Abortion is Wrong

First, I want to say I'm so sorry. I didn't phrase my opening well. I meant to say I want this to be a religious debate... Just kidding. But really, I didn't mean that abortion will be off limits under any circumstance: if the woman's life is in danger, then we should act on trying to save the mother's life. But let me be clear- this is not because the woman is more valuable than the fetus, but rather the mother has a much higher probability of surviving. When I said that abortion shouldn't be endorsed at any time, I was thinking of instances of rape and incest: even in those situations the child should not be killed. You say, "One reason is that it is the parent deciding whether or not to not have the baby." That is equivalent of saying "It's the murderer deciding whether or not to shoot the person. Therefore we should allow him to do it should he decide he wants to." (This analogy of course will be contingent of the fact that the fetus is 1) Human and 2) It's alive. I will prove these later.) After that, you say that it's the parents' responsibility to take care of the baby. Right there you admit that the parents should be responsible to take care of their kid, and the least responsible thing to do would be to have it killed, so why should they be allowed to do it? But let's say that they are not irresponsible enough to abort the baby, but are not responsible enough to give it a good home or raise him/her properly, then what should the do? Well, adoption is an excellent alternative. Many great couples are unable to have children and then go to adoption centers. Abortion is not the only option. MAIN ARGUMENT: My main point will be that the fetus is alive and human. If it is, then we have no right to kill it and decide its fate. The fetus is human: From the very moment of conception, the fetus has all 46 chromosomes to be considered a homosapien sapien (human). And it has its own unique set of DNA that is completely separate from its mother. (This means that the baby cannot be a part of the woman's body, and therefore, this debate cannot revolve around the woman's rights.) So if it is scientifically proven to have its own DNA and all 46 chromosomes, then the fetus is a human being. The fetus is alive: To prove the baby is alive, using Oxfords definition, we have to see that it meets the requirements of "capacity of growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death." I will argue that the baby has/ will have all of these and therefore is alive. The baby inside of the mother has the capacity of growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. From the moment of conception, there is growth, I think we can agree on that. And though the fetus is not, at that moment, capable of reproducing, it will in the future. But if this diminishes its value, and therefore its rights, then it will diminish the value of a girl under the age of 12 (roughly). A girl at that stage in her life is just as incapable of reproducing as a fetus is, but no one will ever argue that we have the right to kill her or give her less value. Functional activity is another one, if we gain our value from being able to move and function, we are stripped of our value once we cannot function. That means those who are in a coma do not have the same rights as you and I, because they aren't able to function at that moment. But certainly we do not propose we can kill at a whim, anyone that is in a coma. Now you might say that the heart is still beating and lungs are still moving, and the fetus does not yet have those capabilities, but once again, it does not have them YET. The value of life is not contingent on a life's level of development, otherwise a 15 year old will have more value than a 14 year old because he is more developed. Lastly, the fetus is changing and will soon die, hopefully about 80 years later, but it will die. So it meets all of the requirements of life. So, if the fetus is a living human, it has its own rights, specifically it's right to life. And its rights are not to be stripped due to its: size, level of dependency, level of development, or environment. This is because we are all changing in size, dependency, development, and environment. So if the fetus' rights will change based on the change of those factors, you must extrapolate from only those living humans, to all living humans, meaning we will be subject to those same changes. I know none of us will volunteer to have our value based on our size, dependency, development, or environment, therefore we should not subject fetus' to the same.