Abortion should be illegal in the United States except when both mother and child might die.

Revive DDO Tournament: Abortion should be illegal in the United States except when both the mother and child's life is endanger. Round One: Presentation of cases. No rebuttals. Rounds Two - Three: RebuttalsRound Four: No new arguments or responses. Side: Con-------------I will address the resolutional framework and then present my case. Thanks to DK and to Subutai for making this round possible. DEFINITIONSShould - indicates desirablility. For example, if i were to say "you should take out the trash," I am expressing what is desirable. Except - indicates an exlusion. For example, if I were to say "take out those bags except the blue one," I am saying that the blue one is excluded from "those bags. "Abortion - Is externally induced termination of the pregnancy designed to result in the destruction of the embryo or fetus. Also, since Pro offers several definitions of "Person," it may become confusing as to what it means, so I would like to present a competing, straightforward explanation of my own:1. Persons are human. I think it is a stretch to try to apply rights of personhood to corportations; i. e. , no corporation would ever have an abortion so it is pointless to discuss the potential for a corporation to have a right to this.2. Persons are living. A corpse is human, but clearly it is pointless to grant it rights under the personhood rationale. It has no autonomy, no ability to feel pain or pleasure, therefore we cannot talk fruitfully about the corpse's rights as a person because it does not need protection against infringements of its personhood such as violations of free will or bodily integrity.3. Therefore, persons are living humans. FRAMEWORKThe resolution poses a relatively clear question to begin with: should abortion be illegal. However, the second half of the topic imposes an important qualification: "except when both the mother and child's lives are endangered. " This qualification is crucial insofar as it says "both" the mother and fetus's lives must be imperiled. If only one of their lives are in jeopardy, it would still be illegal to abort within Pro's world. Thus, Pro has the burden to show that abortion should be ILLEGAL in all situations other than the explicity stated exception. In other words, Pro must argue that such things as the "Rape Exception" are illegal, and that abortion should remain illegal even when only the mother's life or only the fetus's life is in danger. Con--I--have the burden of showing that abortion should be LEGAL in, at the very least, more cases than that one exception. In other words, all that I need to do to negate the resolution is to provide one more addtional exception in which abortion will be allowed. Of course, I will attempt to do more than that, but that is the minimum I have to do to win. Final note about the topic: this is not a resolution about rights. I don't have to show a right to abort, all I have to show is that abortion should be legal in more cases than that one exception. CON's CASENow that I am done with my lenghty lead-in, I will construct my arguments. I will offer several contentions that are independant of one another--showing various additional exceptions to the resolution that should be permitted. Any one of these is sufficient to negate. I will conclude with a final argument about why abortion, in general as opposed to in specific cases, should be legal. Contention One: The Rape ExceptionJudith Thompson, in her famous essay, "A Defense of Abortion," uses the following analogy in her argument: "You wake up in bed one morning and find yourself next to an unconcious violinist. .. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassaed all the avalible medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you and plugged his circulatory system into yours so that your kidneys can filter blood for both of you. You call the doctor and he tells you how sorry he is that you were kidnapped. He tells you that in 9 months they will have what they need to heal the violinist, but if you choose to unplug before then, the violinist will die. " Sure, it would be nice if you remained hooked up to the violinist, but should the law compel you to be so? In the foregoing example, you were forced into an outrageous position whereby your person has been egregiously invaded. You should have the choice to unplug yourself from the violinist. I will present two reasons why this is so: Sub-point A: The State cannot justifiable compel you to save someone. The State cannot compel you to give organs, to donate blood, to fly across the country to perform a surgery, etc. Your ability to excersize your autonomy in these matters outwieghs, legally, the right of the person in need. So, from a legal perspective, the mother can choose simply to "not save" the fetus. In the first 9 weeks for instance, she is not killing it directly, but by aborting it she does deprive it of what it needs to live, just as someone who refuses to give organs is depriving the person in need of a transplant of what they need to live. This is the case when discussing the abortion pill, which resembles an "early miscarriage" except that it is medically induced. [1] If we wish to use another of Thomson's examples to clarify the point, let us use this one (it's a bit updated though; Thomson originally use Henry Fonda): You are ill. The only way you can be cured is if Matt Bomer (or Kim Kardashian if you prefer) kisses your fevered brow. Can the government compel Bomer or Kardashian to fly across the country to come and kiss your fevered brow? Can your friends travel to wherever they live, kidnap them, bring them to you, and force them to kiss your fevered brow? No, obviously not. At this point, we concede that you cannot be compelled to give people what they need to live, and that this is different from murder or like offenses. Sub-point B: The Mother has the right to choose what happens to her body. Why is that your sovereignty over your body is suddenly curtailed by the fact that someone else might die? The law, in Roe v. Wade, asserted that you have a right to privacy, and you cannot get more private than what lies underneath your skin. The UDHR grants you a right to bodily integrity as well [2]. What if the doctor came back and said, "Oh, I misspoke. You need to be connect 19 years, not 9 months. " Surely, you could diconnect yourself from the violinist at some point before those 19 years were up. The law cannot ask or compel you to live with such an invasion of privacy and bodily integrity for that length of time--it is an unreasonable violation of your rights. If we grant that, then by what rationale can we deny that you have the right to disconnect from the violinist before 9 months? Yes, it is a shorter timespan, but if time is the deciding factor, then where do we draw then line--after how long can you disconnect? If that question cannot be answered fairly and non-arbitrarily, then we must either (1) permit you to disconnect at any time, or (2) deny that you have any right to disconnect at all, which seems, on face, extreme. Then, if we accept (1) as our answer, we must also permit the analgous situation of abortion in cases of rape. Contention Two: Saving the Mother's Life We have here two competing rights--the right of the Mother to live, and the right of the fetus to "live. " The question in this case is what are the range of options open to the mother in this instance. I think it is a bit ridiculous to suggest that a mother must sit passively by knowing that she will die if she does not abort but is unable to do so. Thomas provides yet another example to expound on this dilemma: There is a child in a home that is growing at a rapid pace. Soon he will become so huge that he will push the parents against the walls of the home and so crush them to death. The mother cannot get to the door, but she can use a needle to poke the child and deflate him, but doing so will kill the child. Must she simply let herself be crushed to death? No--the mother can exercise a right to self-defense and can deflate the child. As Thomson writes, "In our case there are only two people involved: one whose life is threatened and one who threatens it. .. a woman surely can defend herself against the threat posed to her by the unborn child, even if doing so involves the death of the child. "Contention Three: Abortion, in general, should be legal. Sub-point A: The fetus is not "alive" in its own right; more so it is simply part of the mother's body because it users her body's functions. The most obvious reason for this claim is the the fetus is dependant on a single human in a parasitic relationship. Human beings are independantly functioning, yet a fetus is not. Some might make the counterclaim that, "born human beings can be entirely dependent on other people too, but the crucial difference is that they are not dependent on one, specific person to the exclusion of all others. " [3] Another key point is that a fetus resides in side someone, which is not the cases with humans who live as individuals. The fetus is also incapable of acquring nutrients on it own, unable of disposing of waste on its own, unable of maintaing homeostasis on its own, and it cannot respirate on its own. Sub-point B: Illegal abortions are dangers to the public healthUnsfae abortions are incredibly dangerous [4] and, if there are few safe, legal facilities with expert staff to perform them, the incidents of unsfa abortions will rise. The government therefore has a vested interest in keep abortion legal. SOURCES1 - . http://www.plannedparenthood.org...2 - . http://www.un.org...3 - . http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org...4 - . http://en.wikipedia.org...For more on Thomson, see: . http://en.wikipedia.org...Thank you!