Abortion Should Be Legal

Resolved: Abortion should be legal. Introduction: I am going to clear up a few details immediately. One argument that has been used against abortion to the point of becoming ubiquitous in such debates is that there is little significant difference between the mental or physiological status of a fetus days prior to birth and an infant days after birth. This is used against the traditional liberal argument that the significant moral break in the development of the fetus occurs with its biological separation with the mother. For the most part I do not accept the liberal argument, but that in and of itself does not help to refute the resolution that abortion should be legal. If it is illegal to abort a pregnancy after a certain point, it was still at some point legal. To make an analogy, the fact that it is illegal to drive while intoxicated does not support the resolution that driving is illegal. Legality can be subject to circumstance. Argument 1: Depending on the debate, I will typically uphold that it is morally wrong to kill a person. However, I am quite careful about using the term person instead of the term human. The status of being of one species or another does not logically have any moral value. So I will present my own argument for what ought to be considered a person and leave my opponent to address it: I define a person as an individual, morally conscious being capable of forming a complex thought and possessing the capacity (but not necessarily the ability) to communicate such thoughts via a language. This definition will include all humans that are not serious impaired mentally but will not include any inanimate objects or nonhuman animals. Moral consciousness, thought, and language are all more valuable and relevant characteristics for determining personhood than the genetic characteristic of being human. Under this definition, a fetus that is not sufficiently developed would not be considered a human because it would lack the cognitive abilities. On the other hand, an infant is moral conscious and capable of complex thought on some limited level and possesses the capacity to learn a language with which it can express such thoughts. Therefore it is perfectly legal to kill an underdeveloped fetus but not an infant. The exact point at which the fetus would be considered a person may be subject to debate, but that is irrelevant as long as at some point after pregnancy begins the fetus is not a person. Argument 2: There are pragmatic reasons why it would sometimes be logical to abort a fetus. If the fetus is diagnosed as having a fatal condition that would make the pregnancy pointless, there is no reason to force additional physical and mental stress on the mother. If the pregnancy presented a serious risk to the survival of the mother, than likewise it would be reasonable to abort. The value of the life of the child is of no greater value than the mother's, and the status of being pregnant does not innately impose any obligation to endure extreme suffering and physical risk on the behalf of another individual. In these cases, even if the fetus were considered a person it would still be rational to abort the pregnancy. Conclusion: At this point I have not presented many arguments because I believe that considering my opponent's (comparatively) liberal views this will be a nonstandard abortion debate and I am not going to try to anticipate where it will head. Also, because I am not certain on what my opponent's position will, I will not object if he wants to concede my second argument and remove it from the debate. I have other arguments that may better address his views and I expect there will be enough controversy over my first argument for the next round anyway. Sources: I drew extensively from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, particularly the articles on Abortion and The Political Philosophy of John Locke.