Abortion is morally indefensible.

I accept the challenge to debate abortion, an important topic in our time.I will keep my opening argument brief since Con instigated the debate. I will wait until I see my opponent's opening argument to more specifically discuss the issues that he would like to discuss.My position that abortion is amoral is based upon the simple premise: from when the egg is fertilized a new, unique, living human being is born. This human is innocent (not necessarily in a spiritual sense but in a physical sense). They have not committed a crime deserving of the punishment of death and so it is immoral to kill them, especially since in the vast, vast majority of cases it was the parents who consented to the action that created the preborn human.In order for my opponent to win this debate, he must prove that the preborn human is not a living human. For if the preborn is not a living human, then no justification for abortion is necessary. However if the preborn is a living human, then no justification for abortion is sufficient.Scientifically, it has been proven that the preborn are living human beings. They are alive because they grow. Non-living things don't grow. Additionally, preborn humans exhibit other signs of life such as (but not limited to) respiration, cell division, and reponse to stimuli.We know that preborn humans are, in fact, human. They have human DNA, and living beings reproduce after their own kind. Dogs have dogs, cats have cats, and humans have humans. At no point in human history have two humans conceived a child which was non-human (or another species) and became human at any point during its gestation.In fact, the experts in the field, embryologists, agree that we are human from fertilization. In the most widely-used embryology textbook, the authors say the following: "Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a 'moment') is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte." [1]You just can't make the argument that we are anything other than a living human from fertilization. In fact, most pro-choice philosophers even make the concession, such as Peter Singer, who takes the pro-choice position to its logical conclusion and supports infanticide. Singer has stated, “It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.” [2]If Con wishes to state that we are living humans at any other point than fertilization, he will be arguing against science and some of the most respected pro-choice philosophers. It is a well-established fact. People decry when an innocent is killed for any reason (be it through capital punishment or during wartime), so to be consistent we should also decry the innocent killed through abortion.I will end here. I await Con's opening argument.[1] Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8.[2] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 85-86.