Pro & Con Arguments: "Should abortion be legal?"
PRO Legal Abortion
1. A woman's right to choose abortion is a
"fundamental right" recognized by the US
Supreme Court in the Jan. 22, 1973 case
Roe v. Wade (342 KB) . [49]
2. A fetus is not a human being. Abortion is
terminating a pregnancy, not a baby.
Personhood at conception is not a proven
biological fact. Personhood begins at birth.
3. Fetuses are incapable of feeling pain when
an abortion is performed according to
Stuart W. G. Derbyshire, PhD, Senior
Lecturer at the University of Birmingham
(England). "Not only has the biological
development not yet occurred to support
pain experience, but the environment after
birth, so necessary to the development of
pain experience, is also yet to occur." [10]
4. Access to legal, professionally-performed
abortions reduces injury and death caused
by unsafe illegal abortions. The World
Health Organization estimated in 2006 that
"back-alley" abortions cause 68,000
maternal deaths each year in countries
where abortion is not legal. [11]
5. The anti-abortion position is usually a
religious belief and threatens the vital
separation of church and state. Religious
ideology should not be a foundation for law
in the United States.
6. Modern abortion procedures are safe. The
risk of a woman’s death from abortion is
less than one in 100,000. [12] Whereas, the
risk of a woman dying from giving birth is
13.3 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies. [13]
Furthermore, a 1993 fertility investigation of
10,767 women by the Joint Royal College
of General Practitioners and Royal College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found
that women who had at least two abortions
experienced the same future fertility as
those who had at least two natural
pregnancies. [14]
CON Legal Abortion
1. Unborn babies are innocent human beings
from the moment of conception. They have
a fundamental right to life, which must be
protected.
2. The Sixth Commandment of the Bible's Old
Testament (Exodus 20:13) is "Thou shalt
not kill." Abortion involves killing a human
being and defies a commandment from
God. [23]
3. Fetuses feel pain during an abortion
according to Kanwaljeet J. S. Anand,
MBBS, DPhil, Professor of Pediatrics,
Anesthesiology and Neurobiology at the
University of Tennessee Health Science
Center. "If the fetus is beyond 20 weeks of
gestation, I would assume that there will be
pain caused to the fetus. And I believe it will
be severe and excruciating pain." [24]
4. The original text of the Hippocratic Oath,
the oath that doctors traditionally take when
swearing to practice medicine ethically,
forbids abortions. One section of the oath
reads: "I will not give a woman a pessary [a
device inserted into the vagina] to cause an
abortion." The modern version of the
Hippocratic Oath written in 1964 by Luis
Lasagna also forbids abortion in its line,
"Above all, I must not play at God." [25]
5. The Declaration of Independence (33 KB)
[51] states that "[A]ll men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." Allowing abortion directly
contradicts the Founding Fathers' intentions
for an inalienable right to life in this country.
6. Women should use contraceptives, not
abortion, to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
A Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) study showed that 19-
25% of women who received abortions in
2006 had previously had one or more
abortions. (474 KB) [52] If abortion were not
