Abortion should generally be legal

Abortion should generally be legal because, to put it quite simply, the totality of the benefit and harm relevant to the result of its general prohibition would almost certainly be far more significant, in a way leaning toward harm, than it being generally legal.

Why so? There are a few reasons.

Abortion itself is not typically substantially wrong.

In the cases where it is wrong, it is not definitively true that these cases make up most abortion.

But, even if they did, this is not equivalent to sufficient justification of a law of prohibition. This is because abortion is largely morally inconsequential.

To get slightly more specific, I'll say that making abortion illegal is not equivalent to saving lives that would have otherwise been, and that an argument in favor of the prohibition of abortion must either reveal abortion's uniqueness relative to something such as mandatory pregnancy, prohibition of sexual protection, and mandatory donation of body-parts to those who need them to live, or it may also simultaneously justify such and similar things.

One reason preventing abortion isn't necessarily equivalent to saving lives is that much of abortion happens because it is legal. In other words, making it illegal may not necessarily lead to all of these fetus' living when they otherwise would not have, but also to pregnancy never beginning in the first place. That may be to your liking, though.

The reason I mentioned things like mandatory pregnancy and mandatory donation is that many anti-abortion arguments in this context argue for the potential of the life of the fetus, essentially saying that the good of its life outweighs any harm to itself or to society that it or abortion's prohibition would bring. However, such an argument would also apply prior. Life may begin at conception, but potential does not. The potential of a sperm, for instance, can be said to be of an entire human life. Of mandatory abortion it can be said that it is essentially synonymous. The life of who needs the parts can be said to be more significant than the harm to the donor.

But, many of these arguments, especially in the manner I described them in, abstract from the consequences of legal force. For instance, one, in rejecting to donate their own parts to someone else, would face legal consequences. This would lead to many harms related to that, even if only indirectly.

One danger of making abortion illegal is that people will certainly seek alternative methods of abortion, which are, of course, far less safe. This holds as a genuine consequence even if you think people shouldn't do so.

As for whether I think abortion is wrong, my stance is that it technically satisfies the meaning of killing a human, but that there is no inherent value in human life that successfully abstracts from context. So, not all killing, even of those we may consider innocent, is necessarily wrong.

An argument that abortion should always be illegal is meaningfully distinct from one that it should generally be, just as one that it generally shouldn't be is distinct from one that it never should be. So, if you think abortion should generally be illegal, it is important to specify what kinds of edge cases you do or do not permit.

As for myself, I do think there are exceptions, for instance, abortion should likely be made illegal if it is toward the end of the pregnancy and there are no particular complications with the fetus or the pregnancy itself.

This is far from exhaustive, as I only want to give you something sufficient to reply to.

The entire debate hinges on the assumption that abortion can be compared morally to the situation where a person declines to assist someone else, which is not always the case.

No, the entire debate does not hinge on this narrow point, nor did I claim that abortion is always identical to a situation where a person declines to assist someone.

It does not matter whether a person has a duty to assist others using his or her own body, but what is more important is whether the act of abortion constitutes the killing of a being with rights.

Why doesn't it matter? Are fetus' the only ones with rights? Either way, these rights you mentioned likely do not exist in the way you think.

If a fetus is regarded as a human being with the right to life, then abortion becomes the deliberate killing of another human being. 

No, abortion can satisfy that phrase without such a right's existence, though, self-defense serves as a counterexample that you would likely support as a justified instance of deliberately killing.

The assertion that "abortion is largely morally inconsequential" presupposes that the fetus has little or no moral status at all.

No, not exactly. It supposes that abortion in comparison to forcing alternatives through is likely not particularly worse, or perhaps even better. The reason I say this is because restricting abortion has many costs.

This is exactly what needs to be argued against. Many opponents of abortion believe that the morally significant characteristic of a being is not its consciousness or independence or abilities but that it is a developing human being and has the potential to develop into a person.

And, such potential is absent in the case of abortion. Though, what you mean to say is that fetus', when allowed to develop as they typically do, can become morally significant (in a good way). While I do not disagree with this notion, it does not exhaust all relevant factors.

The assumption here is that the value of humans is not determined by their current abilities and if this were to be accepted, then denying legal protection to human beings simply because they lack abilities would cause problems for other humans too.

It's true that the value of humans is not completely determined by their "abilities", but it would be a mistake to say that the development of humans is irrelevant to their value. We already do deny certain protections to humans with less "ability", for instance, braindead individuals can generally be removed from life support even though they can't consent. You may say that in such an instance the braindead individual does not contain potential. At the same time, the braindead individual doesn't demand the body of another. So, something more analogous would be that even if people had the right to live, we don't force anyone to donate parts to them, and that would include people who initially agreed to it or did something that they knew could lead to that person needing those parts. Though, maybe you think we should be forcing people to do so.

However, another thing that fails to be mentioned is the fact that there is a distinct difference between not saving somebody and actually killing him or her, which is why one should see that there is a clear difference between the two cases of not helping and actively performing certain actions.

No, there is not necessarily a significant moral difference between letting someone die and killing them yourself. Either way, they are dead. How it is viewed by society and how it internalizes in terms of things like guilt can certainly vary, but this does not change that they are dead, which is the primary moral factor. I know the intuitive reply is that people you let die would have died anyway, absent your intervention, so it is not really your fault. However, there are some issues with this. Inaction is not automatically independent of morality. So, the idea that letting people die passively is less morally relevant would need an argument. Secondly, there isn't a sharp separation between these two. For instance, pushing someone off a cliff seems like clearly killing, while not helping them climb up when they slip seems like clearly letting them die. However, what if going was your idea, what if your mistake led them to fall, what if you tried to push them as a prank and they fell even though the push was weak, what if you pretended to try to help which made it easier for them to fall, what if you tell them to jump off, what if you yell loudly and this scares them and makes them fall, etc.? Hopefully, you can see that not every single action neatly falls into one category or another because these categories are crude and simplistic. To give a particularly cruel example, leaving an infant in the middle of the forest is not directly killing them. Even among forms of abortion, this is not decisive. Some methods cause the uterus to contract and expel the abortion, which seems intuitively more like letting die. Other more generally speaking can be interpreted as withdrawing the support of the mother, though many methods simply target the fetus directly. My point is that the method or the label is relatively irrelevant to the actual moral consequences.

