Abortion is societally beneficial.

It appears that my dear opponent, Capllock is no longer with us. Tragic, really. Perhaps he is off to benefit society, and is helping perform abortions... or picketing an abortion clinic to engage in more active social protest than engaging in an online debate with someone who is entirely apathetic to the matter. I shall take this time then to cover the topic a bit more comprehensively. The question of reproductive rights has been a central issue of virtually every presidential election since the 1970s. The first major appearance of the argument of reproductive rights came with the case of Grizwold v. Connecticut which legalized usage of birth control. Roe v. Wade soon followed with the outright legalization of abortion, the adoption of the trimester framework, and the hell-storm that ensued. Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey came subsequently in 1992 and abandoned the trimester framework, replacing it with the question of viability; which is about 22 weeks (Planned Parenthood of PA v. Casey). Politicians have manipulated the issue of abortion since it's legalization in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe. Feminists have paraded the issue as one of women's rights, and exclusively women's rights without taking into account the role of the male (without whom the woman would not have been impregnated to begin with, short of immaculate conception which hasn't happened in a little over two millennia). But all hyperbole aside the only aspects in this country that are relevant to any reasonable discussion of abortion in the United States is the law, which has been consistently been defined by the Supreme Court upholding a mother's right to do away with her big mistake. Every time I hear an annoying child crying in a movie, or crying in a restaurant I am more convicted that abortion is the way to go -especially considering that the parent's lacked the foresight to use a condom. Thankfully, most people that just shouldn't be reproducing aren't having kids anyway (because they are too repulsive to the opposite sex to even be considered as a potential playmate), but in those instances where some people just get too frisky and can't think five minutes (if they even last that long) into their future, there is but one solution. Many have and still do considered abortion murder; when in reality that debate is really about as relevant as a debate over the proper way to pronounce the word "tomato." You say tomato; I say abort! Roe v. Wade is here to stay, despite the best efforts of Reagan and Bush the Second. The Supreme Court's decision in Grizwold created a "right to privacy" which was derived from the first amendment's right to free association clause, the third amendment's protection from the quartering of soldiers, the fourth amendment's protection of unreasonable searches and seizures, the fifth amendment's self-incrimination clause, the retention of "other rights" by the ninth amendment, and the incorporation of these rights under the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment (Grizwold v. Connecticut). Within a few short years, Roe was heard which declared firstly that the Texas statute which banned all abortions was unconstitutional because the right to privacy protects a woman's right to have an abortion. Secondly, the holding from Roe established that in the first trimester of a woman's pregnancy that she had the strongest interest in having an abortion, but by the third trimester the state had a more dominant interest in protecting the life of the child (Roe v. Wade). The question however that determines the legitimacy of abortion itself is simply, from a legal standpoint: when does the fetus/child/whatever you wish to call it get constitutional rights? If the woman's interest was dominant in the first trimester, and the state (fetus's) interest was dominant in the third semester, what happens in the second? Roe left this question largely unanswered and it caused a tremendous deal of controversy until 1992, when Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey was heard abandoning the ambiguousness shat out in Roe, and replacing it with a concrete deadline. The 22 week deadline (or lifeline, if you will) is the time at which during a normal pregnancy a fetus is viable -that is, it could live on it's own or with the assistance of modern science independent of the mother's womb. Regardless of pro-life rhetoric, Sandra Day O'Conner's opinion is more important than any vitriolic nonsense a pro-lifer would have to say on the matter. It is difficult to consider a world without abortion. If it weren't safe and legal it would still be a less-than-rare occurrence, just instead of in a doctors office -it would be far more likely to happen in a back alley. However, in the United States, despite the efforts of Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats abortion is still legal, and always will be. It just hasn't merited federal funding -yet.