Abortions should be free, safe and available all through the US

There are more inconsistencies in Pro's new statement. Pro claims, toward the end of her post, that life begins at birth. Yet Pro claimed in the first round that an abortion after 12 weeks is morally wrong. These two positions are inconsistent with each other because there is no basis for saying an abortion is wrong if it doesn't take a life. If abortion takes a life, then it's wrong; if it doesn't take a life, then it's not wrong. So if life begins at birth, and not before, then no abortion is wrong regardless of how late it is. But if abortion IS wrong, at any stage of pregnancy, then it must be the case that life begins prior to birth. It is hard to know how to respond to an opponent when there are inconsistencies like this in their position. I want to begin, though, but discussing this issue of when life begins because I believe the moral question of abortion hinges on this question. Before we can address the question of whether it's okay to destroy something, we must first address the question of what it is we're thinking of destroying. If it's a mosquito, okay. If it's a girl scout, not okay. Pro claims that life begins at birth but gives us no argument in support of that view. In the previous round, I did give an argument for an individual human life beginning at conception. That argument was based on the premise that the unborn, from the moment of conception, are distinct human organisms that are not parts of their mothers. From conception, a human being goes through various stages of development, but remains the same organism throughout these changes, from zygote to adulthood. But let me go on to add that from conception, the organism has it's own unique DNA which it continues to have into adulthood. It has human parents, and is therefore human. It is undoubtedly alive since it has all the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a living organism--it grows, reproduces, metabolizes, and reacts to stimuli. There really is no question but that it is a distinct living human organism. Pro concedes that the unborn are not part of the woman's body in the sense of being an organ. She thinks, however, that it is part of a woman's body in the sense of being located inside of her and being dependent on her body for survival. But being located inside of her and being dependent on her is not the same thing as being part of her body. If we take the unborn to actually be part of a woman's body rather than being a distinct organism, that would lead us to the paradoxical conclusion that some women have penises, multiple brains, and as many as eight legs in the case of triplets (two legs on the outside and six legs on the inside). That is absurd. It is plainly obvious that the unborn are distinct organisms. They have their own body parts, their own DNA, their own gender, and their own future. (Pro wrote one paragraph dealing with viability, but since Pro believes life begins at birth, not viability, it's unclear what work this paragraph is supposed to do in Pro's case. Pro doesn't tell us what difference viability makes to the question of whether abortion is moral or ought to be safe, free, and available everywhere. This paragraph seems to serve no purpose at all.) That means abortion is morally wrong at any stage of pregnancy. Abortion takes the life of a distinct innocent human being without proper justification. Since abortion is morally wrong and deprives a human being of life, it should not be free safe and available all through the US. If anything, it should be prohibited. Before Pro's argument for the availability of free and safe abortions can even get off the ground, she must first demonstrate that there's nothing morally wrong with it. So far she hasn't done that. She has merely asserted, without argument, that life begins at birth. Pro did address the subject of free and safe abortions. Perhaps some of her comments there were meant to imply that abortions are morally permissible. Let's look at some of the things she said. First, she said abortions should be available for the health and good of women. Well, it may be for the good and health of a woman to free herself from the burden of motherhood by tossing her baby to the bears, but that doesn't make it morally permissible. It depends on whether we're talking about a real human being. We don't kill people for our own good and health. Second, she said women for whom free and safe abortions are not available will resort to more dangerous methods. That may be true, but how is it relevant? A person who can't afford a car might resort to steeling one, but that doesn't mean the government owes everybody a car. The fact that people resort to dangerous pursuits when they don't get what they want doesn't obligate the government to give them whatever it is they want. People are responsible for their own decisions. Third, she seems to imply that abortion might be morally permissible on the basis that some people can't afford to have kids. That is an odd sort of justification. We wouldn't allow people to kill their three-year-old for that reason because we all agree the three-year-old is a living human being. Well, if the unborn are also living human beings, then poverty does not justify killing them either. Fourth, Pro says that abortions lead to less mental health problems than giving a baby up for adoption. Again, this is no justification if we are talking about the life of an innocent human being. Fifth, Pro points out that a woman who chooses not to have an abortion is subject to all the symptoms of being pregnant, including nausea, weight gain, and depression. Again, that is no justification for taking the life of an innocent human being. So we can see that the question boils down to whether the unborn are distinct living human organisms or not. If they are, then none of the reasons Pro gave for allowing them suffice as moral justifications for abortion. However, if the unborn are NOT distinct living human organisms, then none of these supposed justifications are even necessary. If Pro could show that the unborn are not distinct living human beings, then I would concede that there's nothing morally wrong with abortion. But even if we grant that abortion is morally permissible for the above reasons, for some other reason, or for no reason at all, that still doesn't justify the claim that abortions ought to be free, safe, and available throughout the US. It turns out that when Pro says she think abortions should be free, what she really means is that the government should pay for them. But the government gets its money from taxes which are paid by people--including the people who get abortions. So there is no sense in which abortions could be free. If the government pays for them, then everybody who pays taxes is paying for them. Pro thinks the government should pay for abortions because "a woman has a right to get a free and safe abortion" and "Women have the right to decide what they want their bodies to go through." From whence comes this right? Even if women had the moral right to an abortion, it wouldn't follow that they were ENTITLED to an abortion and that somebody else owed it to them. I have the right to own a car, but it doesn't follow that the government should provide one to me. Nobody owes me a car, and nobody owes anybody else an abortion. Except in the rare case where a mother's life were at risk or even when there is a significant risk to her health, abortions are elective procedures. A person with a big ugly nose might've suffered life long ridicule and emotional turmoil because of it, but that doesn't mean the government owes them a free and safe nose job. Maybe they were even turned down for jobs because of their big ugly nose, leaving them in poverty, but that doesn't obligate tax payers to pay for their nose job. I'm almost out of characters, so I'll leave it at that.