Abortion is bad and should be largely illegal

I apologize for missing the deadline on the last round. I was a bit busy this weekend. First off, I don't claim that any abortion advocate believes that size is a factor in determining possession of the right to life. I simply meant to emphasize a lack of valid reasoning for dividing up those who don't possess the right to life from those who do (which i will discuss more a little later on). My opponent asserts that I am committing a slippery slope fallacy regarding the mentally retarded, or the elderly. I believe my opponent has misunderstood my original argument (perhaps i wasn't clear enough in presenting it). My point is not to say that if you agree with my opponent, then you might as well go around killing those who are dependent. My point is that the logic that justifies abortion also justifies far more. For example, my opponent present a criterion of sentience. Since we don't yet have a definition of what it means to be sentient, I think the Merriam-Webster definition is accurate and simple: "able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste." Under the criteria of sentience, then, those who are in a coma are not deserving of the right to life. The aren't able to take in their surrounding through their senses. However it is clear that, despite being incapable of sentience, those in a coma are still people. Personhood still exists in those in a coma. Also, when presented with a criterion for life such as sentience, we must ask the question 'why'. For the profit of the debate, it would be great if my opponent explained why exactly he believes that sentience ought to determine whether or not an individual possesses the right to life. The next main argument is that of the assertion of whether or not it is a woman's right to choose. My opponent gives a couple of examples of why women might want to have an abortion. For the first, the example that the mother would most likely die in the process of childbirth was one i believe could be included in my first post. My thesis (found at the very end of my initial post) included the possibility of the death of both the mother and the child, but perhaps the death of one person or the other is another exception to the illegality of abortion. The other examples given (the baby's suffering and the inability of the mother to provide) do not constitute a 'right' of a woman to abort her baby. As for the baby's suffering, i believe that the right to life is inherently valuable, and, while i can't know that this is true for every case, is reason enough to proceed with childbirth. As for the inability of the mother to provide, a mother can offer their child for adoption, or foster care, to give two examples of alternative solutions. Finally, we come to the argument of safety and health of the mother. My opponent asserts that I haven't really validated my position, which is false. I cited a study of 500,000 women by two credible authors (one of whom is Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School) which found that abortion is 2-3 times more dangerous for the mother. In addition, studies have consistently found that countries that legalize abortion have higher maternity mortality rates: the US has 11 times higher mortality rate than Ireland, which doesn't allow abortions. The US has an 8 times higher mortality rate than Poland, which doesn't allow abortions. In Chile, after the abortion was banned, mortality rates reduced by over 95 percent. http://www.lifenews.com... But this doesn't even cover the other damaging health effects of abortion: psychological effects. A study of nearly 57,000 medical patients in California found that women who got an abortion were 160% more likely to require hospitalizing psychiatric care within 90 days. A study in Finland discovered that 34.7 of 100,000 of women who got an abortion committed suicide, while, on average, only 11.3 in 100,000 women committed suicide, making suicide three times more likely for women who got an abortion. Hopefully this evidence helps to empirically substantiate my claims. Now let's turn to the evidence provided by my opponent. The data for the study he cited came from both the CDC and an organization called the Guttmacher Institute. Unfortunately, the Guttmacher Institute (aka the Alan Guttmacher Institute) has been shown to have released false data based on sketchy methodology in the past. A study from West Virginia University, the Universidad Popular Aut"noma del Estado de Puebla (in M"xico), the Universidad de Chile and the Institute of Molecular Epidemiology of the Universidad Cat"lica de la Sant"sima Concepci"n, published in the International Journal of Women's Health concluded the following after examining some of the Guttmacher Institute's data: (AGI stands for Alan Guttmacher Institute) "Nonetheless, AGI uses these false calculations and intentionally-deceptive figures about illegal abortion deaths to push for decriminalization of abortion around the world. This new study authoritatively discredits the Alan Guttmacher Institute and its findings, as it has been caught red-handed publishing false information that they very well know to be false." https://www.lifesitenews.com... http://scienceblog.com... I hardly believe that after such an indictment, the Guttmacher Institute may be considered authoritative. Hopefully all this evidence (and a refutation of my opponent's evidence) will help to substantiate my claims.