Abortion

Thanks, Dan, I'm happy with ignoring the Zygote process.Okay, on to the show.The first thing I want to do is quickly go over some definitions. I see the pro-life argument mainly consists of using words like "baby" to describe unborn, still gestating embryos, which are basically clumps of cells. The term "baby" refers to a newborn or very young child [1]. So calling a fetus a baby just makes abortion seem a lot worse than it is.I see the main point you made as to why abortion is actually a bad thing is your final point, about Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts." So I'll touch on that quickly here. As you can see here [2], partial-birth abortions are illegal. To say abortion as a whole is a bad thing because very few people perform illegal activities just doesn't quite work. And finally, regarding "selling baby parts," that's blowing it out of proportion, and is taken completely out of context. Planned Parenthood has been permitted under federal law to donate the organs and tissues, as well as the ability to collect reimbursement fees [3]. So your argument that "they're selling baby parts" is way out of context, and everything done is done legally and the main purpose is finding cures for degenerative neurological diseases, brain tumors, and spinal cord injuries. The actual full-length interview is available on YouTube [4] for anyone to watch. It is (obviously) unedited, unlike the video on the pro-life websites, and the staff are professional and go into detail about everything, and there is no way it sounds anything like a black-market baby-selling industry, and what it does sound like, is a group of people eager on researching cures for diseases and such, allowed by the government.Now, on to the rest. Your first argument is something I surprisingly haven't heard before, as it makes sense at a first glance. However picking it apart and thinking deeply about parenthood and abortion, it's made clear that there actually is a pretty good reason why "babies are punished" for their parent's actions. To allow an unwanted, unloved, uncared-for embryo to be born into this world, populating it even more and existing in an environment that didn't want it to begin with just doesn't make sense. My last paragraph will tie into this.With your situation, there's a difference between wanting a child and going through with a pregnancy that you're "unsure" you can afford, and not wanting a child at all and being unable to afford one at all. I will touch on this and the previous paragraph in my next paragraph.I see you say "the embryo pays..." "people get abortions for bad reasons..." "you can keep the baby and find an alternative to an abortion..." but you missed one major, critically important point in the whole debate. WHY is abortion bad? You haven't said anything (other than illegal activities) bad that's tied to abortion. As far as I know, your position is "abortion is not okay." So far, you've given alternatives to abortion and all that, but you don't say why it's actually not okay.So let me tell you why it is okay.Abortion does many things. Keeps the society from overpopulation, disallows a child to grow up in extreme poverty, or an environment filled with hatred and neglect, disallows a child with a severe mental disorder that can ruin his/her life from existing, disallows a child to be thrown into yet another foster home because they have parents who don't want them, and the list goes on. Why is it bad to have an abortion? Does your reasoning actually outweigh my reasoning as to why abortion isn't bad? Well, let's see... yes, we're killing something with the same DNA as a human being. And that being the only thing that makes it human, that sure doesn't outweigh possible reasons to have an abortion. And we can't forget that embryos can't feel any kind of mental or physical pain [5], so the only real argument we can go on is "it has human DNA so we can't terminate it, no matter the reason." It isn't aware. It isn't conscious. It doesn't know it exists to begin with. To deny the mother the right to terminate a pregnancy (for whatever reason) is forcing her to go through nine months that she doesn't want to go through, and endure an agonizing childbirth because... well... you haven't really told me why yet.So let's actually see why abortion is a bad thing!Thanks! On to you! :)Sources [1] http://dictionary.cambridge.org...[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu... [3] http://www.dailydot.com... [4] [5] http://jama.jamanetwork.com...