Abortion is a mother's right.

Contrary to what my opponent has stated, the "unborn entity" is certainly the point of contention. Whether or not something should be killed or not is determined by what that "something" is. And earlier in the debate, the opponent conceded points 2-4 in my syllogism, so the premise of this resolution is founded on the first premise: "The unborn entity, from the moment of concept, is a full-fledged member of the human community."My arguments are founded on axioms that are grounded in logic and philosophical reasoning. My opponent superficially describes my arguments (e.g., "arguments on photo albums") and implements the fallacy of argumentum ad passiones, or "appeal to emotion." [1] My opponent is mistaken when he states that different animal embryos are "basically identical." There are certainly several physical and developmental differences among them. [2] However, the difference that I would like to emphasize for this debate is the inherent potential to develop into a human being; a shark embryo does not possess this trait. A human embryo is programmed to develop the structures and functions of a human being, because it is a human embryo, in type. Hence, the equivocation between human and non-human embryos that my opponent attributes to my argument is completely inaccurate and such a use of moral equivalence would be absurd. My opponent then shows a set of embryos of various species and challenges the reader to evaluate moral worth. This point whithers down to the principle that "appearance determines moral worth," which is inaccurate and does not serve the opponent's argument. For example, if a living human being has serious injuries causes him to be unrecognizable as a human being to me, that does not mean that he has less moral worth as a human being. Furthermore, if I were a sociopath and perceived the life of another person to be of no moral significance, would my killing someone have no moral bearing due to that fact alone? Of course not; limited, arbitrary human perception does not set moral worth. To further elaborate on my opponent's statement, "It is typically considered, however, that the process of birth is what brings a person into the human community, not conception": 1) This statement appeals to popularity and does not serve the opponent's point. 2) In the everyday definition of "human community," indeed, birth is considered the gateway into it; however, in this debate, we are discussing this "community" in a sense of moral equivalency. Hence, the opponent's statement implements semantic ambiguity to uphold his case. Photo AlbumQuestion posed by my opponent: "Ever tried building a house out of seeds?" No. To my opponent: Have you ever tried to host a running marathon for infants? Again, a tree and a seed are simply at different stages of development; in the same way, an infant and an adult are at different stages of development. But when we inquire into the TYPE of seed, we will label it by the name of the tree; in the same way, we can label an embryo as human, as opposed to, say, dog. The dilemma that the opponent creates with this analogy simply misrepresents the reality of the situation at hand. Then my opponent proposes various criteria that supposedly devalue the morality of an embryo as a human. He brings up the issue of dependency; many babies are born needing supplemental oxygen support... Are they morally sub-human? He brings up unconsciousness and unawareness; are temporarily fainting or sleeping people morally sub-human? He then says that a human embryo is solely different from those of other species due to the species of the mother. This is absurd, because there are physical differences, as well as the inherent programmed potential to become a specific species over another. From a metphysical standpoint, there is a spectrum of life development without pause (i.e., death), and hence, one's identity remains the same from the start of this development (i.e., conception) to the end (i.e., death.)SLEDa. As the oak seed (a.k.a. "acorn") sprouts into the oak tree, we can analogize each stage of its development with the stages of development of a human being. An oak seed becomes a oak sapling, like a human embryo becomes a human infant. Throughout, however, the seed and sapling remain oak in type, just like the embryo and infant remain human in type. b. Droppedc. Droppedd. The opponent cherry-picks a new criterion to exclude diabetic people by saying that th function must be innately nonexistent. Okay. If someone who is born without legs (and did not develop them during prenatal development) less human than someone who did develop them, even though he may be more dependent on others due to his lack of legs? We can see that the dependency argument is absurd, even as the opponent's arbitrary criteria narrow down. Natural AbortionsThe opponent does not contest this.---In conclusion, the unborn entity, from the moment of concept, is a full-fledged member of the human community. Therefore, it is immoral to kill it, as it has the same moral significance as a human at any other stage of development. The resolution has been refuted. ---[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://wishihadgills.files.wordpress.com...