Abortion is an individual's choice

The argument

Giving a woman the right to an abortion is a necessary part of giving women full autonomy over their bodies. Bodily autonomy means the authority to decide what happens inside one's own body, and pregnancy is not a marginal case of that principle but among the most demanding instances of it: it transforms the body over months, carries real medical risk, and ends in a process no one else can undergo on the pregnant person's behalf. Telling a woman she must proceed with an unwanted pregnancy robs her of that control. It puts her through a life-altering process against her own free will — and once the decision is taken out of her hands it is enforced by her own body, which she cannot step out of while someone else's judgement runs its course. No comparable demand is made of anyone else, and there is no other context in which a person is required to place their body at another's disposal for a fixed term regardless of their wishes. This is why abortion is more than just terminating a pregnancy. It is female independence, because the timing of children shapes almost everything else a life can contain: what a woman can study, the work she can take and keep, where she can live, whether she can leave a relationship, what her position will be a decade hence. A woman's decision over when to have a child is therefore central to her ability to exercise control over her future, not one choice among many. To deny that decision is to deny the autonomy of which it forms part. Because control over one's own body and one's own future requires the option to end a pregnancy, abortion is an individual's choice and should be legal.

Context

We have the right to exercise control over our bodies. No one can force a woman to have a baby if she does not want to.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Women have full control over their bodies even if abortion is prohibited. There are plenty of contraceptive options which they are free to use to avoid a pregnancy. If they do not want to become pregnant, they have the freedom to take these precautionary measures. If they didn’t, then it would be safe to assume that they didn’t want to exercise that control when they had the opportunity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] There are other ways to ensure you do not fall pregnant without resorting to abortion. Abortion does not have to be legal to provide women with full autonomy over their own bodies.

Framing

- Individuals have an inalienable right to choose what they do. - In particular, women should choose what happens to their bodies.