Abortion

Definition Corrections and Developmental Timetable: Zygote: first through third day Blastocyst: second day through second week Embryo: third week through eighth week Fetus: ninth week to birth Quickening: thirteenth week through twentieth week Viability: after 24 weeks Should an unborn entity be terminated at any point during this timetable, an abortion is said to have occur. Thus, an "abortion" simply refers to any termination of pregnancy [Applying Ethics, Olsen., Van Camp., Barry. p. 120]. Notice this definition would then include miscarriages, still births (even though the baby isn't removed from the mother's body yet), fertilized ovum (zygote) that didn't/doesn't attach to the uterus wall., etc. (a long list of various "natural" kinds of abortions can be complied). It is estimated that between 15% to 20% and up to 50% of all fertilized ovum are aborted naturally (spontaneous abortions) [http://www.nlm.nih.gov...] &[http://rationalwiki.org...]. I'm in no way suggesting that the rate of natural "spontaneous" abortions somehow justifies surgical abortions, however, I do think this has relevance in regard to the "moral landscape," and the stage at which abortions can be justified even when the mother's life is not at risk. There is no cause for moral concern as no rights, person-hood or life has been withheld or violated. Round 1 Rebuttal, Logical Inconsistencies: 1) My opponent argues abortion is "on balance" immoral. The reason the phrase, "on balance," is referenced is in order to accommodate concessions; exceptions when we would like abortion to be permissible (when a mothers life in endangered) and still maintain that abortion is immoral most the time. If that position is held, then all of the FLO points and all of the second (medical) points are not proper supporting ideas for the immorality of abortion. The "exception" (to save the mother) would violate both the "FLO" and the outlined "Medical" concepts; not morally proving or justifying a case either way. Why is abortion morally justified and permissible to save the mother? And then would it be morally justified and "on balance" at any stage during the development of the unborn entity? But notice if we make an exception, for any reason, it still nevertheless violates the FLO and Medical arguments presented. Again, ethically and morally, the problems remain. Do we care about EEG brain wave activity when we need to save the mother? 2) Argument for "potential life" is a Slippery Slope fallacy. Can anyone safely say that an acorn IS an oak tree? At what point does an acorn "become" an oak tree? When does an acorn stop being an acorn and is officially an oak tree? Should we care about all acorns if we value all oak trees? A three-day-old blastocyst is a collection of 150 cells. There are over 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. Every time we scratch our arm or face hundreds of thousands of cells, identical to the cells of the blastocyst, are discarded. And yet we do not see anyone blowing up abortion clinics or slaying doctors because we have scratched our noses! This is a biologically accurate analogy to the end of a three-day-old blastocyst. For a three-day-old blastocyst (a clump of 150 cells) does it make sense then to assign potential life? And if we did we would then have to also do the same for all these discarded cells from scratching our nose! It is a biological and scientific-medical fact that anyone of these discarded skin cells could be said to have the same "potential" to "become" a new life (in fact any cell with a nucleus). This is why stem cell research from an blastocyst has been so controversial. I await proper moral justifications for my opponents position that isn't in contradiction of his supporting arguments!