Abortion on demand is morally and ethically wrong as well as currently overused

Having said that, CON sites my statement that the human fetus "withdraws from touch and other stimuli" and responds with "both bacteria and plants respond to stimuli, should we afford them the same protections as PRO suggests we give to fetuses? " To this I respond to CON I do believe that a human is a more complex organism than either bacteria or plants. When speaking of the developing human and whether or not they can feel pain, " The developing neural elements may be immature but they are not inactive. They . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. and begin to synthesize neurotransmitters shortly after DNA synthesis stops, at time intervals corresponding to the first trimester of human development"[1] As far as affording the bacteria and the plants the same protection that I think fetuses should have. Many, many plants in this country are protected by federal and/or state law [2]. The sad fact is that it seems as though in this country we value our plant life, in many cases, more than we value the lives of our unborn. And the responding to stimuli. From the same paper as quoted above, " Fetuses undergoing intrauterine invasive procedures, definitely illustrative of pain signaling, were reported to show coordinated responses signaling the avoidance of tissue injury"[1] On the issue of overuse CON states that there were 784,507 abortions in 2009. This total, however was taken from the reporting of 45 out of the 52 required areas for completely accurate figures. Those non-reporting areas include CA, the abortion capital of the country. I can't speculate what the total number of abortions would be had the numbers for these 7 additional areas been included But that's neither here nor there. Out of the total 784,507, 36.6% of the women had 1 or 2 previous abortions and 8.1% had 3 or more previous abortions[3]. I have to apologize that I don't have statistics from 2009 on this particular matter but I do for 2008. In 2008, 54% of the women that got abortions did use contraception, however 46% did not. [4] My point is this, these numbers might not seem all that large but when you put it in perspective,784,507 (or more) is a pretty large number if you look at it in terms of taking the lives of 784,507 innocent people. Also when you have women getting an abortion because it is not a convenient time in their lives to have a baby, that is bad enough. But when they get to be repeat customers at the Planned Parenthood and they are not using contraception, then yes, abortion is being overused. As for morality, I think it is definitely immoral to think of a human fetus as anything but exactly that just to justify in your mind the act of getting an abortion just so you don't experience any inconvenience or detours in the course of your life because of a choice that you made. I believe it is ethically wrong to terminate innocent human life no matter what stage of development they are in for the same reasons I previously mentioned. In conclusion I think CON posed some good points and I look forward to round 3 [1]. anes-som. ucsd. edu/vp%20articles/topic%20c. %20anand. pdf [2]www. fs. fed. us/wildflowers/rareplants/conservation/lawsandregulations. shtml [3]www. cdc. gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6108a1/htm [4]www. guttmacher. org/pubs/journals/3429402. html m