Resolved: Unwanted Pregnancy Abortions are unjust and should be banned in the US.

Abortions are not unjust. Abortions should not be banned. Pro suggests that justice cannot be achieved if rights are violated and abortion violates the right to life. Pro suggests that violations to right to life are murder. Pro suggests that violations of groups of unborn individuals is genocide. Pro suggests that abortion violates social contracts between the people and the state. I commend my opponent for these arguments. However, they all pivot on a single assumption which is not duly established. A fetus is not a person. This said it therefore follows that, a fetus does not have rights. and a fetus is not part of a social contract. -- Part I. The scientific community doesn't unanimously declare anything. A ovum and a spermatozoa are both alive as is the zygote they form. Implantation is a completely arbitrary and worthless bit of demarcation in a determination of "life". As such, I demand a citation here because the claim being made is completely wrong. You follow up this bizarre claim with the claim that therefore life begins at fertilization (10-12 days earlier). Beyond being completely illogical it doesn't follow from the previous statement. I will not dwell on this point because the entire process is alive as it deals with living cells. A declaration of life is not a declaration of rights. A plant is alive as is an unimplanted zygote. The primary mistake in part I is the declaration that "Once a person is 'alive, he/she is guaranteed the rights and future rights of the constitution." -- The error here is that you say "once a person" whereas we are dealing with a rather small clump of cells to a single cell at this point which could not be qualified as a person. Further, the rights of the constitution are specifically granted to the citizenry of actual people. There are a number of qualifications, programs, rights, and services granted to persons with children, none of these rights exist without a birth. A clump of cells is not a human being. Your supporting syllogism is based on the unstated and unacceptable premise that a fetus has rights including the right to life. Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not a person. -- Part II, Genocide is the destruction of a specific group of individuals along racial lines. One could conduct genocide via abortion by forcing all members of any particular group to have abortions until the group dies out. However that is a very specific example which does not apply here. Fetus do not count as a racial group. Fetus do not have rights. Whereas in part I it was simply an objection based on the underly premise that a fetus has rights, this argument is flawed in an additional way. Genocide does not apply in this case because you are tweaking the definitions. The UN charter is established in order to "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person" which does not apply to small clumps of cells inside a uterus as that is not a human person. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a person. Further, this part fails on the grounds that: fetuses are not a racial group. -- Part III, Social contract theory is a fairly common philosophical point of view, however as you noted Locke believed that all persons have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property and these rights are given to all peoples. Fetus are not peoples. The right to govern is given by the consent of the people to be governed. Fetus do not consent to be govern because consent is a neural function and they don't have even mildly developed brains. Further at earlier stages they don't have any neurons at all. The tacit agreement between people and state applies only to people, not to fetuses. Abortion does not violate social contracts. A fetus is not a person. -------------------------------- All three of your arguments can be broken down to a single premises which we properly disagree on. You believe that that a tiny clump of cells is a person and therefore has rights. If we were talking about actual people your arguments would unneeded. If one allows for the premise that a fetus is a person the arguments against killing a person are quite clear. As such, to move the argument forward I concede the following points: I) Murdering people is wrong. II) Murdering groups of people is wrong. III) The state allowing people to be murdered is wrong. I strongly object to the idea that a clump of cells is a person. A person is a human being and the operative word is "be". We view sentience as a very critical point of "being human" of "being" in general. It is the proper demarcation line between "it is" and "I am". As such, those things without sentience, though alive, are of some value, however the value of a human being is greater. This view informs all of our moral theories and our moral understandings. I think therefore I am. A fetus doesn't think and is not. Plants are live even prior to sprouting but this doesn't give them a right to life under the social contracts. This distinction is lost in your arguments as they apply just as easily to plants or dogs as they do to a fetus. A dog is alive, a dog has a right to life, killing a dog is murder. You have carefully ignored why people have rights instead suggesting that it only has to do with the concept "being alive". Life is not the line between without rights and with rights. Further it isn't simply the DNA which gives us those rights or something intrinsic to us as a species. Rather our brains are developed to the point where we adeptly live in large social groupsand have established laws and societies which function in such a way to disallow certain behaviors as judged by the people as being worth giving up in exchange for our own safety and betterment (I give up the right to kill people in order to have the right to life, the right to steal in order to have the right to property, the right to imprison and force in order to have my right to liberty). An unthinking, undoing, growing clump of cells does not fit into this tapestry of existence which requires rights and contracts, the UN or the Constitution. ------------------------------------- Let me further note that we are dealing with a person in the form of the woman. The woman has the right to her life, liberty and property. She has the right to do with her body what she well. She has a fully functional brain. She has a place in society. She is a human being. If she choses to have something removed from her body she is well within her rights to do so. It would be a violation of her rights, as an individual for the state to devalue her by forcing her against her will to incubate a non-individual. She has a right not to endanger herself by carrying a pregnancy to term. She has a right to do with her body what she will. We do not say that cows have a right to life. And a cow has billions of neurons. A fetus during the very early stages has a couple hundred cells in total. Any theory of rights of fairness and justice would require that cows be placed in higher regard than an early stage fetus. On the grounds of rights, we are forced to side with the actual person who has rights rather than a clump of cells of less moral concern than a fly.