Why support abortion for rape victims?

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If abortion were illegal people could still choose to use the cheapest, safest, and most effective way of avoiding pregnancy. Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense to claim that those who want to ban abortion are somehow infringing on the right of a woman not to be pregnant. Am I right?

You need to get the idea that abstinence is effective out of your head because it's not. Like I said, just take a gander at the the teen pregnancy statistics in states that only teach abstinence only sex education to see how not effective it is. Humans do not have the willpower to abstain from sex when their hormones are raging.

Teaching abstinence != actually not having sex

" Humans do not have the willpower to abstain from sex when their hormones are raging."

BS. That is the same logic used to justify rape.

Actually, yeah, abstinence does mean not to have sex. To abstain from something means not to partake in it.

Clearly they don't have the willpower not to have consensual sex, otherwise why are there so many kids nobody wants?

Are you really saying that abstinence isn't effective? Has any woman who didn't have sexual intercourse ever gotten pregnant in the history of the world? No. So how is that not an effective way to avoid pregnancy? I fail to see how sex education has anything to do with this indisputable biological reality. As a young adult, I have thus far abstained from sex, alcohol, drugs, and the other such vices. If I can do it so can anyone else.

Oh, but you honestly expect everyone else to be just like you? You are NOT everyone else, and you can't expect everyone to be just like you. How judgmental you are!! ! You need to take your bigoted @$$ and p!$$ off!! ![/sarc]

For what it's worth, I completely agree with you here. The idea that abstinence isn't effective is completely absurd. Barring divine intervention, no sexual intercourse = no pregnancy.

So, I guess I just imagined getting pregnant. Good to know.

Okay, sense you obviously don't understand a word I'm saying, let me rephrase myself.

Sex Ed != Sex

You are talking about promoting abstinance through education, we are talking about literally abstaining from sex. As Angel and American said, regards of the effectiveness of preaching abstinence, it's impossible to actually get pregnant unless you actually have sex. Your point is irrelevant.

"So, I guess I just imagined getting pregnant. Good to know." Did you have sex? If so, that has nothing to do with anything.



If morals were only up to the individual, than what's the point of having any laws? Might as well say it's a personal choice not to murder someone. Of course that's missing the point as laws against murder protect the law makers safety, someone might be fine with murdering someone but not want to be murdered themselves, so let's go with a more relevant analogy: poaching. Obviously, the people advocating for laws against killing endangered species wouldn't kill endangered species in the first place, and most would be poachers wouldn't have any ethical qualms with poaching. However, it's still crucial that the people who care get their say as otherwise the species would be extinct, and in their view a moral atrocity that could have been prevented happened. Same type of thing here.



Exactly why abortion is legal in case of rape.



False analogy, as their is no ethical burden with getting medical treatment for a broken leg. This is purely hypothetical, but say if it required, oh, baby panda livers to fix a broken leg, than the argument might be relevant. One must live with a broken leg because it's wrong to cut out baby panda's livers.





Oh really? I'm not going to take a firm stance either way, but I'm going to point out the fundemental flaw with this reasoning: what makes you are the arbitor of what is or is not a person? Let's say Bob Jones thinks woman are subhuman, does that mean he should be allowed to rape them as he pleases? Or, let's say the person who bullied you the worst in school believes autistic people are soulless flesh blobs. Does that mean he should be allowed to kill you merely on the grounds that you annoy him? The fact is, there isn't really a fine line between fetus and infant, and it's generally agreed infanticide is abhorrent. Sure, young embryos lack brains, but does the certainly make them not human?

Yeah, humans are irrational all the time. However, having sex for pair bonding, or even just for pleasure, is not irrational.


You're not entirely correct. It's possible to get pregnant without sex (ever hear of IVF?), but it's pretty unlikely to happen unintentionally.

Humanity is not in any danger of dying out. A more valid analogy to illustrate your point, since abortion is legal and killing endangered species is illegal, would be the moral crusade by vegans to prevent anyone from killing and eating animals. Vegans think that it's unethical; meat-eaters think that it's not. Meat-eaters currently have the law on their side. Pro-life people think that abortion is unethical; pro-choice people think that it's perfectly fine. Pro-choice people currently have the law on their side.


Ok, let's change the analogy a little bit and say that the driver's kid was in the car too, and the kid needs a chunk of liver because his got blown to smithereens by blunt-force-truama during the accident (not unheard of). Should the driver/dad be forced to donate a chunk of his liver to the kid, who will die without it, because he 'chose' to drive and 'chose' to put the kid in the car? The dad will probably survive the donation.
What if the 'kid' in question is a non-sentient, non-sapient blob of more-or-less organized tissue?


