Abortion Should be Made Illegal in the United States

Before I begin with my main arguments and defences I would like to point the topic out for any readers/votes: "Abortion Should be Made Illegal in the United States" The topic is very clear and concise, and the wording must be very closely paid attention to. Just for further clarification, I would like to point out that my opponent is arguing for the truth of this statement: "Abortion Should be Made Illegal in the United States" while I am arguing that this statement is false, in other words: "Abortion Should NOT be Made Illegal in the United States" One last comment is that abortions are currently legal, and thus the burden of proof is on my opponent. My opponent has to provide SUFFICIENT WARRENT (good reason) why ABORTIONS MUST BE BANNED. If my opponent does not do this, I must win by default. I will now move on to my case. Argument 1: Mothers are humans Subpoint A: Humans have a right to life A pregnant women is obviously a human. My opponent claims humans have the right to live. But if you make abortions illegal, this right to life is violated. There are many cases where a mother will die unless she gets an abortion. Remember, my opponent is advocating the following statement: "Abortion Should be Made Illegal in the United States" If he is advocating that statement, there are no exceptions. If my opponent wished there to be exceptions, it must be explicitly stated in the topic. Subpoint B: Humans have a right to dignity One of the most fundamental rights is the human right to dignity. Why are things like rape so terrible? Because it takes an hour of the victim's time? No, because it violates their dignity. Dignity is an essential right to humans. Making abortions illegal violates human dignity in three ways: 1) Women who are raped should not be forced to have an illegitimate baby. It violates the mother's human dignity. 2) If doctors know a baby will have a serious disease (mental retardation, quadriplegia, etc. ) but the mother is forced to have that baby, that is violating the human dignity of that baby. The baby will be born with no dignity, and will have no dignity throughout life. Doctors CAN know this ahead of time, especially with instances such as incest. 3) If a mother knows ahead of time they will not economically be able to support a baby, they should not be forced to have that baby. If a mother is forced to have a baby, she may have to scrape together money any way she possibly can, including the drug and sex trade. This strips her of her dignity. In addition, the baby and mother may end up living on the streets because they have no money, this strips both of them of their dignity. This is very common, according to the Guttmacher Institute 57% of women who get abortions are economically disadvantaged [3] Argument 2: Back Alley Abortions Humans have a natural desire to exercise free will. According to the SEP: "'Free Will' is a philosophical term . .. for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. " [1] If a law stands in the way of a human exercising their free will, they will simply circumvent that law. This is natural and happens all the time (drugs, theft, etc. ). If a mother does not want to have a child, and abortions are illegal, they will still get an abortion, just an illegal one. When abortion was illegal before Roe vs Wade, it did not decrease the number of abortions. "Criminalization of abortion did not reduce the numbers of women who sought abortions. In the years before Roe v. Wade, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year. " [2] A problem arises because illegal abortions are often very unsafe. When abortions were illegal many back-alley abortions caused serious health complications for women. "Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions. During this time, hospital emergency room staff treated thousands of women who either died or were suffering terrible effects of abortions provided without adequate skill and care. "[2] Argument 3: Abortions stimulate the economy According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1.21 million abortions are performed a year. [3] The average cost of an abortion is $850. [4] That's $1,028,500,000 a year. In these shaky economic times, stopping that big of a market literally overnight would have serious repercussion for the whole economy. Defense 1: Fetuses are not legally humans My opponent claims that fetuses are human. While they may be biologically human, that does not mean they are legally human (nor should they be). Let me ask the reader/voted a very important question: Murder of a human is illegal in the United States. According to my opponent, a fetus should legally be considered a human. Having a miscarriage is killing a fetus, should the mother be charged with manslaughter? If you kill a person in the United States (even if you didn't intend to) it's a very serious felony. Miscarriage would be considered manslaughter by my opponent's definition. Defense 2: Fetuses are not conscious My opponent does not provide any clear or concise evidence, just vaguely throws out that consciousness is not well known enough and it's not a good argument. While consciousness is not COMPLETELY known, enough of it is known for the purpose of this debate. First, consciousness can be defined. The definition is: "Consciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. " [5] Second, it IS known that fetuses do not possess consciousness: "a fetus doesn't possess enough neural structure to harbor consciousness until about 26 weeks, when it first seems to react to pain. Before that, the fetal neural structure is about as sophisticated as that of a sea slug and its EEG as flat and unorganized as that of someone brain-dead. " [6] At 26 weeks it is past the second trimester, and thus is already illegal in the United States. Defense 3: Rape My opponent claims there are only a small number of women who are raped a year. And out of that small number only a small number get pregnant. The thing is, this doesn't matter. Human dignity is such an essential right, even more important than the right to life. NOBODY should be forced to live an undignified life. Sources [1] . http://plato.stanford.edu... [2] . http://www.prochoice.org... [3] . http://www.guttmacher.org... [4] . http://www.prochoice.org... [5] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [6] . http://www.slate.com...