Resolved: Abortion should be Illegal (Except in life threatening cases)

Thank you to the Con again Contention 1: Fetus is a person http://www.abort73.com... "Faye Wattleton, the longest reigning president of the largest abortion provider in the United States"Planned Parenthood"argued as far back as 1997 that everyone already knows that abortion kills. She proclaims the following in an interview with Ms. Magazine: I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.1 On the other side of the pond, Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the largest independent abortion provider in the UK, said this in a 2008 debate: We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it. It"s clearly human in the sense that it"s not a gerbil, and we can recognize that it is human life.2" ""It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." "The official Senate report reached this conclusion: Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.11 The American Medical Association (AMA) declared as far back as 1857 (referenced in the Roe. vs. Wade opinion) that "the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being" is a matter of objective science. They deplored the "popular ignorance...that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening."" So you can see, even the extreme "pro-choice" supporters concede that the fetus is a human. The fetus is a human simply because it is biologivally conceived by two humans and the fetus has its own unique DNA. http://www.abort73.com... "A month after fertilization, brain development rapidly speeds up. In just two days time (between day 31 and 33), the brain's size increases by 25 percent. It is estimated that during the course of prenatal development an average of one million neurons (impulse-conducting cells that make up the nervous system) are produced every minute. " "By the sixth week, the brain emits measurable brain impulses. Primitive brain waves have been recorded as early as six weeks and 2 days. Small bodily movements can be observed at this time, initially affecting the entire body but gradually becoming more specific." "Pro choice" people may claim that the fetus isn't human as it is not developed completely. However, a baby isn't completely developed compared to a middle aged person, is it not a human? Size and development don't matter, the fetus is a human. THe fetus is an individual, not part of the mother because the fetus has its own DNA and can have different blood type than the mom, no human can function with two different blood types. Mothers don't have 4 arms and 4 legs when they are pregnant. Contention Two: FLO http://www.abort73.com... "Don Marquis, a philosophy professor from Kansas University, wrote an article entitled "Why Abortion is Immoral," published in The Journal of Philosophy, proposing a way to avoid the above difficulties. Instead of basing the morality of abortion on either of the above categories, he suggested that we address abortion within the larger discussion of the ethics of killing. That is, before we make any moral decisions about abortion, we should ask: what makes killing wrong in the first place? According to Marquis, killing is not wrong because it shows the killer to be barbaric nor because it leaves friends and relatives left behind saddened. Rather, killing is wrong primarily because of the effect it has on the victim. Killing deprives the victim of life. The loss of one"s life is the greatest possible loss anyone can suffer. It "deprives one of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one"s future." It is not merely changing the biological state of a victim from alive to dead that it is wrong, but the effect of that change on the victim"s future, which forever is taken away. In Marquis" own words: "When I am killed, I am deprived both of what I now value which would have been part of my future personal life, but also what I would come to value." His conclusion: what makes killing any adult human being wrong is "the loss of his or her future." Marquis adds that this explanation for the wrongness of killing should be preferred if it fits with our natural intuitions about killing and if there is no other better explanation. In addition, he finds his explanation to be supported by several considerations: (1) it explains why many regard killing as one of the worst crimes (i.e., killing is regarded as so horrible because of the great loss it causes); (2) it is incompatible with the view that it is only wrong to kill beings that are biologically human (i.e., it would be wrong to kill any being with a valuable future, like aliens and some animals); (3) it does not necessarily entail that euthanasia is wrong (since those who face an incurable future of pain would not lose a future of value); and (4) it accounts for the wrongness of killing newborns and infants (since they indeed have futures of value like adults). Thus, if the primary reason for the wrongness of killing is that it deprives one of his or her future, then this has obvious implications for abortion. Every normal fetus, just like you or me, has "a set of experiences, projects, activities, and such which are identical with the futures of adult human beings and are identical with the futures of young children." Since fetuses have a "future like ours," then it follows that abortion is a serious moral wrong. Thus, it is not the category of "being human" or "being a person" that ultimately makes the moral difference in abortion, but the category of having "future like ours." Just as it would be wrong to arbitrarily kill someone like you or me, since we have valuable futures full of a variety of experiences and enjoyments, it is equally wrong to kill fetuses, because they also have valuable futures. Lastly, under this theory abortion could only be justified if another life (e.g., the life of the mother) was threatened by not aborting." Basically, killing is wrong because it deprives someone of a Future Like Ours (FLO). If someone is to have a full life with experiences and you kill them. it is wrong because they will never experience a life like we are. http://www.abort73.com... "The reason that some people take such offense at comparing abortion to past crimes against humanity is the same reason that the white establishment of America was scandalized when Dr. Martin Luther King compared the abuse of black Americans to the Holocaust. It is easy to condemn crimes that are far away (either by distance or time), it is much harder to condemn them when they sit right in your back yard. Abortion supporters are infuriated at the notion that abortion is comparable to the Holocaust because they incessantly argue that the unborn aren't people. This is exactly the same argument that is always made to justify crimes against humanity. They're not really people. This is what Hitler said. This is what America said when it counted enslaved African-Americans as 3/5 of a person.1 If we can't compare atrocities past to atrocities present, then the term "never again" loses all its meaning." Conclusion Banning abortion is not forcing women to give birth, as they chose to have intercourse. It is not choosing a fetus over a mother, as it is the fetuses right to live vs. the right to choose (to kill), and the right to life triumphs as without life you have no freedom to make decisions. Banning abortion is saving lives. Back to Con! "I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born." Ronald Reagan "A person's a person no matter how small" Dr. Seuss