Voluntary abortion should be legal.

zschmoll

I also want to thank my opponent for opening up our debate and for being willing to engage on what is definitely one of the biggest controversies in the marketplace of ideas today.

I am going to begin by addressing my opponent’s arguments point by point, and I will conclude with a positive case as to why voluntary abortion should be illegal.

My opponent opens with the bodily rights argument. It is summarized as follows: “The bodily rights argument states that the violation of the woman's bodily rights is unethical and intrusive.” Essentially, this position is articulated by the image below which states “My body equals my choice.”

This advances into a discussion of how it is not to force women to “donate” their bodies for eight or nine months if they don’t want to. This progresses into how abortion is a reproductive right. Women have the choice to decide whenever they want to have their children, and my opponent argues that if abortion is made illegal, women do not have that choice whatsoever.

I’m going to begin my rebuttal of this series by starting at the end and working to the beginning. Abortion as a reproductive right is entirely a false dilemma. I don’t see how abortion is the only way that women can be guaranteed the right to have children at the time they want to. One obvious example is the birth control pill. It allows for family planning, and it would not be made illegal if abortion was illegal. It is not as if reproductive rights all of a sudden disappear without abortion. Women can certainly have the rights you mention without this medical procedure.

Still working backwards, we come to this argument of women donating their bodies for eight or nine months perhaps unwillingly. This falls under the argument that it is her right to choose what she does with her own body. My opponent was clever in trying to avoid the entire discussion of personhood. By avoiding that, it sets up the child as just another part of the mother’s body like an appendix that can be harmlessly removed. However, this seems a bit ridiculous if the infant is indeed a person which I will be arguing in my positive case. If the infant is a person, then he or she certainly has rights to life which need to be evaluated relative to the rights of the mother. Removing a person is not like removing a body part.

Finally, we come to this argument of “My body equals my choice.” Apparently this is a fundamental right of human beings, so if a child in the womb is indeed a human being, why is someone else’s choice being imposed on his or her body? Again, I will talk about this more in my positive case, but I wanted to add a little bit of refutation immediately so that point.

I am not going to address the parental responsibility argument that my opponent mentions, but I would argue that there is a human responsibility. If indeed the unborn child is a person, then there is a responsibility not to kill that person. That is why nearly every society in the history of the world has prohibited murder. We do not kill people just because we want to. If unborn children are truly people, then it seems that there is some type of human understanding that we simply don’t do that. CS Lewis called it the Tao in The Abolition of Man, and I would hope that we can agree that murder is wrong. We are debating whether or not the unborn child is indeed a person, but I would hope that we are not debating that murder is wrong, and if the unborn child is a person, then it logically follows that killing that child is wrong just like murder is wrong.

My opponent and then moves on to argue that abortion is a safe medical procedure, so there is no reason that it should be prohibited on those grounds. It is not safe for the child however, and if that child is indeed a person, then it could be the safest procedure in the world for the mother, but it still ought to be illegal just like murder is illegal. This entire section of this argument will be irrelevant once it is established that unborn children are indeed people.

I want to now proceed to my positive case regarding why voluntary abortion should be illegal. As you have noticed in my rebuttals above, most of these arguments simply fall apart if it can be proven that the unborn child is indeed a person. So to be in my discussion, we need to define what a person is.

I want to begin with something that I believe we all agree to. People are the individual entities of the human race. Two-month-old babies are people. Rebellious teenagers are people. Middle-aged factory workers are people. 97-year-olds in nursing homes are people. My job is to demonstrate that an unborn child can be considered as much of a person as any of these examples.

On the surface, I don’t know why this is a debate. They have all the building blocks to become people written in DNA, and if nature is allowed to develop as it has throughout history, they will continually mature into a much more complex creatures. The process of becoming human has to start somewhere, and conception seems like the most logical place for that to happen. You can’t get more fundamental than those original two cells.

Now, I want to handle some objections to the personhood of unborn children as I have established above. For example, are unborn children not people because of their size? After all, a baby begins as two cells joined together at fertilization. That is pretty small and perhaps insignificant. However, is it not a person?

Let me ask you this. I am 5’1” tall. My best friend is 6’4” tall. Am I less of a person simply because of my size? Absolutely not, so I don’t believe the argument holds that simply because something is two cells decreases the fact that it is a person.

How about the level of development? Again, say that a cell has just been fertilized. It is not developed enough yet to viably survive on its own, so it must not be a person according to my opponent. However, let me ask you this. The day after a baby is born, it is certainly not fully developed. However, if you kill that child, it would be infanticide and considered murder. We don’t consider babies outside the womb less human because they are at an early level of development, so why does that automatically stop while they are in the womb?

