Abortion should be legal.

My opponent's arguments almost invariably rely on the premise that abortion is not homicide - or that foetuses have no right to life. Obviously if this premise were true then all of Pro's arguments would be be perfectly correct. If we only consider the welfare of the mother then it is clear that we ought to allow her to abort safely and easily. However if the premise is false, and abortion is indeed homicide, then my opponent is guilty of making false syllogisms. Note that I will be arguing that abortion should not be legal in all cases apart from cases where the mother would be under severe physical risk if she were to continue the pregnancy. Why abortion is homicide P1: Abortion is the deliberate killing of a human foetus by another, P2: Homicide is the killing of one human being by another, (1) P3: A human foetus is a human being, C: Abortion is homicide Homicide is illegal (apart from justified homicide, but abortion does not fall under this bracket), and so if abortion is homicide, then it logically follows that abortion should also be illegal. I do not know which (if any) of my premises my opponent disputes, so I will wait until he/she voices her objections. Response to Pro My opponent's main argument is that 'Outlawing abortion will not stop abortion'. However, this is a nonsensical argument to use in opposition to outlawing abortion. We outlaw actions because they are immoral (in general), irrespective of whether outlawing the action would actually stop the action. For example, outlawing theft does not stop theft, but it is non sequitur to suppose that this is any reason to legalise theft. The same applies to murder, slavery, torture and many other horrible things. Pro also seems to have forgotten the fact that pregnant women choose to have an illegal abortion, it's not as if they are forced into it against their will (even in cases of this, the problem to be dealt with is to punish the person who forces the woman to abort, not to legalise abortion). Therefore, as women choose to have an illegal abortion, knowing that it is a dangerous procedure, they are willingly putting themselves in danger and therefore they are partially culpable. The woman can simply choose to not have an abortion. Ultimately, abortion is not a necessity. My opponent raises the problem of pregnancies caused by rape, and goes on to liken it to a forced organ donation. Yet this is a poor analogy for two reasons: 1. There is an unique obligation in society for parents to protect their children, yet there is no obligation to protect other people. If we change the analogy to a scenario where a young child will die if his mother does not donate a kidney to him, it would be abhorrent for the mother to then refuse to do so. 2. Refusing to donate a kidney to someone who needs it in order to live is different to directly killing someone. The former is just letting someone die naturally, whereas the latter is the direct and deliberate murder of someone. Abortion is the direct killing of the foetus, whereas refusing to donate a kidney is letting someone die naturally. Pro goes on to say that legal abortion is necessary to allow medically necessary abortions (which I take to mean cases where the abortion is to save the mother's life). Apart from the fact that it is perfectly possible to allow medically necessary abortions and not abortions in other circumstances, only 0.00014% (2) of abortions in the past ten years in the UK have been to save the mothers life. It is absurd to suggest that we should make the 99.99986% other abortions legal for such a negligible minority of cases, especially considering then in every single one of these cases a human life is destroyed unjustly. The last argument presented is that legal abortion is a relatively safe procedure. Yet this only considers the safety of the mother, it is the most unsafe procedure possible for the foetus. Furthermore, just because something is safe it does not mean that it should be legal. Tax avoidance is safe, but it does not follow that tax avoidance should be legal. I will now pass the debate over to Pro. (1) http://dictionary.reference.com... (2) https://www.gov.uk...