Team E — Anti-abortion
Abortion should not be permitted in today’s society. Abortion is the purposeful ending of a human life—a human life that has a right to exist, but has no means by which to protect itself or exercise that right for itself. It is our most basic of human rights to have the right to life at all stages of our development (once development has begun), and not just before some arbitrary point in time.
Unborn babies should be and are currently afforded the same human rights status as a newly born baby – we argue that the point at which a developing human life may no longer be terminated legally is arbitrary, and is not based on any firm criteria or evidence.
Human beings do not stop developing and growing after birth – yet to terminate a child’s life outside of the womb is (rightly) regarded as completely unacceptable. The legality of terminating a baby’s life inside of the womb, however, is seemingly dependent on how long the foetus has been developing, despite the fact that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the ‘cut-off’ point is anything more than a practical issue, concerned more about the well-being of the carrier, rather than the well-being and rights of the unborn foetus.
We contest that the rights of the pregnant woman should not take precedence over the right of the child – the fundamental point being that each human life has an equal right to exist. Women can exercise a very large degree of control regarding their choice of whether or not to become pregnant, whilst the rights of the child cannot be employed by the child itself; therefore they need to be protected by the law.
The right of the every woman to exercise choice over their pregnancy is one that may be taken by multiple other means. Responsible use of contraception and better sex education offer females the ability to exercise their right to choice. The unborn child has no such ability.
So long as abortion is an option, it will be continue to be used as an ‘after-the-fact’ form of contraception – unlike conventional methods of contraception, abortion violates the fundamental human rights of another individual—the unborn child.
ledhed and I can have our 'kill all babies' vs. 'but babies are cute' debate somewhere else.
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