Is it simply location that matters? I don’t understand how that works. I was born at 11:55 at night. Was I not a person at 11:54, but I became one at 11:55? All that theoretically changed within that time period was my physical location. Location doesn’t seem to be a valid reason to deny personhood.

However, how about my opponent’s assertion that the woman should not be required to have a child be dependent on her for nine months if she doesn’t want to. We don’t use dependency anywhere else to evaluate whether or not someone is a person, so why do we apply that to the unborn? If you are 95 and are unfortunately stricken with Alzheimer’s disease, you don’t stop becoming a person simply because you need more help with your everyday life than you previously did. Similarly, infants are not denied personhood simply because they cannot feed themselves immediately. Why does it matter if you are dependent on someone?

It doesn’t seem to logically make sense that any of these criteria deny the personhood of the unborn child, and it is not rocket science to figure out that these kind of things start at the beginning. That means we are left with a contradiction. If the unborn child is a person, and if we believe that it is...

ArcTimes

• Abortion is nor murder. There is no reason to think abortion is murder, even if it was a person because abortion is not the termination of a fetus.
  
• The bodily rights' argument doesn't depend on the personhood of the fetus.
• The answer to the question "is the zygote/embryo/fetus a person?" has no exact answer in science.
• Con was not able to rebut any of the arguments of Pro properly. He dodged all the arguments implying abortion is murder and that the fetus is a person which were addressed in the first round.
  

I thank Con for this round.

Vote Pro.

1. 1. (Medical) Definition of Twin
   

zschmoll

I want to thank my opponent for yet another thoughtful response and what you can tell was a very long cross-examination section.

Counter Rebuttals

1. That is a contradiction in regards to your first point. “I never claimed that abortion was the only way a woman can be guarateed [sic] of these rights,” and “The only case women have these rights respected if abortion is legal instead of illegal.” So you are not saying that the only way women can be guaranteed the right to true reproductive rights is through abortion, but the only way for women to have these rights respected is if they are allowed to have abortions? I guess I am not seeing the distinction between your two statements, but I hope your first one is where you stand because then we agree.

2. Unfortunately, I am not going to drop the person that argument of personhood as my opponent wants me to. I don’t understand why I should. Again, if I was to go out and kill a 39-year-old person, it could very well be murder (assuming it was premeditated and other things like that that the court of law demands to differentiate from manslaughter). Why is that a crime? It is a crime because I have taken the life of a person. I don’t get a murder sentence for killing a robot. Certainly, robots can function like humans in certain situations, but murder is purely a crime for killing people because indeed they are people. Consequently, what if a three month old child is a person? Why does it not make sense that the same penalty should apply to a premeditated, voluntary killing at any stage of life?

3 + 4. I still maintain that neither of these points matter. Of course, if an unborn child is a person, and if killing a person is murder, then killing an unborn child is murder. That is a simple logical proof, and the implication of that is that as a society, we punish murder in a certain way, and it is certainly illegal. I am arguing that our laws be made consistent. Murder is murder.

5. I would challenge very strongly that we don’t know when life begins. I don’t mean to argue from authority here, but first of all, please review the wide variety of scholars who believe that life begins at the minute those two cells come together.

https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

http://www.naapc.org/why-life-begins-at-conception/

I recognize that you will just write off the sources as “pro-life propaganda”, but I particularly tried to decide on websites that were cited and verifiable, so. Also, there are a variety of textbooks quoted on this list which have presumably been reviewed on their own by their own team of scientists. I would like to find scientific evidence to back up any claim you have.

You did mention this concept of identical twins not being separate until later on into two embryos. However, even before that split took place, I don’t see why that invalidates the point. Just because we don’t know that it isn’t going to divide into two people later on doesn’t mean it somehow is not a person. A good example of that is conjoined twins. They are individual people with separate personalities, but they are connected together physically. The embryology doesn’t make sense and certainly doesn’t trump the genetic argument.

I am curious. You stated that you believe in the neurological definition of when life begins, but I don’t believe that you actually do. Using that as a criteria of life beginning would be equivalent to saying that your life is over when you are in a coma because you cannot feel pain. It is murder to kill someone who is in a coma and similarly cannot feel pain, so if that is the criteria, then there is no question that abortion is murder and should also be illegal since nobody can seriously and consistently use this argument.

