Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices

I've had a load of exams recently, so apologies for the posting this as a last minute thing. I appreciate your patience and understand that it sometimes upsets the flow of the debate. Observations OBV 1 - The resolution of this debate is an interesting one that can have the burdens differently set out depending on what Con argues. Since Con does not argue that "adolescents ought to NOT have the right to make autonomous medical decisions", then I assume that he has a smaller burden to fulfil than me because I must prove the resolution to be true but my opponent simply needs to prove my arguments false and to show that they should not have the right to make autonomous medical decisions. OBV 2 - My opponent argues from the perspective of a moral nihilist. Therefore his burden requires him to prove that actions cannot be intrinsically moral or immoral. I must argue that actions can be intrinsically moral and immoral and must also argue that adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical decisions (as I have shown). Undefined Terminology We are going deep into very specific arguments here so some terminology needs to be defined before I can begin with my rebuttals. Moral: the principles of right and wrong behaviour [1]. Immoral: not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics [2]. Moral Nihilism: the view that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral [3]. Moral Realism: the view that there are moral truths [4]. Right: morally good, justified, or acceptable [5]. Framework My opponent criticizes the significance and the impact of the libertarian framework because the reasons to buy it haven’t been explained and the morals presented are subjective. The message, I thought, was self explanatory so I will make a reiteration for clarification purposes. Something can be morally correct. I have proven this by showing that my position manages to coincide with what is right. Since libertarians prioritize individuals, this ultimately means that they prioritize the individual's human rights (as I have mentioned), the concision between libertarianism and utilitarianism is no mistake or contradiction. A libertarian believes in helping the individual and if many individuals are at risk then the libertarian should be more inclined to help the group of people rather than the one individual thus proving that libertarianism and utilitarianism are coexist in one society. Rebuttals My opponent makes a few pre-emptive rebuttals that I’m just going to mention before I get into the actual rebuttals. I do not believe in God and I do not believe that God created morals - therefore, God is not relevant and does not need to be addressed. Since the definition of “right” is morally good, justified or acceptable, in order to prove morals to exist I must show that it is good in the sense that it is acceptable and is justified. I have already proven it to be acceptable by showing (in my initial argument) that society generally accepts this and innate principles are considered to act under our common understanding of morals / our universal morality [6]. I have justified this by presenting the libertarian framework. Since it can lead to various mental disorders then we ought to allow them to make autonomous medical decisions due to the fact that if we fail to allow adolescents to make these decisions then the future generation will suffer from mental illnesses (an argument which my opponent dropped) and will consequently mitigate the development of the human race, the world, etc. Ergo, this is justified. Because I have proven that it is acceptable and it is justified this ultimately means that it is right and is therefore morally good. We can look at morals from the Buddhist perspective to negate the rest of this contention. Buddhists believe that the 3 causes of suffering are ignorance, hatred and greed - these are known as the 3 poisons. To alleviate suffering you must rid yourself of the 3 poisons. This is a good way to view an action as wrong. Causing suffering comes under the definition of wrong and therefore Buddhist philosophy is a rational viewpoint. Since people will get mental illnesses due to their lives being taken out of their control - this causes suffering and is considered morally wrong, a priori. My opponent then makes questions as to why all morals aren’t always followed. There are many reasons why morals aren’t always followed. The being that they were never taught what is right and what is wrong [7], the second is that they may have a mental health problem that prevents them from understanding or acknowledging morality [8]. The list goes on. Morality can only exist if somebody has the capacity to understand moral truths. This is why animals, people with mental illnesses, plants and inanimate objects cannot and do not (necessarily) have moral understandings and do not necessarily have an understand what is right and what is wrong [9]. They cannot be expected to understand moral truths if they do not have the capacity to understand what morality even is. Showing that some people do not act morally, does not mean that morals do not exist. My opponent’s second argument is about age and choices. My opponent, apparently, believes that children will act irrationally when told to have a body part amputated but an adult will not. The shock and fear of having a significant surgery or amputation is almost always there regardless of whether you are a child or an adult [10]. What is important to note is that it always remains your choice (unless your choice is impossible to receive - ie. you do not say what you want to happen or you are in a coma, for example). What happens, to both adults and children, is that they are informed of the risks, harms and possible side effects. They provide a non-bias view and give them all the possible consequences of the different options that they take - this is called counselling. After explaining the consequences the doctor will tell them the best decision to make (in their opinion) and may or may not attempt to justify this further. If after all of this, the child wants to go through with the more harmful option then the decision should be allowed, so as to not harm the child further (with mental illnesses, stress, etc.). By using force, you violate that child’s human rights and if they are extremely unwilling to undergo the procedure then force could be seen as a means of torture! This violates the hippocratic oath, this is a form of medical torture and this is a form of psychological torture [11][12]. Finally, my opponent attempts to use Hitler’s morality in an attempt to prove that morality is subjective and cannot always be trusted. I do not advocate every single person’s view on morality because the reality is that some people’s views on morality are wrong because they do not coincide with the more specific definitions. Hitler's views on morality were not viewed as acceptable by many since his morals were only truly unveiled in the post voting period of the election for the new Kaiser [13]. After that many people regretted voting for him and many people that voted for initially despised his views on morality [13]. It is believed that Hitler most likely had one of these mental illnesses: hysteria, psychopathy, megalomania or paranoid schizophrenia [14]. All of these problems are associated with an impaired sense of morality. This means that Hitler was most likely incapable of graspoing the concept of morality and as a result Hitler should not be used as an example of poor morality because his ideologies do not coincide with the definition of morality and he wasn’t even aware of morality. Sources [1] http://dictionary.reference.com... [2] http://dictionary.reference.com... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org... [7] http://www.enotes.com... [8] http://www.academia.edu... [9] http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk... [10] https://en.wikipedia.org... [11] https://en.wikipedia.org... [12] https://en.wikipedia.org... [13] https://books.google.co.uk...[14] https://en.wikipedia.org...