For instance, there is a difference between letting a drowning man die without your help and pushing him into the water. This is why it makes sense to say that the pro-life approach is also justified from this point of view. 

I don't deny that there is a difference, rather, I deny that it's typically significantly morally better or necessarily morally better to let them die.

Additionally, the assertion that the illegality of abortion will not necessarily save all fetuses cannot justify the idea that the prohibition of abortion is itself immoral.

Indeed, not by itself, so it is quite fortunate for myself that I mentioned more than that!

Criminal laws meant to stop harmful acts do not always stop everyone from committing such acts. The mere existence of individuals who violate the law does not negate its moral value. Murders, thefts, and abuses are all prohibited even though they take place, yet the society holds such prohibitions because the prevention of harm is thought to be worthy.

A fine conclusion!

The problem of unsafe abortions also poses a consequentialist objection, yet consequences cannot be determinants of ethics. If a particular deed is essentially unethical, its improvement will not necessarily render it ethical.

It is not true that consequences cannot be determinants of ethics. An ethics that abstracts to such a degree that consequences are completely irrelevant is not any true ethics, and it is also not what you are supposing. You are supposing that actions like murder are wrong, but murder is a consequence, and everything relevant to it can be understood as a cause and effect of other determinations. The notion that particular deeds are essentially (necessarily, I presume) unethical does not hold in the context of broad types of actions like killing. For instance, killing can be justifiable as self-defense. However, since you seem adamant about deontology, I will get more specific.

Deontology relies, just like every ethical system, on value, right, or good. If it were not meaningfully better in any intelligible way to adhere to duties or any law or moral code, then there would be no reason to do so. It would cease to be normative. However, meaningfully better in an intelligible way is necessarily identical to meaningfully better to what reality can intelligibly be better for. Upon the concept's own self-completion, this is revealed to be sentience. Independently of sentience, nothing can be better or worse for anything. So, deontology does not get off the ground. Sentience is an empirical contingency, not something that works with universal laws about actions that defy context. However, partiality toward sentience or its experiences, and duties or rules are not incompatible opposites, rather, they are truly united because such rules are actually instrumental heuristics for the real value within reality.

For instance, that certain illegal activities will be more dangerous if they are made illegal will not, by itself, provide justification for their legalization.

Well, if the activity is already illegal, then there is no "more dangerous" that making it illegal will cause, because it is already illegal. But, if you mean the fact that making an illegal activity legal would improve society is not a justification, then, what is exactly? I would agree not every improvement is by itself sufficient justification, but certain improvements can certainly be.

First of all, one needs to determine whether the activity in question entails an unjust harm in the first place. The question of potentiality needs to be scrutinized as well. Although it is indeed true that both the sperm and egg cells have the potential of producing human life, they do not equate to being embryos or fetuses.

In the same way sperm and egg cells do not equate to fetus, a fetus does not equate to a baby. If the potential only suddenly starts being important at conception, then I would like a reason as to why. Otherwise, I'd say, in terms of moral similarity, the egg and sperm cells are far closer to the fetus than the fetus is to the baby.

The single sperm cell is not an organism on its own with an independent genetic makeup and development process. After fertilization, there exists a clear biological entity that, provided that nothing from outside interferes, continues developing throughout the human development process.

Well, I suppose this may be shocking, but the mother is outside the fertilized entity. So, indeed, it depends on outside interference. Though, I'll grant that this outside interference is biologically typical. Either way, the same could be said about the sperm cell. Given the continuation of the process, it may very well end up fertilizing an egg.

Finally, the argument rests on the assumption that bodily autonomy is a paramount principle, whereas rights usually conflict with other rights. Individual freedoms are already restricted by society when these freedoms lead to harmful outcomes for other individuals. 

I didn't assume that, and I never claimed that. I do not think bodily autonomy is an absolute right. In the same way, neither is life. I believe in no absolute rights because such abstracts from ethics. Otherwise, this is correct.

In other words, the dispute is not about whether or not bodily autonomy should be taken into account since it definitely should; rather, it is about whether or not bodily autonomy gives one the right to end a human life.

I suppose you could try to put it that way. But, even then, this is not correct. This abstracts from the topic. The topic is whether it should be legal or illegal in general. So, it is more like whether abortion being made to be generally illegal is better than not making it generally illegal.

Thus, the entire argument hinges upon the following essential question: Does the fetus have a right to life that carries some moral weight? If the answer to this is affirmative, then it cannot be considered an issue of personal liberty, and legal constraints may be seen as necessary for upholding the rights of another individual. If the answer to this is negative, then the argument becomes much more persuasive on the basis of bodily autonomy. It is not possible to settle this argument on the basis of consequences alone.

I would say it depends on what you mean by right. Does every fetus have a universal right to life, as in, them being alive ought to be upheld above all else? No, they do not. Are fetus' morally relevant? Yes, they are. Is it true that in many cases fetus' ought to survive? Yes, it is. But, this all abstracts from the legal question of which consequences are inseparable.

You seem focused on whether abortion is wrong. That is a core point, but it does not exhaust all factors.

For instance, many mistakes can be wrong, but mistakes are not necessarily punished because it would be impractical for them to be. Legal prohibition does not automatically improve an issue.

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