Abortion and murder are not morally equivalent.

"Do you also know that spending 9 months completely exhausted from an ever growing, energy-draining parasite that we romanticize to be can make studying and perhaps having a part-time job nearly impossible to physically do without sacrificing success at one for the other? You could end up failing exams or losing your job because of the pregnancy alone and its effect on your body. This would make you have to redo the whole year. Then you'd have to live forever with the guilt of knowing that you could perhaps have raised your own baby but now if you ever do have a child and raise it, you'll always have that ever growing guilt of never having raise your first child and it will bite at you and psychologically ruin you." Because as we all know, maternity leave does not exist. "So what if the fetus has the potential to become a baby and the baby has the potential to a life? Why does this surpass the woman's right to deal with a growth in her body that's draining all her nutrition and health for the sake of its own survival? A fetus is just a selfish, malignant blob of cells inside the mother's body that she is sacrificing her own well-being to produce." Problems: 1. If the fetus is just a malignant blob of cells because it doesn't contribute to the mother's wellbeing, then a newborn is too. Why is it not okay to kill a newborn but perfectly okay to kill a fetus? Does passing through the birth canal magically make the fetus into a contributing human? 2. A woman doesn't have a right to "deal with" a fetus because it has the potential to become a human being. Humans do not have the right to control whether or not another human lives or not. This is the reasoning by which we believe that murder is in most instances immoral. 3. I'm sorry, but a decreased quality of life for nine months does not outweigh losing one's entire life outside of the womb. Seventy years is worth more than nine months. 4. The fetus does contribute to the mother's wellbeing. Evolutionary fitness occurs when your genes are passed on. By being born, the fetus contributes to its mother's evolutionary fitness. "Why are you forcing to do this when it can end up as a screwed up adult or as a miscarriage?" Why give birth at all to anyone "when it can end up as a screwed up adult or as a miscarriage?" "Oh okay, so you want to make the mother wait 6-7 weeks when the fetus is slightly more conscious and then kill it, yeah that really makes no sense." I never said to kill it after six to seven weeks! I said the risk of miscarriage drops after six to seven weeks! "What on Earth does poor vs. rich countries have to do with it? Are you saying that poor countries are somehow invalid in moral discussion?" No, I'm saying that the places in which stillbirth is more likely are poorer countries, so if we're worried about stillbirths we shouldn't have abortions, we should just try to reduce poverty. "I don't need to prove a link between homicide and neglectful past (which will most likely stem from a child being unwanted in the family but the mother being too stubborn to give the child up for adoption). [https://www.childwelfare.gov......] Consequences of childhood neglect include impaired brain development (meaning resorting to crime to earn money will be more likely) and direct link to criminality.[http://tinyurl.com......]" You still need to prove that children born unintentionally are more likely to be abused as children. "My opponent concedes that washing hands is murder and should be criminally charged as such if it were not for the ct that bacteria not only lack sentience but are entirely parasitic and selfish in their way of existing...aside from this, there are very many good things that bacteria do for the world" I did not say that! I said that CERTAIN bacteria can be killed morally. I know many bacteria are beneficial, and do not condone killing them! I only condone the killing of harmful bacteria! "Not only is a fetus parasitic to a greater extent as it takes up more time, effort and nutrients to maintain than the average bacteria...whereas fetuses very rarely give back more than they give" A newborn doesn't give anything to its parents either. Are you saying it's justified to kill a newborn? "often will end up wasting their life away on partying, self-indulgence retirement and finally dying." I could say the same thing about the mother. "If they hadn't wasted all their time getting drunk with strangers, they wouldn't have made the mistake of not using protection with that boy who left them. They deserve having to have a child as punishment for their mistakes. They have to learn to take some responsibility." "Nevertheless, this is actually false because the consequences of killing someone who has already lived are far more emotionally devastating to the vast array of people who value their sentient existence and economically devastating to their workplace than killing a fetus which is potentially only known to exist to the mother seeking the abortion and the doctor giving it." So you're saying that if a mother gives birth to a child by herself and doesn't like it, it's okay for her to kill it? Over to Pro.