Abortion

As a reminder to the voters, we agreed that the third round would only be for refuting the opponents case. Therefore I will not counter the points my opponent made in R3. I'll simply hope that my arguments from R2 out to the voters as a stronger case. As for my opponent's case in R2, I have no objection to either of his sources. Tragically, rapes do happen and as a father, I certainly know that children cost a lot of money. However I believe there are flaws in the logic of both of his arguments. 1. First, let me just point out that according to the CDC (previously cited), less than 1% of abortions occur due to rape. So if we are talking about most cases and/or the greater good, than these cases are not pivotal to this debate. That being said, there is no doubt that rape is terrible and no reasonable person would ever argue otherwise. While I'm unsure what "...many babies can be born crust is why abortion can then be an option..." mean, my best guess is that he is trying to say that since the child was conceived against the will of the mother, that the mother should be able to abort the child. This is an emotionally driven challenge to be sure. Carrying a child to term is a challenge under the best of circumstances, let alone when it is conceived under such horrendous conditions. However, that doesn't mean aborting the child is the right things to do. The child is still an innocent life and shouldn't be punished for the sins of its father. The old saying, two wrongs don't make a right, comes to mind here. There are better solutions to the issue which will be address when I move onto point 2. However, I would also argue that by offering abortions in these circumstances, we are actually compounding the problem. Now, not only do the survivors have to deal with the emotional damage of the rape, now they have to deal with the side effects of abortions as well. Furthermore, according to a survey done by the Elliot Institute, 80% of women who had an abortion after being raped said they regretted doing so and 43% of those women said they only did so because they were forced to by family members or healthcare providers. In the same survey, 69% of the women carried the baby to term and either kept the child or gave the child up to adoption. Of those women, not one of them regretted their decision. In summary, that means 80% of women who aborted a child that was conceived by rape, whereas 0% of the women who gave birth to it regretted their choice (1). 2. As I mentioned above, there is no denying the cost of raising a child. However can we really put a cost on the value of life? Is that not the path of eugenics? It is a cold and calculated solution that is simply not ethical. Much like the case above, there is a better solution. Adoption is the obvious solution. My opponent argues that abortion benefits everyone, but doesn't adoption benefit more people since the child gets to live and the adopting parents get to have a child? In fact, with all of the side affects of abortion that I listed above, I would argue that abortion benefits no one. There is a less obvious solution though. In the U.S. we often focus on quick answers to long term problems. Abortion is just that. It's like amputating an arm for a gash rather than opting for a skin graft or stitches. What if, instead of the quick fix that has lasting consequences, we aimed to help mothers through their pregnancies? If this is truly a debate of what is good versus what is bad, would it not be better to construct a system where we help moms through their pregnancies by making sure that they have healthcare. If they decide to keep the child, then we should make sure they have the resources to take care of the child. If they chose to put the child up for adoption, then we owe it to them and to their child to make sure the child is united with a caring family. If the child is conceived by rape, than the mother should be given whatever counseling she wants in order to help her through that lifelong pain. The goal here is to find a better solution to these issues than abortion, and that solution is to support the mothers of all children. In this way, we truly find solutions that benefit everyone. In R2, I defined fine, bad, kill and life. I applied scientific logic to those definitions to show that an unborn child is alive, and that killing innocent lives is bad, therefore abortion is bad. I also cited numerous studies that showed that abortion is bad for the mothers as well. R3 was used to refute my opponents R2 arguments. In it, I pointed out that less than 1% of abortions occur because of rape. Additionally I showed that two wrongs don't make a right, and most importantly, I showed that abortion is not the best solution to a child conceived in rape. I also argued that there should not be a cost value attached to the value of life. To do so implies that higher class lives are more valuable and that's simply not true. Additionally I argued for the benefits of adoption and for a system that supports mothers during and after their pregnancy, thus benefiting many lives, rather than ending one and damaging another. In the end I believe that my case is concrete and uses numerous facts and scientific studies to support my case. Conversely I have shown flaws in the logic used by my opponents emotionally driven case. I encourage all voters to use their minds when voting and evaluate the content of the argument and vote for whichever side they believe did the best job building their case. 1. http://concernedwomen.org...