Resolved: Abortion should be Illegal (Except in life threatening cases)

Thank you. Rebuttal " my opponent ignores women who were raped. If a woman living in a state where abortion was illegal, was raped, and then became pregnant. She would have two options, try for an unsafe abortion, where the risk to her life is much greater than a proper abortion, or give birth to the child. Let's consider she gives birth to the child, chances are, the child will not experience a happy childhood, given the fact that it was born to a mother who did not want it alive. If the child is given up for adoption, then the child will cost taxpayers much more money than a Medicaid abortion would. An abortion during the first trimester of a pregnancy costs around $350 - $400. But providing for a child in an adoption centre for many years would cost much more." The costs are irrelevant to this debate, as money does not justify killing. Rape is only about 1% of all pregnancies, so this exception cannot dictate the norm. However, I will still address this point. I agree that rape is a heinous crime. However, creating more victims by killing an innocent is not the right answer. Consider a case in which a rape victim gives birth to a son, and after 5 years the mother sees the boy and decides he reminds her too much of the rapist, and she kills him. This is not justified, and neither is abortion. " the fetus cannot be considered as a seperate lifeform. Abortion isn't equivalent to killing a newborn, because the fetus isn't capable of living an independant life. And I know that most people would bring up late term abortions, but there are stats that show 90% of abortions occur in the first 13 weeks of the pregnancy. And at this point, the fetus isn't capable of living as an independent being." OK, the fetus is not completely independent at this point. But it is still very much an ALIVE HUMAN, as I proved with the facts that the fetus is part of Homo Sapiens, the species of humanity. Just because it is dependent does not make it any less human. People reliant on life support are not inhuman. Newborns are helpless, but they are human. A fetus is dependent, but is still human. "If she desperately wants an abortion, she will probably resort to unsafe abortions. Each year, 20 million unsafe abortions are estimated to take place each year, and out of these, 67,000 women die due to complications of unsafe abortion. Also, before the 1973 decision to legalizing abortion, there were still 1 million abortions every year, and it had become the leading cause of maternal death and mutilation." This is untrue."One need only look at the frequency of abortion since it was first legalized to see that the legality of abortion plays a huge role in establishing a woman's willingness to choose abortion. The Centers for Disease Control, which has tracked U.S. abortion data since 1969, reports that "[after the] nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions increased rapidly, reaching their highest levels in the 1980s."11 In 1970, there were 193,491 legal abortions. In 1973, the first year in which abortion was legal in all 50 states, there were 615,831. By 1981, that number had more than doubled." http://www.abort73.com... As you can see, most women would not choose to resort to illegal abortions. "Dr. Christopher Tietze, then acting as the chief statistician for Planned Parenthood and the Centers for Disease Control, also addressed the exaggerated claim of 5,000 - 10,000 abortion related deaths per year. He wrote in a 1969 edition of Scientific America: Some 30 years ago it was judged that such deaths (from illegal abortion) might number 5,000 to 10,000 per year, but this rate even if it was approximately correct at the time, cannot be anywhere near the true rate now. The total number of deaths from all causes among women of reproductive age in the U.S. is not more than about 50,000 per year. The National Center for Health Statistics listed 235 deaths from abortion in 1965. Total mortality from illegal abortions was undoubtedly larger than that figure, but in all likelihood it was under 1,000." "In the year prior to Roe v. Wade (1972), the Centers for Disease Control reports that 39 women died from illegal abortion in the United States and 24 died from legal abortion.9 That is a far cry from 5,000-10,000. The National Abortion Federation maintains that "between 1970 and 1980, legal abortion in the USA is estimated to have prevented 1,500 pregnancy-related deaths."10 But even if those numbers are accurate, legal abortion killed roughly 15 million human beings during that same stretch of time. If you do the math, the number of women "saved" by legal abortion from 1970 to 1980 was 0.0001% of the total number of innocent human beings killed by legal abortion. And at least half of those killed were women." http://www.abort73.com... Banning abortion would result in more lives saved, on net. Thirdly, abortion is always dangerous. http://www.lifenews.com... "But get this: the average Odds Ratio for these twelve studies is 5.54. That means that the breast cancer risk for Indian women who have had prior abortions is five and a half times that of women who have not. Another way to put it is that you have a 554% increased risk of developing breast cancer if you have had a prior induced abortion. That"s pretty scary, isn"t it?" http://www.bcpinstitute.org... According to the Breast Cancer Institute, 53 out of 73 studies find a positive link between abortion and breast cancer. Add this contention to my case, proving dangers of abortion My Case Contention 1 stands as all the solid evidence points my way. The fetus is an independent being as it has different DNA than the mother. Contention 2 stands as life is worth having based on the experiences, so depriving it is wrong. Constitutive being argument: P1) If an individual being has a constitutive property at one point in time, then it has that property at every in its existence. P2) You are the same individual living being or organism as the fetus from which you developed. P3) You are a human person constitutively. Therefore vote Pro! Thanks.