Pro-Life Results in Punishment for Women

Quite regrettably, Con has spent nearly the entire round arguing with a strawman. For one he claims I am arguing that any undesired consequence is punishment, which truly makes me wonder if he bothered to read my round at all. I stated specifically in the no wrongdoing section and emphasized again in my conclusion that undesired consequences imposed specifically as a result of ones actions is punishment. Con then attacks my case with arguments that deal specifically with circumstances. I don't know how to make this any clearer, so I will illustrate below:Undesired consequences imposed due to ones own actions = Punishment.Undesired consequences imposed due to unfortunate circumstances = NOT punishmentThe examples I gave in the last round included a teenager who swears at the dinner table being grounded. That is as classic an example of punishment that one could possibly give. In this case the undesired consequence is the teenager being restricted to his room, and is a result of his actions (swearing). I also gave an example of a murderer going to jail. Jail is the consequence, and is imposed as a result of murdering someone else.But instead of addressing my point, Con uses irrelevant examples such as a man being drafted, or fallaciously trying to turn my suicide mission point. Being drafted is a consequence due entirely to the circumstances of the country and has nothing to do with the actions of the individual who was drafted. It is therefore not punishment because the individual's actions are irrelevant. In the case of the suicide mission analogy Con is correct; If the mission was ordered as a result of the circumstances his commanding officers were in, then it is not punishment. Glad we agree.This brings us to the subject of the debate. Let's ask ourselves, is being forced to carry her pregnancy to terms an undesired consequence being imposed on a woman wishing to have an abortion? Assuming we are speaking English, the answer is an obvious yes. Now the big question, is this undesired consequence the result of her own actions? We'll get back to that in a minute...RapeCon claims that I am using the rape argument as an appeal to emotion, essentially trying to bait him into admitting he is for banning abortion even in cases of rape hopping that people would get disgusted and vote against him. What Con fails to understand is that I was doing the exact opposite. I was not trying to throw a cheap blow, I was actually presenting Con an opportunity for a victory. The rape example illustrates the only way Con could keep his argument rationally consistent, which is to say that abortion should be banned in all circumstances. Only in that case is the undesired consequence of a woman losing her bodily rights the result of the unfortunate circumstances and not her own actions.Yet, I did fail to realize that Con already ruled out this option for himself in round one where he states: "This is about the generic condition of a pregnant woman who engaged in consensual sex", and also in the comments section; "This is about pregnancy resulting from consensual sex and does not include rape". Con has made it blatantly clear by emphasizing the word "consensual" and by ruling rape out that this is entirely about the woman's actions, necessarily making the undesired consequence a punishment.And even if Con were to claim that he is for banning abortion in cases of rape I would still argue that Cons position is the minority view, making it largely irrelevant. But since Con made it explicitly clear what this debate is about, I need not continue with it.Implicit AgreementAgree: have the same opinion about something; concur.http://tinyurl.com...Idiot: an intellectually disabled person, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive wayhttp://en.wikipedia.org...Con argues that someone is agreeing to a consequence if they take an action knowing that the "natural result" will lead to those consequences. That is not the definition of what it means to agree. Agreeing is necessarily a state of mind. Whether you agree with something is by definition independent from your actions. We do of course expect that our actions will coincide with our state of mind, but that doesn't always happen. And when it doesn't, we call people who exhibit this behavior an idiot. We for example, would call a person who doesn't wish to be electrocuted yet sticks a knife in a wall socket to be an idiot. This type of stuff happens, that's why we have a word for people like that.And even if we were to grant Con some type of point here, he is still badly misapplying the word. An agreement requires two minds. Only when you have two minds can you have the same opinion. You cannot agree with a wall socket.In the case of pregnancy I think Con is trying to use the word "agree" as a means of justifying his asserted obligation that the mother has to carry the pregnancy to terms. There are two types of obligations; contractual and moral. A moral obligation is a matter of what is right or wrong. Cons standards of morality (or anyone else's for that matter) have absolutely nothing to do with this debate. It doesn't matter whether you think a woman should carry out the pregnancy, that doesn't make forcing her to do it to be an undesired consequence imposed as a result of her own actions. A contractual obligation is one in which the woman agrees to the consequences. And since it has been established that an agreement requires her to have the same opinion, it is a logical contradiction to claim that a woman wishing to have an abortion agrees to carry the pregnancy to terms. Con has to show where she made this agreement and as the example above illustrates, taking an action which Con claims leads to its "natural result" does not suffice no matter how dumb Con things the person is.No WrongdoingCon continues to argue that it cannot be punishment if there is no wrongdoing. He then claims that since the action of having consensual sex is not wrong that there is no punishment. This is perhaps the most bizarre argument I have heard in this debate, and is nothing more then an argument from semantics based on a misapplication of simple English.How do we tell when an action is considered wrong by an authority? Simple; when the authority deems the act punishable. In other words, when the act incurs an undesired consequence on the actor. Does society consider murder wrong? Of course, that is why we imprison murderers. In my previous round I used an analogy of a man being jailed for eating a hot dog to which Con responded "there is no natural link between eating a hot dog and going to jail". Of course there isn't, because we do not consider the act of eating a hot dog to be wrong.Now to be clear, I am not arguing that morality is determined by the punishment. I am arguing that the authority's perception of the morality of a particular act should correlate with the level of punishment one receives. This is exactly why I and so many others are pro-choice, because people should not be punished if they did nothing wrong. The fact that the immorality of an act and the penalty for an act should generally correlate is why the people who write dictionary definitions saw no need to explain that in the definition of punishment. It is common sense. That doesn't mean that having done nothing wrong means it is not punishment.ConclusionCon badly misinterprets words to mean whatever he wants them to and has failed to address the only argument that truly matters; that the difference between punishment and whatever Con's claiming is that punishment is specifically a result of a persons actions. Con has made it clear that this debate is about consensual sex. Therefore his position clearly focuses on the woman's actions, not the circumstances that followed the act.