Abortion should be illegal

== Roadmap == Pro's case has fallen flat -- resting on bare assertions, unjustified frameworks, and gross misrepresentations. The debate comes down to two issues: (1) utilitarianism, and (2) the rights of the fetus vs. the rights of the woman. I've won on both counts. == Utilitarianism == The purpose of government is to make decisions based on utilitarian calculations. Both of Pro's responses fail. Begging the Question First, I provided justifications for a utilitarian calculus, which Pro ignores. I pointed out that (a) the utilitarian standard gives the State legitimacy, (b) rights are incoherent without measuring "interests" against each other, and (c) the government presently follows a utilitarian calculus, and so there would be inconsistency in Pro's world, and since Pro is the one who doesn't like inconsistency, Pro should accept util. No response to any of those three reasons. Second, Pro argues that my position is controversial. Pro does nothing to prove any of those philosophies. Reject them all as bare assertions. But, outside of Fukuyama's purpose of government, all other examples that Pro gives themselves assume that the government legislates based on "interests" -- Hamilton's explicitly so, and Locke and Hobbes based on "rights," which, as I already pointed out, are interests. Furthermore, Pro has no alternate standard for government. Their entire case presumes that the "right to life" is obvious, but gives no justification for its existence outside of a utilitarian framework whatsoever. If anyone is begging the question, it's Pro, not me. Majority Rule. Pro misinterprets what I mean by "maximizing the desires of the people." I don't mean that policy should inherently be based on what policies the people want. Rather, and I've already clarified this in-round, "desires" are "interests" -- things like pleasure and pain. I mentioned that "interests" equals "mental states" in Rd. 3, and that policy that maximizes positive mental states is good and policy which maximizes negative ones is bad. My world doesn't entail what, specifically, the majority wants. Rather, it's about the base interests and desires of the people, which are "weighed" against each other (i.e. things like pleasure and pain). Illegal Abortions It's obvious, contextually, that by "good" I mean "fulfills positive interests." That's the framework I defended the whole debate. Under that, illegal abortions aren't "good." Illegal abortions cause thousands of deaths each year. Pro's representation of the argument as one about "legalizing something just because it will happen anyway" is false. My [6], [7] and [8] prove that back-alley abortions are dangerous and cause thousands of deaths each year. Pro's rape analogy has been refuted, and they've dropped it, conceding it by omission. Conclusion: The government should legislate based on a utilitarian standard, for reasons I've mentioned and Pro has ignored. Since Pro violates that standard by causing thousands of deaths and injuries every year, vote Con. == Rights == The fetus doesn't merit rights. A woman's right to autonomy is more important. Three key areas of clash here: whether the fetus is sentient; if there's legal inconsistency from not recognizing a fetus's right to life; and if a woman's right to autonomy extends to abortion. I'll address each in turn. Sentience The fetus isn't sentient. Pro has two objections. First, Pro says I don't set any standard for sentience. However, it's implicitly obvious that by "sentient" I mean "able to have interests." In fact, I said, "Since the fetus lacks interests, it shouldn't have rights." That's obviously the standard I'm using -- the fetus isn't conscious (i.e. it lacks interests). Furthermore, "sentient" isn't a term of art -- it's a normal term that means able to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively (i.e. conscious). Multiple sources prove that the fetus isn't conscious, and lacks interests. Second, Pro says that the fetus does have sensation before 24 weeks. Two responses to that. One, Pro's own source rebuts the idea that "taste" and "touch response" are sufficient for consciousness. I'll quote Pro's source [2] here: "[I]f you touch the foot of a fetus at 12 weeks, he/she will move away, but it is . . . unlikely that the fetus is feeling anything. This is just a reflex response like a knee jerk. At this stage there is no connection between the nervous system in the body and the higher levels of the brain, which we think are necessary for conscious experience." Which means none of those are sufficient to establish "sentience," which, when taken from context, means "consciousness" or able to have interests. Two, that's insufficient to fulfill Pro's burden, which is to prove that abortion should always be illegal -- at best, all Pro is able to prove is that abortion should be illegal until 10 weeks. Since Pro drops my analysis that only sentient individuals have a right to life, I'll take that as a concession. Therefore, since the fetus isn't sentient, it doesn't have a right to life, which takes out most of Pro's offense. Inconsistency Pro's argument is that legalized abortion is inconsistent with already existent laws that acknowledge a fetus's rights. I've got two responses: (1) this debate isn't about the U.S. or such a specific country; and (2) I don't have to advocate such laws or the status quo. I'm conceding the response about private property. First, this debate isn't a matter of a specific nation's policy. It is a debate about whether, in a general case, abortion should be illegal. Therefore, U.S.-centric arguments turn into arguments about "what if a certain country has a law inconsistent with this one?" Second, it isn't my burden to defend the status quo. I don't need to defend the UVVA. I just need to defend a world where abortion is illegal. Therefore, I could even support the abolition of the UVVA or its amendment to look more like what I thought it was last round (i.e. a law that protects a woman's control over her fetus). Furthermore, Pro hasn't explained why the way to solve this inconsistency is ban abortion, rather than repeal this law. Unless Pro proves that abortion is harmful, which I've already refuted, this argument has no impact. Autonomy. I argued that women have a right to autonomy; Pro initially denied that this was the case ("It is a myth that we have a right to autonomy.") and now seems to agree with the idea, but says harm to the fetus is sufficient to violate this right. Since Pro agrees with the principle of autonomy (having implicitly conceded it last round, and having dropped all my justifications for a right to autonomy), the only point of clash is that the fetus's rights matter. Since the fetus doesn't have a right against abortion, vote Con on autonomy. Conclusion: The fetus is non-sentient, and therefore does not merit a right against abortion, and that judicial inconsistency is an insufficient reason to do so. Since Pro's world is one in which the right to autonomy is violated to fulfill a non-existent right against abortion, vote Con. [Note: A ban on abortion is meaningless in practice, so Pro's world doesn't save fetuses either.] == Conclusion == The fetus shouldn't have a right against abortion since sentience should be the standard for rights: a standard that the fetus doesn't fulfill. Banning abortion does nothing for the right to life of fetuses even if such a right exists. I've refuted Pro's argument from "inconsistency" by showing how it doesn't fulfill their burden, and the idea of "arbitrariness" by providing an objective time standard. Since the fetus lacks moral consideration, Pro's world does violate the right to autonomy. Furthermore, Pro's world is one that causes thousands of deaths, and that legislation should try preventing deaths. Since Pro's world is one which violates individual autonomy and kills thousands of people to uphold a meaningless law, vote Con.[13] http://tinyurl.com...