Abortion Should Remain Legal

"… an abortion could be performed for any reason, if the woman wants it. And even if it is made illegal for a woman to have the right to an abortion for birth control reasons, then the laws should be changed." The laws could be changed, yes. But the jurisprudence that removed a number of state laws restricting it shouldn't be discarded. The right of the mother outweighs the rights of the fetus only so long as there is some risk to the mother in not denying the fetus those rights. Let me use an analogy, as I am fond of those: Let's say you have a pet cat. I take your cat and put it in one of two identical boxes. In the other I put an armed bomb. I leave a full container of water at your feet and hand you a box. I tell you that, if the box holds the bomb, it can be disarmed by holding it in the water for fifteen minutes. Of course, if it's the cat, the cat will drown. The box must be gently lowered into the water soon, or it will detonate. In this case, there is a high likelihood of harm to yourself, and a high likelihood of harm to your cat. You need to decide whether the potential that you are holding your cat outweighs the potential of harm to yourself. That is a personal choice, where ethical boundaries are blurred. It is a situation where choosing to dunk the box or not is basically up to you. Now, same scenario but one box is left empty. Once again, I leave the container of water at your feet. I tell you that one box is empty and the other holds your cat. How could you ethically argue for dunking the box? Just replace your cat with the concept of ‘human being' and the bomb with ‘harm' and you will have some idea of why abortion without any need is wrong. "A fetus can have plenty of deformities, such as permanent mental or physical disabilities. Sure, some people with disabilities aren't all wallowing in misery, but that's not true for all handicapped people." If a person so dislikes living, that person could end it, and may have a right to do so. One does not have the right to choose for others, however, whether or not their lives should be lived. You have successfully made an argument for the right to commit suicide. You have not made an argument for the right of one person to take a chance of killing another person when there is no need to take that chance. "Even if we develop alternative treatments, there could still be reasons for abortion. Such as using embryonic stem cells from aborted fetuses - which have the potential to replicate themselves into any type of tissue - could be used for huge advances in medicine, and even save lives. Also, even if alternatives to abortion and other ways of getting embryonic stem cells are developed, then we could stop having abortions then." Thank you for conceding this argument to me without my having to do it myself. See one way below: http://www.boston.com... "Morning-after abortion pills don't work if the woman finds out she's pregnant later than a day after. I don't advocate abortion as the only means of birth control, but it should never not be an option." http://www.webmd.com... Sex is not a surprise. Tell me a valid ethical reason for a woman not using any of the above options, knowing that she is having sex? "How could you consider a fetus equal to a human being? I already stated how it is NOT a human. It is a potential human because it is only alive because of the mother's body, and is incapable of many human functions. It also does not have rights because it is part of another human's body. The woman should be in control of that fetus because it's part of her own body." That is your definition. Some ‘vegetarians' eat fish because ‘they're not animals.' After all, they don't have fur. If it helps you sleep at night, fine. This not a valid argument, however, for all the reasons I set forth above … it's not up to me or you to decide if the fetus is a child; the state of the organism is indeterminate because of our definitions. The ethical thing to do is to mitigate the possibility of harm. If the mother would not be harmed by the fetus' development into a definite human being, the mother has no right to risk the possibility of harming even what COULD be a human being. It would be like dunking the empty box. "Just because you're willing to, doesn't mean everyone is. Many people couldn't afford to pay for the millions of unplanned babies born if abortion was made illegal." No, many people couldn't afford to pay for the (many more) millions of unplanned babies born if people didn't have contraceptives. Or so I can argue, as you've provided no statistics to review. This is, of course, beside the point; you asked for a personal opinion, and I granted it. "Also, why should that woman have to carry that baby around for 9 months and endure labor and pregnancy, just to give that child away?" So does she want it or not? If she's the type who would argue that labor pains alone mean that she earns the right to parent the child, I would argue that she should have the child TAKEN away. "There are still going to be many planned children put up for adoption." Then they weren't planned very well, were they? Perhaps there is a need for greater sexual responsibility. This would be something I agree with. "Seriously, what's your problem? You value embryos over a grown person's control over their own life?" Awesome ad hominem/straw man attack you've presented. No, I value mitigating harm. I can not, and do not, define whether or not a fetus is a human. I do recognize that a fetus MAY be a human. If the fetus MAY be a human, and it has not and will not predictably cause harm to a person, then regardless of its origin I do not see a valid reason for taking its life. Because it MAY be murder, and I would rather not take that chance needlessly. "You're okay with women getting raped and having to be pregnant and care for a kid, just because you don't agree with the decisions they make over their own bodies?" [sarcasm] Oh, yes, clearly I am in love with rape. [/end sarcasm] No. Women have a variety of options at their disposal now, but hopefully will have an even greater variety at their disposal in the future, such that abortion will seem wrong even in these situations. If someone murdered your sibling, would you go ahead and kill the murderer's kid? I hope not. The burden for the recompense of a vile crime of the progenitor should not be transferred to its progeny. "What don't you understand about us not having those advances yet?" Not a thing. What do you not understand about how these advances invalidate your resolution? "That's not completely true, actually a lot of actions in humans have some hereditary factor in them." Yes, it's just that, a factor. A chance. It is not a guarantee of anything. It probably isn't even a very high probability really. The possibility of the good that may come of the birth outweighs the loss of that possibility in abortion: http://www.righttoliferoch.org... "... it's the woman's choice whether she wants the kid or not." Not indefinitely, no. "You still don't understand that we don't have all the advances in birth control that we'd like to have. Currently, abortion is the only type of birth control necessary in a lot of situations." See above. "Even if anti-choice people make abortion illegal, that won't stop abortion." Anti-choice. Funny. I am anti-choice I suppose. I don't think people should choose to murder, steal, rape, etc. So I'm anti-choice in a very limited sense. "Plenty of women will get back-alley abortions ..." They could do that or get the perfectly legitimate non-abortive equivalent I have already proposed, where the child can be incubated independent of the mother.