Prohibition of Abortion

Level of Development: First, my opponent have provided no reason for self-awareness to be the defining factor in determining one's humanity or lack thereof. He have provided no evidence whatsoever for the idea that once the third trimester begins, babies magically change from being <blank> to being human. One of my opponents biggest errors thus far has been his failure to answer the following question: "If a fetus is not a human person, what is it?" Since my opponent has failed to provide a counter-interpretation as to what a fetus is, we can only assume that my interpretation, that a fetus is a human person, is true. However, I will defend my interpretation anyways. My opponent's basic argument here is that because a fetus doesn't yet have all of its functions (i.e. self-awareness), they are not human. This argument is invalid because of the following counterexamples: The brain is not even fully developed until people are 25. This means people under the age of 25 do not have all of their functions, does that make them less human? As we get older, we tend to lose functions, does that make us less human? Finally, people with mental disabilities often don't have all the same functions as others, does that make them less human? Of course not, these counter-examples show that the definition of humanity as "having a certain function (e.g. self-awareness)" is inherently arbitrary and flawed. "There have been at least two other instances in American history in which specific groups of human beings were stripped of their rights of personhood as a means of justifying horrific mistreatment. African-Americans and Native-Americans both felt the brunt of a system which tried to create the artificial classification: human, non-person. This distinction wasn't based on an honest evaluation of the evidence, but with an eye towards justifying a specific action. In the case of Native-Americans, they had land. In the case of African-Americans, they had labor. Classifying them as non-persons (even property) provided a moral framework for those in power to forcefully take what they wanted without compensation. Today, "unwanted," unborn children don't hold anything as tangible as land or labor, but their claims on those who would eliminate them are no less significant. They stand in the way of an unencumbered, more self-absorbed lifestyle. Once again, this notion that human beings can be classified as "non-persons" is not built on an objective assessment of the facts, but with an eye towards justifying abortion." -Abort73.com "At this point, some people define the term "person" according to function (call this view thefunctional view of persons). That is, they say that something qualifies as a person if it can do certain things, like think rationally. But this definition of personhood fails. First, there are clear cases in which something qualifies as a person, but cannot do the things required of the functional view of persons. For example, a human person under a general anesthesia does not qualify as a person under the functional view of persons, since a person in this situation does not have the ability to think rationally. Two, the functional view of persons does not fit certain intuitions about persons. For example, if you had a cat that couldn’t purr, couldn’t chase mice, and couldn’t climb trees, you wouldn’t say that your cat isn’t a feline (though you should if you define "feline" in terms of function). Instead, you would say that your cat is a cat that can’t purr, chase mice, or climb trees. In the same way, if you know a human that can’t think rationally (like a fetus, or a person under a general anesthesia), you shouldn’t say that this human isn’t a person, but that this is a person who (at the moment) can’t think rationally. In light of these reasons, the functional view of persons should be rejected." -Abort73.com In the majority opinion in Roe v Wade, Harry Blackmun wrote, "The judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to...resolve the difficult question of when life begins..." This statement is blatantly false, and many doctors and scientists agree: In 1981, a United States Senate judiciary subcommittee received the following testimony from a collection of medical experts (Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, Report, 97th Congress, 1st Session, 1981): "It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School "I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception." Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania "After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception." Dr. Jerome LeJeune, Professor of Genetics, University of Descartes "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic Even Peter Singer, contemporary philosopher and public abortion advocate, and bioethics proffessor at Princeton joins the chorus in his book, Practical Ethics. He writes: "It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being." Faye Wattleton, the longest reigning president of the largest abortion provider in the United States—Planned Parenthood—argued as far back as 1997 that everyone already knows that abortion kills. She proclaims the following in an interview with Ms. Magazine: "I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus." Pardon the massive amount of evidence in an argument, but don't miss the significance of these acknowledgements. Prominent defenders of abortion rights publicly admit that abortion kills human beings. They are not saying that abortion is morally defensible because it doesn't kill a distinct human entity. They are admitting that abortion does kill a distinct human entity, but argue it is morally defensible anyway. I'll get to their arguments later, but the point here is this: There is simply no debate among honest, informed people that abortion kills distinctly human beings. Environment: Refer to the above evidence to refute my opponent's claim that, "I think the fetuses becomes a human in the third triester personally because that's when it has all of its functions." He has provided zero scholarly articles or doctor's opinions to warrant his personal opinion, thus my point of view should be preferred. Aditionally, reference my above argument on this. This argument has nothing to do with environment, it is more of a level of development argument. By saying that a fetus "becomes" a human in the third trimester, he admits that humanity definitely occurrs before birth, so and that is the concern of this argument, so it is a non-issue. However, refer to the fact that this "all of its functions" definition is arbitrary. Who determines what functions make the list of "all functions"? Because this definition is so arbitrary, and because it has been disproven by counter-examples, it must be rejected. So, and I quote, "I think a fetus is a fetus no more no less." What species is a "fetus"? Are they their own distinct life forms that undergo a magical transformation into a completely different life form at some arbitrary point in time? From Abort73.com, "Human embryos and fetuses have a personal, rational nature because they ARE humans beings. Cognitive function increases over time, but the nature is there, even in the womb." The following video summarizes it well, https://www.youtube.com... Finally, born humans should be given precisely the same status as unborn humans, that being personhood. From this, my opponent will attempt to extrapolate that I am contradicting myself by saying that I say a born person should have to die to prevent the death of an unborn person. However, I am simply saying that neither of the two should ever be murdered. It is not an issue over whose life is more important, but rather one of whether someone's life being in danger justifies the murder of another. Once again, judges, when evaluating this round, I call upon you to determine who has made the better case for whether or not fetuses are persons. That question is the sole determiner of whether or not elective abortion is ever justified, and should be weighed most highly of any issue in the debate.