Abortion should be illegal ( Tournament )

I'm just going to address the key points."This isn't a debate related to philosophical" -- Let's look at this, shall we? What is the point of saying "abortion should be illegal". My opponent puts forth the idea that it is murder. Why is murder wrong? We can either use a moral argument, which makes the debate ethical and therefore a case of applied ethics, or philosophy, or we can use a sociological argument, which makes the debate a sociological definition. So, what definition should we use? A sociological one - " an individual being, especially with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture." (minus use of word containing definition, which is why I dislike online dictionaries, it's not useful to define a human as a human being. Someone should tell the website that) OR we use the philosophical one - a self-conscious or rational being. But my opponent states it's a medical debate. What does this mean, though? Medicine is simply a branch of science - and when I have started getting my qualification in physics, one of the questions that comes up in an exam is "what does science do?" or the negative variant of the statement. I can spend a long time on what it does or doesn't do, but the important, line-in-the-sand among scientists is that science, nor any variant of science, does not answer moral questions[1]. Nor does it answer political questions. Nor aesthetic, or any others. What it does is explain, not make judgement. If we are to use a medical definition - a point I have kept saying, which my opponent has ignored as an answer to the important question: why does it matter if something is human? The dead are human. Human cells are human (the clue's in the name).So, with accordance to his SYLLOGISM (They're not arguments [no e after the u]), I disagree with P2 and P3. A human, such as the dead, are not people. Spock, who is not a human, is a person. We grant rights to Spock, but not the dead.( A little bit of maths here)ALIVE HUMAN BEING = Human and person = enjoys rights and liberties granted by the state.TOASTER = Not human and not person = does not enjoy the same rights and liberties.DEAD HUMANS / THE WALKING DEAD = Human but not a person = does not enjoy the same rights and liberties.CAPTAIN SPOCK / ALIENS = Not humans but a person = enjoys same rights and liberties.*(My opponent has not questioned the idea which aliens are people, simply dismissing it as irrelevant. Let personhood = P, Human = H, enjoying rights = E, not enjoying rights = N. HP (alive human beings) = E = PTherefore HP = PAlso H = P/HTherefore HP = P/H Therefore H must = 1, therefore H is irrelevant.Therefore P is the only defining characteristic.Or in a linguistic form, seeing as humans are equal to aliens in rights, yet the only similarity is that they are both 'people', "personhood" must be the characteristic that is not just important, but defining.Therefore, the entire discussion about 'humanity' being important is completely null, as it is irrelevant. My opponent claimed repeatedly that personhood is irrelevant, giving the reason that this is a "medical" discussion. An unfounded and false statement.My opponent also repeatedly claimed that killing is murder - that is the only logical assumption that can be made from his argument. Yet - leaving the legality of abortion as an example to one side for a moment - the Death Penalty is legal in 51% of countries, and 30% have exercised this ability in the last 10 years alone. War consists of killing the opposition. These are killing. These are legal. I could construct another mathematical table to show this, but it is irrelevant, we come to the same conclusion: It is the allowance of the courts that make it (il)legal, not the act of killing. Through my 5 argument points:1 - Feeling pain2 - Complex communicationFirstly, "I don't have time to give examples", so I waited for him to have the time to say so. But then it was "A human doesn't have to show communication". Now I am feeling dissappointed and let down: I was hoping for a spanish foetus! My hopes and dreams have been squashed, and that this point has been DROPPED.3 - Sense of selfMy opponent gave the idea that a foetus can defecate, therefore it is alive. Now, I felt that I had to correct this false claim, but it was a sidenote. It is not proof of sense of self. My computer produces heat. So does near everything, as all moving parts are partly inefficient (movement produces heat, which is not wanted). A sense of self is not addressed.However, my opponent then out of the blue claims that I am wrong, and foetuses CAN defecate: after all, "is it logical that babies poop all that feces at birth?". Well, ignoring how this is a dismissal of his idea that this was a medical debate, the evidence speaks for itself: and it is more logical to follow evidence and rational thought than instinct. So is it logical? Yes. However, this is still a side-note. The idea that this proves a sense of self has not been adequately justified, nor has any claims here been... true. DROPPED4 - Ability to reasonConceded, and rightly so. DROPPED5 - The ability to go beyond instinctRead point 4. DROPPEDRegarding "abortion is a legal illegal action", I realise that I may not have conveyed myself clearly in a single sentence, so I will reduce it to this: Abortion, a legal procedure, does not become illegal nor legal the moment it becomes murder: It is based on the law and the law alone; saying it is murder is completely different to saying it should be murder, one stating that the law outlaws it, making the debate about whether this fact is true, while the second makes it a policy debate, where we contend whether it should be a law.Summary of point allocation:Conduct: I leave this to you, but I would take note of arguments being dropped fully by either side, blind calls of fallacy, comprehensive and full arguments, and civil manner. Spelling and Grammar: Some do not count this as important, but I personally do. When one is repeatedly called out on spelling or grammar mistakes, then one tends to correct them more. So if there are any spelling errors by myself or my opponent, then please state them so they can be corrected. Just for note, I am british, and we spell "fetus" foetus, and words occasionally have extra 'u's in, such as favour or colour. Finally, I used "personhood" and "humanhood" as informal terms, and any others that I used, which will have speech marks surrounding them to connote this.Who debated best: This is, of course, up to you, but I urge people to counteract votebombs. If they are promoting who you would vote for, take your points from the 7 in order to counter it. e.g. If you would vote for my opponent and give him 4 points, and someone gave him a +7, then give me a +3, or a 7 - the four that you would have given my opponent. This way, votes aren't wasted too much, I hope. or, if this is complex and hard to understand, just do what you want :SAnyway, I thank my opponent for this debate, and look towards seeing the scores.http://undsci.berkeley.edu...;http://upload.wikimedia.org...