Abortion is immoral

Thanks Guidestone for your opening arguments. Now onto the rebuttals! I'm disappointed with Guidestone, because he started going into rebuttals in round two when I specifically said not to. Indeed, I even put no rebuttals in parentheses to make sure my opponent saw it. I feel like he should lose points for not following the rules, especially since I made them very clear-cut and easy to understand. IntroductionFirstly, I will begin by attacking my opponent's arguments for the impermissibility of abortion. Secondly, I will be defending my original arguments for the moral permissibility of abortion. I was actually supposed to defend my original arguments in round #4, but since Guidestone has decided to ignore the rules and jump into rebuttals early, I now have to defend them in round #3. With that said, I will now begin. Definition of anencephalic:"having part or all of the cerebral hemispheres and the rear of the skull congenitally absent."Does Every Human Have a Right to Life?I will now present the anti-abortion argument that Guidestone made in round #2. A. Every Human has a human right to life, which can not be taken away. B. A new distinct living human comes into existence at conception. C. Concluding, everyone has human rights, like the right to life, from the moment of conception. This is the typical Pro-life argument against abortion, and, as you can see, my opponent has made use of it. This argument made by him could be summarized as follows:"It's human! Don't kill it!"This view seems implausible, and I believe it's defective. Let me demonstrate why I think that by going through the first premise.Rebuttal of Premise AThis premise states that every human being has a right to life, and therefore it is immoral to end another human being's life. However, if this is true, then it would be immoral to end the life of a human who is permanently comatose or an anencephalic newborn. This is because they are human beings, and after all, every human has a right to life according to this premise. But surely nobody believes it would be immoral to end the life of someone who is permanently comatose. A person in this state will never experience consciousness or be able to do anything. Their heart may still be beating, but the person with their unique personality, beliefs, desires, and memories is gone. They are practically dead. For these reasons it's impossible to believe that ending the life of such a person could be considered immoral. The same situation applies to the anencephalic newborn. The newborn, like the permanently comatose human, will never experience consciousness. As we can see, premise A is obviously false, and should therefore be rejected. However, if the first premise of his argument is wrong, then Guidestone's anti-abortion argument fails.Disadvantages of This Anti-Abortion Argument The way Guidestone's argument is set up is unsatisfactory. This is because I don't think it explains to us why we think killing is wrong. His argument is basically it's wrong to kill every human being. However, as I have already shown, such a view is unsound. If we're going to say that killing is immoral, we need a good account for why we think that. An adequate account on the wrongness of killing should, I think, extend beyond the human species. To understand why I think that, let me provide a thought experiment. Imagine that one day in the future we come across other life forms on another planet. The beings on this planet are self-conscious, sentient, have interest and desires, are intelligent like human beings, and rational. Yet, they are not members of our species. Now, let us ask ourselves, would it be wrong to kill these other beings? I believe that most of us are inclined to say yes, it would be wrong to end their life. However, on Guidestone's argument, it doesn't explain why it would be wrong to kill these aliens. But on the Interest Principle, (my argument) it does explain why it would be immorl to kill them. The alien beings on this planet are self-conscious, and have the ability to imagine their own future. If these beings can imagine their future and have desires, hopes, intentions, or certain projects they wish to complete in the future, then they can have a desire for their continued existence. For these reasons, my view on the wrongness of killing provides a sound account on why it's immoral to kill, but my opponent's view does not. I will now be responding to the objections raised by Guidestone to my original arguments. Guidestone states that I didn't really give a defense of my first premise, and that all I said was that it's true because of the Interest Principle. However, if he would have kept reading, he would see that I did give a defense of this premise, and provided reasons why ending the fetus' life is not immoral. I argued that since a fetus does not have a desire for its continued existence, then it shouldn't be considered wrong when you end its life. The reason for that is because you're not frustrating its wishes, hopes, plans or intentions for the future. It has none. Earlier I gave the example of tearing up a newspaper to help put the Interest Principle into perspective. When I tear up a newspaper, I'm not frustrating its desire not to be torn up. It has no such desire. In the same way, aborting a fetus does not frustrate its desire not to be killed, because it has no desire in its continued life. Later, on his attack of premise 2 of my argument, Guidestone claims: "Every living thing has desire to keep living. If you injure any living thing they will try to repair the damage because of the desire to live. This is because all living things respond to stimuli."However, this claim by him is false. If a living thing repairs damage it has taken, all that shows is that they have a desire in repairing themselves, but not a desire for continued existence. Like I stated earlier, only things that have self-consciousness and the ability to imagine their future can have a desire for continued existence. This is because only these kinds of beings can actually be aware of their own existence and contemplate it.Finally, I will respond to the objections raised by Guidestone to the violinist thought experiment. Guidestone states that we have special responsibilities to our offspring that we don't have to strangers, and since the violinist is a stranger, you do not owe him life support. There are two things I would like to say to this. The first is that I could simply change the violinist thought experiment around to fit this objection. Let’s say you're about to unhook yourself, and the doctors rush into your room to say "don't unplug! We just found out that the violinist is your long lost son!" Are you now obliged to stay hooked up, even though you weren't before? I would still say that you are not obliged. Yes, it's true that you are biologically related to this person, but you haven't assumed guardianship and consented to take care of them. My opponent gave the example of a parent letting their child starve in their home, rightfully pointing out that we could charge such a parent who negelcted their own child. But in that case, we do have a situation where a parent has assumed guardianship and consented to take care of that child. Why else would the child be in the parent's home? The second thing I would like to say is that there are some cases where a woman is NOT biologically related to the fetus. For example, a woman at a fertility clinic in Japan found out that an egg inserted into her uterus was not her own, nor was it fertilized by her husband's sperm. In this accidental case, it seems like Guidestone would have no objections to this woman getting an abortion, since the fetus is not biologically her offspring. However, it looks inconsistent to say that abortion is immoral when there is a biological relationship, but not immoral when there is no biological relationship. ConclusionGuidestone's anti-abortion argument is unconvincing, and he fails to debunk my arguments for the moral permissibility of abortion.Source:http://www.slate.com...