Abortion is generally immoral

Let's get to it. IntroductionAs you will recall, the burden is shared. This means that it will simply do no good for my opponent to merely refute my arguments. She must tear down each of my arguments, and present arguments as to why abortion is generally a moral action. Thus, the voters should weigh the arguments provided by both sides. When does life begin? There isn't much controversy that a new life begins at conception (4). Even Peter Singer, who justifies infanticide, admits, "there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being. " (5)To quote an embryology text book,"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. .. . The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity. " (6)But does this mean abortion is immoral? Maybe. Maybe not. I. The Future Like Ours (FLO) argumentMy main argument shall be Don Marquis' FLO argument (1). To begin with, we know the statement "Murder is immoral" is true. However, why is this so? Let's sketch out a syllogism to demonstrate why "murder is immoral" is true. Then maybe we can fill in the missing premises. P1: ? ?? P2: ? ?? C: Murder is immoral. Now, quite clearly, what makes an act immoral is the unique and highest evil inflicted upon the victim(s) by that action. Thus, genocide is immoral because it involves the widespread killing of people of a certain group, rape is immoral because of the lack of consent present, etc. So what is the unique evil inflicted in murder? Is it pain? Obviously not, since one can murder someone without inflicting pain. Is it that it harms the families of the individual? No, because they might not have a family. The main reason why murder is immoral is because it completely and certainly deprives the individual of its life, and its meaningful future. Marquis notes, "the loss of a future to them that they would otherwise have experienced is what makes their premature death a very bad thing for them. " (1)Rather than just removing the individual from existence for a moment, murder deprives the individual of its continued being. So when someone murders someone, they are unjustly snatching 50+ years from them! We're literally grabbing all the future moments they might share with their families, all their pursuits, etc. This makes sense when we see that murder is often punished with life-imprisonments. So we can fill in our second premise of the syllogism, and we get:P1: ? ?? P2: Murder absolutely deprives a being of its meaningful future (FLO). C: Murder is immoral. Now, in order to make this a valid BARBARA syllogism, we need to add the major premise (2). Thus, we get:P1: Any action which absolutely deprives a being of its meaningful future (FLO) is immoral. P2: Murder absolutely deprives a being of its meaningful future (FLO). C: Murder is immoral. However, this has serious consequences for abortion. P1: Any action which absolutely deprives a being of its meaningful future (FLO) is immoral. P2: Abortion absolutely deprives a being of its meaningful future (FLO). C: Abortion is immoral. A few advantages of the FLO argumentI'd like to list a few advantages of this view as well.1. This shows why destroying something without a meaningful future like ours isn't necessarily immoral.2. It would also be immoral to kill "hobbits" or "aliens" because they have meaningful futures.3. It does not rest upon the premise that the fetus is a person in the univocal sense that we are.4. It explains why it is immoral to kill someone who is unconscious. Thus, abortion is immoral, to the same degree that murder is. II. "It's my body though! " A rebuttal of bodily rights arguments. I'd now like to turn to a common objection; that of bodily rights. It is often argued that the rights a person has to their own body trumps an individual being's rights to its life. So even if the fetus will grow up to have a meaningful future just like ours, the woman has the right to her own body, and can discard the fetus. However, this is easily debunked. Why assume that the right to my body trumps another individual's right to life? Bodily rights, and right to choices can only be made firm if the individual's right to life and their future existence is made firm. Thus, bodily rights are parasitic upon the right to life! If we are going to question an organism's right to a meaningful future, we will undermine the very foundation upon which the rights to our bodies and choices are based upon. Let me make an analogy. In order to secure my "Right to text" I first have to secure my "Right to have a cell phone. " Thus, my "Right to text" is based upon my "Right to have a cell phone. " Likewise, the rights to our bodies and the rights to our choices are based upon our rights to a continued existence, as our nearly all rights. I'd also like to present the responsibility objection (3). W means womanRA means voluntary intercourseF means fetusP1: If W participates in RA with the knowledge that F might result, then W has a special obligation to render aid if F does result. P2: W participates in RA knowing that F will, or might, result. P3: F does result. C: Therefore, W has a special obligation to support F. To illustrate this argument further, consider an example. If I am standing on a dock, and I accidentally bump a person into the water, I have a special obligation to save them if they are in danger of drowning. Through my action, I have put them in a position of risk, and I have a special obligation to deliver them from danger if I can. This is obvious. Obviously a woman can easily deliver this human organism with a FLO from risk. But it gets even better. If I have a special obligation towards someone though my voluntary action, then it's even worse for me to go out of my way to destroy that being. In the case of abortion, the woman is the one who is deciding to destroy this new being with a valuable future. Rather than merely allowing the victim to die, she is one of the direct causes in the victim's death. (This could also be used to show that the man has an obligation towards the fetus as well. So you men don't get off the hook that easy, and are equally responsible. )So, the idea of "bodily rights" is absurd, and easily dealt with. III. The reverse violinist argument. Judith Jarvis Thomson has made the famous violinist argument (7) in support of abortion. But I'd like to cause some irony, and show how this is easily reversible. One day, you wake up in a bathtub. You're strapped down. Completely helpless. There's cords going from your body to a person in the other bathtub. It's a famous violinist. He explains to you, saying "Oh, well, you see, I enjoy taking X drug, because it makes me feel good. But sometimes the machine I step into malfunctions and I pass out, and wake up with myself hooked up to you. If I cut these cords, you're going to die. Anyways, I am under no obligation to keep you alive, since you're infringing upon my bodily rights. So I'm going to cut these cords, and you will die. If the public found out about you, it would ruin my career, and I just can't have that. "Is this fair? Of course not. You can't drag someone onto a plane, and then throw them out because they're trespassing. The violinist voluntarily did an action, and he knew it might result in your being in this helpless state. He has a special obligation to keep you alive, even if it means being hooked up to you for a couple of months. We should be responsible agents. ConclusionIn conclusion, we've seen good arguments to believe abortion is immoral. It destroys a new human organism, which has a valuable future like ours. Consequently it's comparable to murder. Furthermore, the couple who have voluntarily partook in intercourse, with the knowledge that a fetus might result, have a special obligation towards this individual being. Destroying it is clearly contradicting this. I'd also like to make another important point. Since we have been given arguments that abortion is seriously immoral, and would be essentially murder, we need them to be strongly refuted and we need strong arguments to think otherwise. When possible human life is in play, we need to tread carefully, and be certain. Also make note that I haven't used the word "person" once in reference to the fetus! This is because it's not essential to the arguments. If by "person" you mean a conscious human being, then the fetus is not a person. But if by "person" one means a human organism with a right to life and its valuable future, then the fetus is obviously a person. But this is semantics, and really isn't necessary to my argument. Even if the fetus isn't "a person" strictly speaking, I have still shown that abortion is immoral. I know this is a controversial topic, and if I have come off as strong, please do not count it against me. ;-) Over to my opponent! (1). http://faculty.polytechnic.org...(2)http://upload.wikimedia.org...(3)http://www.vmi.edu...(4)http://www.westchesterinstitute.net...(5)Peter Singer, quoted in Kaczor, 2011, P7. (6)O'Rahilly, Ronan and Muller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. (7). http://spot.colorado.edu...