1. Laws against abortion kill women.
To prohibit abortions does not stop them. When women feel it is absolutely necessary, they will choose to have abortions--even in secret, without medical care, in dangerous circumstances. In the two decades before abortion was legal in the U.S., it's been estimated that nearly 1 million women per year sought out illegal abortions. Thousands died. Tens of thousands were mutilated. All were forced to behave as if they were criminals.
The CDC reported 39 deaths from illegal abortions in 1972. But let's assume that's accurate. Is the purpose of the government to make it safer to kill the innocent? Hell, everything illegal is dangerous. Rape someone and you can catch an STI or get maced. Commit arson and you can burnt. Rob a bank and you can get hurt by a security guard.
2. Legal abortions protect women's health.
Legal abortion not only protects women's lives, it also protects their health. For tens of thousands of women with heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia and severe diabetes and other illnesses that can be life-threatening, the availability of legal abortion has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth. Before legal abortion, such women's choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth.
In such a case, every effort should be made to save both lives.
3. A woman is more than a fetus.
There's an argument these days that a fetus is a "person" that is "indistinguishable from the rest of us," and that it deserves rights equal to women's. On this question, there is a tremendous spectrum of religious, philosophical, scientific and medical opinion. It's been argued for centuries. Fortunately, our society has recognized that each woman must be able to make this decision, based on her own conscience. To impose a law defining a fetus as a "person," granting it rights equal to or superior to a woman's--a thinking, feeling, conscious human being--is arrogant and absurd. It only serves to diminish women.
So now we get to decide whether someone else is a person? If I decide a black man is not a person, may I enslave him? Should Peter Singer be allowed to kill newborns?
Granting personhood to a fetus doesn't diminish women any more than granting personhood to the handicapped diminishes the able. To say otherwise seems horribly elitist.
4. Being a mother is just one option for women.
Many hard battles have been fought to win political and economic equality for women. These gains will not be worth much if reproductive choice is denied. To be able to choose a safe, legal abortion makes many other options possible. Otherwise an accident or a rape can end a woman's economic and personal freedom.
Motherhood is indeed an option, but motherhood starts at conception. Nobody supports forcing women to become mothers; we just oppose them killing their offspring.
5. Outlawing abortion is discriminatory.
Anti-abortion laws discriminate against low-income women, who are driven to dangerous self-induced or back-alley abortions. That is all they can afford. But the rich can travel wherever necessary to obtain a safe abortion.
This assumes that abortion is okay. Nobody thinks hiring hit men should be made legal just to make it cheaper.
6. Compulsory pregnancy laws are incompatible with a free society.
If there is any matter which is personal and private, then pregnancy is it. There can be no more extreme invasion of privacy than requiring a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. If government is permitted to compel a woman to bear a child, where will government stop? The concept is morally repugnant. It violates traditional American ideas of individual rights and freedoms.
The most fundamental principle of government is to protect the weak from the strong. If the government cannot tell one human being she cannot kill another human being, the entire concept falls apart.
7. Outlaw abortion, and more children will bear children.
Forty percent of 14-year-old girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. This could happen to your daughter or someone else close to you. Here are the critical questions: Should the penalty for lack of knowledge or even for a moment's carelessness be enforced pregnancy and child-rearing? Or dangerous illegal abortion? Should we consign a teenager to a life sentence of joblessness, hopelessness and dependency?
Here's a question for you: Should a girl be allowed to punish her offspring for a mistake she made before her offspring even existed?
8. "Every child a wanted child."
If women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the result is unwanted children. Everyone knows they are among society's most tragic cases, often uncared-for, unloved, brutalized and abandoned. When they grow up, these children are often seriously disadvantaged, and sometimes inclined to brutal behavior toward others. This is not good for children, for families or for the country. Children need love and families who want and will care for them.
More like "Every unwanted child a dead child.".
9. Choice is good for families.
Even when precautions are taken, accidents can and do happen. For some families, this is not a problem.
But for others, such an event can be catastrophic. An unintended pregnancy can increase tensions, disrupt stability and push people below the line of economic survival. Family planning is the answer. All options must be open. At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. It is about the value of women in society. Should women make their own decisions about family, career and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children? Or is that a government decision?
Again, the incorrect assumption that abortion is a preventative measure. The only thing it prevents is the further development of an already-existing offspring. Also, I suggest you look up "family planning". We don't let parents abuse their children under the guise of "decisions about family", so why let them kill their children?
