abortion should be banned

Alright, thanks to Pro. As he has kept his round short, I will endeavor to do the same, though I have quite a bit of material to go through. To start, he hasn't really supported his assertion from the opening round. Saying that abortion is murder implies that abortion is a) unlawful, b) always premeditated, and c) that the fetus is, by definition, human. It is not my burden to show that these things are untrue, it is his to prove them true, which he has not yet done. I would say that abortion is most certainly lawful under the status quo, and that Pro hasn't really provided a reason why that's unreasonable. I would say that there are many medical cases in which an abortion becomes suddenly necessary, removing any premeditation from the equation (remember, Pro is banning all abortions, not just some). Lastly, I'd argue that humanity is contingent on personhood, something that a fetus has yet to obtain. An individual zygote doesn't have any human traits beyond its strands of DNA, and DNA is not, by itself, reaching the quota for what is human. Pro is building his case entirely on the premise that a potential human can be murdered, and he'll have to support that by either proving that the early stages of development include the acquiring of personhood, or that the supposition that the child will eventually obtain personhood is sufficient reason to call it murder. But onto the rebuttals. Pro has not yet actually countered any of my assertions. He asks a number of questions, but none of them are particularly relevant to the debate. Yes, a woman should be able to inject drugs into her own body if she is of legal age and sound mind. I'd also argue for legalized prostitution. However, this is irrelevant. When I'm talking about women's rights, I'm discussing the importance of ensuring that women be able to act autonomously, and that decisions involving their body and the invasion of it be left to them. That autonomy disappears at the moment that society places a legal burden on you that prevents you from acting towards your own interests. Whether the woman got pregnant by mistake, by rape, or did so purposefully, but now faces severe medical or financial pressures, it is their body that has to bear that baby for 9 months, and no external body should be able to require that of them. Pro is completely non-responsive to my point regarding medical interventions. There are numerous complications which can threaten the lives of both mother and child during pregnancy. Banning abortion effectively bans an essential medical procedure to protect that mother's life, and thereby ensures the deaths of many women for the sake of children who will likely die with them. Lastly, he mentions adoption. First off, not everyone is going to pursue adoption. Those that don't will still feel like the child is a burden forced upon them, and will treat that child terribly. Second, we're talking about a lot of adoptions here. I can provide numbers if necessary, but consider the numerous abortions that happen in this country. Try adding all those children to an already overburdened, underfunded adoption system that rarely finds homes for the children it has, and basically all you get is a tremendous number of orphaned children who will be similarly neglected by society at large.