There's actually a very clear line between a fetus and an infant: birth. One is dependent on a specific woman for its oxygen, its nutrition, its temperature regulation, and its waste elimination; every function of homeostasis is performed by her body, and it is contained within her body. The other breathes, circulates its own blood, and can be cared for by any other human as well as the specific woman.
And, of course zefs are human (adjective), just like hair can be human or livers can be human or lungs can be human. That doesn't make them people and it doesn't mean that we should respect them any more than we should respect any other chunk of human tissue. As for life, it began billions of years ago and has continued in an unbroken line since. Ova and spermatozoa are no less 'alive' than the 2n organisms that they are made by or the 2n zef that they can combine to produce.

Even Peter Singer, grasps the reality that the distinction you are making there is arbitrary. I am not a functionalist when it comes to human life because it leads to the conclusion that a being with less function has less worth and that is a standard that I don't believe anyone wants to uphold.



You are actually making three arguments here, one from function and the other from possession and dependence and the last is one of privacy. I see little value in either. Dependence has nothing to do with privacy, its simply a matter of ownership. If the woman owns the space, then she can destroy it at will. If it is one of dependence then you would also have to support examples that would affirm situational infanticide (as Singer points out, although he supports it). The privacy argument is your best but I just cannot support the idea that it means we should grant that human beings can be property, which is a fundamental distinction between our two positions.

Most people do; that's why abortion is pretty restricted in the 3rd trimester (and I do not, personally, disagree with those restrictions). However, my opponent brought up the near-strawman of 'abortion the second before birth,' and I was responding in kind.

Given your stance, I wouldn't expect you to ;p

If there were a case where an infant (or, for that matter, any human being) were entirely dependent upon a single individual human, using that individual's body to support its own, restricting the individual's movement and enjoyment of life, then I would support that individual's right to remove him- or herself from the dependent infant or adult, even if it would mean the latter's death. I would support the individual's right to control their own body even if the dependent party was sapient, but all the more so if it wasn't even sentient.

Our own bodies *are* our own property, with limitations; we cannot sell ourselves or our organs, for example. But I don't agree that privacy is intrinsically linked to ownership.

Interestingly Genghis Khan did exactly that after his wife was kidnapped and was returned pregnant, 7 months later. Kublis Khan was the baby born and Genghis not only raised him as his own knowing another man had planted the seed, but made him his heir over his own numerous offspring. He was not a morally admirable man, but he loved his (first) wife and son. it's quite a contradiction to our way of thinking.

There seem to be a couple of fallacies being thrown about here.

First, abortion is not universally allowed. Many countries have laws against rape victims aborting the parasite which would become a baby if allowed to use the woman for 9 months.

Secondly, people are generally extremely precious to other people around them, but life itself is commonplace, human life is commonplace, some say too much so, I don't actually agree about the world being overpopulated, but that is another debate.

Why is it important to preserve unwanted human life? This is not a person who is precious to others, even though it is definitely human. Unless you have some superstition about what supernatural beings might want, it is totally without reason.

If your reason is that you believe some supernatural being wants another person to act a certain way, then let the supernatural being get on with informing the person of the right decision, and butt out.

You mean like the rapist did when he attacked her?

She is morally bound to carry that child to term, but no one's forcing her to raise the kid against her will. That's what adoption is for.

Your opinion is noted, but the woman's opinion is much more important when it comes to her moral obligation to a blob of human cells which is not yet a person, but has the potential to ruin or end her life.

I'm generally anti-abortion, as I've already mentioned. However, I really do think a case could be made for abortion in the event of rape that a woman does NOT have a moral obligation to carry the child to term. I would, and do, find that an argument to that effect to be compelling.

That said, I do have these objections: If it is human, then it is a person. Abortion kills individual human beings, and at no point in development after conception is any blob of human cells not a person.

Second, all of us blobs of human cells have the potential to ruin or end another fellow blob's life. It is wrong for any blob to punish another blob simply based on their "potential" for ruining or killing. Most often that is called "murder."

I live in a particularly poverty-stricken area on the edge of town. I have a neighbor who is redneck through-and-through, and he doesn't have any issue walking around his own yard visibly carrying a handgun. I find it creepy, but whatever. He's a nice guy, has helped me out on several occasions, and I don't perceive him as any significant threat…gun or no gun. He's just a little odd. He has tremendous "potential" for shooting me on the spot if he just feels like it. Do I have the right to sneak up on him and kill him because of his "potential" to kill or ruin my life?

I carry a large folding pocket knife. It comes in handy for opening letters, packages, sharpening pencils, slicing apples, and peeling oranges. The clip blade is just short enough to not be legally considered a weapon. It's a great backup if I ever get a dull steak knife. Here's one like it:



Though it would be somewhat difficult and risky, I could use it as a weapon if I got in a tight spot. Since I now have the "potential" for sneaking up on someone and stabbing them in the throat, thus killing that person or ruining his life, does that give someone the right to kill me?