Resolved: Abortion should be made illegal in the US.

say that it should be legal because people are going to do it anyway - is it not worth saving many more lives (the lives of the mothers) than letting them die getting back-alley abortions? What do you people think? Remember, this isn't about whether abortion is right or wrong (there are more than enough of those already) - this is about whether it should be legal or not. 6 reasons to vote NEG Government gets to control a woman's body. By making abortion illegal, you're introducing a slippery slope that gives government control over a woman's body. You're taking away a personal freedom. Who knows what other controls the government may legislate in the future. Will it have the power to force sterilization? Will it have the power to make motherhood mandatory? Will it next take away the right to use other birth control methods such as The Pill? "Back alley" abortions would increase if it were made illegal, leading to increased risk of young women dying or becoming sterile. Regardless of what laws are in place, there will always be young women out there who want to have an abortion. They may not want to face the wrath of their parents, the embarrassment at school, or the lifetime responsibility of motherhood. If we criminalize abortion, many woman will simply look for other ways to get rid of the child. They could starve themselves or seek unlicensed "back alley" abortions. So instead of getting an abortion in a controlled environment where there is one last chance for counseling on options, women may subject themselves to a potentially dangerous situation. These type of methods often lead to sterility or other harm, even death. It's arguably better for society to have babies aborted than have them be brought up poor and neglected, where not only will the child suffer but society when that child develops a higher attraction to crime, welfare, etc. This is probably a controversial point but it has to be said. Without legalized abortion, a lot more women will become parents whether or not they want to be and whether or not they're ready to be. Raising a child properly is a full-time labor intensive process. The children who are neglected or abused are usually the ones that grow up to be drug addicts, lifelong government aid recipients, and criminals. Do we want to subject the child to such misery? Do we want to saddle society with the added burden? Some people say, "What if Abe Lincoln's mom had an abortion?". You could also ask, "What if Adolf Hitler's or Saddam Hussein's mom had an abortion?" One brief mistake can take away a woman's childhood and trap her for life. We all make mistakes in our life, especially when we are young. The pressure to have sex at an early age is fierce in today's society. Even a girl who lives a good, responsible life can have one slip up. But that one slip-up can take away all her life plans and trap her. She may have planned to go to medical school, train for the Olympics, travel the world, or just have fun while she's still young. All this can be thrown down the drain with one brief mistake. We shouldn't penalize someone for life. Giving up a child for adoption can be just as emotionally damaging as having an abortion. Women develop an emotional bond with a child when they carry it through the full term and go through the experience of delivery. Giving up that child for adoption might be the only reasonable option for a young girl too immature or poor to raise a kid. However, the women now has to live with a feeling of abandoning their child for the rest of her life. Why do you think so many adoptive parents seek out their kids when they're grown? There's no doubt that some women suffer psychological damage from having an abortion; however, the damage done from giving a child up for adoption is much worse. Abortion is not murder because it is performed before a fetus has developed into a human person. A fetus doesn't become a real human being until it is physically delivered from a mother's womb. If you define a fetus as a human, are you going to go back and say a sperm or egg is a human? Should we ban birth control altogether then since we'd be killing a "human"?