Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices

I apologize for the forfeit. Got knocked off the power grid for a while.Pro seems to be implying that I should just stick to presenting a rebuttal this round, rather than making a constructive case against the resolution. I'll go ahead and oblige.Western Philosophy is okayPro says that all traditional conceptions of personhood fail because they unjustly exclude certain "vulnerable populations". Firstly, this is an a very vague and unsubstantiated assertion; Pro has conveniently neglected to cite even a single specific example of a population being unjustly excluded under a reasonable view of personhood, so we have no reason at all to accept his claim. Such an absolutist dismissal of Western philosophy requires much more warrant than what Pro has given. Secondly, this is a fine example of circular reasoning. Who cares if some beings are excluded? Pro gives us no real answer. If a criterion for personhood is accurate, then beings who do not meet it are not considered persons, and there's nothing wrong with that. The only reason to consider it problematic would be if there existed some other, more accurate criterion indicating that the excluded beings ARE persons; for Pro's concerns to have any merit, he must advocate an alternative conception of personhood... which would refute the thesis of his case (that personhood is an illusion). The takeaway here is that the objection grounding Pro's entire framework relies on reasoning which contradicts his own advocacy. Anyways, the assumptions Pro makes later in his case completely undermine this framework. Quoth the affirmative: "the vampire can never become a legible subject in the straight white male symbolic western America. He can never become a subject, for the vampire does not have the one necessary condition -- it has no mirror reflection. This 'lack' is read as the lack of a soul". In other words, Pro's entire case is based on the premise that human souls exist (and vampires don't have them). However, souls provide a perfect basis for personhood and the existence of the "subject" -- being immaterial and eternally-existent, souls are capable of 1) providing their physical hosts with a a stable sense of identity, and 2) distinguishing their hosts from the rest of the inanimate universe. Yet another instance of self-refutation within Pro's case.Vampires are not anti-thetical to personhoodA vampire's lack of reflection in a mirror does not imply that he/she lacks a soul. Mirrors have nothing to do with souls; they are all about the reflection of light, which distinctly deals with the physical realm [1]. As such, we should turn to physical theories to explain the mirror phenomenon, which there are plenty of [2]. This knocks out the viability of Pro's only 'evidence' that vampires are soulless. Not only that but, vampires also possess all of the fundamental factors which have traditionally defined personhood, like self-awareness, conscious experience, capacity for suffering, self-motivated movement, etc [3].This is problematic for Pro because his entire case depends on the idea that "becoming a vampire" destroys the traditional conception of personhood. It doesn't. Vampires are "persons" under any reasonable interpretation of the term. Even if we accept that there's something egregiously wrong with all conceptions of personhood, the resolution is not affirmed because making the medical decision to become a vampire accomplishes absolutely nothing, metaphysically speaking.Pro cannot become a vampireRemember that the "subject" is NOT impermanent -- Pro's assumption regarding the existence of souls provides us with a stable sense of self & identity. Really, just the fact that Pro is able to consistently refer to himself "Zaradi" is sufficient evidence that the "subject" is not just an illusion. It is a construct which objectively exists in reality, and even if we have trouble explaining what exactly it is, we universally operate under the assumption that it does, indeed, exist. The implication of all this is that 'being' is not "transformative", and Pro cannot simply turn into a vampire at will. No matter how impermanent Pro believes himself to be, vampires have a huge array of defining physical characteristics which are simply unattainable by humans [3]. Moreover, if it is true that vampires don't have souls, then it is even more absurd to believe that one can become a vampire, because it would require somehow getting rid of your own soul... good luck with that. I will conclude this section by turning Pro's voting paradigm against him: if the judges must vote for the advocacy which is most realistically implementable, then they are obligated to vote Con. We don't need to do ANYTHING to negate the resolution because it is already the norm for adolescents to be deprived of the right to make autonomous medical decisions [4]. Meanwhile, there has been much doubt cast upon whether or not it is even POSSIBLE for Pro to become a vampire. It is clear that my position is more realistic, and thus more deserving of endorsement.Vote Con because my round was actually comprehensible, unlike Pro's.(1) http://www.optics4kids.org...(2) http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com...(3) http://twilightsaga.wikia.com...(4) http://www.heal-online.org...