1. Abortion is healthcare

Healthcare means professional efforts made to maintain or restore physical, mental, or emotional well-being. That includes medications, therapy, and operations. What that doesn't include is killing babies. Women who claim that abortion is healthcare believe that it is just like any other medical procedure designed to improve their health and well-being.

They see their unborn child as a burden that they have to remove in order to get their life back on track. They equate killing their baby with removing a tumor or a parasite. They think it's as simple and harmless as popping an unsightly pimple. But what about the baby's rights? He or she also has the right to healthcare.

Doctors can operate on unborn babies to deal with various health concerns that may develop while they are in the womb. That's the kind of healthcare these babies deserve. They don't deserve to die as a result of their mother's selfish and ignorant assertion that abortion is healthcare.

2. Abortion is a need

Technically, a need is something we require in order to live, such as food and water. We also need medical care to treat certain conditions that, if ignored, could lead to death. Things we don't need include WiFi, air conditioning, and our cell phones. Trust me, I don't like to admit that any more than you do. But it is possible to live without those things. In fact, plenty of people do.

Another thing we don't need is abortion. So many supporters of abortion, who hide behind the word 'choice,' claim that women need abortions. Following the established definition of 'need,' the only time a woman needs an abortion is if it's to save her life. I'm not going to tell you that doesn't happen because, unlike Planned Parenthood, I don't like to lie.

I will say, though, that it only happens about 0.0172% of the time. That comes out to be one out of every 5,813 pregnancies results in maternal death. That being said ten out of every ten abortions results in fetal death. While I recognize that there are instances in which abortion is necessary to save a mother's life, it's not a common occurrence. 99.98% of the time, women don't need an abortion any more than they need a bullet in the head.

3. Abortion is the only solution to your problem

Places that perform abortions such as Planned Parenthood have the agenda of convincing pregnant women not to keep their baby. If you have an unplanned pregnancy and go to one of these places just to get information about your options, they're most likely going to tell you that your best, or only, option is to "terminate the pregnancy."

They won't tell you about the resources available to you at local pregnancy resource centers. They won't encourage you and empower you by telling you that you are capable of carrying the pregnancy to term. They won't tell you about adoption. They'll make it seem like pregnancy is the problem and the only solution is abortion. They don't want you to have the baby because they won't benefit from that. Baby killing is their money maker.

The truth is that pregnancy doesn't have to be a problem. If you're facing an unplanned pregnancy, the problem is not the baby. The problem is that you can't afford the baby or you can't feed the baby or you can't give the baby a good place to live. None of those problems are solved by killing the baby. They are solved by pregnancy resource centers and other nonprofits that offer financial aid, free food, and free housing. Don't go somewhere where you and your baby aren't valued. If you want real help, go to a pregnancy resource center near you.

4. You won't regret your abortion

Silent No More Awareness is a pro-life organization that invites women who regret their abortions and men who regret lost fatherhood to share their stories and find healing. So far, 5,819 women have expressed regret for their abortion. Of those, 2,419 shared their testimony on the website in hopes of convincing expecting mothers not to make the same mistake they did. One such testimony is by a woman named Emily, who was coerced by her mom and boyfriend into having an abortion at age 16.

"(After the abortion) I started heavily drinking and using drugs and went into an extreme depression. My boyfriend left me anyway. My mom kicked me out, and I still survived, which only increased my guilt. I got pregnant again at 17. I was so careless, because I felt that I was supposed to have a child and I didn't. My daughter was the best thing that happened to me. Since then I have found my faith and had four children. Not a day goes by where I don't come to tears due to the horrible mistake I've made. It has been the biggest regret of my life. The guilt continues to haunt me daily. The only choice I have is to give back and help save others from making the same horrible mistake."

To read more stories like Emily's, visit Silent No More Awareness's website.

Shout Your Abortion is a book compiled by pro-choicers of stories from women who claim not to regret their abortions. I don't pretend that all women who have had an abortion regret it, but plenty of them do and are too afraid and ashamed to speak up. Instead, what's probably the minority seems like the majority because they're so loud.

The pro-life answer to that book is a book called Shout Your Abortion, Too, where women who do regret their abortion share their stories. The book is currently still in the writing stages, but it is available for preorder and will be shipped beginning September 1.

5. Abortion is safe

Allow me to state the obvious. The baby is not safe. There's nothing safe about death. Without going into too much detail, some ways the baby is killed are through an injection that causes cardiac arrest, being sucked through a tube, having their skull crushed, and being torn limb from limb.

If that's not convincing enough for you, or you don't care because you don't believe the baby is a living human, then perhaps you're interested in how abortion is unsafe for the mother. Some methods of abortion use a sharp object that scrapes the remains of the fetus out of the womb. That sharp object can cause the mother pain, as well. There are methods of abortions where there is a risk of the mother's uterus being perforated. This can lead to extreme pain and even death.

The most common painful side effects of abortion are heavy cramping and bleeding. Would you consider any type of surgery safe if you started bleeding profusely afterward? The idea that bleeding is normal and no big deal should be a warning sign itself.

If you take the abortion pill, it forces you to miscarry. You're basically giving birth to a small, dead baby-often in pieces. I imagine that's not pretty to see in your toilet or bathtub. The abortion clinics will tell you that you can get comfortable at home in anticipation of the miscarriage, but there's nothing comfortable about baby parts coming out of you.

Although abortion carries a low risk of maternal death, there is always the possibility of complications leading to hospitalization.

Excerpt from BMC Med article titled Abortion-related emergency department visits in the United States:

"Since 2011, state legislatures across the U.S. have passed numerous laws that regulate abortion provision, many requiring abortion providers to obtain local hospital admitting privileges and have transfer agreements with nearby hospitals. These laws are passed under a presumption that they are needed to protect women's health and safety and that hospitalization as a result of abortion is an occurrence frequent enough to necessitate legislation formalizing the relationship between hospitals, abortion providers, and clinics."