Abortion should be illegal

Contention 1: Self-Awareness One of the arguments for abortion is that the fetus is not self-aware, but the fetus becomes fully aware during the 24th week of Pregnancy, which is why many abortions in the 3rd Trimester are illegal. (http://www.scientificamerican.com...) Many people believe that is the qualifications for the starting of a FDH (fully developed human) is when the creature is self-aware, but this has many flaws. One being that in cases of sleep and in cases of comas. Under these situations the person is not self-aware, does this mean that they are no longer a FDH until they have awoken? However the personâ€™s ability to be self-aware is irrelevant to their personhood as it is an inherent capacity for self-awareness. Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, â€œafter fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.â€" He stated that this â€œis no longer a matter of taste or opinion,â€" and â€œnot a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.â€" He added, â€œEach individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.â€" You can see here that this further my point as one can see that life begins at conception and throughout the child's life is concidered a human life. The moment of conception is when life starts. This is because this is when you start being and because you are beginning to being. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), created a movie that showed the realities of abortion to inform Americans. In his movie Silent Scream he stated, "â€œModern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us." Here the founder of an Abortion Rights group showed that modern technology shows us that the unborn child is indeed another human being and a valued memeber of the community though he is still unborn. (Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979). "In fact, philosophers often use the terms self and person interchangeably: a capacity for self-awareness is necessary for full personhood.â€" (http://socrates.berkeley.edu...) If that is true then we can see that itâ€™s degrading as different levels of self-awareness would vary across the board. Meaning that certain people like that of â€œspecialâ€" peoples and those in different medical conditions would not be considered FDH and be up for â€œabortionâ€" depicting as such in the Unwind Trilogy by Neil Shusterman. Meaning that they would also be considered less of a person than the average American. With the quote bellow we can see that people are people because they are human, not due to something they gain nor loose in their lifetime, so this can work all across the board in this debate. "Humans have value simply because they are human, not because of some acquired property they may gain or lose in their lifetime." (Scott Klusendorf, "Advanced Pro-Life Apologetics" Biola University lecture notes) By accepting the legality of abortion we can see that we are endorsing that a human life is disposable as Pope Francis called it the â€œThrow away culture.â€" We get rid of the unborn like they are unwanted pickles on our Hamburghers from McDonaldâ€™s and just imagine the horror of never getting to see the light of day? When we look at our stages of life we can see that from it was you there at conception and youâ€™re the same now (though taller and more mentally developed) and we can see that it was you at birth and you are here debating me, so we can see that it was you in the womb, not the body of something that would later become you. This means that once you were fetus, if it is wrong to kill you now, then it was wrong to kill you then. (https://bearspace.baylor.edu...) In the end we can see that at the least a fetus has the same FDH levels that of a person in a coma or asleep. Every organism must be able to maintain a consistent internal environment. This is often seen done through sweating, excretion and blood plays a major role. There is no set law on how one’s internal environment must be maintained, so long as the organism can accomplish this, it’s performing Homeostasis. The Fetus performs a great deal of Homeostasis through the Placenta. The Amniotic Fluid also plays a large role in maintaining body temperature. The fluid stays slightly above the body temperature of the mother in order to keep the fetus’s body temperature where it needs to be. (http://americanpregnancy.org...) The hormones that help maintain Homeostasis are produced in the Placenta. The Fetus must maintain glucose homeostasis, body temperature, and body fluid homeostasis. Every organism must require Metabolism, the transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and the decomposing of organic substances (catabolism). The energy is used to vastly support homeostasis and other phenomena. The fetus maintains a good deal of metabolism on its own. Many primary hormones, such as insulin and glucagon, don’t pass through the placenta. This means the hormones are produced within the fetus. The mother’s own hormones play a minor role in the fetus’s Metabolism. (http://www.reproduction-online.org...) There are many who believe that life starts with a heartbeat, or some who argue that it’s about being self-sustaining. Neither is correct. Life has nothing to do with a heartbeat, or self-sustainment. This is an issue of flawed Cause and Correlation. That because someone is alive because he has a heartbeat, when in reality he has a heartbeat, and brain signals, and digestion… because he is alive. We can measure if you die by using your heartbeat, but it’s not because of your heartbeat that you are a living creature. Your heartbeat just keeps you alive. A tree has no heartbeat, nor does jellyfish, but even they are alive. In all reality, a heartbeat is merely a side-function of Respiration, the true character of life. Self-Sustainment isn’t used to measure life either. The idea that humans are self-sustaining is far from reality. Humans depend on bacteria to live, if we lost the trillions of microorganisms and bacteria in our bodies, we would simply begin to die. (http://www.scientificamerican.com...)There are many humans who can’t live on their own, some using iron lungs, and others in comas. Being able to live is required; being able to do it independently for this very reason is not. It should also be noted that parasitic creatures like the Candiru, or the tapeworm also fall under this category and we still concider them alive. While this seem less than humanly, living isn’t about how pretty or desirable the creature is. Contention 2: After Affects of Abortion In China, women their generally tend to have the world’s lowest rates of breast cancer, but the numbers have been skyrocketing so the Chinese government launched several studies into the incident and has found that an abortion has the chance to increase the rate of breast cancer after an abortion by 600%! This study was backed by the New York City Science Advisor to the Coalition of Breast Cancer/abortion, Joel Bind. Bind has stated that the link found between the two is that of a cigarette link to lung cancer. (http://www.naturalnews.com...) Dr. Jane Orient has found that the reasoning behind this is that estrogen increases by 2000% during the end of the 1st Trimester which in turn increases vulnerability to estrogen-fueled cancers and that a full pregnancy decreases the risk of milk producing stem cells to divide into that of cancerous cells. (http://www.sciencedirect.com...) As we can see from above is that there is a direct corrilation between abortions and breast cancer as the statistics show that it's near 1 abortion per breast cancer incident. They have also found that abortion causes PASS (Post Abortion Stress Syndrome) which leaves women in mental anguish similiar to the effects of shel shock. (http://www.abort73.com...) Contention 3: Life of the Mother In 2012, the Dublin Declaration on Mental Healthcare reached a ground breaking finding that abortion is not necissary to save the life of a mother as 140 scientists observed this study. They released the following findings. -“As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. -We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child. -We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.” (http://www.lifenews.com...) Since I've ran out of characters I shall pass things off to Con for this debate.