6. In regards to the examples I cited in the first round, I mainly just use them to eliminate potential arguments my opponent might have against the personhood of the unborn child (by the way, I define unborn as the time that the child is in the womb a.k.a. from fertilization to birth). It is too bad that my opponent will not use any of them, but I was just anticipating where the argument might go. It seems to be where many of these debates end up going.

Conclusion. I think that we need to look at the somewhat strange claims my opponent has made in this section.

1.  “There is no reason to think abortion is murder, even if it was a person because abortion is not the termination of a fetus.” My opponent attempted to run this argument in the cross-examination section. Basically, the main contention was that a cesarean section is technically an abortion because it is deciding to remove the child. This is purely a diversionary tactic to avoid the topic. If a person dies by the intentional and premeditated actions of another person, it is murder as defined by the law. Therefore, if the fetus is a person and if it dies through the process of abortion, then we have a murder on our hands. It is odd to say that it would not be a murder even if the unborn child was a person.

2.  That’s fine if you want to keep asserting that the bodily rights argument does not depend on the personhood of the unborn child. I am putting a value on an individual life. If the unborn child is a person, then if there is an abortion that ends the life of the child, that is the ultimate right. I am ultimately arguing a bodily rights argument as well I guess. Why does the developing body of the unborn child deserve to be violated and killed? Are there not bodily rights there is the unborn child is a person? It does come back to a personhood whether you want to or not. If the unborn child is a person, then why are they not bodily rights? It cuts both ways.

3.  The third point is blatantly false. Look at the science, and you will see I am right. The identical twin argument is again another diversion. Whether or not there is one or two potential lives there doesn’t discount that there is life there.

I of course thank my opponent for another statement, and I look forward to the final round of this cross-examination and debate.

PS: I said that I would address the final point of the cross-examination because I got tired and bailed out during that time. J

We were debating over organ donations and whether that is similar to abortion in the fact that the woman has to donate her body for nine months. In other words, should a parent be forced to donate organs to a child?

I am beginning by going back to my point in personhood. If they are analogous, then the unborn child must be as much of a person as a child who is born. I know that wasn’t your intention in asking this question, but again, you really seem to want to have this idea of personhood without admitting that the unborn child is a person with all the rights that you would give to the mother. If the fetus is not a person, and then I don’t know why we’re having this debate.

Anyway, here is how I would approach this question. The difference is still nature. In the abortion situation, the parents are actively interfering with the development of the child which has already been underway. In the case of organ donation, then we can preserve a life by taking action. You are trying to make terminating and preserving the same thing, and they really are not. The analogy is not nearly as tight ideas into think it is, and for that reason I still do not think this is relevant to our debate.

ArcTimes

• In the first round, I was able to present a compelling case for the legalization of voluntary abortion. The next rounds were just rebuttals to Con's weak case.
• Con's arguments were totally irrelevant and didn't attack the bodily rights' argument.
• The bodily rights' argument was at least mentioned in Con's rebuttals. Con didn't try to address the security issue.
• Con main arguments were related to the personhood of the fetus and how it made abortion murder.
• Con was not able to met his burden and prove the fetus was indeed a person. He presented some sources for the first time in the debate after several rounds. It was a group of quotes and he even mentioned the fallacies he was committing.
• There was no need to try to prove the fetus is a person. I repeated several times that I could give all the rights of a person to the fetus, and it would not change anything. The bodily rights' argument works for people. So Con just made his case weaker.
• Con was not able to prove that abortion is murder. Repeating a claim doesn't make it a truth. I showed reasons to show that abortion is indeed not murder. I presented examples, analogies and I think it's pretty clear what's the truth in this case. His last resource was calling it unnatural, which was a really bad rebuttal.
  
• Con was not able to show why voluntary abortion should be illegal or rebut any of Pro's argument.

Thanks for the debate. Vote PRO.

zschmoll

Well, this has been a controversial debate, and I thank my opponent for engaging in it with me. Let me hit the main points.

Personhood Argument

We have come to what is the most important part of this argument. If the fetus is indeed a person, then there is no way to avoid my charge of murder. After all, if killing any person is murder, then if the fetus is a person, then killing a fetus is murder. It is that simple, and my opponent did not dispute any of my arguments other than by trying to say that they were irrelevant.

First, let me address a low blow. I provided two source lists supporting the fact that the vast majority of scientists believe that personhood begins at conception. He writes this off as biased and irrelevant and doesn’t even address the argument. He says that I even point out my own fallacies which is ridiculous. I anticipated him saying that and mentioned that these are simply compilations of positions from a variety of peer-reviewed sources that are all cited. Notice that none of the sources cited within the articles are from explicitly biased sources. Please ignore my opponent on these claims. All I was attempting to show is that science has pretty much settled the issue that life begins at conception. Personhood might not begin there, but life certainly does. My opponent didn’t even try to refute these claims other than by yelling bias without even addressing the fact that the quotes themselves come from very reputable sources.

