Abortion is generally immoral

My ArgumentPremise 2: I have shown that since there is no fundamental difference between the preborn and the postborn, the preborn enjoy the same intrinsic value as the postborn. If it is immoral to kill a born person without just cause, it is likewise immoral to kill a human in the womb. Con has not offered sufficient reason to support killing a human in utero. Even the presence of ideal desires does not ensure one human has intrinsic value over another. I will explain further in a moment.Premise 3: Con has not proven my argument from round 2 invalid; quite the opposite, the conclusion is logically supported by the premises. I have even shown how my argument is sound.In order to "detach" the unborn from the mother, you must actively kill it. While we do not have the right to someone else's internal organs, we do not have the right to kill someone to ensure they don't use our organs.Premise 4:I have shown that the abortion has the primary effect of killing the unborn. This is even common knowledge. Abortions kill a living member of humanity. There are ways to terminate a pregnancy that don't result in killing the embryo/fetus.Abortions kill an innocent human being, and human beings are intrinsically valuable by virtue of being human. If you consider it immoral to kill a postborn human without just cause, it is also immoral to kill a preborn human without just cause because the same human out of the womb is the same human that was in the womb. We were all once a fetus/embryo/zygote. A zygote develops into an embryo, which develops into a fetus, which develops into an infant, which develops into an adolescent, which develops into a teenager, etc. Con has not proven my argument invalid or unsound. Therefore I have met my burden of proof that abortion is generally immoral. Lack of Harms Argument Premise 1:I would agree that if abortion did not cause an overriding harm then it would not necessarily be immoral (although it might still be). However, Con would have to prove that depriving the unborn of its life is not an overriding harm.Premise 2:ValuesCon's analogy of the 100 embryos versus the eight-year-old child doesn't prove anything. If I were trapped in a burning building I would have seconds to rescue one or the other. I would have no way of knowing if the 100 embryos would ever be implanted or used for research. The correct course of action would be to rescue the eight-year-old child because she has the greater chance of life. Con can twist the result any way he likes, rescuing the eight-year-old child results in the best chance of good coming out of the rescue.I don't value one life over 100. If our own child is in danger as is another child, every parent would rescue their own kid. They could do no different if they were a good parent. This does not mean the unfamiliar child is less valuable as a human being. DesiresThe argument for actual or ideal desires is an ad hoc requirement for value. There is no reason not to attribute ideal desires to an embryo who has not yet developed the capacity for consciousness or to know that it has desires. One might say that an embryo has an ideal desire -- it would have the desire to live if it had the current capacity to recognize a desire and voice that desire.This is the point of the indoctrinated slave -- he has a desire, to continue being a slave and not to want to live. He will never have any other desires because of his indoctrination. Yet it would still be wrong to kill him as it would be wrong to kill an embryo who does not yet "know" that it has a desire to live.With the cloned, brain-dead human, most people would still recognize that a harm has been done to this human. Harm, philosophically, is to leave someone worse off. To clone someone without the capacity for thought or for any of the things that make humans valuable is to leave them worse off than if you had just cloned them and allowed them to be born without tampering with them. Even though this human technically has no desires, harm has still been done to him. He is left worse off than if he had been allowed to grow and mature normally. Again, he has no "ideal" desires but it would still be wrong to clone brain dead humans.Finally, in the analogy of Uncle Bob, we see the inconsistency of this position. Con says that Uncle Bob would still have a right to live, although who Uncle Bob was is gone. He is essentially no different than an embryo yet Con still says he has a right to live whereas an embryo in the same state would not. Bob does not have any "ideal" desires yet he still has a right to live. To say that a preborn human's right to live trumps a woman's right to convenience is not secular. I can not kill anyone because they are in my way. That would be immoral. An embryo (which Con and I once were) should also not be killed because of convenience due to the fact that they are humans with intrinsic value. However, even if his argument is correct and we have not determined the value of the preborn yet, then his entire Lack of Harms Argument should be disregarded because he, likewise, could not state that a woman's right to convenience does trump the unborn's right to life.Moral Obligations ArgumentPremise 1:Con stated, "If allowing a state of affairs exceeds one's moral obligations, then terminating that state of affairs is not generally immoral." While terminating a state of affairs may not necessarily be immoral, terminating a state of affairs in a way that is immoral would be an immoral act. Killing someone to terminate a state of affairs would be immoral, as I have shown.Premise 2:Conceded only insofar as I recognize that abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. However, it is the only method of terminating a pregnancy that is immoral because you are actively killing an intrinsically valuable human being with the inherent capacity to perform all the functions that make humans valuable. Again, if terminating the state of affairs results in an immoral act, then terminating the state of affairs is, itself, immoral.Premise 3:I have not conceded anything. Abortions due to rape only account for 1% of abortions, so the vast, vast majority of abortions are done due to socio-economic reasons. [1] If you accept abortions in the case of rape, that only proves that abortions are morally permissible in the case of rape. That does not prove that abortions are generally moral because rape abortions are in the very, very small minority. However, I do not support abortions in the case of rape because the child should not be punished for her father's actions, and one act of violence should not be compounded upon another. Con still tries to adapt the violinist analogy to more accurately fit the situation but the fact remains -- you are not responsible for the violinist's condition. When a man and woman have sex, they are responsible for the child's creation and therefore responsible for creating and caring for a needy child.Con still tries to argue out of what abortions actually are -- they are not simply depriving someone of life, they are actively killing an unborn child. They are not disconnecting the woman from the violinist, they are stabbing him in the heart to kill him, then unplugging.He has also not responded to my baby machine analogy, instead insisting on a war of analogies. If you press the button for the pleasureable experience, you are responsible for the baby it creates.Con's modifications do nothing to the analogy. You are still ultimately not responsible for the violinist's condition. You are extending his life, not bringing him into existence, as is the case when a child is conceived. I am low on characters but suffice it to say, I have met my burden of proof in spades. Abortion is generally immoral. [1] http://www.guttmacher.org...;