On balance, abortion is immoral

My opponent, TrueScotsman makes some interesting points, although none of them prove that abortion is not morally justified. I congratulate him though, as I rarely meet someone who defends abortion as well as he does. Unfortunately though, this is a case of defending the indefensible. My opponent is guilty of the appeal to extremes fallacy, as he refutes the rule of 'do not kill human beings' based on the fact that there are some extreme cases where the killing is in self-defence. I agree that killing is justified if it is necessary in self-defence, but this is an exception and exceptions do not make examples of the falsity of a rule. Anyhow, I can easily qualify the rule by saying 'do not kill human beings unless it is necessary to save your life'. Either way, this rebuttal does not justify abortion. I agree that there are differences between foetuses and babies, but there are more significant differences between adults and babies. Just because there are differences between foetuses and babies does not dehumanise the former. I also agree that a foetus cannot feel pain and consciousness, but firstly I was only referring to a general utilitarian consideration of killing human beings; I sought to establish that utilitarianism forbids the killing of human beings and THEN apply it to abortion, not the other war round. It can be argued that utilitarianism would not forbid abortion because first-trimester foetuses cannot feel pain or fear being killed. However, this forgets the other half of the utilitarian principle that we ought to safeguard happiness, which is to say that we ought not to actively prevent someone from being happy. Abortion prevents the foetus from living a life, which prevents its happiness. One could argue that if a foetus is unwanted then its life will not be happy; but this is a gross assumption considering that many people who have been unwanted as infants have gone on to live happy lives. Besides, the very fact that even unwanted people fear death suggests that people still derive happiness from life even if their lives appear pitiful from the outside. My opponent has questioned which deontological theory I am referring to. I apologise for not making it initially more clear, but I was mainly referring to Kantian deontology as this is arguably the most well-developed deontological theory and forms the basis for modern deontology. Kantian ethics asserts that we can derive our maxims as categorical imperatives; they must be universalisable, treat humans as ends in themselves and be rationally valued if we were law-makers. Killing (apart from self-defence) is not universalisable because if everyone was to follow the maxim (to kill others) then life would cease to exist, which self-defeats the maxim of 'kill others'. The negation of an incoherent conclusion must be true, so the maxim 'do not kill others' must be true. Killing also does not treat humans as ends in themselves (because it shows a blatant disregard for our fellow man) and would not be rationally valued if we were law-makers (because the resulting society would be chaotic). Now we come to the evolutionist approach. I will drop this support of the impermissibility of abortion because my opponent has voiced his objection to evolutionary ethics as concept. And right he is. I also object to evolutionary ethics but I wrote about it in round 2 in anticipation that my opponent would attempt to justify abortion from an evolutionary standpoint. As my opponent shares my conceptual objection to evolutionary ethics, I will not waste my character count defending an ethical theory I do not even support. The utilitarian and deontological theories are enough support of the premise that the killing of human beings (apart from self-defence) is immoral. My opponent asks a legitimate question: why should we be consistent in our moral assertions? I shall explain... By making a moral assertion one is stating "We ought to do X"; when someone is being inconsistent they are saying "we ought to do X, but I ought to not do X". This is a logical contradiction. Con opines that the consistency argument fails because foetuses cannot consent to anything. However, this is a misunderstanding of the principle that has arisen from lack of clarity on my behalf. Let me rephrase the consistency principle: "Treat someone as we would consent to be treated now if we were to be then put in the same situation as that someone." For example, we would only treat comatose patients in such a way that we would consent to now (in our current mental awareness) if we were to then be put in a coma and treated the same way. If we take consistency to mean "Treat someone as we would consent to be treated if we were in the same situation as that someone.', then this would allow us to mistreat unconscious people and so it cannot be wholly veridical. It is clear to see that we should adopt the qualified principle above. Therefore, the consistency argument, albeit in a more qualified form, continues to forbid abortion. The defence of my attack on my opponent's "consciousness" rebuttal is that there are differences between a comatose patient and a foetus. Of course there are, but none of the differences are clearly relevant to the permissibility of killing them. A person in a coma has the potential to be conscious, but my opponent's argument is that it is actual consciousness, not potential consciousness, that qualifies the value of a human life. Furthermore, considering the definition of "potential": "having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future."(1) A foetus has the capacity to develop consciousness in the future, so it follows that a foetus has potential consciousness and is on a near-equal standing to people in comas. My opponent also says that comatose patients have been conscious before, but aside from this not having any clear relevance, it is not always the case. Babies can be born unconsciousness and remain in a coma for months; is the fact that they have never been conscious any justification for killing them? Therefore, my opponent's arguments that consciousness, or at least potential-consciousness, allows human beings to be killed are exposed to not stand up to scrutiny, or at least they do not justify abortion. I agree that having a child is a potential burden, but it is barbaric to allow murder in order to relieve people from burdens. A born child is even more of a burden, but that does not allow it to be killed by its parents. A child can be given up for adoption at birth, and so it can always be cared for. My opponent claims the burglar and thrill-seeker analogies are weak because the situations are "rather different". I agree that there are differences, but if we look at the base of it then we can see that the fundamental cases are the same: both are choosing to commit an immoral act out of self-interest. I have already justified that a foetus has value as a human life, so the huge amount of foetal deaths that would result from legalising abortion is a major factor against doing so. My opponent states that stealing is detrimental to society where abortion is not, and so the former ought to be illegal and the latter legal. However, we do not criminalise acts purely on the basis of society's self-interest, we criminalise on the basis of what is moral to do. For example, a homeless person is detriment to society and so society would gain if he was to be painlessly euthanized, but it is still illegal to do so because it is fundamentally immoral, just as abortion is. If we also allow anything that is not detrimental to society then there would be no reason why an abortion is justified and the murder of a 2 month old baby (living on taxpayers' money) is not, so long as both deaths are painless. First I will apologise for my use of 'anaphylactic', for some reason I must have connected the two words subconsciously. Just to say though, there is a difference between keeping an anencephalic foetus alive and actively dismembering/poisoning it (as is the case in abortion). Anencephaly is similar to someone who has had his head shot by a rifle; the person will die and has no brain activity, but we would not be justified in actively killing this person, the most ethical cause of action is to let them die naturally (as they will). In a similar way, we are not justified in killing anencephallic foetuses but we ought to let them die naturally instead. I agree that there is no instrumental purpose to the foetus's life, but if we judge one's right to life on instrumental value then we would be justified on killing the dying elderly without their consent. Furthermore, anencephaly (or the severity thereof) can be misdiagnosed; if abortion of anencephalic foetuses is justified then healthier foetuses who are misdiagnosed would be killed. My opponent brings up the risk to the mother; but as I have said in round 1 I believe abortion is justified in cases where the mother's life is at risk. If Con is referring to the general risks of childbirth, then I would raise the point that maternal mortality is very low in first world countries, and abortion can also cause death. I do not accuse Con of appealing to pity, I state that the fallacy is often used in the general debate, even if my opponent did not make explicit use of it. Even if people do not think of abortion as a punishment to the foetus, it does not change the fact that the foetus is punished, irrespective if it is intended. Con suggests that adoption is difficult as nobody would want to adopt a rapist's child, but I would argue that a childhood in care is still better than being killed. There is nothing stopping a mother giving her baby up for adoption, irrespective of whether it is actually adopted. I apologise for not being more eloquent or not fully answering all points, but I am about to run out of characters. (1) Google: Define potential