Abortion should be illegal

DefencesRightsHere, Con makes two claims. Firstly, that a woman has a right to privacy and secondly, that the constitutional definition of 'person' only applies to post-natal human beings.The first claim is one I accept - a woman does indeed have a right to privacy. However, Con has neglected to argue that the right to privacy supersedes the right to life. Since a constitutional right to privacy is only implied by the constitution (1), whereas the right to life is explicitly mentioned not once but twice within the constitution, it stands to reason that the right to life is more fundamental than the right to privacy.Furthermore, a right to privacy does not extend to a right to harm others within the extent of that privacy. For example, I cannot kill someone in the privacy of my own kitchen and then justify it by appealing to a right to privacy. The second claim is that the constitutional definition of 'person' only applies to post-natal human beings. To justify this, Con states that mentions of ‘person’ in the constitution are ‘always defined in post-natal manners’. However, this is a poor justification, since it can easily be explained that the vast majority of human beings have already been born, so it makes perfect sense that most references to persons within the constitution will be references to born humans. This does nothing to reach the conclusion that the constitution takes ‘person’ to mean ‘post-natal human’. Reductio ad absurdum, most references to persons within the constitution are for post-pubescent humans, but surely it does not follow that only post-pubescent humans are constitutional persons?Con cites the 14th amendment to support his claim that only born humans are citizens of the United States, yet this commits the fallacy of ‘affirming the consequent’ (2). The 14th amendment states that ‘all persons born…are citizens of the United States’, but it is a fallacy to conclude that all citizens are born persons. Let me demonstrate the fallacy:Given that ‘All ravens are black animals’It does not follow that all black animals are ravens.The logic is simply invalid, and therefore so is Con’s argument.Furthermore, the 14th amendment is an 18th century text, written in a time where virtually nothing was known of foetal development - the first thing people saw of a person was when they were born. When the 14th amendment was written, the fact that they refer to birth at all is simply a way to elucidate that citizenship isn’t something gained during your life - you have it just by living in the US. It is absurd to suggest that the founding fathers wrote the amendment in such a way as to distinguish between foetuses and babies, especially given their limited embryological knowledge.As a penultimate point, birth is completely arbitrary for establishing personhood and citizenship. The passage of a human being through the birth canal does not magically grant personhood, citizenship and all the associated perks, because there is no essential difference between a foetus 10 minutes before birth and a baby 10 minutes after birth. Finally, there is already a precedent for foetal personhood/citizenship within US law. The ‘Unborn Victims of Violence Act’ 2004 established a foetus as a legal victim (3), which heavily implies both personhood and citizenship to foetuses.Therefore, there is nothing within the constitution that denies that a foetus is a person. If anything, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act explicitly implies that they are persons.NAPCon doesn’t refute much of the argument here, all he disputes is that governments don’t follow the NAP in reality. However, this debate is about what should be the case, not what is the case. Therefore, commenting that governments do not follow the NAP is totally irrelevant to whether they should follow the NAP, which is what I demonstrated in R2.Central to Con’s point is the claim that governments arise spontaneously and not out of negotiation. However, he misunderstands the argument because the ‘state of nature’ is hypothetical - there is no recorded case of human existence sans some form of government. What the state of nature is is a thought experiment with which one can examine the proper role of government. As I pointed out, the government must ensure a stable and healthy society by prohibiting some actions and permitting others. Of course, this raises the question of what criterion should be used to decide which actions to prohibit. I maintain that the NAP is the most utilitarian criterion and the one that ensures that human rights are protected.Therefore, even if the NAP isn’t followed in reality, the NAP is what should be followed. Hence this pertains to the resolution of whether abortion should be legal.ContentionsUnsafe AbortionsThis sub-debate is essentially just a war of statistics, with Pro giving statistics of how illegal abortion supposedly endangers women whilst I give statistics that either refutes this