Abortion debate settled!

The long-awaited conclusion to this epic trilogy (parts one and two here and here) has arrived.

One problem of the abortion debate is neither conservatives nor liberals state whether they are debating opposition/support against/or abortion or abortion rights. On the surface, the two may be the same, but they are in fact two different subjects entirely. An abortion is a deliberate termination of a pregnancy, resulting in the destruction of a fetus. Abortion rights is the right for a woman to have legal access to having an abortion. Hence, someone might be personally opposed to abortion, but may still recognise and accept abortion rights. For this argument, I will focus on abortion rights.

But what is the argument against abortion rights? Namely:

Abortion is murder and therefore should be illegal. The reasons being that:

- fetus have souls and therefore are human.
- fetuses have human DNA, therefore killing them is murder.

However, each reason is fallacious. The soul argument is the easiest to debunk: namely, there is no evidence for their existence. Therefore, we can assume that until some observable evidence does develop, then souls don't exist, discounting the entire argument. Another problem is that the soul argument is theocratic and not democratic. It is theocratic because outlawing abortion based on the soul argument is to base the opposition of abortion rights on religion. If this country were Iran or Saudi Arabia, that argument might stand up. However, this Australia, a democratic country-we don't base laws on religion.

The 'human DNA' argument is also wrong, because more then DNA is required to make a human a human. Yes, the genetic code helps define us as humans and not other mammals. But if DNA were all that's needed, then my body is composed of billions of little people because my body is composed of billions of cells. A cell is not a human because billions of them are required to create a human-it's like saying that a tree is in fact a forest.

OK, we have established that killing a zygote or an early-stage foetus isn't murder (under a secular, legal perspective). However, the lines start to blur as the foetus develops into a baby, in which it is effectively a human. So at what stage can you call the flesh-sack a baby and therefore a human? Personally, I'd say that when the foetus no longer requires the mother to live, then it's a baby. It can breath, digest and perform all physiological functions on its own without any external aid (no electronics or machinery either), which is pretty much what it can do outside the womb. According to In the Womb, the foetus can live outside the mother at 26 weeks. Therefore, we can say that at 26 weeks (from a scientific point of view), the foetus has become a human and, with exceptions (such as the threat of physical or mental deformities, or birth being a threat to either the mother's or child's health), abortions post-26 weeks should be illegal.

But above all else, the reason for abortion rights is because illegalising abortion does nothing to stop it. Rather, it forces abortion underground. It happened with prohibition, it happens with illegal drugs, and every time a country illegalises abortion, they are committing genocide against women.

Bay of Fundie does a better job here.