Need Help Countering "10 Abortion Arguments"

[Mr.Blank1.5]

womensissues.about.com/od/reproductiverights/a/AbortionArgumen.htm

This is a webpage I found that details 10 arguments for and against abortion. To me, it seems biased towards the pro-choice side. If anyone can provide better rebuttals than I can (which I’m sure many of you can), please respond.

Pro-Choice - 10 Arguments For Abortion

1. Nearly all abortions take place in the first trimester, when a fetus cannot exist independent of the mother. As it is attached by the placenta and umbilical cord, its health is dependent on her health, and cannot be regarded as a separate entity as it cannot exist outside her womb.

1. The concept of personhood is different from the concept of human life. Human life occurs at conception, but fertilized eggs used for in vitro fertilization are also human lives and those not implanted are routinely thrown away. Is this murder, and if not, then how is abortion murder?

1. Adoption is not an alternative to abortion, because it remains the woman’s choice whether or not to give her child up for adoption. Statistics show that very few women who give birth choose to give up their babies - less than 3% of white unmarried women and less than 2% of black unmarried women.

1. Abortion is a safe medical procedure. The vast majority of women - 88% - who have an abortion do so in their first trimester. Medical abortions have less than 0.5% risk of serious complications and do not affect a woman’s health or future ability to become pregnant or give birth.

1. In the case of rape or incest, forcing a woman made pregnant by this violent act would cause further psychological harm to the victim. Often a woman is too afraid to speak up or is unaware she is pregnant, thus the morning after pill is ineffective in these situations.

1. Abortion is not used as a form of contraception. Pregnancy can occur even with responsible contraceptive use. Only 8% of women who have abortions do not use any form of birth control, and that is due more to individual carelessness than to the availability of abortion.

1. The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing a woman to use contraception or undergo sterilization?

1. Taxpayer dollars are used to enable poor women to access the same medical services as rich women, and abortion is one of these services. Funding abortion is no different from funding a war in the Mideast. For those who are opposed, the place to express outrage is in the voting booth.

1. Teenagers who become mothers have grim prospects for the future. They are much more likely to leave of school; receive inadequate prenatal care; rely on public assistance to raise a child; develop health problems; or end up divorced.

1. Like any other difficult situation, abortion creates stress. Yet the American Psychological Association found that stress was greatest prior to an abortion, and that there was no evidence of post-abortion syndrome.

Some of my counterarguments:

1. Well if that’s the case, would an infant right out of the womb be fair game for killing? As others have said, how far out of the birth canal would you consider it a human?

2.Human development begins at conception. Personhood is an artificial concept which has no consensus. And yes, the deliberate destruction of fertilized eggs is murder.

3.That argument makes little sense to me. Adoption is not an alternative to abortion because…women can choose to give or not give up her child? Most women choose not to give up their babies…and how does that relate to abortion>

4.The safety of a procedure has little bearing on its morality.

5.Abortion will not un-rape a woman. Rape victims, whether they had an abortion or not, can experience trauma that may last from months, to decades, to even the rest of their lives. Also, why is it that a rapist can be jailed, but a child must be put to death?

6.Isn’t that an argument against contraception? What happened to being responsible and using your head instead of demanding a so-called right to having sex without pregnancy?

7.Of course she has control over her own body. But neither she, or anyone else has the right to terminate that individual human being created from intercourse.

8.Was that a suggestion given to us on how to stop abortion in America?

9.There are more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics in the US. In addition, I’m pretty sure there are many Catholic charities, and other groups such as Feminists For Life that provide services for teenage or other young mothers.

10.That is a fact that is regularly warped by the pro-abortion crowd.

“The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver that pregnancy. The evidence regarding the relative mental health risks associated with multiple abortions is more equivocal. Positive associations observed between multiple abortions and poorer mental health may be linked to co-occurring risks that predispose a woman to both multiple unwanted pregnancies and mental health problems.”

source: apa.org/pi/women/programs/abortion/index.aspx

 

[oldcatholicguy]

1. The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing a woman to use contraception or undergo sterilization?

Her reproductive right is to not get pregnant (ABC, NBC, sterilization, no sex, etc). Said right ends when she gets pregnant. Funny how the law holds a man responsible for a pregnancy (has no say in aborting the child, can be forced to provide money and support for the pregnancy and for the child he did not want), yet treats women as if they are either mentally handicapped or are children (can not be held responsible for their actions). I guess the liberal feminists and pro-choicers actually believe that women are mentally and socially inferior to men.

 

[oldcatholicguy]

1. Teenagers who become mothers have grim prospects for the future. They are much more likely to leave of school; receive inadequate prenatal care; rely on public assistance to raise a child; develop health problems; or end up divorced.

So the answer to poor social support for pregnant teenagers is to murder the child? I would have thought fixing the poor social support would be the answer. Silly me and logic.