Abortion and the right to life

Again, I thank The Bomb for issuing this challenge.He has assumed that the unborn are living humans and as such, I will not defend that as it has been assumed for the purpose of this debate. He has gone the route of the bodily rights argument to show that the unborn do not have a right to life (or at least, the wishes of the mother supercedes the unborn's right to life, if it has one).While Con defines the right to life as "the right to the bare necessities to live," in the case of the pro-life position it is more accurately defined as "the right not to be killed."Con brings up the famous violinist analogy postulated by pro-choice philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson (updated to include a rock star). While on the surface this analogy seems to resemble pregnancy quite well, it actually doesn't for several key reasons.First, most pregnant women are not bedridden. They are able to go places. They are not stuck to a bed for nine months.Second, in the original case that Thompson relates, you are kidnapped by by the Society of Music Lovers and forced to be connected to this famous violinist. I'm not sure if that's where Con was going with this, but the vast majority of pregnancies are not forced. In most cases, a child is created through a consensual act by two adults. They are not forced into the situation. Con is a little ambiguous on whether you are forced to give him use of your kidneys and asked not to disconnect, or if the person in question was just given the choice before hand. But either way, in this scenario the person has no obligation to allow this musician to use his kidneys (or other internal organ) because he is not responsible for the situation this musician finds himself in, sad as it is.As such, it is not hypocritical to saw the person has no obligation to allow this musician to use his organs, even for a relatively short period of time (nine months).As for when Con puts his argument in another sense, the same argument against the violinist analogy stands.So even though the unborn is living off of something that is technically "not theirs" (e.g. the woman's uterus, the nutrients she takes in, etc.), the unborn still has a right to life that is immoral to take away because the child exists due to a consensual act between two people. The child did not bring itself into existence. To create a needy child only to kill that child is irresponsible and barbaric. To say nothing of the fact that the woman's body actually goes through changes to facilitate carrying the child for nine months.Regarding Con's question of the innocence of the unborn, he, himself, says that "innocence implies having done no wrong." As the fetus has done no wrong, it is immoral to kill her, especially since she has not done anything deserving of death. It is irrelevant that the fetus has an imperfect nature that will cause her to do wrong things. There's no guarantee that she would ever do anything deserving of death. Suppose she does grow up to commit a criminal act: you are proposing killing her even though she may only grow up to shoplift from a supermarket. Also, this raises another ethical question: do you have the right to punish someone before they are guilty of a crime?Unborn humans are clearly not parasites. Most pregnancies are not harmful to the mother, and the unborn are biologically human while a parasite is a different biological organism from the host. A parasite is an invading organism from an inside host, but the sperm and egg come together and create a brand new human inside the woman's body, and she moves from the ovaries to the uterus, all inside the woman's body. You can view this webpage for some more reasons why the unborn are not parasites. [1] The unborn are also not tumors or tapeworms. Tumors and tapeworms are detrimental to a woman's health, and most pregnancies do not result in harm to the mother. Procreation is a natural process. The zygote implants itself in a location where every zygote goes to implant itself (unless something goes horribly awry, such as in ectopic pregnancy). The zygote is not invading the woman's body, it is implanting itself in the only place in the universe it can survive because it was created by a consensual act between two parties.Regarding Con's final point, abortion is not self-defense. It is illegal to use excessive force to stop someone from harming you. Most pregnancies do not result in harm to the mother so killing the unborn child is excessive force (and to be clear, I believe that abortions are morally justified if the mother's life is in immediate danger and both mother and child cannot be saved). Abortion is not a moral method for making sure she benefits from her nutrients, especially if a simple change in diet can be instituted.I have shown how Con's arguments fail. The right to life is our most fundamental right as human beings, and as human beings (which is supported by science and reason) the unborn from fertilization should receive the same protection from death that we have. The unborn are innocent, as I have shown, and the conclusion logically follows from the premises.[1] http://www.l4l.org...;