If you’ve ever been in a debate over abortion, you know where the land-mine questions are buried.

The first one is, “You have no right to tell me what I can do with my own body.” The most accurate and simplest answer is,

“Of course I don’t have any right to tell you what you can do with your own body. If you want to cut off an arm, tattoo 666 on your forehead, paint your skin green, go at it. I might try to persuade you not to do these things, but in the final analysis, the choice is yours. It’s your body. Of course, if people see you cutting off pieces of your body, they might begin to question your sanity. But it’s not a crime to be insane. ”

The above response doesn’t complete the argument. A preborn baby is not part of a woman’s body. He or she is a separate biological entity encased in the amniotic sac. At no time is the preborn baby touching any part of his mother. In some cases, a baby’s blood is a different type from the mother’s. A preborn baby is not like a diseased appendix or lung. What is born is another human being.

Then there is the “I’m personally opposed argument.” I always ask, “Why are you personally opposed to abortion? What is it about abortion that you think is wrong that you would be opposed?” It’s at this point the stuttering starts. “What would you say to someone who said that he was opposed to slavery but continued to uphold the right of people to enslave other people?”

Now we come to the hard cases. People opposed to abortion are always asked what they believe if a woman gets pregnant as the result of forcible rape. The forcible rape issue is in the news because of a comment by Todd Akin who is running for the Senate in Missouri. I always ask this question,

“How many women who are forcibly raped get pregnant? Let’s say it’s 1000 per year. This means that abortion for 1.5 million non-rape victims was legalized to make it possible for 1.499 million to get an abortion. This hardly seems right.”

I then ask this question:

“Would you be willing to outlaw abortion if there was an exception clause for rape?”

A die-hard abortionist would say no. This shows you that the rape exception is a smokescreen.

The same argument can be used for the “life of the mother” argument. Very few women die from complications as the result of a pregnancy. I’m not saying that women don’t die, but it’s extremely rare, about 250 per year. Let’s take the high side that “every day two to three women die in the United States from pregnancy-related complications.” That’s about 1000 out of 1.5 million abortions.

Once again, pro-abortionists push for legalizing abortion for every woman to accommodate abortion for less than a few thousand cases. In reality, most pro-abortionists support abortion with no regard for other women or the preborn babies that are “evacuated” from the sanctity and safety of their mother’s womb