Abortion

Thank you for your opening statements, Pro. I look forward to our discussion.DefinitionsAbortion:a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of the fetus. [1]Morally Permissible:“To say that an action of mine is morally permissible is to say that no one has a valid claim against my doing it, that doing it violates nobody's moral rights." [2]In utero:in the uterus : before birth [3]Introduction Before I begin, I should note that I'm Pro-abortion. Meaning that I think abortion is morally permissible. However, for the fun of it, I will be playing devil's advocate in this debate. Today I will be defending two contentions. The first is that abortion is generally morally wrong. The second is that Pro's justifications for abortion are not satisfactory and should therefore be rejected. As Pro pointed out this is a debate on the morality of abortion, not a legal or religious one. Pro also stated in the format of the debate that the burden of proof is on him. So if I can prevent him from doing this he will lose. However, I am still going to be putting forth my own arguments against abortion. With that said, let me begin The Traditional Pro-Life Argument P1) It is morally wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.P2) The fetus is an innocent human being.P3) Abortion intentionally kills the fetus.C) Abortion is morally wrong. Defense of Premise 1 This premise seems pretty obvious and I don't think many would disagree with it. For that reason, this premise doesn't need that much of a defense. Defense of Premise 2 This claim is simply a matter of biology and it can be shown to be true. To quote the embryology text book Human Embryology & Teratology:"Although human life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed...." [4] The distinguished bioethicist and moral philosopher Peter Singer also agrees that fetuses are human beings. In his book Practical Ethics he says:"It is possible to give 'human being' a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to 'member of the species Homo sapiens' ... In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being." [5] Defense of Premise 3 Given the definition of abortion I gave above, this premise is also true. Since each premise I have defended is correct, the conclusion that abortion is morally wrong follows. The Future-Like-Ours Argument Here I will be using Don Marquis' future-like-ours argument to defend the anti-abortion position. His argument can be put forth as follows:P1) Intentionally killing an innocent being with a future-like-ours (FLO) is morally wrong.P2) A human being in utero is an innocent being with FLO. P3) Abortion intentionally kills the human being in utero. C) Abortion is morally wrong. Defense of Premise 1 I believe this view gives us a good reason for why we believe killing other human beings is morally wrong. When you watch the news and hear family members of a murder victim talk about their deceased relative they often say, "he had his whole life ahead of him" or "now she will never be able to walk down the aisle." The point here is that killing deprives us of a valuable future that we would have experienced had our lives not been cut short. This is why we view killing a normally functioning human being without their consent to be one of the worse if not the worse crime somebody can do. Defense of Premise 2 David Boonin, a Pro-Choice philosopher from the University of Colorado Boulder, writes of premise two: "The future-like-ours argument appeals to an actual property that the fetus already has, the property of having a valuable personal future. This is an actual property it shares with us, not a potential it has to acquire which we already actually possess." [6] So, a human fetus does have a FLO. Defense of Premise 3 Given the definition of abortion I gave above, this premise is also true. Since each premise I have defended is correct, the conclusion that abortion is morally wrong follows. It’s important to note that Marquis only argues that the FLO argument is a sufficient condition for the wrongness of killing, not a necessary condition. Marquis admits that some people may not have a FLO, but that it may still be wrong to kill them for other reasons.The Substance View This argument comes from the philosopher Patrick Lee and claims that what makes human beings bearers of rights is not a property they obtain over time, but rather is an intrinsic property they have as rational animals. According to the substance view, even if a human person cannot immediately exercise person-like attributes (such as rational thought) because they are disabled or too young to exercise them, they are still persons because they are the same kind of intrinsically valuable being throughout their entire existence. [7] This argument can be put forth as follows:P1) It is morally wrong to intentionally kill an innocent adult human being because they are members of an intrinsically valuable kind of being.P2) Human beings in utero are members of an intrinsically valuable kind of being.C1) Therefore, it is morally wrong to intentionally kill human beings in utero. P3) Abortion intentionally kills human beings in utero. C2) Abortion is morally wrong. The Constitutive Property Argument This argument comes from the philosopher Christopher Kaczor and is formulated as follows:P1) If an individual being has a constitutive property at one point in time, then it has that property at every in its existence. P2) You are the same individual living being or organism as the fetus from which you developed. P3) You are a human person constitutively. C) The zygote from which you developed was a human person. Conclusion In my opening statements I have given various arguments for thinking that abortion is generally morally wrong. In the next round I will respond to the arguments made by my opponent and show that there are many difficulties with the view he defends. Sources: (1) http://www.merriam-webster.com...;(2) https://ndpr.nd.edu...;(3) http://www.merriam-webster.com...;(4) Human Embryology & Teratology, 3rd Edition P8. (5) Peter Singer. Practical Ethics P127(6) http://bama.ua.edu...;(7) David Boonin. A Defense of Abortion. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003) P62.(8) Patrick Lee and Robert George, “The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity."(9) Christopher Kaczor. The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (Routledge Annals of Bioethics) P105.