Abortion should be made illegal.

RETRACTION – I made a false factual assertion in round 1. The factual assertion is here: “A human zygote, embryo, or fetus, while it may technically be a human, does not exhibit, and never has exhibited, any degree of SISAC.” The statement is not true. The first indication of any degree of SISAC in humans occurs at approximately the 16th week of gestation [1 - "Hearing. Responses to low frequency noise can be recorded from approximately the 16th wk in the fetus brain"], and the indications gradually become more numerous until birth. This does not substantially alter my position on abortion in general, nor does it substantially alter the structure of my arguments. However, I feel that is important to be factual. RE: Safety - Most unsafe abortions occur where abortion is illegal. [2] "Legal induced abortion [in the United States] is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion." [3] Pro argues that all abortions should be outlawed because some abortions are unsafe. This argument is fallacious, and I will use an analogy to help illustrate this. The structure of Pro's safety argument: Some abortions are safe, but some abortions are unsafe. In the interests of safety, we should eliminate all of the risk from abortions by prohibiting all abortions. True, this would eliminate the risk from abortion if women would actually comply with the restriction (a big if). However, I don't intend to discuss the issue of noncompliance with abortion restrictions. A very similarly structured argument to Pro's would be as follows: Some roads are safe, but some roads are unsafe. In the interests of safety, we should eliminate the risk from roads by prohibiting the use of all roads. True, this would eliminate the risk from unsafe roads provided that compliance was high. However, it should be clear at this point that there is an error in reasoning. The error is as follows: Pro lumps together both unsafe and safe abortions in to a single category, then seeks to use the cause of safety to justify prohibiting all of the procedures from this category. Pro's method of categorization is not proper. If Pro's objective is safety, then Pro must categorize on the basis of safety or its correlates. Otherwise, the categorized items will include items that are not related to the stated objective. In this case, Pro's method of categorization improperly includes safe abortions when prohibiting safe abortions is unrelated to Pro's safety objective. RE: SISAC Rebuttal - Pro rebuts my SISAC argument with two arguments. First Pro asserts, without any evidence, that the level of SISAC exhibited by a fetus or is comparable to that of a cat or dog, and that it is immoral and unethical to inflict pain upon and/or kill these animals. Therefore, Pro argues, it is immoral and/or unethical to inflict pain upon and/or kill a fetus or embryo. Pro's second rebuttal is that if you agree with my SISAC argument, then "you MUST agree that the very elderly and the very young can be killed because they have a lower SISAC." My response to Pro's first argument is to point out that his assertion - that the level of SISAC exhibited by human fetuses is comparable to that of cats and dogs - is baseless. I restate my position that it is morally neutral to kill organisms that exhibit a level of SISAC that is zero or near-zero, and that have never exhibited any level of SISAC greater than near-zero. Examples: Killing bacteria or protists; Harvesting of crops; Mosquito eradication; Pertinently - The destruction of human zygotes. With gestating humans, the level of SISAC begins at zero with conception, and there is no indication of any SISAC until the 16th week of gestation [1]. After that point, the indications gradually increase as the human develops. Birth is certainly not the end point of this development. The human brain doesn't stop developing until sometime in the third decade [1] (i.e. 20's) of a human's life. My response to Pro's second argument is that he has inaccurately portrayed my own argument. This is a fallacious form of argument known as a "straw man." [5 - See for explanation of term, not as evidentiary support] Pertinently, I never stated that it is OK to kill organisms if "they have a lower SISAC." In fact, I stated explicitly that it is morally repugnant to inflict pain upon or kill creatures that exhibit a degree of SISAC that is less than that of the average man. This is what I said in round 1: The intrinsic moral and ethical value of an organism is positively correlated with the degree to which it exhibits SISAC. Stated differently, the more SISAC an organism exhibits, the greater the intrinsic moral value of that organism's life. RE: Positions of pro-life adversaries - I have no opinions on those positions. I will defend my positions, not the positions of others. I'm sort of under the gun here. I intend to introduce new arguments in the next round. Sources - 1 - http://www.nature.com... 2 - http://www.nytimes.com... 3 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 4 - http://books.google.com... 5 - http://en.wikipedia.org...