Abortion is morally wrong

To waive your right to define a term means you hand this privilege over to CON, and for him/her to change the definition at this stage of the debate means is unfair on me as I have joined this debate under false pretences. Please do not take this personally, it is not my intention to come off as hostile. I will now clarify on what I meant by "surviving outside the womb". Human: When a fetus is capable of surviving outside of the mother's womb, typically around 20 to 28 weeks after gestation [1]The reason for such a definition is that this is the most common criterion that laws concerning abortion abide by. At this stage, the baby will have developed all organs necessary and matured all organ systems necessary to survive outside of the womb. This is also the period of time where the baby starts to acquire the capacity to feel pain [2]. If we correlate this with the definition of 'life' and draw a parallel with other aspects of the human body, we start to see why this is a relevant definition for this motion. Criterion 1: Survival outside the wombWithout the capability to survive outside the womb, the baby can only be characterised as another organ within the mother's body that just so happens to have a separate set of DNA from the rest. Separate DNA alone, as PRO tries to argue, is not enough to justify a human life. Practices such as kissing or sharing a drink with someone else would result in us ingesting substances containing foreign DNA, and organ transplant patients have entire organs with foreign DNA within them, but we never hear stories of people claiming to be pregnant from those practices. Organs cannot function outside of the human body, in much the same way as how fetuses are unable to continue developing when deprived of the hospitality of their mother's womb. Organs are biologically attached within the human body like fetuses, and organs are self-contained like fetuses. To argue that the termination of pregnancy is a murder is to argue that, a) organ failure is a suicidal act, and b) all organs are individual lives in and of themselves. I invite PRO to do so. Criterion 2: Ability to feel painThe ability to feel pain is an important marker. An entity that is treated or handled with respect to its capacity to feel pain is an indicator that said entity is perceived to be esteemed and humanised. One very clear example of such is that vegetarianism is fueled by the notion that animals face a gruesome and painful death when they are slaughtered for their meat, and that vegetarians will only eat meat under the condition that the animals are slaughtered humanely and that they die a peaceful and painless death. Other examples include the advocacy for painless methods of execution to be used for those on death row, and policies enforcing the use of painless methods in animal testing. With 'pain' confirmed as a yardstick for something that is deserving of humane treatment, whether it be a person or animal, it is only morally consistent with the status quo that one would consider 'pain' to be a valid criterion for what it means to be a human. A fetus that can feel pain should have that capacity accounted for, while a fetus that cannot sense pain is not a 'human' or, for that matter, a 'living creature', and subsequently not eligible for the humane treatment that it would otherwise be entitled to. On PRO's casePRO argues that "from the moment of conception, the unborn are human beings". That is far from the truth. Zygotes are identical, by nature, to any other cell in the body, in terms of their cell structure and functionings, and in terms of the fact that they're dependent on the greater human body to survive. Both zygotes and other cells fulfill the specifications of life as defined by PRO (metabolism, growth, reproduction, responsiveness/adaptation). In that case, I could be committing massacres simply by scratching my arm or pulling out a hair or two as I have effectively terminated the 'lives' of millions of skin and hair cells. Thus, we can disprove the argument that personhood should be defined by life or the status of being alive, and that personhood is not granted from the moment of conception. PRO also tries to refute my definition of 'human' by pointing out that humans are dependent on their surroundings just as how fetuses rely on the womb to survive. I am in no way against this, but I would like to shed light on the fact that no one disputes one's status of being human when one is in a different country or out in space. Thus, this point bears no relevance. Leaving the definition behindEVEN IF we disregard all of the above and grant PRO his/her belated definition, we still see that there are cases of abortion which can be labelled as morally permissible. This is actually conceded by PRO him/herself when he/she says "This implies that there are in fact cases where the killing of a human being could be morally permissible". Despite PRO's concession, I will proceed to justify one abortion case which is morally justified: when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. This is a case where, from a utilitarian perspective, it is perfectly justified to terminate the pregnancy and kill the baby in an effort to save the life of the mother. The philosophical dilemma one faces when encountering a life-threatening pregnancy is as follows:1. No course of action is taken, the mother dies, and along with her, the fetus dies, or;2. The pregnancy is terminated, the fetus will die, but the mother will live. In both instances, the child has been fated by the pregnancy to die, but the mother has the option to live. It is then, pragmatically speaking, logical to opt for the second option in an attempt to save the mother's life, on the premise that it is better to save one life than to lose two. This is in no way a manifestation of valuing the mother's life over the fetus' (both under the assumption that the fetus is a human and not), nor is it, in any way, unfairly delegating the fault of such a lethal adversity on the fetus. It is simply acknowledgement that it is ethical to save the mother when there is no way to save the fetus. Thank you PRO for a wonderful debate thus far and I await your response. SOURCES USED[1] . http://www.bbc.co.uk...[2] . http://www.mccl.org...