Abortion should in most cases be illegal

Thanks Pro; this is quite a serious topic for me and not one I take particularly lightly, as my own mother had an ectopic pregnancy with me--she had to have blood transfusions while pregnant, and almost died in child birth. In the vast majority of cases, the fetus is either aborted or simply does not make it to one/two months never mind full term. I on the other hand was very lucky. My position is still, however, that abortion should be legal. This argument is primarily based around the impracticalities involving illegal abortion, as I will demonstrate. Opening Argument: It should come as no surprise to anyone, than an illegal abortion is far more dangerous than a legal one; so arguing in favor of a legal procedure (one that is carried out by qualified doctors in a medical environment) actually has less to do with what side of the political, religious, or personal spectrum one is on and more to do with what is practical and safe for the woman involved. History has more or less demonstrated that abortion is basically an inevitability, in fact, the first references to various types abortions can be traced back to 1550 BCE (1.) https://www.thoughtco.com... The Ancient Egyptians did it, the Persians did it, the Romans did it--point being that it happened. The Babylonian Talmud also makes reference to it, stating that when something is a certain shape, it may be aborted. Centuries later types of bans were enforced on the practice, but women still continued to have abortions through whatever means necessary; some able to go to physicians and some not. In terms of more modern times, illegal abortion has lead to what would be millions of unnecessary and likely extremely painful female deaths, throughout the world. It is a particular problem in developing countries--so much so that according to the World Health Organization, every eight minutes a woman in a developing country, will die as a result of an unsafe abortion (2.) http://www.who.int... Countries and states that have very strict abortion laws or outlaw it completely, have a higher mortality rate among women (see above link.) Some of these are not necessarily just attributed to the medical dangers either, but the self-inflicted harm a female can do to herself if she is denied safe access to abortion (3.) http://prospect.org... Going back to to 20th century; After the Roe v Wade court case and the decision to legalize abortions nationwide in the U.S (1973), the number of illegal-abortion related complications decreased according to estimates from the National Hospital Discharge Survey (4.) https://www.guttmacher.org... Once again, countries that haven't made the same improvements like Venezuela, where abortion is illegal, women who do not wish to go through with their pregnancy are confronted with an array of difficulties--from buying dangerous abortion pills on the black market to undergoing procedures such as 'vacuum aspiration', one such woman experienced both as the pills she had purchased has failed to remove the entirety of the fetus (5.) https://www.google.co.uk... In regards to *less* developing countries that still disallow abortions; Ireland would a good example. Despite legalizing gay marriage in 2013, abortion is still illegal. Irish women are left with the options of underground abortions or spending money that they don't necessarily have to travel to countries where it is legal, in 2016, the United Nations formally called upon Ireland to reform its legislation and make it legal (6.) http://www.ohchr.org... and (7.) https://www.amnesty.org... It's also important to note that abortion bans, actually have no real impact on the rate of abortions that are performed (8.) http://news.bbc.co.uk... and (9.) https:/theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/criminalising-abortion-does-not-cut-number-of-terminations-says-study Which obviously presents a significant issue to Pros position as there would be little point in making something illegal AND increasing the danger to life/mortality rates, if it had no effect on the practice in question anyway. So, my stance in this debate is less based around the ideological factors but the non-theoretical ones. The life of an actual living woman, who can feel pain and the horrific effects of unsafe and illegal procedures--who can die without due need, should come before the potential life of a fetus or unborn child. Fundamentally 'laws' should always exist around what is good for the continuation of life as it is being lived--not as it could be lived, maintaining safe ways for people to exist is what should objectively count.