Abortion should be illegal

OBJECTIONSa.) Argument from RightsPro basically argues here that the interpretation of "person" in the US Constitution should and could be expanded to "fetuses" and pre-natal structures, as that is in the definition it presents. However, this interpretation is often challenged by two things: (a.) the fact that a woman's right to privacy has always been more fundamental and (b.) there is indeed other instances of the word in the US Constitution whcih suggests that the word ought to be implied post-natally.Pro argues (a.) that this "right to life" is provided by the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. The opposition does not cite any Supreme Court evidence to support this pre-natal interpretation. This interpretation would also lead to large clashes against Supreme Court decided cases. In Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy had to be respected after Union Pacific Railway demanded to surgically analyze a women who was injured in their train threatened to sue them for negligence. The Supreme Court argued that “To compel anyone, and especially a woman, to lay bare the body, or to submit it to the touch of a stranger, without lawful authority, is an indignity, an assault, and a trespass.” [1] This logic, that a woman's right to personal privacy is strictly her's, is protected in numerous cases in the Constitution. The implied privacy of the First Amendment led the Supreme Court to overturn a conviction of a man who was arrested because of possession of "obscene" material for private usage. The Supreme Court ruled that “fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy.” [2] The Fourteenth Amendment also protects the right to abortion. In Meyer vs. Nebraska, the Supreme Court ruled that the teaching of foreign languages cannot be banned as "it denotes...right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." [3] The logic here is simple: that the Constitution had long held the right to privacy, especially of the body. This is affirmed in the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment, which accords large privacy rights to the body and what is done with it.Pro argues that (b.) the interpretation of "person" in the Constitution belongs merely to both pre and post natal conditions. However, when the word "Person" appears in the Constitution, it is always defined in post-natal manners. The Supreme Court during Roe v. Wade ruled that "in nearly all these instances, the use of the [person] is such that it has application only postnatally." [4] An example of this would be Art. I, 9, cl. 8, which states that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." This clearly has post-natal implications, since rarely has a fetus been an office of profit. In Section. 1 of the 14th Amendment, we are told that "All persons 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." Although this does not amount to much, the "born and naturalized" part are crucial: fetuses are unborn and henceforth not citizens of the US pre-natally. [5] Hence, we can conclude that, insofar as abortion is concerned, the Constitution very well protects those rights as well as leaves the rights of the fetuses unrecognized. (Apart from this, this argument contradicts the strict policies (life threat and physical injury) of the opposition, since these rights should apply to fetuses not directly life threatening or physically injuring)b.) Argument from the N.A.PPro goes into the abstract here. The N.A.P, accordingly to Pro, "is an axiom within political philosophy" in which "any initiation of aggression by one person to another." In this argument, he goes from this principle to a very general and practical policy. His claims however are based on the claim that the government should in reality be based on this principle. This must be doubted.As for the first claim, that (a.) the government should in reality be based on this principle, we are met with many classical political philosophy claims. One is that the NAP is often called upon during policy making. This is a gap taken from reality. Often, governments are created not from a contract with the people, but from violent revolutions or peaceful demonstrations. Very rarely do deliberations create society and government. Many times, they are spontaneous: for example, the American Revolution would not have happened if Britain had not demand an increase in tax. The Russian Revolution would barely have been possible without the First World War. Since they are spontaneous, there is often, in many society, no deliberation: society's creation is spontaneous and improvised, rather than deliberate and principled. What we should henceforth conclude here is that no government bases its policies on a principle such as the NAP, but on rather realistic motivators as society is spontaneous and improvised.DEFENSESa.) Unsafe AbortionsThe opposition here starts off with arguing from authority: since Guttmacher cannot be relied on to provide credible sources, then it should be discarded. But what was really indeed wrong with the data itself remains to be debated. I will continue to use Guttmacher for the opposition has yet proven to us all that Guttmacher is unreliable.The opposition says that "before Roe v. Wade was decreasing rapidly and the Supreme Court Decision did not change this trend at all." However, the graph he cites cites the death of women who died from illegal abortions. The decline coincided with the start of penicillin usage, which leads us to a conclusion-that this graph does not show that the frequency of abortion had reduced, but rather shows that abortion became safer during the period immediately before Roe v. Wade. [6] Moreover, the opposition says that, as was the case of Chile, abortion did not effect the MMR of the country. The opposition argues that this was better than the Romanian example because "it observes the effect of banning abortion after a long period of abortion being legal." However, it would be perhaps useful to say that Chile indeed had Draconian and highly restrictive laws prior to the complete abortion ban. As the Guttmacher Advisory notes, "Before 1989, abortion was legal in Chile only to save a woman’s life." Apart from this, the evidence base was way too narrow, as " In Chile, women who suffer complications after undergoing unsafe abortions are highly unlikely to admit to these actions given possible criminal sanctions." [7] Moreover, if the opposition were to use the "long period of abortion being legal" test, then Romanian example would hold up, for the fact that abortion was legal in Romania for 9 years before the 1967 ban. The opposition also uses Poland as an example that breaks the unsafe abortion trends. However, there have been many cases of "women individually going to clinics in Russia (Kaliningrad), Lithuania or Belarus...[whose only limitations is] increasing abortion prices for Polish women." [8] The opposition also says that "restricting abortion would deter most women from having one." This may be evident, but as said in R1, this bases itself on the rational choice theory (RCT), which has been shown to be incredibly false, for even though the pros and cons of a decision is often analyzed, criminals often have emotional connections or underestimate the laws, which would lead them nevertheless to obtain one. This is evident in similar debates in the issue of drugs and the death penalty (no matter how Draconian the laws, they will still get high)b.) Socio-economic EffectsIn this objection, the opposition makes many claims. The most absurd claims he makes are that this logic justies genocide and infanticide. Whatever they are, they must be dismissed as "faulty comparisons," a fallacy which compares things to others to make them less desirable. [9] Pro claim that this argument contradicts my "trimester policy." However, 92% of abortions are done before the last trimester-often people do not wait long to get rid of a definite undesired fetus. [13] c.) Use of Abortion LawsHere is where the absurdities end and the sense starts again. Con argues that abortion is high in countries presented merely because of a lack of law in those areas. This is true to a point. But it also ignores the fact that after Roe v. Wade, abortion rates in the US (a developed country) fell to its lowest since 1973 just recently in 2011. [10] There is also evidence that this is part of a general "U-turn" trend from Roe v. Wade, as this decrease has gone on for twenty years. [11] Apart from this, in Asia, where the population lives mostly under liberal abortion laws but in developing society, the abortion rate is almost twice as lower as that in Africa, where the population lives under restrictive abortion laws and developing society (24 v. 13 per 1000) [12] This ultimately leads to the conclusion that even in developing countries where abortion laws are liberal, the abortion rate is lower than developing restrictive abortion countries. CITATIONS:[13] http://bit.ly...[1] http://bit.ly...[2] http://bit.ly...[3] http://bit.ly...[4] http://bit.ly...[5] http://1.usa.gov...[6] http://bit.ly...[7] http://bit.ly...[8] http://bit.ly...[10] http://bit.ly...[11] http://wapo.st...[12] http://bit.ly...[9] http://bit.ly...;