Abortion is Generally Immoral.

Comments about abortion debates in generalBefore I get stuck into the substance of Pros argument and my counter argument on the immorality of abortion I want to quickly address some comments made by Pro in regards to the wider debate on abortion. Pro says. .. ""Choice" is simply a euphemism used by the pro-choice side to mean "abortion. ""When the term "pro choice" is used, it is usually said within the CONTEXT of discussing abortion, thus choice just means choice to have an abortion, I don't think this is guilty of committing an euphemism. But now look at the Pro life term within the CONTEXT of discussing abortion. As I alluded to before what this term REALLY MEANS is the criminalisation of abortion. Thus the more correct term in the CONTEXT of discussing abortion would be something like the criminalization of abortion and/or "anti choice". So if Pro or anyone else is concerned about euphemism's being used in abortion debates I would seriously urge them to look at what Pro life within the context of abortion REALLY MEANS and then judge who is guilty. Pro says says that pro lifers are not "anti choice", but the term anti choice is used within the context of abortion, so yes pro lifers are anti choice as far as abortion is concerned. Pro says. .. "If abortion is immoral and on par with murder, then women should not be allowed to legally make the choice of having an abortion"Now that's a pretty big IF, and this is why I said that even if Pro can prove abortion is immoral it doesn't entail that abortion should be illegal. There is a HUGE differnce in the claim that abortion is immoral and that abortion is so immoral its on par with murder and thus should be illegal. Countering Pros ArgumentIn summary, my main counter argument is that Pro refers to humanity, humans and human beings in ambiguous ways and thus tries to equate the few cells of fertilization with say a fully developed, thinking, feeling, human child. Lets start with Pros first premise. .. "P1: From fertilization, the preborn are biological members of humanity. "Notice the key word here, BIOLOGICAL, the cells of fertilization are BIOLOGICALLY human but they are NOT necessarily human persons. "P2: It is prima facie immoral to kill an innocent human being. "I would point out that the fact that something is prima facie wrong doesn't mean its wrong absolutely. Even Pro has already made an exemption that abortion is not immoral under some circumstances. But the real key here in this premise is what exactly does Pro mean by "human being" does he mean a human person or just something that contains human dna ? It must be that Pro means a human person, cause if they mean't that a human being is anything that has human dna, then every time you scratch your nose and destroy cells, cells which are human you are commiting genocide. Point here being is too show the untenability that destroying something that contains human dna is the same as killing a human person. "P3: Abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. ""Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal logical fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time). It generally occurs with polysemic words. " [1] This is where is I think the equivocation in Pros argument becomes more transparent. Here Pro uses human being in a different way than they used it in premise 2. In premise 2 they referred to human being as a human person, in this premise they refer to human being as something that contains human dna but is not necessarily a human person. To help highlight why Pros argument is not a good one cause of how it equivocates on what exactly they mean when they refer to human beings and humanity through out their argument consider the following counter argument. .. .P1: It is prima facie immoral to kill an innocent human person P2: A 3 day embryo is not necessarily a human personC: Therefore its not prima facie immoral to destroy a 3 day embryo I don't think I need to defend P1 as if Pro tries to refute it, they merely undermine their own argument. But what about P2 ? as I argued before its untenable to give human person hood to something just because it has human DNA lest we are all murder every time you scratch your nose. Also in support of P2 consider what Sam Harris says. .. "A 3-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. " [2]How can Pro justify the mere existence of human cells equates to a human person ? as Wikipedia explains. .. "Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law, and is closely tied to legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a natural person or legal personality has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability. [3]We can grant Pro that to kill an innocent human PERSON is prima facie morally wrong, but this still doesn't prove that abortion of say a 3 day embryo is morally wrong. As such the claim that abortion (at least in the general sense) is morally wrong is unjustified. Sources[1] . http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] . http://www.samharris.org...[3] . http://en.wikipedia.org...