From the perspective of law, here are 3 legal reasons to make abortion illegal:
- Murder is unlawful. Abortion is, in essence, murder. Although abortion is not technically included in the definition of murder, murder is described by law as the intentional killing of a human being. California law specifies that murder is the deliberate killing of a “fellow creature”. An unborn fetus is, if not a human being, a living creature, and should be protected by the same laws as the rest of us. It’s not fair to choose who is and isn’t acceptable to kill. If murder is illegal, abortion should be illegal as well. Currently, fetuses are targeted by many and have few restrictions on their extraction. Also, it’s notable that killing is becoming lawful in other ways. For instance, in Belgium, euthanasia is on its way to being legalized, even for children. This legalization of killing is comparable to the legal mass murder committed in Nazi Germany.
- Unborn fetuses should be protected by the 14th Amendment. When the 14th Amendment was adopted, abortion was already well on its way to criminalization. Public opinion of abortion was declining through the 1860s. By the 1900s, abortion was considered a felony in every state. During the debate on the 14th Amendment, Senate Sponsor Jacob Howard asserted the importance of every human to have equal rights to life. Howard felt that the criminality of abortion upheld equality, as the smallest and most helpless humans had the same right to life as anyone else.
- Federal laws, such as the death penalty laws and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, protect unborn children. The death penalty law states that an innocent unborn person cannot be sentenced to death for a crime they did not commit. This specification must be made because an unborn child is seen as a person by the legal system. In addition, Common law, like Federal Law, generally stated that a pregnant woman could not be executed until birth to protect the unborn child. The UVVA defines a fetus as a “child in utero” or “child, who is in utero”, meaning that while unborn, the fetus is still technically a person.
For the debate, you may prepare some religion arguments as well, they are more persuasive for some people.