Anyone who keeps up with the many pro-choice demonstrations in the United States cannot help but see on pro-choice placards and buttons a drawing of the infamous coat hanger. This symbol of the pro-choice movement represents the many women who were harmed or killed because they either performed illegal abortions on themselves (i.e., the surgery was performed with a "coat hanger") or went to unscrupulous physicians (or "back-alley butchers"). Hence, as the argument goes, if abortion is made illegal, then women will once again be harmed. Needless to say, this argument serves a powerful rhetorical purpose. Although the thought of finding a deceased young woman with a bloody coat hanger dangling between her legs is -- to say the least -- unpleasant, powerful and emotionally charged rhetoric does not a good argument make.
The chief reason this argument fails is because it commits the fallacy of begging the question. In fact, as we shall see, this fallacy seems to lurk behind a good percentage of the popular arguments for the pro-choice position. One begs the question when one assumes what one is trying to prove. Another way of putting it is to say that the arguer is reasoning in a circle. For example, if one concludes that the Boston Celtics are the best team because no team is as good, one is not giving any reasons for this belief other than the conclusion one is trying to prove, since to claim that a team is the best team is exactly the same as saying that no team is as good.
The question-begging nature of the coat-hanger argument is not difficult to discern: only by assuming that the unborn are not fully human does the argument work. If the unborn are not fully human, then the pro-choice advocate has a legitimate concern, just as one would have in overturning a law forbidding appendicitis operations if countless people were needlessly dying of both appendicitis and illegal operations. But if the unborn are fully human, this pro-choice argument is tantamount to saying that because people die or are harmed while killing other people, the state should make it safe for them to do so.
Source: Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights, Francis J. Beckwith
Abortion: it's OK as long as the woman dies, too!
How "pro-life" of you.
Wow - Talk about fallacies! You must be kidding.
Firstly the concept that life begins at conception brings with it arguments that we can not really answer. //////////
1. 40 - 50% of conceptions do not make it past the first week of life due to their genetic flaws. So did these persons die, was life really within them if they did not have the fundamental make up to deine life ?
2. A large percentage of spontaneous abortions are due to the mother not being ready. From the mother being low on folic acid, malnutritioned, stressed, or on medication. In other words, worldwide and here in the USA you can attribute more abortions to stressers like poverty. So are we actually killing more babies by not providing basic healthcare and nutrition to all fertile women?
3. Although a matter of contention oral contraceptives are able stop implanatation of a morula. It is a fact that via ultrasound women have been seen to produce eggs(ova) when on oral contraceptives. Therefore however small a percentage many women who are pro-life have actually caused an abortion unbeknownst to them.
A very important aspect of law is having one that can be enforced. I am woefull as an MD, will I have to report people who come looking for an abortion, or someone who has lost a baby if i suspect them for having and abortion. And what about the young girls who will try and do it on their own. Do they go to jail? In my home country abortion is illegal yet more rampant than here in the USA. As a christian I do not want a single abortion. As a scientist I am stuck with explaining it.