Abortion is generally immoral

RebuttalsPremise 1: The term "fertilized egg" is a misnomer as the sperm and egg cease to exist once the zygote, a new living human being, has been brought into existence. However, Con does not dispute this premise.Premise 2: There are four major differences between a pre-birth human and a post-birth human. They are:1) Size -- this doesn't work because men are bigger than women, yet they do not have more of a right to life than women. Therefore, just because the unborn are smaller than born humans does not nullify their right to life.2) Level of development -- toddlers are less developed than adults, yet they do not have less of a right to life. Since the unborn are less developed than toddlers, it does not follow that they have less of a right to life.3) Environment -- I am an American who has been to Italy, yet that did not change who I am. As such, an eight-inch journey down the birth canal does not fundamentally change who the baby is. The baby five minutes after birth is the same baby five minutes before birth.4) Degree of dependency -- infants are dependent on their mothers, yet it is not morally permissible to kill them. A child who cannot drive is more dependent than an adult who can, yet they have no less a right to life than adults. As such, even though the unborn are more dependent it does not follow they have less of a right to life.I have justified this premise. If Con hopes to falsify it, he must show a difference between the pre-born and post-born that justifies the moral permissibility of killing it.Premise 3: Both of the premises Con offered follow from my first premise. Innocence is the key, which he has seemed to glance over. It is not always wrong to kill a human being, but it is prima facie wrong to kill an innocent human being, one who has not done anything to deserve death.I have shown why it is wrong to kill them because of their intrinsic value. It is wrong to kill a human being without just cause. If you require a reason to kill an adult human being or a child, then you require a reason to kill an unborn human because they belong to the same species. It is special pleading to say we can kill the unborn without just cause, but we need one to kill a born human.Premise 4: Abortion is the act of killing a human being to terminate a pregnancy. There are three ways you can terminate a pregnancy: you can carry the child to term and give birth, you can carry the child to viability and deliver via c-section, or you can have an abortion. Having an abortion is the only method of terminating a pregnancy that actively results in the death of a human being. You must kill the child in order to terminate the pregnancy in this manner. It is not simply depriving them of life, but it is physically killing them either by chemicals, dismemberment, etc.I will now respond to Con's counter-arguments.Lack of Harms ArgumentPremise 1: Abortion takes the life of a living human being. The right to life trumps a person's right to convenience, therefore abortion results in an overriding harm.Premise 2: ValuesHere Con attempts to trap pro-lifers by appealing to 100 embryos in danger and an eight-year-old girl. However, this analogy fails to take into account triage. Those 100 embryos may go back into cold storage if I were to save them, but there is no guarantee they would ever be implanted, or that they wouldn't ever be used for research. The eight-year-old girl is the logical choice to save because she stands a grater chance of survival than those 100 embryos.Let me pose a similar scenario to Con: Suppose you are in a burning house. There is an eight-year-old stranger in one room and your eight-year-old child in the other and you can only save one. You would most likely rescue your child over the stranger. Even though you placed a greater value on your child doesn't make the stranger any less intrinsically valuable.DesiresHere Con attempts to appeal to desires to show whether someone deserves a right to life or not. But present (or actual) desires do not determine when one should logically have a right to life. Consider this scenario:Say your uncle Bob is in a major car accident which results in severe brain trauma. All his past experiences are wiped out and everything that he knew and was able to do will have to be re-learned. He is essentially like a pre-conscious fetus. In order for Con's position to work, Bob will have lost his right to life and it would now be morally permissible to kill Bob for any reason, unjustified.I will offer two examples that show why having desires does not instill a right to life (paraphrased for space constraints):1) The Problem of the Indoctrinated SlaveA person, such as a slave, may be indoctrinated to believe he has no interests but he still has a prima facie right not to be killed, even if he has no conscious desire for, or interest in, a right to life. Even if the slave is never killed, we would still think that he has been harmed precisely because his desires and interests have been obstructed from coming to fruition. [1]We would say this slave still has a right to life despite being indoctrinated to believe he doesn't.2) The Problem of Creating Brainless Human BeingsSuppose the method of cloning were used to create humans for the express purpose of extracting their organs for the original person to use. Suppose that we removed some of their brain cells so that they would essentially be born brain-dead for the purpose of harvesting their organs. [2]According to Daniel Brock, "this body clone would be like an anencephalic newborn or presentient fetus, neither of whom arguably can be harmed because of their lack of 'capacity for consciousness.'" Yet, Brock maintains, "most people would likely find the practice of purposely creating non-sentient human beings 'appalling and immoral, in part because here the cloned later twin's capacity for conscious life is destroyed solely as a means to benefit another."Moral Obligations ArgumentPremise 1: The mother bears a responsibility for creating a naturally needy child, so she bears a responsibility for caring for that child. Carrying a pregnancy to term falls under ordinary, not extraordinary, care.Say you come across a machine that when you press a button it gives you a pleasurable experience, but 1 in 100 times a baby pops out. If you press the button for the experience, you are also responsible for the creation of that child and caring for that child. You can't simply leave the child there to starve.Premise 2: Agreed, but it is the only means of terminating the pregnancy that results in actively killing the unborn human.Premise 3:In the case of pregnancy, you cannot "unplug" the unborn human without killing her. The violinist analogy would be more correct if you must stab the violinist in the heart before you can unplug from him.Additionally, when a child is conceived they are living in the only place in the entire universe they can survive. In Thomson's analogy you are hooked up to the violinist through an act of violence (being kidnapped), but the vast majority of pregnancies were through consensual acts of sexual intercourse.By creating the child, she has also created the child's neediness. The child would not be needy if she was not brought into existence in the first place. The parents are responsible for the child's existence and neediness.I have shown that since the preborn are human with an inherent right to life, it should be respected. Additionally, if you commit an act which can result in the creation of a needy child, you are responsible for caring for her.[1] Lee, Patrick, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, pp. 7-31[2] Beckwith, Francis in an article found here: http://www.tandfonline.com...;[3] Brock, Daniel (1997) "Cloning Human Beings: An assessment of the ethical issues pro and con. In Cloning Human Beings, vol. 2 (pp. E1-E23). Rockville, MD: National Bioethics Advisory Commission.