Raped Women Should Be Euthanised

Conduct Con in his opening has referred to the resolution as “disgusting”, an “abomination” and has attacked me directly and accused me of not taking this debate seriously. These are subjective and a form of ad homenum, hence voters should take this into account when voting on conduct. Pro equivocates euthanasia with ‘murder’ equivocates several times in his round, here is the definition of murder: “to kill (a person) in a deliberate and unlawful way : to commit the murder of (someone)”[1] The debate would establish lawfulness, hence I kindly ask Con to stop slipping in presuppositional word swaps and other pot-shots in his rebuttals. Presuppositions This is not a public policy debate, this debate addresses the truth of the ‘ought’ value of the resolution, “Raped Women Should Be Euthanized”. Thus the pragmatics of the implementation of this resolution are off-topic, as this resolution is akin to ‘We should find a cure for cancer’, or ‘We should prevent murders’, such resolutions may or may not be practically feasible to accomplish, but it is an objective fact of whether or not the ‘ought’, or ‘should’ stands, regardless of whether it practically follows. Hence, I am not obliged to follow Con’s routes of ‘Idealism’ and ‘Realism’ in affirming the resolution; I have made my presuppositions explicit enough anyway. Indeed the ‘we should’ part of the resolution affirms that we should do what is within the interest of society, which ultimately links back to morality and overall public interest. Pro’s affirmation of ‘minimizing suffering’, while a contributing factor, is not the only consideration that must be made , and is just a case of Con trying to change the parameters of the debate. Indeed one of my major justifications for euthanasia was that it would allow more of a nation’s resources (person-hours, emotional resources, as well as physical and monetary) to be put towards other people leading happy and content lives. Gendered Arguments There is nothing within the resolution that prohibits the same resolution applying to male or transgendered people, it’s just that this debate doesn’t extend that far. Moreover Con does nothing to affirm why that’s a bad thing anyway. There are obvious practical reasons, namely that we do not have as many statistics on male-rape as we do on female-rape, moreover males have different sets of hormones, and are affected differently by the secondary effects of rape (anxiety, depression, etc).[2] Thus, if it is a fact that men generally do not suffer the same secondary, or physical effects as females, especially if a significantly reduced amount then a strong case can be made for justified differential treatment of men and women. I am not stating we should discriminate in this case, I am stating that this resolution doesn’t intend to, and even if it did lead to such discrimination it would be for objectively justifiable reasons (and it would be Con’s burden to establish why we should ignore such, which completely ignores the sociological, psychological and biological issues at play). Hence Con’s point hits thin air on both fronts, and Con’s presuppositions actually need substantiation. “…and as such assumes a heteronormative framework, which harms sexual minorities.” This is false, the resolution doesn’t preclude an equal treatment of men & women, and even if true, the “harming of sexual minorities” doesn’t necessarily entail (bare assertion by Con). Realism “… you still have to vote Con because he isn’t going to access any impacts in the real world.” If true, then so what? This debate is whether or not we should euthanize, and a moral case enough to affirm the ‘ought’ or ‘should’ outright (see ‘Presuppositions’). Even if we do not have an effective system that would discover women who have been raped (reporting), then a further case can be made that such a system needs to be developed and installed for weeding out rape victims for euthanisation. We already have such systems in place for animal abuse, where countless animals are inevitably found and euthanized each year after suffering physical abuse by their owners. Hence current pragmatics doesn’t preclude the truth of the resolution. Pro asserts that this would ‘hand the rapists a blank check’, but on the contrary such a policy would significantly increase rape awareness, and also would obviously lead to renormalization of the state punishments anyway. Rape is clearly intended to encompass sexual assault with sexual intercourse, hence Pro’s ‘touching’ arguments are outside the scope of this debate. Moreover the resolution doesn’t entail throwing women into prison, it entails euthanizing them, which is substantially cheaper than incarceration (~$35). [6] Practical concerns Con overstates the prevalence of rape in his own source (18.2%, not 20%), which is a cherry-picked statistic. While this misses the point of the debate (see ‘Presuppositions’), it also