Abortion takes the life of a distinct, living, whole human being

I will now rebuild my case. "I will demonstrate how this objection reduces to a counter-intuitive view of human beings and how we understand our own identities. SkepticalDebatee, you see, is confusing property things with things of internal nature." I thought this was a scientific debate. Is my opponent referencing the soul? "Allow me to explain. He asserts that a fetus is not a whole human beings because it lacks a certain amount of parts; that it is incomplete. Such things as arms, muscle, and organs are, in his view, essential to being a whole human being." Yes, they are. "We all understand that our parts can be changed, replaced, or even removed while remaining whole human beings. Or else kidney donors would all be part, not whole humans! Indeed, are amputees only part humans?" They are not "only" part humans. (That would imply that there is something not human in them.) They still however are not whole. They are part of a human. (Part in this case not meaning individual piece.) This may be a disturbing thought, but please understand it is meant with no disrespect. They are still human even if they aren't complete. They may have just as much value, but they aren't hole. In fact the second definition of whole expressly states that something damaged is not whole. [1] "The only things which can account for a person remaining whole after the loss of a part is a unifying, inner nature; a human nature. In the same way that you, the reader, are a whole human irrespective of your parts, so too the unborn are whole human beings irrespective of their parts. Will my opponent deny this fact?" It is not a fact there is no evidence of a soul or "human nature", and even if there were it wouldn't help your case! My argument still stands. " First, a factual response. Geneticist Dr. Rama Balakrishnan of Stanford University reaches quite a different conclusion than my opponent. In fact, she says "How about a sequence that is 300 bases long? How many different combinations of the 4 bases are possible in these 300 bases? The total number of possibilities will be 4^300,"[1] That is, 4 to the 300th power." My opponent clearly didn't finish reading the article. Just a few paragraphs later Rama Balakrishnan states this. "So, out of these (4^300)^25,000 combinations, we should exclude the silent and lethal mutations to get the true number of different people. Lethal mutations should eliminate lots of these as many, many changes will result in a nonworking gene." [2] Of course there are still many left after this, but it is important to note that on average each person only has 60 mutations. [3] This equation is finding how many unique combinations are possible, and not whether these combinations are likely. There could be someone with every line of DNA mutated! While this does drastically cut down my original figures we can still be certain that not every organism is distinct from the moment of inception. "A mother could carry three genetically identical twins, yet surely my opponent would not argue that these triplets are not distinct from one another. How then would he be able to say that the unborn are not distinct?" They will certainly become distinct later on, but they aren't unique from conception. They are identical! In fact I'm quite glad you brought up identical twins because now I have more evidence! Identical twins are genetically identical! [4] The twins will change after birth, but it is only in rare conditions that they will be different before birth. Two more appeal to authority arguments are given. These aren't evidence. Evidence would require actual statistics or science proving this concept alone. Just the existence of identical twins negates this as generalization anyways. "To close then, the reader is left to judge whether my opponent"s view of humanity is correct. Are humans merely collections of parts assembled over time?" Scientifically yes. Your argument against this view centers around the soul, or some similar concept. You have shown no evidence that this actually exists. Even if the reader agrees with Pro on distinct and living there is no argument on whole. As Pro has BoP I urge a Con vote. He lost whole and he has lost the debate. 1. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com... 2. http://genetics.thetech.org... 3. http://www.livescience.com... 4. http://www.geneticsawareness.org...