I negate the resolution “abortion should be legal in the US.” For clarity, abortion here is the voluntary termination of an active pregnancy, and does not include miscarriage or accidental terminations. The only argument the affirmative presents is that people have some abstract right to bodily autonomy and that nobody else should dictate what other people do with their own body. This argument is very weak and does not apply to current interpretations of US law for the following reasons:
1) US law dictates what people can do with their bodies all the time, including restricting assault, drug use, alcohol use, and trespassing. Limiting abortion is not some newly blazed trail for the US Government, we already regulate what people can do with their body all the time.
2) US law particularly regulates what people can do to other people, which is where the affirmative argument completely falls apart, in that it neglects that abortion always involves at least two people, those being the mother and the baby. The mother does not have the right to harm the baby inside her womb just as she would not have the right to harm the very same baby moments after it has exited her womb.
3) Abortion is bad in itself because it encourages promiscuity by separating sex from procreation. Promiscuity is associated with many negative outcomes including worse mental health and increased disease.
4) Abortion is bad in itself because it is murder and denies babies of their human rights, most notably denying their right to life, the prerequisite to all other rights.
For these reasons, you must negate.
Thank you for the compliment thinking I’m using AI. If you had any formal debate experience, you would know that’s just how we talk. Regardless, going down the affirmative’s rebuttal
On their #1, the examples mentioned absolutely meet the same standard of individual autonomy, particularly drug use and alcohol use. The affirmative then says ‘just because something is law doesn’t make it correct’ which is fair enough as a standard, but I think it is safe to presume that laws against the unjustified killing of another person is a flagrant violation of human rights, is murder, and is objectively incorrect whether the law says it or not.
On #2, the aff says I am assigning individual life to the fetus which falls apart as assigning individual life assumes it is independent and can function on its own. I would question how many babies the affirmative has ever met and how many of them can live independently of the support of another human? Would the aff say these people too do not have individual life? Of course not. The affirmative standard of life is inconsistent at best and completely illogical at worst. The negative standard, however, says that from the moment there is unique DNA, there is a new person present in the equation, and you don’t get to murder it just because it depends on you. This is made even more clear by the fact that babies depend on you just as much immediately after they are born, and we appropriately recognize that as murder. Aff misunderstands the promiscuity argument, my point is if people have an easy way to dodge the natural consequence of sex (i.e. abort the baby) then they will be more promiscuous and that is correlated with a lot of negative outcomes. Aff is nonresponsive to this argument so extend it cleanly. #4, the aff makes no justification why humans have to be fully formed to have rights, or why they have to be independent. In fact, we know this is not true because premature birth babies who are not fully formed are understood as having human rights, but unborn babies at the same stage of development do not? This is the type of logical incongruity the affirmative asks you to just accept with no justification. Don’t buy it. The thing that grants the baby human rights is the fact that it is a human. When did it become a human? The moment of conception, proven by the presence of completely unique DNA. So if it is human, protect its human rights, and make abortion illegal.
Last point of aff rebuttal is a throwaway, like “if you make it illegal, it’ll still happen but be more dangerous” like “ok, robbery is illegal but it still happens, so just legalize it and it will be safer” this is clearly a ridiculous argument and nonresponsive to the moral or ethical claims and impacts the negative has cleanly extended through round 2. Thus, you must negate.