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Abortion should be legal

Original enthymeme: Abortion should not be illegal in any State because an expectant woman has the right to decide whether she wants to carry the baby to term or not.

Claim: Abortion should not be illegal in any State.

Stated Reason: Because it should be entirely a decision of a mother on whether she wants the child or not.

Grounds: Women end up having unwanted babies who end up suffering or at times the pregnancy is medically dangerous to the mother and ends up putting her life at risk. These issues can be solved by legalizing abortion and making it a lesser social evil.

Backing:

Non-abortionists argue that abortion is illegal at any stage since it is murder. This is not the case because most abortions take place in the early weeks of pregnancy when the fetus cannot exists as an independent person from the mother. This is because it if attached to the mother through the placenta and its health is fully dependent on the mother. Therefore, it should be regarded as a separate person outside the womb and therefore abortion at this stage cannot be said to be murder.

Adoption can also be regarded as abortion because it leaves the mother with the decision on whether or not to keep the child. Both of this acts; adoption and abortion should be discussed as one because they both focus on the well being of the mother and the child. It can be urged why keep a child that is not wanted just for it to suffer or just be an inconvenience for the mother. In United States statistics show that 3% of unmarried white women and 2% of unmarried black women give up their babies for adoption.

Form a medical perspective abortion is a safe procedure. 88% of the women who have had an abortion did not experience any serious complication. While the risk of having any serious complication is way below 0.5%. There is also no prove that these women may have affected their future ability to be pregnant or to give birth.

In case a woman made pregnant after a rape case of incest it may be a further psychological harm to the woman if she keeps the pregnancy. In most case a woman may be too ashamed to speak up or unaware of her pregnancy thus making the use of morning after pill ineffective.

Abortion can also be a form of contraception in cases where other birth control methods have back fired. It is scientifically proven that even with the use of some contraceptive use, pregnancy can still occur. When this happens a woman must make the choice on whether or not to keep the child. Forcing the woman to keep the child would be wrong considering the she was not totally careless and did not want a child.

Teenagers who become mother while still in school may have their dreams shuttled. In most cases due to additional responsibilities they are forced to leave, their babies receive inadequate prenatal care, depend on public assistance to support the child and at times the child develops health problems. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to false the teen to keep the baby but the non-abortionist think otherwise.

Counterclaims:

Non-abortionists argue that it a akin to murder, it should therefore be illegal and unethical. The claim that abortion is murder arises from the argument that it involves taking another human’s life and the act does not uphold the sanctity of human life.

Legalizing abortion is permitting the society to take the life of another human or impose harm intentionally to another human without any applying any form of punishment.

It is non-abortionists or pro-life further state that abortion should not be legalized for the sole reason of protecting the child or the mother from suffering. This is because adoption is quit viable considering there are millions of American families who want to adopt a child. Therefore, the idea of unwanted pregnancy should not arise.

In the cases of rape and incent, women should be encouraged to take proper medical care which can easily avoid pregnancy. By encouraging abortion or murder of the unborn child is shifting punishment from the perpetrator to the child who committed no crime.

For women who demand to have control of their bodies they should be advised to use contraception to ensure they do not get pregnant or abstinence. They should also note that abortion should not a form of contraception.

Qualifier:

Arguments on abortion regarding whether it should be legalized or not begin by determining whether it is murder or not. Abortionist argument gain their strengths by stating that it is not murder since the fetus cannot be regarded as an independent human being. Non-abortionists on the other hand, back their arguments by stating that abortion is murder therefore criminal and punishable. The two sides are quite correct since the fetus gains consciousness a few weeks into the pregnancy actually 12th week of pregnancy and it is after this stage that the child can be regarded as a human being. For this reason, arguments on whether abortion is murder should strongly be based on the fetus age. If abortion is done in the early stage of pregnancy before the fetus becomes a human being then it is not murder but after this stage it is murder and abortion becomes a crime.