There Are Good Logical/Scientific Arguments to Justify Abortion

Pro justifies abortion with fears of over population, which I will gladly address. It's important to note that Pro did not challenge the idea that abortion kills an unborn human life. Instead, my opponent implies that the dangers of overpopulation are more pressing, thereby making abortion a type of self defense measure to save our species. This argument has two parts. First - overpopulation is a real danger. Second - abortion is a justifiable self defense against such danger. Is overpopulation a real danger? Not really. Pro notes that by 2050 we would need three Earth's worth of resources to feed population projections. The central flaw with that, of course, is that it's based on current consumption rates. The world's population, especially it's industrialized population, is incredibly wasteful. In the U.S. alone, 30-40% of all food supply gets wasted. A full one third of the food produced worldwide gets thrown out [1]. It's not our food consumption that's out of control, it's our production. The same goes for water and electricity consumption. The incredible strain on water and electricity has more to do with the world's extravagant hotels, swimming pools, and irrigation systems than basic human necessity. If we simply consumed what we needed and stopped taking 15 minute showers, the strain on water supplies would be much less. The solution to this is not killing unborn people. It is controlling our own consumption of luxury goods and finding more efficient ways to produce and irrigate crops. As efficient green technology increases, the strain on resource production will decrease. Pro talks of the dangers of a net 2.88% population growth rate worldwide. Yet, that 2.88% mostly comes from only a handful of countries. The top population growth rates across the globe belong to countries such as Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Uganda [2]. These are largely poor countries with high amounts of violence and short life expectancies. Children are still needed as economic assets and social security in such places. Conversely, more and more countries have birth rates approaching zero: U.S. 0.77%, Canada 0.76%, Italy 0.3%. Many countries even have negative birth rates: Russia -.03%, Japan -.13%, Germany -.18% [3]. We see a trend here: poor, violent, and undeveloped countries continue to have sky high birth rates, while stable, educated, and advanced countries have very small ones. The obvious solution is to spend our efforts making the world a more peaceful, educated, and developed place, rather than simply killing unborn babies. On to the second part - is abortion a justifiable self defense measure against over population dangers? No. Pro presents a false dichotomy of solutions - either find more planets or stop having children. There are far more choices than that. We've already discussed the benefits that better technology will have on green energy and more efficient production/consumption ratios. We also know that higher education, economic stability, and access to birth control all reduce birth rates to sustainable levels. It's ridiculous to say that we need to stop having families and start aborting children in order to save our species. Pro's final point ("I am not saying everybody who has a baby right now should have an abortion") begs another moral question - who gets to choose who aborts and who doesn't? Who has the authority to say "this baby lives, and that baby dies."? How can anyone justify that choice through logic and science? This brings us beyond population control and into the dangerous world of population engineering. Conceivably, governments do not only choose some babies to abort, but they choose WHICH babies to abort. Thus we can begin to see the Nazi-like desire for certain traits, which brings fearful consequences. Pro has a long way to go before this argument can be justified. I'd remind Pro that the next round is their last round. I hope my opponent will present more than a single argument. [1] http://www.worldfooddayusa.org... [2] https://www.cia.gov... [3] Ibid.