claim or shows the opposite, that maternal mortality actually increases under legalised abortion.Con writes that ‘abortion became safer during the period immediately before Roe v. Wade’, but that is my point exactly! In the run up to Roe, abortion mortality decreased rapidly due to medical advances but the actual Supreme Court decision did not even effect this decrease. If Con’s argument is correct and legalising abortion does make it safer, then we would see this decrease accelerate. But we don’t; there is no change.This observation implies that, contrary to Con’s arguments, abortion mortality is affected by medical advances and not by legislative measures. Therefore, Con cannot claim that abortion should be legal on the grounds that doing so would reduce abortion mortality, because the evidence from the USA (the country in question for this debate) does not show that legalising abortion will have any effect.Myself and Con could continue this debate arguing over the respective validity of the Romanian and Chilean case studies, which both contradict each other, but it is more relevant to discuss countries that are similar in culture and economy to the USA, as this debate is about the USA.South Africa, on the other hand, is fairly similar economically and culturally to the USA, and so it would be relevant to observe the effect of abortion legalisation. Therefore, I would contend that abortion legalisation has coincided with an increase of the maternal mortality rate fourfold, which certainly harms Con’s case for legalising abortion on the grounds that it makes it safer for women.Regardless of statistics, however, I extend my argument from last round that states that; legalising abortion to increase the safety of abortions can only be a justifiable act if it is assumed that abortion is a perfectly acceptable act that doesn’t violate someone’s rights. However, my opening ‘rights’ argument demonstrates that abortion does violate the foetus’s right to life.In other words, Con’s argument is only valid insofar as my ‘rights’ argument is invalid, because if abortion is a rights-violating act such as theft, murder or rape, then it is absurd to legalise it to protect the perpetrator. As I said in round 2, it is nonsensical to legalise theft in order to protect the health of thieves.Since Con hasn’t refuted my ‘rights’ argument, his argument from unsafe abortions is invalid.Socio-economic effectsCon doesn’t really refute anything here, he accuses me of making a ‘faulty comparison’ fallacy, whereas I do not. I presume Con has misunderstood the argument, in which case I will reiterate:Con’s argument here is that ‘we should allow abortion to prevent the socio-economic problems associated with unwanted persons’. In other words, the ‘goal’ is the elimination of problem-ridden persons from growing up in society.But if this is why we are legalising abortion, there is nothing that says that the killing of unwanted persons is justified inside the womb but not justified outside the womb, since birth is an arbitrary cut-off point. If the goal is to eliminate unwanted persons from growing up in society, then why stop at foetuses? Why should we not kill off unwanted children or teenagers? Since that would still achieve the same goal of eliminating unwanted persons.Therefore, if Con is to be consistent within this argument, he also has to accept that his logic would allow the killing of unwanted children; that is, infanticide.Use of abortion lawsCon writes:‘[Pro] argues that abortion is high in countries presented merely because of a lack of law in those areas. This is true to a point. But it also ignores the fact that after Roe v. Wade, abortion rates in the US (a developed country) fell to its lowest since 1973 just recently in 2011. There is also evidence that this is part of a general "U-turn" trend from Roe v. Wade, as this decrease has gone on for twenty years.’In other words, abortion rates have decreased since Roe vs Wade.This is somewhat of a straw-man argument, since I never denied the reduction in abortion rates since 1973 (I actually think its good that abortion rates are decreasing), but I do not see how Con can say that the abortion rates are decreasing because of Roe vs Wade. In fact, the abortion rate shot up post-Roe (4) and only started declining in 1990. My opponent seems to make the argument that abortion legalisation would reduce the abortion rate, but actually, the decrease in abortion rates since 1990 can be attributed to three main possibilities:1. Introduction of restrictions on abortion2. Less need for abortion3. Increasing amount of pro-life people of child-bearing age (5) Point 1 is what I emphasised in my round 3 rebuttal (source 8). This says the opposite of Con’s argument that liberalising abortion would decrease abortion rates - the evidence suggest that the opposite is true.__(1) http://bit.ly...(2) http://bit.ly...(3) http://bit.ly...(4) http://bit.ly...(5) http://theatln.tc...(6) http://bit.ly...