Abortion is generally morally wrong.

Thanks for your response, Pro. I'm confident my colony of nudists will be enough to squish your pesky mosquito (which is morally acceptable since it lacks sentience).Burning House Thought ExperimentMy opponent states this: "Con’s question of the moral wrongness of harming a puppy demonstrates that this indeed is not the fact, or killing a puppy would be morally equivalent to murdering a human. This alone serves to demonstrate the insufficiency of Con’s definition of morality."Pro, if you think I am unwilling or unprepared to defend the stance that hurting a puppy is equally as morally wrong as hurting a newborn human, you are mistaken. Admittedly, though, it is slightly irrelevant as my primary objection is that sentience is the most significant property to consider when asking questions of morality.You bring up the scenario, hypothetically if you're house was on fire, and you could only save one, which would you save: a newborn dog or a newborn human? Clearly, we inherit some rudimentary understanding of morality from birth, a byproduct of every social species as a means to perpetuate that species' survival. However, a significant aspect of thinking logically is to disregard what our intuition tells us, at least until that intuition can be logically justified.Our initial thought may be to save the human, but why ought we save the human over the puppy? Burning alive will cause just as much suffering in a puppy as a human. If we place more value in the human, it is either because our DNA wants to be passed on another generation, or because we recognize that the human has more practical value (it will one day be able to contribute to society), not necessarily more moral value.And before I move on from this point, tell me, Pro– if you were in a burning house and could save only one, which would you save: a newborn human or a zygote in a petri dish? Let's even grant the hypothetical case that if you save the petri dish, the zygote will be medically inserted into the womb of a woman and continue to grow naturally and safely.Hopefully, you would save the newborn since it will suffer horribly otherwise, while the zygote would not.More Thought Experiments (welcome to philosophy 101)Other than the above mentioned, my opponent spent a lot of words to raise one small objection to my moral significance, sentience: "A housefly has no potential to become sentient, while a zygote does."To prelude, let me just say I love moral thought experiments. It's very easy to come up with some truly absurd ones, and can be difficult to figure out what the "morally right" answers are. Let me share five similar, yet very distinguishable, moral thought experiments relating to the issue of abortion and sentience.1. The man who will never wake upImagine there was an adult, 25-or-so-years-old, who was hit by a semi-truck. Miraculously, he survived, but he now lies in a hospital bed in a state of comatose. In other words, he is not sentient; he cannot feel pain or pleasure or anything at all; he is unaware of his existence, he never dreams, and although his brain still sits in its skull in one piece, it never does anything worth writing home about.He will never awake from this comatose state and you know this. Is it morally acceptable to pull the plugs on whatever machines are keeping his heart beating? His family may not want this, since the flatlining of his heart monitor means his life is truly over, but an unbiased third party, such as the man's doctor, would say his life ended when the semi hit him. He may be technically, biologically alive, but his life has lost all value.It is not morally wrong to pull the plug on a brain-dead human being. After all, no harm is caused.2. The man who will wake upBut wait a minute. There is a difference between our hypothetical man and a fetus. The fetus will eventually "wake up" (that is to say it will gain sentience later in its development). So let's change the thought experiment a little.Let's say the man will wake up in a month or so, and we know this. Is it morally acceptable to pull the plug on him? I would say no. It can be said that while pulling the plug would have no negative consequences (it wouldn't cause the man pain or anything of the sort), leaving the machines running would have a positive consequence (the man will wake up).This is unlike the first scenario where leaving the machines running and pulling the plugs both have neither positive nor negative consequences (though it can be argued that a negative consequence of leaving the machines running is the wasted resources on a hopeless case).3. The man who will wake up, but at a costWell, if we're trying to be as accurate to the issue of abortion as possible, there is another discrepancy in our thought experiment. The man will wake up in a month, and we know this, but only at a cost: someone else must be severely hurt.This someone else must endure morning sicknesses, random nausea, fatigue (an inability to perform any physical labor, from heavy lifting to merely bending over), increased headaches, minor to severe back-pains, higher blood pressure (which could lead to other medical problems), hormonal changes, and all of this leads up the grand finale, the most physically painful phenomena a mammal's existence can endure: childbirth. Not to mention the huge financial strain the entire process will cost, and the permanent effects to physical appearance afterwards.Suppose, then, that no one volunteers themselves for this experience (hard to imagine, right?). Would it be morally acceptable to force someone to go through all of this pain in order to allow our non-sentient man become sentient? Of course not. To not force this upon someone has no negative consequences (again, the man will not feel pain; he will simply continue is existence as "animated matter", or biologically die, both of which are morally indistinguishable), while forcing pain upon someone for this purpose would have the positive consequence of the man becoming sentient and the negative consequence of this person enduring horrible pain.Is it morally right to prioritize the rights of the stranger over the rights of the brain-dead man? It is important to keep in mind that while one can become sentient, one already is sentient. In cases like this, I assert that the rights of a sentient being override the rights of a non-sentient being (even if that being has the potential to become sentient in the future).Therefore, I would say it is morally wrong to force someone to endure pain for the sake of the man becoming sentient. It prioritizes the rights of the non-sentient man higher than they ought to be, and causes unnecessary and unwanted suffering to an innocent person.4. The man who will wake up, but at a cost to the one who caused itOkay, to be fair to the pro-lifers, there is yet another difference: this person who will have to suffer was the one who caused this man to be in a coma in the first place. He/she was the one driving the semi-truck who ran into him (ie, the one who got pregnant and created this fetus to begin with).Is it morally acceptable to force the one who caused this man's comatose state in the first place to suffer so that the man can regain his sentience? Actually, I'm unsure about the answer to this one, but it doesn't really matter, because there is another difference...5. The man who will wake up, but at a cost to the one who caused it accidentallyThe one who hit him with the semi-truck did so accidentally (ie, failed contraceptives). Should this person be forced to suffer so the man can regain sentience even though it was an accident? No; we ought not to be held responsible for the consequences of actions that are out of our control. You could say she just shouldn't have had sex, but that's like saying the driver just shouldn't have been driving a semi. She shouldn't be held responsible for failed contraceptives anymore than the driver should be held responsible for failed brakes.