Abortion

I will preface my initial response by noting that I am, as a person, also vehemently against abortion. However, I will be arguing in favor of it here. I would first point out that a zygote is but a single cell, capable of no mental function, no emotion, no human activity. While fetuses certainly develop functions such as heartbeats, movement, blinking, etc. later in a pregnancy, there is no logical basis on which to grant a zygote special worth. If there was, however, then my opponent should be shocked by the frequency of pregnancy loss at fertilization; according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, roughly 50% of all fertilization spontaneously fails, mostly before the heart begins beating at five weeks. If these undeveloped embryos are to be considered human, then based on the number of pregnancies in the US in 2014 alone, an estimated four million (2) innocent, unborn children were killed by failed pregnancy before their mothers were ever aware that they were pregnant. However, my opponent has expressed no concern with this egregious loss of precious life. Contrast this number with the 664,435 legally-induced abortions reported to the CDC in 2013 (3). The instigator's position appears to focus on the prevention of a certain kind of death, one which is statistically minor in comparison to the far greater loss of pregnancies which occurs naturally, every day. I am aware that this debate does not (yet) focus on naturally-occurring pregnancy failures but I wish to streamline the argument by precluding appeals to the value of human life on which pro-life advocates almost universally rely. Secondly, I submit that the welfare of the women who suffer unwilling pregnancies (rape in particular) has not yet been acknowledged. Researches from the Medical University of South Carolina identified in 1996 that 5% of rapes result in pregnancy, causing around 32,000 annual births at the time of the study. Nearly 12% of these women suffered spontaneous pregnancy failure and half of the 32,000 victims chose to abort (4). I thus question the morality in criminalizing the decision of a woman with no say in their own impregnation to abort an unwanted fetus as opposed to carrying for nine months, undergoing thousands in medical costs, and either possibly and radically modifying their lifestyle to accommodate the newborn or contributing to the orphan crisis by placing the child in adoption, out of which 22,000 children every year mature without ever being accepted into a family (5). While I acknowledge clear humanity after a certain point in a fetus's development, I challenge the notions that humanity begins at conception and that abortion is unjustifiable even in cases of rape. (1) U.S. National Library of Medicine - Miscarriage https://medlineplus.gov... (2) Center for Disease Control and Prevention - 2014 Births and Natality https://www.cdc.gov... (3) Center for Disease Control and Prevention - Abortion Surveillance https://www.cdc.gov... (4) U.S. National Library of Medicine - "Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... (5) Dave Thomas Foundation - "Get Informed" https://davethomasfoundation.org...