Abortion

Introduction In the last round of this debate I will defend my original arguments from objections raised by Pro, and then conclude with my closing statements. With that said, let me begin. The Traditional Pro-Life Argument Pro says he disagrees with the claim that it is morally wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. He claims that in order for an individual to be wronged by death, it must contradict the organism's preference to continue living. However, as I already showed in my objections to his argument, this view of the wrongness of killing has many difficulties and thus is an unsatisfactory answer to why ending life is wrong. Pro agrees that the fetus is a human being, but denies that this means it has a right to life. I worry this view advocated by Pro undermines human equality, and that he uses reasoning similar to those of past injustices. Namely, some human beings have moral worth, but other human beings do not. The lessons of history provide strong evidence that we should advocate a society in which all innocent human beings have moral consideration and are treated with respect. The Future-Like-Ours Argument Pro claims that I defended P1 with objections from the last round. But that they were not actual objections to his ethics, but rather objections to the supposed implications of his ethics. But if an ethical theory has immoral implications, then that actually does count againist it being a good ethical theory. For example, if someone proposed an ethical theory that implicated it would be morally good to torture small children, that would count against it being a sound moral theory. In the same way, if Pro's preference utilitarianism leads to immoral conclusions, then we have good reason to reject it. Pro claims that if we are committed to the FLO argument I have advanced, then we should also accept the view that failing to separate each individual totipotent cell in the human embryo is morally wrong. This is because the totipotent cells in the human embryo have a FLO, and if we don't divide up these cells this will deny them a FlO. I expected this objection to come up in the debate, which is why I put P1 of the argument as follows: "Intentionally killing an innocent being with a future-like-ours (FLO) is morally wrong. " In response to this objection, I want to make a distinction between intention/foresight. It's true that when I fail to divide up the human embryo, I foresee that this will deny individuals a future of value, but that is not my intention. My intention is to not have to go through the burden of dividing up every single embryo. However, if I perform an abortion, not only do I foresee the death of the embryo, but it is my intention is to cause its death. That, I believe, makes a moral difference. In the former case my intentions are permissible, while in the latter they are not. But given that my opponent is a utilitarian, he may deny that your intentions matter, and the only thing that is morally relevant is the consequences. But I think this is implausible, for consider this example. Imagine two dentist one of whom is kind while the other is a sadist. When the kind dentist performs a tooth removal, he merely foresees, and regrets, that this procedure will cause pain. But it is not his intention to cause pain. His intention is to better the health of his patient. However, when the sadistic dentist performs a tooth removal, not only does he foresee that this was cause pain, but he intends to cause pain. Would anybody really try to claim that these two situations are morally equivalent? I would guess not. In the former case the dentist's intentions are permissible, while in the latter they are not. The Substance View I take it that the main objection here is that the fetus is not a rational being but a potential one, and therefore it does not have the same basic rights as an actual rational being. But I don't think potentiality can be quickly dismissed out of hand. For consider the case of an adult human being that is in a temporary coma. While in the coma this adult lacks the immediate exercisable capacity to act rational, but he still has the potential to become rational once he is no longer in the coma. However, just because the adult lacks the immediate exercisable capacity to act rational, does not give us a moral justification to kill him. This is because he has the potential to become rational. In the same way, the fetus also lacks the immediate exercisable capacity to act rational, but this does not give us grounds for killing the fetus, because it has the potential to become rational. Pro may object that what separates the adult in the temporary coma from the fetus is that the adult in the temporary coma has a dispositional desire to go on living whereas the fetus does not. A dispositional desire is a desire that one is not consciously thinking about, but nevertheless has. So the adult in the temporary coma still has a desire to live, even if he is not consciously thinking about it. However, one can imagine a case in which an adult in a temporary coma would not have a dispositional desire to live, but still obviously have a right to life. Imagine an adult who gets in a terrible car wreck and becomes comatose for 9 months. This wreck was so severe that, in addition to the temporary coma, he also developed amnesia. Given that the adult has suffered amnesia, we can't even posit a dispositional desire to him. Thus, he lacks a right to life under Pro's view. However, I think it's pretty uncontroversial that this adult still has a right to life. This is because even though he doesn't have a dispositional desire to continue living, he still has the potential to become rational. And therefore it would be wrong to end his life. The Constitutive Property Argument Pro lays out pretty much the same objections he raised to the Substance View, and for that reason I don't feel the need to respond. Moreover, I've noticed that the Constitutive Property Argument and the Substance View look very similar to each other. So in a way it feels like I'm defending the same argument twice. For the sake of time, I'm just going to drop this argument and let the Substance View stand in its place. Conclusion In this debate I have defended the anti-abortion position and provided arguments in defense of the claim that abortion is morally impermissible. I want the voter reading this to keep in mind that even if all my arguments against abortion have been unsound, one will still be committed to vote for me if they believe that I kept Pro from meeting his burden of proof. With that said, let me say how much I enjoyed this debate. Having a discussion on this topic with Pro has been really fun. Pro is an intelligent person who argues with force and clarity.