It is ironic that my opponent talks about this big debate in science about when life begins but provides no evidence. Always be dubious about claims with no reason to back them up. If there is a debate, I asked for relevant sources in the previous round, and I still don’t see any except for one doctor who runs a personal website. I am assuming that my opponent is not making that claim based on first-hand knowledge conducted in the laboratory by my opponent. Therefore, there ought to be some sources if that position is true and disputes the one I have presented. You have seen my evidence, and you have seen nothing from my opponent based on disputing that life begins at conception. Weigh the evidence and decide who made a better case.

Now, if life begins at conception, I go back to my first-round argument. What makes that life different than the life of any other human being on earth? My opponent doesn’t dispute any of my claims and doesn’t argue say that the size, level of development or location matters in determining the difference between a life that begins at conception and the life of a five-year-old child for example. Seeing no difference mentioned by my opponent, there is no reason why we shouldn’t believe personhood begins at conception.

All we get from my opponent is an argument that personhood is more than being alive. The paragraph is ludicrous. Please ignore that as it is a strawman. I argued that the joining of a sperm and egg cell create the first stage of being a human. I never argued say that an individual cell was a person or that a severed arm was a person.

I still don’t understand this argument regarding identical twins. Basically, my opponent shows no research to back this up which again should make you suspect, but regardless, it seems as if the general idea is that we cannot determine whether the developing fetus is going to be one person or two people. However, just because we can’t scientifically determine whether or not that person will divide or not doesn’t lessen the fact that there is at least a developing person there. Again, my opponent provides no arguments to dispute the fact that a person in the early stages of development is any less worthy of the right to life as any fully developed 45-year-old adult. This is asserted by my opponent, but it kind of comes up without any relevant backing.

Finally, this entire thing about brain maturation seems like a copout. We have many assertions here, but no reasons. Personally, I am glad that this is not my opponent’s criteria for determining when life begins because I believe it’s false. Life begins at conception.

Other Rebuttals

This C-section argument is ridiculous. As I have pointed out many times, the child does not die during a C-section, so it is clearly not a murder as I have granted many times throughout this debate. Murder involves an intentional act to kill. I don’t know why this keeps coming up other than the fact that there are no better arguments.

I use unborn child because my opponent has not refuted my claim of personhood. If this it is indeed a person, unborn is an appropriate term because it has not gone through the process of birth. A child is a young human being, and you can’t get younger than in the womb. I am accused of begging the question, but I am getting no reason why that is invalid. Again, I am getting assertions without reasons, so why would we believe that?

Bodily Rights Argument

My opponent really wants this bodily rights argument to win the day, but I see no reason why it should. Again, if the fetus is indeed a person at the earliest stages of development, and remember that all of the evidence that has been presented points in that direction since my opponent provided nothing other than statements without actual scientific support, then it has all of the rights of a person. Again, I asked my opponent to show why it is not a person, and we have seen nothing. If it has all the rights of a human being, then there is certainly a right not to be murdered. That seems to be universal in any culture you go to. Now, we have a situation where the fetus did not choose to be conceived inside the woman. Why would you then take away this basic human right (the right not to be murdered) based on a criteria that that person has no control over? Why is there a penalty on that person for something that happens naturally? We make civil rights arguments all the time to make sure that people are not penalized because of their natural race or gender, so why are we penalizing the unborn child based on his or her natural location?

When you break the basic human right of the right not to be murdered, we say that is illegal. Murder is illegal, but my opponent is saying that it is okay to murder someone based upon something that that person has no control over. Basically, if you are naturally in the wrong place, we can justify murder. The bodily rights argument falls apart.

Conclusion

1.  I asserted that the fetus is indeed a person. That is based upon peer-reviewed science that life begins at conception, and if left uninterrupted, human development will continue to occur from a two celled organism into a fully developed adult.

2.  My opponent was not able to demonstrate that it was reasonable to believe that personhood begins at any other point than conception. We have no reason to believe that it doesn’t, and that makes logical sense. It is the first stage of human development.

3.  If personhood also begins at conception, a claim that my opponent illogically dismissed without any reasons, then abortion is indeed the killing of a person. That is simply an identity.

4.  By law, killing a person is murder, and murder is illegal.

5.  Therefore, abortion ought to be illegal.