self-defeating, since clearly we should be jailing/executing all rapists without exception anyway, which according to Pro’s statistics number ~ 10-20% of the male population. The incarceration rate within the US for any crime is just 0.716%, so in order to fulfil the ‘should’ on incarcerating rapists, we should also be incarcerating an additional ~10% of the US population. Which would leads to exactly the same economic effects that Pro complains about for my position. This is clearly special pleading. To formalize (modus tollens): P1. If we shouldn’t euthanize all raped women for familial/economic reasons, THEN we shouldn’t incarcerate/execute all rapists for familial/economic reasons P2. We should incarcerate/execute all rapists despite family/economic reasons C. “We shouldn’t euthanize all raped women for familial/economic reasons” is false The defence of P1 is for the exactly the same reasoning Con gave for the familial/socio-economical reasons why it’s impractical to euthanize 10-20% of all women, since the impact of incarcerating/executing these men would be pretty much the same. Con asserts that the suffering induced onto the families and economy would outweigh the benefit by “hundreds of orders of magnitude” (that is >10100) and gives zero justification for this. The number of atoms in the universe are <1082, so suffering outweighing this number is physically impossible and seems to be another example of Con exaggerating his case. While the emotional downfall of the families does need to be accounted for, we fails to consider the overall positive effect of: 1. Removing an individual with likely long-term suffering from society 2. Adding a new individual without these long term suffering into society (with the freed up resources) A utilitarian/relative calculation would clearly benefit my position. Pro asserts a demographic crisis (without substantiation), to refute this I will cite China, who is now the world’s leading economy yet has a strong male/female bias (exceeding 1.1:1 and approaching 1.4:1 in some regions) and are growing and maintaining population just fine. Hence Con’s welfare fear mongering is pure fantasy.[3] Pro baldly asserts rebellion and civil way, and the destruction of state, which is prima facie fantastical and with zero evidential support. Moreover even if this is true Con needs to actually demonstrate that this would outweigh the benefits already listed. IV. Morality Con’s arguments here are fuzzy, and are mostly emotional appeals. Con has made no effort to demonstrate it would be moral not to euthanize raped women, especially in spite of the enormous and appalling degree of suffering they, the state and their families endure that I have demonstrated so far. We clearly see fit to euthanize people as capital punishment, and animals who are under sufficient levels of suffering and stress. Moreover Pro doesn’t at all affirm or even suggest what rights women have as individuals that would mitigate the resolution, hence I have nothing to argue against. Why shouldn’t we see humans as a means to a greater good? On utilitarianism, and societal egoism, and many other moral philosophies this would clearly be the way to go. Concessions need to be made to have a maximally good society and Pro’s only affirmation to the contrary is: “….but rather as objects to subject to policy analysis, and that just isn't right” A bald assertion if I have ever seen one. I see fit to reject universal human rights until Con can actually demonstrate they do and should exist, since universal human rights is synonymous with moral objectivism, which is clearly runs into philosophical problems, such as ignorance in biological and psychological differences, and the evolution of moral values over time.[4] “It's Pros burden to prove incorrect the fundamental moral axiom of murdering people being wrong, not my burden to prove it correct” 1. This is a shifting of the BoP, this is Con’s claim, he needs to support it 2. The resolution doesn’t entail murder Only a limited number of moral systems take this as axiomatic, moreover there are many systems in which suffering outweighs the threshold of the benefit of living (e.g. antinatalism).[5] Con defence of the ‘axiom’ entails that an individual should remain alive despite being under the maximal possible excruciating suffering imaginable, since there is “no point in minimizing suffering if we don’t care about the individual who’s suffering we are minimizing”. This is prima facie absurd. It is precisely because we care about the individual’s suffering, and the overall societal benefit that we should euthanize them. Pro’s suicide option concedes the resolution (we should euthanize), and the pragmatics of it is absurd, especially given they have effects and consequences that extend beyond themselves (resources, care). Similarly we don't wait for murderers to hang themselves/turn themselves in. 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