Abortion should be banned.

IntroductionI thank kingkd for his reasonable apology.A Few RemarksIn the beginning of this final round my opponent makes a vast number of unsubstantiated assertions which I will briefly list.He points out that I am not addressing something, however it remains vague what it is exactly I am not addressing. Right before that he quoted a passage where I said abortion is not wrong simply because something is human, but that makes no sense: neither do I dispute that a fetus is a human nor do I ignore it in my arguments, they revolve around what it is that makes a human morally significant.He insists that the resolution is "Abortion should be banned because it deprives someone of a human life" but this does not change any of my arguments in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that "...because it deprives someone of a human life" was added by Pro only in this round and never mentioned before.Now we come to the assertions:Pro simply states that "Life is an inalienable right" and taking it away is morally wrong. He does not in any way shape or form justify this utmost important claim which is a disaster for his side since this is basically what we are arguing about: do fetuses have a right to life?However just asserting that they do gets you nowhere.So he is right when he says "THIS IS THE ONLY IMPORTANT PART ABOUT THE DEBATE", but he completely fails to make a reasonable argument for why they have a "right to life".Mackie's Continuity ApproachNever was this argument addressed by Pro. I assume that he cannot object to it and that therefore abortion should not be banned.The Desire ViewHere Pro completely misses the point.He correctly summarizes Boonin's argument, being that because a fetus has no neuronal basis for anything that would resemble a person, like desires, it therefore neither desires to live (it simply cannot desire anything) nor should be given a right to life.Then my opponent completely talks past the argument when he says that the fetus has an actual and an ideal desire to live on. This is utter nonsense since the conclusion of the argument is precisely that because a fetus does not have the capacity to desire it does not have a right to life. This includes all desires, actual and ideal.If you want to grant ideal desires to things that cannot desire anything then well, you should be careful when walking around since the grass you might be stepping on will inevitably one day be part of a human being and has therefore an ideal desire to continue to live on.Good luck defending such a position.Marquis' FLO ArgumentPro again counts my agreement on the humanhood of fetuses as a concession, but I have pointed out several times that this is not the case.He starts out by saing this:"Con argues against FLO by saying that the future of some cells is equal to the future of WHAT IS ALREADY A HUMAN."By "some cells" he means the totipotent cells that constitute the embryo at one point, which supposedly is not a human according to my opponent and by "what is already a human" he means apparently something else than just "some cells". However even after the cells are not totipotent anymore they are still literally just "some cells". If 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 cells are not a human then why are 32? The line drawn here is completely arbitrary.The murderer analogy is nothing but a red herring.Coma PatientsPro has the audacity to claim that I did not respond to one of his objections to the desire view, but this is a lie. I quote: "many people do not desire to live such as suicidal people or brainwashed people who believe their life has no meaning"He never talked about coma patients and yet claims that I ignored his argument.For the sake of it I will respond to the nonexistent objection anyway."When I wake up in the morning I do not have to learn everything that I believed the day before. I seem to have almost all the same beliefs, concepts and desires I had yesterday. This suggest that these mental items were retained in some form or other while I was asleep."(2)Likewise, when someone wakes up from a coma their self was retained as well.Intelligent Aliens And The Mentally DisabledIn round two my opponent claims that Locke's definition is inherently flawed because it would count intelligent aliens as persons, but I do not see the flaw here. If we were to meet an intelligent, humanoid alien species we could potentially communicate with, then I don't see why they should not be regarded as persons.Afterwards he mentions that this definition would exclude the mentally disabled. However two things should be noted here:1) This is not the definition of "person" I personally would use, it was merely a reaction to the fact that my opponent did not define "person". Therefore I listed one that works against him.2) This suggest a false picture of disabled people. I actually work with disabled kids and to claim that none of them would be considered "a thinking intelligent being that can know itself as the same thinking thing in different times and places" is ableism. Ableism: "a form of discrimination or social prejudice against people with disabilities"(1)Moreover this definition excludes only humans with really, really rare conditions such as encephalopathy, a condition that prevents huge parts of the brain from developing.ConclusionMy opponent neither gives a compelling argument for is position nor a compelling objection to my arguments. His very loaded language is but a desperate attempt to get some approval. All his objections to my arguments and the constitutive property argument can be found in my last debate on abortion as well...I wonder why... http://www.debate.org...Sources(1) http://en.wikipedia.org...(2) David Boonin, A Defence of Abortion