Abortion is generally immoral

In closing I would reaffirm that my argument has been a rebuttal to the assertion not an attempt to affirm the negation. I would thus argue for a vote for Con on e grounds that the burden of proof has not been fully carried by KeytarHero. I will begin with a response to some comments and then summarize.“I would say that's a significant concession. Once we have affirmed that the unborn in question is human, then that should answer the question of whether we can kill it by abortion.”The argument is not that trivial. The contention for abortion cannot be so easily resolved by the biological species affirmation. The argument is more critical as to the question is the fetus a person, does it belong to humanity? There is much more to being a person than just being a member of the species. This argument from KeytarHero can be defeated trivially by the following thought experiment: Consider a fetus which has a severe developmental defect and only has an autonomic nervous system develop. This thing is still clearly a member of the homo sapiens species, but it is not conscious, it cannot think, it cannot feel, it cannot desire, expect or want. This then while belonging to the human species is it a person? “ It is wrong to kill any human for an unjust reason.”This is almost a definitional argument as unjust and wrong are synonyms in this context. But here is the critical point here, KeytarHero has, in his defense of the rights of the unborn, completely ignored the rights of the mother and again this is critical to establishing the burden of proof for rights are meaningless when considered in isolation. Simply consider the following thought experiment: Right now KeytarHero is likely spending resources for his own personal benefit, however at the same time 1 out of 5 children in Africa is starving [1] while Indonesia has over 60% of the total number of wasting children in the world[2]. The total numbers are staggering, each year 15 million children die due to lack of food[3] and then of course there are all the other issues such as the high rates of child mortality due to malaria and HIV/AIDS in Africa[4]. Now the question to be raised here is why is KeytarHero not obligated to allocate his resources to save them, especially when things like a mosquito net costs less than a dollar? If he can refute this with “they are my resources I can do what I want with them – even if my choices cause another person to die” (these children are persons by any definition) then how can it be so trivially argued that a mother can not claim a right to their own person resources, i.e., their body? Now this example is not mean to be definitive and in fact it raises a whole host of questions the most dominant one being did the mother give up the right to her body upon sexual intercourseThis is not trivial by any means to defend, especially if you consider rape when it seems obvious that she did not consent and the entire act of conception is an act of violence and a violation of her rights (under the exact view KeytarHero develops). But my point here again is not to affirm abortion but simply to note that KeytarHero can not be considered to carry the burden of proof in this argument as he has trivialized the issues, has ignored critical contentions and as noted on repeated occasions not provided full (or even any) justification for his assertions. “Besides which, I think the placenta technically belongs to the woman, does it not? Is she a cannibal by consuming part of her own body?”This is a strong defeater for KeytarHero’s argument as he here fails to understand that as noted in the above the placenta develops from the trophoblast which is part of the blastocyst, one of the early stages of the embryo. It is not a part of the mother, it develops from the embryo itself. If the fetus is fully a whole member from conception and is a person then surely it is cannibalism to eat part of it and surely part of it cannot be so trivially discarded as biological waste. The point here is until this separation is made in the development of the embryo between what is going to be the placenta and what is going to be the fetus then they are still intermixed (they start as one cell obviously) and thus that thing can not be consider to be a person simply as part of what it is at that stage is trivially discarded and even eaten. “From the very point of conception, we exist as a new and unique entity.”Again KeytarHero fails to develop the substance view and just states it as fact, as noted there are trivial defeaters for this assertion when it is so simply stated such as twinning, recombination, and cellular totipotency. For example how can you possibly say that from the point of conception the embryo is a new and unique entity until it has passed the stage where any of those three are possible because they permit the embryo to develop into multiple “sorts of things” under the substance view (i.e. a triplet is not considered “one sort of thing” under the substance view). KeytarHero drops this entire contention and just glosses right over it and does not fully define the substance of the substance view or defend the argument at all. “Every human is intrinsically valuable because humans are rational moral agents with the inherent capacity to reason and comprehend the universe around us.”Here KeytarHero has finally stated his justification for the inherent value of humans but again is this defended? How would Cody respond to his as he is a nihilist and would reject the concept of morality[5]. It is also an odd statement to make as it defeats his own arguments as a fetus has no capacity to reason and comprehend the universe around us as its brain is not developed at conception obviously.“It is also wrong to kill an innocent human and since the unborn are valuable, living humans, any reasons that would be unacceptable to kill a child outside the womb must also be unacceptable to kill a child inside the womb.”This assertion is defeated trivially if you consider the previous quote about rational agents and that even born children do not even have an awareness of self, this takes time to start and the ontogenesis is effected by a multitude of factors[6].In closing I would note that KeytarHero has not fully justified any of his three premises.P1) This was argued finally from the substance view which as noted was not even fully defined let alone defended.P2) This was defended in the last round by claiming humans are rational and moral agents, but as noted there are schools of philosophy which reject such concepts and it is obvious that a fetus has neither capacity.P3) This was never defended just asserted and as noted completely ignores all rights or effects of the mother and just assumes they do not exist or have no influence.[1] http://www.worldexpochildrensfund.com...[2] http://www.worldexpochildrensfund.com...[3] http://cozay.com...[4] http://library.thinkquest.org...[5] http://www.iep.utm.edu...[6] http://psycnet.apa.org...