abortion paper thesis

To structure your argument, you must first determine who your audience is. Who is it that you are arguing against? You must determine what claims this audience makes, what warrants underlie those claims and what data they offer to back up those claims. You have to understand the warrant because that is what you must refute. For a pro-choice paper, you might begin thinking along these lines:

Issue: Should abortion remain a legal option for pregnant women?

Audience: Pro-life people who believe abortion should be made illegal.

Their claims : Abortion is murder. Other claims follow from this main claim, i.e., that the government does have the right to interfere, that more lives will be saved than lost, that morality is legislated in other areas. Also that many unwanted pregnancies turn into wanted pregnancies or wanted children.

Underlying warrant: A fetus is a human being and so killing one is tantamount to murder.

For the paper then, an outline might look like this:

Introduction: introduce the issue

Thesis: Abortion should remain a legal option for women because the government has no right to interfere with a woman’s body, illegal abortions result in far more fatalities, many unwanted pregnancies result in economic deprivation and an on-going cycle of poverty and despair, but most importantly, there is no conclusive evidence or argument that a fetus is equal to a human being and therefore, has equal rights.

Evidence for argument #1

Evidence for argument #2

Evidence for argument #3

Evidence for argument #4—this argument will have the most written on it since this is the one that refutes the warrant of pro-life.

Opposition Refuted : Identify and respond to opposing arguments. You may concede points here as long as you are able to overcome with a strong argument. For example, you might say that many unwanted pregnancies do have happy endings—no rise in child abuse and parents accept the new child, but that this is by no means a certainty. Just because a woman is forced to carry to term and ends up loving her child does not mean the government has the right to make that decision.

Conclusion: By this time, your conclusion should seem inevitable given your arguments. Sum it up, leaving your reader with a strong impression, something to think about. Ending with a question is not the best option—all the questions should have been answered by now.

For a pro-life paper, you might begin thinking along these lines:

Audience: Pro-choice people who believe abortion should remain legal.

Their claims : A woman has a right to decide what happens to her body; the government should not interfere; women will die in large numbers if the option is not available; abortion laws are discriminatory; unwanted children are a problem for families and society; the poverty cycle remains unbroken; abortion is good for women’s health.

Underlying warrant: It’s a woman’s choice; not anyone else’s.

Such a paper might look very different since the argument rests on one main issue. In this case, an outline might look like this:

Thesis: Abortion should be illegal because whatever arguments the pro-choice side can make, it does not matter when we are discussing the life of a human being. Abortion is murder.

Opposing Arguments: go through what the opposition’s major arguments are. You may concede points here—yes, more children might be abused; yes, women will lose the right to choose; yes, some women will die trying to have an illegal abortion, BUT what we’re really dealing with is allowing the murder of children because they are inconvenient or unwanted.

Evidence for fetus as human argument

Evidence : for any other argument

Addressing Opposing problems : to make your case stronger, you could give solutions for the problems you outlined in the opposing arguments section. For example, if child abuse and unwanted children are a problem, perhaps we could work on changing the adoption system. This shows you are aware of the problems illegal abortion creates and are willing to acknowledge those problems, i.e., makes you seem more reasonable, not fanatical as many pro-life people are depicted.

Conclusion: By this time, your conclusion should seem inevitable given your arguments. Sum it up, leaving your reader with a strong impression, something to think about.

Other options are available. You may find for your topic that going point by point would work best. For example, give the opposing side’s strongest argument, then refute it. Give their second strongest; refute, and so on. This works well if you can go point-by-point.

You also need to consider how to arrange the arguments you have. You can go strongest to least strongest or start with the second strongest, go down the line, finishing with the strongest. You may find that one point leads logically into another. Whatever you decide, make sure you put some thought into it. Your reader should feel like she has been led to a logical conclusion, not hop-scotched across one point to another without a clear organizational pattern.

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