Roe V. Wade's Arguments For The Abortion Debate

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An abortion, which is the voluntary removal of an embryo or a fetus from the uterus in order to terminate a pregnancy, has been one of the most controversial topics of the past 30 years. In 1973, the landmark case Roe vs Wade essentially paved the way for the abortion debate to be at the forefront of not only health debates, but also legal and political debates. Roe filed a class action lawsuit against the State of Texas and stating that the laws in Texas on abortion at the time were unconstitutional, because she couldn 't get an abortion unless it was to save her own life (Roe v. Wade). In the end, the Supreme Court stated that it a state law that banned abortion except to save the mother’s life was unconstitutional, and therefore “ruled that …show more content…

When the counter arguments of Pro-Choice reasoning, Pro-Life viewpoint, is analyzed there are multiple logical fallacies and false statements which are used which make their argument less valid. Firstly, the Pro-Life advocates use the texas sharpshooter fallacy when making the point that abortions cause women to have greater physiological damage later on in life. They use statistics that specifically support their argument without addressing any other specifics: “A 2008 peer-reviewed study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health found that "Young adult women who undergo... abortion may be at increased risk for subsequent depression"” (Pro & Con Arguments). This is very misleading data because there is also ‘data’ which shows that women who don’t get abortions have physiological and emotional damage: “A Sep. 2013 peer-reviewed study comparing the mental health of women who received abortions to women denied abortions found that women who were denied abortions "felt more regret and anger" and "less relief and happiness" than women who had abortions” (Pro & Con Arguments). Since data can be used for both sides of the argument it makes this point completely invalid. Secondly, Pro-Life advocates make the argument that abortion should not be used because adoption is a perfectly good alternative. This is imply a false statement because abortion and adoption are two extremely different actions. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy and adoption is the giving away of a child for personal reasons. In one case the baby is definitely alive, adoption, and in the other case it is debatable whether the fetus is alive or not, abortion. Additionally, “very few women who give birth choose to give up their babies - less than 3% of white unmarried women and less than 2% of black unmarried women” (Lowen, Linda). Once an argument uses logical fallacies it immediately makes it less reliable and trustworthy because it is using a technique that does not exemplify

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