of life means by reproduction. It does not mean that the organism can literally reproduce at that moment in time, it means that the organism has the potential to do so in adulthood. This is true of most complex organisms and humans are no different. (5) Therefore, using the scientific facts above, we can determine that an unborn child, is in fact, alive and it logically follows then that abortion kills this life. Since killing is bad, we must conclude that abortion is bad. As for my second point, there are numerous reasons why abortion is actually bad for women. One is that abortions have been linked to an increase risk of breast cancer. This is often considered controversial in the press, but the science is clear. Since 1957, there have been 77 studies on this topic and 79% of those studies indicate that there is a positive correlation. If we only look at the 37 studies that were considered statistically significant, then the figure becomes 97%. (6) In addition to physical health, there are mental effects to abortion as well. According to a 2009 study done by the British Journal of Psychiatry, women who have an abortion are 81% more likely to experience an increased risk of mental health problems to include anxiety, drug abuse, depression and suicidal behavior. Furthermore, 10% of those problems are directly related to the abortion (7). This study reinforces others before it, most notably a 1996 Finnish study that showed women who had abortions were nearly 6 times more likely to attempt suicide (8). Finally, abortion can lead to death as well. According to the CDC, 480 women died from having abortions between 1972-2010 (9). Of those abortions, 411 of them were legal and yet the mother still perished despite the claim of the procedure being safe. It should be noted that after 1997, four states, most notably California, stopped providing the required data to the CDC so these values are likely lower than reality. So I must ask the voters, how can abortion be considered good? Science has led us to the fact that abortion kills a living human. We know that killing an innocent being is wrong, so therefore we can logically conclude that abortion is bad. Likewise, we can see through numerous scientific studies, that abortion is bad for the mothers as well. Therefore it must be concluded that abortion, is bad. 1. http://www.dictionary.com... 2. https://www.britannica.com... 3. http://www.beginbeforebirth.org... 4. http://www.reproduction-online.org... 5. https://www.britannica.com... 6. http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com... 7. http://bjp.rcpsych.org... 8. http://www.bmj.com... 9. http://www.cdc.gov...