Urgent What is a cool idea for a speech about abortion

Question

This is my view on abortion

After considering these points I believe Brumby’s models B is the most appropriate it allows a baby to be terminated for up to 24 weeks. This allows time for reasons of abnormality or risks to the woman to take into account. However I believe if the child Is normal and it is because of psychosocial reasons that the baby should not be aborted but at least be given to adoption.

Any reason into abortion should be thought through and tried to be avoided Although different instances many occur such as rape where the woman is not at fault. If the child is normal and healthy why destroy its life... even if you couldn’t care for it If you knew you could save it’s life wouldn’t you at least try?

Answer 1

Using the word "cool" in your speech might be a bad idea....

Is the point of your speech to show your opinion? What is your target? Write to that.  Who is your audience? Write to that as well.

Basically, to create an effective and professional speech on a subject that is commonly strewn with over-emotional rants and misinformation, you must be knowledgeable on both sides of the issue and able to focus on promotion of your side rather than breaking down the other sides arguments.

A very important point: don't drag out the "Pro-Lifer's Aborted Baby Picture Album". It's so disgraceful to humanity the way some people wave those photos around.

Answer 2

Yes.

Answer 3

I tend to agree with you, or at least I favour your prescription over the current law in Canada which is devoid of any prescription or edification .  As for aborting the fetus conceived out of rape, the incidence is so rare it can safely be omitted from any argument.

In China and India, selective abortion is common, wherein girl foetuses are destroyed in favour of having more boys in the family! This socially distructive practise is now being emulated in Canada and to a lesser degree in the USA!

Answer 4

I have thought about this quite a bit over the years. The wide spread of opinions is incredible, matched only by the passion of the activists on all sides. This is an issue that few people are even able to have a civilized discussion about. Complicating it further is that there are few that hold a black-and-white view of the issue. The majority of people in the US see abortion as a giant grey area with varying degrees of abortion considered acceptable. Very few people hold the position of unlimited abortion access or no abortion under any circumstances. Below is the process I went through to come up with my position on the matter.

First, I asked myself the question at what point does a human being obtain "personhood" and as such gain all the legal and moral protections that status entitles them to? There are some who say that the point of personhood is 28 days AFTER birth, at which point you still should be allowed to abort. In fact, there is a professor of ethics at Princeton University that actively advocates this position. This is the position that spurred “Born Alive” legislation that says if a woman has an abortion and the baby survives, that doctors cannot withhold care and let the baby die on the operating table. Others say up to the point of birth. These folks, such as Barak Obama, would hold that this type of infanticide as well as partial birth abortion is a reasonable procedure. Or perhaps just before while the mother is in labor. Or 6 months of gestation or 3 months or three weeks. I wrestled with this for a long time.

Then I looked at the issue a different way. Does human life have an imputed value or an intrinsic one? If we say that it is imputed, meaning the value is derived from something else, some outside criteria, then any one of the above positions would be equally valid. We as a society would decide what criteria to select. My problem with this is what criteria do you use? On what basis is a baby at 6 weeks more valuable than a baby at 5 weeks? Is a baby that has not yet developed a heart still a baby? This hit really hard on my wife and I when we lost one of our children. Lynne had a miscarriage a few years ago. When people with strong pro-choice sentiments gave us their condolences, they referred to the fetus as a child, even though she (we named her Grace, even though we do not know for sure if she was a she or a he. It made it easier to explain to the other children what happened and easier for Lynne and I to grieve our loss) was at the same gestational point, 9 weeks, that they believed abortion was merely removing some unwanted tissue of the mother. So, the criteria used is whether or not a child is wanted? If that is so, then why? The characteristics of an object of any sort are not contingent on another persons belief for perception.

By similar logic, if the value of human life is imputed, it can also be taken away, depending on what some person or group of persons believe that life is worth. So if you happen to be mentally retarded or black or Jewish, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to be killed off for the good of the community if they believe it. I have a friend who is paralyzed from the neck down and constantly in pain. There are some in the world who would look at her and say that she has no quality of life or that the money and effort to support her would be better used on others. They would have her die due to her handicap. But knowing her the way I do I find the notion that she is without a quality of life to be ridiculous on its face. She is a writer, a painter, a social worker, and heads up an international charity. I’d call that a pretty good quality of life. So would her husband who married her years after her accident put her in the wheelchair. Thus, the imputed value logic is shown to me to be completely arbitrary. Following any of the “prior to this point it is not human but at this one on it is” positions is likewise arbitrary and is not able to answer the question of personhood.

But consider the proposition that human life has an intrinsic value. That it is valuable simply because it is human life and no other reason. No measure or quantification of the value of it, it is and that is enough. It is sort of like gold. Gold is valuable because it is gold, not because we as a society stood up one day and said, “we are going to make gold valuable”. Gold has an intrinsic value as opposed to an imputed value, such as paper currency. Paper currency is worthless in and of itself. It has value only because we say it has a certain value.

This position then would support a clear line between human life and not human life. With this position, you are a human at the point that you have a unique genetic code. In other words, at conception. Prior to that, there was no “you”. The male and female reproductive components in and of themselves are not a unique genetic code, but merely parts of the donors. It is only when they combine to create new life do “you” begin to be a person.

The notion of intrinsic value also carries forward throughout life. My mother-in-law was on dialysis for several months before diabetes finally took her life. There are many who would have said that she should just die and not burden the rest of us. If those persons held the position that human life has imputed value, I can understand. I however, believe that human life is intrinsically valuable and worth preserving and protecting for as long as possible. Thus, we should protect life at the beginning and at the end and at all points in between. That is why we continued to get her to dialysis until the day she finally passed away.

So, we come full circle back to the question of abortion. Should it be outlawed? My answer, since I believe in the intrinsic value of human life, is that for the most part it should. Why only “for the most part”? Because there are times when you have to weigh the life of two humans and pick one to live and one to die. My sister-in-law faced such a problem once. She got pregnant from her husband and it turned out to be a tubal pregnancy. Had the child been allowed to grow inside of her, it would have killed her before the baby would have been able to survive on its own. Thus, in weighing these two lives, one would have to conclude that the baby would have to die in order to save the mother’s life. What about cases of rape or incest? I have 5 daughters (yes, that was no typo) and the thought of one of them being raped is always lurking in the back of my mind. Statistically speaking, at least one of them will be before they graduate from college. If one of them should get pregnant as a result, the hard decision would be to let that child live. Pregnancy is not the extremely dangerous event of the past. Rarely do people die from giving birth. Many more die as a result of complications after an abortion. But the bottom line is that the child is innocent of any crime, so why punish it? It is a human being of intrinsic value. I’m not saying it is an easy choice and I can certainly sympathize with those who have had to make it. Perhaps they even made the wrong choice. But, God is a loving and forgiving God, who can even forgive the taking of a human life. Which is what abortion is.