Rape Should Not Be An Exception In Abortion Policy

1. Facts Can Only Conclude "So What" without ValuesMy opponent conjectures that we must turn to facts when there is philosophical disagreement. Yet in any case that philosophy is not considered then the facts can not be said to have any value. With no philosophical judgement at all the facts can only conclude "so what", because nothing is important unless it is given value.Facts are important as they give evidence that a certain action will relate to your values, but facts can not determine what is valued at the most basic level. However, a fact is that many people think and act as if this were "life".It is a scientific fact that the fetus is biologically alive, it is also a scientific fact that the sperm and ova are alive before they even come together as an embryo.Of course it would be silly to require protection of sperm or ova.Notice I can say it would be silly without factually showing why it is silly and still have a valid point. The point is proven through emotional reception. Some people might actually not get it but that doesn't invalidate my point. That this would be silly is a collectively held value. Similarly a society can hold a valid collective point of view on the question of abortion. If people focus on the brain as the seat of consciousness it makes sense to allow abortion up to that point. If people focus on the "coming together" of the embryo, conception. If people focus on the baby being born abortion can just be legal. There are many various opinions found in our society between "protection of the right to life at conception" to "protection of the right to life starting at birth". Society has already arbitrarily said "no" to protecting "sperm" or "ova" and "yes" to protecting a newborn that can not truly be said to be sentient.2. A More Similar ComparisonWhether we like it or not a person can even invite someone into their house and in the middle of a chaotic blizzard and knowing the person has no where else to go they can kick them out. This seems cruel to us, yet we legally tolerate it, because to try to legislate against such a specific use of property rights puts property rights as a whole at risk. As the body should be even more protected from government intervention than property, given that the body is more personal than mere property then unless we would legislate a responsibility not to remove people you invited from your home then we should require a woman not to abort a fetus from her body unless the fetus' right to life is more important than the woman's right to her body. If that were the case then it would be inconsistent reasoning to then hold that people should not have a responsibility to keep people they invite in their homes.3. What Side I Am OnI made it very clear in this debate that I am only arguing that IF abortion is illegal then rape ought not to be an exception to the policy. I am not taking any position on abortion's general legality during this debate. My point about 2nd class citizenship is that if abortion is generally illegal but not in the case of rape then you are effectively giving the fetus a "conditional right to life", as "the right to life" is traditionally part of our concept of "personhood" that is effectively calling the "fetus" a "conditional person" or as is sometimes called, a "second-class citizen", a person entitled to some rights but not all rights.However, if the government instead takes the pro-choice position and generally allows abortion it avoids doing this, and the fetus is then simply not a "person" at all.So the view, if implemented that a fetus should have the right to life except in cases where the fetus was fathered by rape uniquely creates a precedent of a "class of persons" that is not "fully person". This could set a precedent leading to certain races, ethnicities, or the disabled being deemed "a person but not fully person". Both the consistent pro-choice and consistent pro-life positions avoid this pitfall. "Only if it's rape" does not.4. Shades Of Gray In ResponsibilityCon claims that because a woman who wasn't raped is responsible for the fetus coming into existance it merits considertion that she be required to sustain the fetus' life with her body.However, what about a woman who used protection? Or a woman who was reassured by her male partner that he was steile but in fact was not? There are many shades of grade in responsibility. Even with rape the woman could have taken birth control pills to avoid having gotten pregnant. What about in a case where it wasn't rape but the woman did take birth control pills and it failed?There are too many variables involved to fairly say we can allow abortion just in case of abortion if responsibility is the issue. This would require us in order to be consistent in our application of reasoning to allow abortion in cases of failed birth control, and in cases where the man lied about being sterile(and to prevent abuse doing that would have to be punished in some way even if it was just with a fine, and the result would be a clogged-up court system determining whether a man lied about being sterile or not just because a woman wants an abortion)There are also cases of "rape" such as where the argument is that she could not consent because of alcohol or other intoxication where the lack of personal responsibility on her part is very questionable, namely that if she avoided getting intoxicated she wouldn't have been in an "incapacitated" position in the first place and would not have made a decision under the influence. It isn't fair to say a woman who gets drunk, says yes, and then in the morning calls it rape should be able to have an abortion but a woman who takes birth control pills and only sleeps with her husband and just isn't ready for a baby should not be allowed to.Having abortion illegal but opening it up that much would be a waste of a law, since practically any woman would then be able to argue that she has the right to an abortion under the conditions upon which it is allowed. This would encourage people, particularly women to be dishonest. In particular it would be a problem if courts were bogged down determining whether or not a man lied about being sterile, and if that wasn't in some way penalized then the men would willingly claim that just so their partners could have abortions, which would only further promote dishonesty.ConclusionSince you can not consistently make rape an exception without making failed birth control an exception or men pretending to be sterile an exception and since doing so would render the anti-abortion law unenforceable the position of making abortion illegal except for cases of rape must either result in an unenforceable law or one with inconsistencies that set either bad policy precedents or sets a precedent for more inconsistency and hence abritrariness in lawmaking.