The Strength and/or Lack Thereof of the Arguments Against Legal Abortion

There is perhaps no topic in our political climate that is as sensitive as the topic of whether abortion should be

legal or not. It is quite a divisive issue and my hope is that if we cannot all agree on the morality of it, we can at

least agree on the legality of it. Here, what I will be addressing are the common arguments against legal abortion

and how strong those arguments against it are.

"Abortion must be made illegal because it is taking a human life"

This is technically true. However, the fact that it is a human life alone does not justify making a law against taking

that life. It is generally agreed upon that there are various situations in which it should be legal to take a human life,

such as in situations of self-defense. So while arguably true, this statement does not address the morality of

abortion or why it should or should not be legal. One might still say that the difference is that unborn children are

innocent, which perhaps makes the argument more convincing though still not good enough. Innocence means

different things to different people. For example, some say that innocence means one has not been convicted of a

crime. Others may mean innocence in the sense of having been obedient to all of the rules of The Bible or

whichever holy book the person making the argument believes in.

"God says abortion is murder. Therefore, abortion is murder and must be outlawed."

This argument has very little if any strength. For starters, not everyone believes in God and not everyone follows the

same religion. For this argument to be sound, the person making the argument would first need to develop a way to

demonstrate to non-believers that God exists. They also would need to be able to demonstrate to non-believers

and believers alike that their religion is the correct one. Even after doing those things, we still would have to find a

way to justify making a law for everyone that is based on what we believe God says. A believer might say that the

justification is that whatever God says is good for us is good for us, but that would be difficult to demonstrate,

especially since nothing we have observed is infallible. That obviously does not mean that infallibility does not exist,

but there is no good reason to assume that it does exist either. Not to mention, that believer would also need to

demonstrate that God did in fact say it.

"Abortion encourages irresponsibility."

Define "irresponsibility", first off. In many discussions I have had with people making this argument, when pressed

further, they talk about the use of birth control and such, but that still does not make it a good argument. For

one thing, the argument assumes there is an epidemic of intimate relations where people are not using birth

control, when the reality is that no type of birth control is completely foolproof. Plus, the more effective birth control

usually has to be purchased as a prescription. That can be pretty expensive for some people. In addition, this

argument makes it seem as though the person saying it is opposed to abortion because of the type of behavior they

think it encourages rather than because of genuinely caring about the life of the unborn child.

"Children are still dependent on their parents after they are born. Neither the mom or the dad have the legal right to

kill them then, so why is it okay to kill them before birth?"

This argument is usually a response to someone defending abortion by pointing out what I alluded to earlier about

the fact that an unborn child is dependent on the use of the inside of their mom's body for life support. There is

validity to this argument, though once again, it does not completely hold. One key difference in that situation is that

the unborn child no longer needs to be stuck to and relying on someone else's body for life support and can

be given up for adoption at that time, if the parents decide they do not want to care for the child. Additionally, the

fact that one thing is illegal does not by itself justify making another seemingly related thing illegal.

In the end, even with all these points made against these arguments against abortion, the topic of abortion will

probably remain a sensitive and divisive thing. That said, I hope for these points to encourage those who are anti-

abortion to think harder about their position on it and whether they have good reason for their position or not.