One of the many bad abortion arguments

Here's a bad argument people who are for abortion tend to use.

"If we make abortion illegal, some people are going to do it anyways. The law will not stop them. Therefore, we should legalize abortion."

This argument has the form of: "If we make act X illegal, people will not obey the law. Therefore, we should make act X legal."

This argument makes as much sense as the following arguments:

"If we make murder illegal, some people are going to do it anyways. The law will not stop them. Therefore, we should legalize murder."

"If we make stealing illegal, some people are still going to do it anyways. The law will not stop them. Therefore, we should legalize stealing."

And so on.

So, simply because a certain law will be broken does not give us good reason to not make that law. This is seen with stealing, murdering, raping, etc. This argument does not work in these cases, therefore it does not work in the case of making a law concerning abortion.

What is relevant is not whether the people in the town will follow the law. What is relevant is whether people in the town should follow the law. This goes for rape, murder, stealing, etc. If a town made a law against rape, perhaps people would not follow it. It still remains the case, however, that we should make a law against rape.

So, one would have to argue, not that people would disobey the law in question but that they should disobey the law in question. This is a different claim however and cannot be supported by the argument at the top. A new argument would have to be brought in to support this new claim.