Abortion should be banned.

I thank Con for his rather informative latest argument. I will now proceed to address these points accordingly. Case one - Statistical analysis I want to pull two seperate points that my opponent had stated throughout two different rounds in this debate to illustrate my point. Here I will point out where there is a real 'inconsistency' in my opponent's case. "If you wanted a unborn baby do die without feeling pain it would need to happen before 20 weeks. " - Round 2 "It also states even after 19 weeks the neurons will have to extend to where pain is perceived which means a baby will develop pain between 23 and 24 weeks. Meaning an abortion can be done without the fetus feeling pain before 24 weeks. " - Round 3 Now, The point I am trying to illustrate isn't the fact that you went from saying 20 weeks to 24 weeks. Your information came from the same source after all. The point I am trying to make is that stated that the neural development of the brain only starts developing at 19 weeks yet pain only develops somewhere between 23-24 weeks. The problem with this is that in round two you made the assumption in no way, Shape or form that pain could occur in a fetus even despite the fact that later on you acknowledged that neural development to the brain happens at 19 weeks. If you read my case in round three you will have noticed that I was talking about abnormal cases, Where neural development can vary rather considerably. The reason why your sources and my sources vary differently in when pain can be perceived is because it is not always clear when this development occurs. In most cases you would be right, A baby would not perceive pain before 24 weeks. But the perception of pain in a fetus is still a scientific question simply because of the possibility of abnormal cases with varying levels of growth development. This is the reason why your argument is inconsistent in both argumentation and evidence. Even without all of this information, A fetus still responds to stimuli at 8 weeks of development even though pain is not known to register at this stage. So there are active responses coming from the fetus from outside forces. Why is it that 'pain' quantifies human life? You never really stated that pain defines human life but rather a painless abortion is a more moral way of going about it. You still have not made the distinction about how the definition of a human being that you brought in at the start distinguishes an unborn fetus from a born baby. Case two - Choice "From this I can state from the emancipated people from foster care homes majority of them do resort to crime. Someone does not turn to crime if their life was decent which means if you were able to make abortion illegal. " First of all you are leaving out a great deal of factors of what exactly influences the crime rate. Political factors, Socio-economic factors, Welfare factors, Environmental factors. The topic of the crime rate is a great deal more complicated than simply the legality of abortion. Many studies (one such study is in my sources) show that it is incredibly hard to correlate abortion to crime. Simply doing so is far too vague and leaves out many factors of the human element. But for the sake of analysis, Say that you were right. Say there hypothetically was a direct correlation between abortion and crime. Instead of actually trying to solve the grassroots of the issue with our social and economic systems that influence crime, You'd rather allow human beings to die at the perceived benefit for society. Note that I used the word 'perceived', Because there is no direct correlation between abortion and crime. If there is a problem in the foster system, Then it is the welfare system that needs overhaul. Not human lives. Case three - The Unborn Criminal If you're a regular reader of the Quarterly Journal or in particular the work of Steven Levitt then you would know that there were a great deal of inconsistencies and misrepresentations in his report published back in 2001. A paper published by Yale University showed this in their report (again, Link is in the sources). Allow me to bullet point this illustration - The report showed no evidence which linked the falling crime rate to the legalization of abortion. If it was directly as a result of the legalization, Then crime should have started falling amongst the young population first. Rather, The paper published by Yale showed that crime actually fell amongst the OLDER population first. Therefore something doesn't add up there. The report did not take into account the delay of due process in the legal system after the legalization of abortion. Many crimes that were taken to court roughly 18 years after the law was passed were crimes that happened prior. Some may have happened years before, Long before the law should've showed results. Steven Levitt lumped these figures together without proving that the drop in crime was mainly because of the fall in juvenille crime. Levitt made a gross assumption in his journal that a whopping 80% of crime had dropped as a result of the legalization of abortion. Because no direct link was shown and he made no future case to dispute the fact that older people were less crime in comparison to juvenilles, This shows that the report is grossly inconsistent. Moving on. "as it stands contraception is not always available due to it not being free" I think we can all agree that contraception was never expensive to acquire. It sounds to me that you're talking about lower income families who do not have the monetary means of buying 10$ condoms. If that is the case, How is it that low income families will routinely be able to afford abortions if they weren't able to afford condoms? As my opponent said earlier in the debate - "cost of abortions was also reduced due to abortion being legalised. Before Rov v Wade it was $400 to $500 now I am guessing would be in 2001 is $80. " Now I'm not a mathematician but any reasonable person can tell this doesn't make sense if you're talking about the expenses of contraception in comparison to the abortion itself. There is virtually no excuse to not being able to afford contraception in this regard. None. Your own input proves that. "Reason is because freedom is better than restrictions". You need to remember one important fact before you start stating this. Liberty and security are two parallels on opposite ends of the spectrum which need to remain balanced. If you have too much liberty, You have very little security. Vise versa, With too much security comes little liberty. To state that freedom is 'always' better is a ridiculous notion in this regard. At the end of the day you still live in a society governed by laws. You do not have the freedom to do absolutely anything and everything you want because you as a citizen live in a governed society. Should I have the freedom to shoot up a school because restricting it is against my personal liberty? No. Because liberty does not triump over life. As a very famous quote once put it, "You cannot put a price on life". Case four - Rape There are a number of blaring problems that my opponent has presented with his solution on the topic of rape. First of all, We all know rape kits were never truly effective at all. You'd think that if they were we'd never have the problem of false rape charges in this day and age. What my opponent doesn't understand is that the NCBI published the information on rape kits as guidelines for the procedure in the court of law. It did not mean they were effective. And they aren't. Both my sources referenced below credit this, One from an actual person's account and another from a study conducted on its effectiveness. Simply put in bullet point format once again - Rape kits cannot easily distinguish injuries due to force compared to injuries sustained from rough, Consensual sex. The evidence supplied by rape kits has been reported; both by the journal and by a individual's account, To be often mishandled by police. Rape kits sometimes go into evidence lockers for years before it is produced in a court. Rape kits do not speed up the court of law, As they aren't accurate enough to prove charges. Therefore, Abortions are still impractical because the case will almost certainly take longer than 24 weeks; the timeframe that my opponent is advocating for abortion. The notion my opponent has made that a rape kit alone is enough for a legal charge in the court of law is ridiculous and I sincerely invite him to present evidence where this is the case. Enforcability I have already stated this. There is no way to effectively stop all abortions because anything that the government deems as against the law will always have a black market. That's basic economics. Burden of Proof is not based upon 'hypothetical scenarios', It is based upon overall effectiveness. An easy example of this is Poland. A country that only allows abortions based upon life threatening scenarios. As per my source below when the law was tightened in 1993, The abortion rate fell 95% from reported cases. This alone is enough to support the enforcability of an anti-abortion law. Case closed. To summarise - My opponent never distinguished the difference between an unborn fetus and a newborn. Mothers do not get to choose whether a baby lives because they have access to the resources necessary to educate them about the impact of unprotected sex. There is no direct correlation between abortion and crime. Allowing abortion cases based on rape paves way for the slippery slope fallacy based on a dangerous precedent. The government is fully capable of effectively enforcing abortion in a real world scenario. I thank my opponent for the debate. Ciao. Sources - "Abortion and Crime" - Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 254 "The Problem with Rape Kits" - Splinter News "The National Problem of Untested Sexual Assault Kits" - Rebecca Campbell "Historical Abortion Statistics, Poland" - Wm. Robert Johnston