A Rational Look at the Abortion Controversy One of the most hotly contested issues within and outside of biomedical ethics today is abortion. The discussion received new impetus with the release of the controversial abortion drug RU-486, "a pill to increase access to abortions and allow women to obtain them privately from their doctor instead of facing screaming protesters at clinics."2 How happened in the case With regards to all controversial issues, there are very passionate people on both sides of the fence. Unfortunately, a heated discussion about abortion can easily and quickly turn into a rhetorical battle rather than a dialectic of reason. But the guiding light in such discussion must always be reason, not rhetoric or other fallacies, because only reason can solve this problem and judge which side is right. In this short essay, I will attempt to eliminate some of the confusion present in typical abortion debates by cooling the rhetoric with reason illuminated by scientific facts. Specifically, I will examine two common pro-abortion arguments made by Mary Anne Warren and Judith Jarvis Thomson and demonstrate that they cannot withstand rational scrutiny and therefore fail to justify abortion. I will also use a "quadrilemma" argument similar to Peter Kreeft's to show that, apart from any specific argument, abortion cannot be morally justified. Before we even begin to discuss the issue of abortion, it is imperative to agree on a starting point from which to think. The fact that some people differ even on this point tends to make the pro-abortion and anti-abortion paradigms somewhat “incommensurable,” and this is probably one of the main reasons why people are tempted to come to different conclusions about them ... ...middle paper......the illusion equivalent to an unwanted pregnancy due to rape is nothing short of ridiculous. The sexual act tends by nature towards pregnancy, that is, this is the natural purpose of the sexual act, and every woman who performs this act voluntarily, with or without contraception, thus voluntarily opens herself to pregnancy.20 Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic, " 468.21 Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic," 468f.22 M. LeRoy Sprang and Mark G. Neerhof, "Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy," Journal of the American Medical Association 280, no. 8 (1998): 745.23 Sprang and Neerhof, "Banning Abortions," 745.24 See Peter Kreeft, Making Choices: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Moral Decisions (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 1990), 119-21.25 One might argue that " abortion is morally neutral" is another possibility, but what is morally neutral is morally permissible.