Abortion

Thank you, Lucky10279, for inviting me to this Debate. Continuing from my Round 1 post: (1.) Con assumes that an unborn human is "innocent". I shall instead show that it is "guilty". Note that the word has multiple definitions (these are at htt.../dictionary.reference.com/browse/guilty ). guilty: adjective: 1. having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, especially against moral or penal law; justly subject to a certain accusation or penalty; culpable: The jury found her guilty of murder. 2. characterized by, connected with, or involving guilt: guilty intent. 3. having or showing a sense of guilt, whether real or imagined: a guilty conscience. Definition (1) clearly indicates that guilt can apply without there being any intention (2) of committing a crime. This is important because it is well-known that an unborn human lacks sufficient brainpower to understand what a "crime" is. As an analogy, consider a mosquito landing on some human's skin. It will commit the crime of "assault" when it sticks its proboscis through your skin (a type of "bite"), but it certainly knows nothing about crimes. That fact won't stop the human from smashing the mosquito flat, however. htt.....ww-rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/moslife.htm It could be worth noting that many humans will smash mosquitoes flat even before they bite, if the humans detect the mosquitoes soon-enough after landing on skin. Why, if the bug hasn't actually committed assault yet? The answer to that appears to be found in "genetic programming". It is known that various aspects of DNA (yet to be identified in detail) can influence the behavior of an overall organism. (Even DNA in the common-cold virus can do that, by encouraging a human to sneeze and spread the virus.) Bugs have simple behavior patterns that can be entirely coded in DNA. Their behavior is more "controlled" than "influenced". Thus bugs are the biological equivalent of "robots" --and various robot-building researchers have constructed devices that behave remarkably like insects: htt.....ww.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/the-engineering-life-around-the-web/4237675/Insect-like-robots-that-fly-and-cooperate Humans know mosquitoes landing on their skin are guaranteed to bite, regardless of knowing about genetic programming. Meanwhile, life-forms far more complex than bugs can sometimes use "learning" to alter their built-in genetic predispositions. Even so, it is well-known how difficult it can be to discourage a fox from assaulting a hen-house, or to suppress a sneeze. But mosquitoes only land on skin to bite. Now back to the topic of unborn humans. When a blastocyst implants into a womb and becomes an embryo, at that moment it is committing assault much like a biting mosquito, and its actions are equally DNA-controlled. Unlike a mosquito's assault, however, this assault is very un-obvious. Some days must pass before various hormonal changes can be detected, indicating that an assault indeed did occur, and it is continuing. In more ordinary words, pregnancy has begun. A just-implanted blastocyst divides into two major sections, and one becomes the "placenta". It receives less public attention than other part, the "embryo". But, like a mosquito's proboscis, the placenta is the embryo's tool for accessing blood-nutrients --and an embryo needs a much longer list of nutrients than a mosquito. It can now be more-easily understood why an abortion opponent might consider an unborn human to be "innocent" --it is not so obviously sucking blood like a mosquito; its umbilical cord puts some distance between its body and its assault-tool, the placenta. Nevertheless, it is absolutely, positively, guilty of committing an action that can be deemed "assault". In the criminal-justice system there are extremely many cases in which a human who has been assaulted in one way or another has declined to press charges. In essence, the assault is forgiven. Logically, ever since Roe vs. Wade, even though the verdict wasn't spelled-out in the manner described above, a pregnant woman has the right to declare her pregnancy to be the equivalent of an assault, and seek an abortion to end it. And, since at no stage during pregnancy is the assaulting organism more mentally sophisticated than a mere animal, no trial or judge or jury or other legality should be required, before an abortion is performed. There is another and "larger" analogy, than comparing a pregnancy to a mosquito's assault. In the realm of fantastic fiction there are certain human-ish organisms that likely could fully qualify as "persons" under the legal system. The relevant descriptions are (A) they classically commit a blood-sucking assault upon ordinary humans, and (B) they are classically penalized with destruction entirely outside the legal system. That is, classically, if you encountered a "vampire", it was considered OK to drive a wooden stake through its heart --and you didn't need the permission of a judge or jury! I recognize that more modern portrayals of vampires have complexified their behavior considerably (some don't suck human blood, for example). So vampire-slaying isn't quite as cut-and-dried as it used to be. However, the actual behavior of unborn mammals (not just humans) hasn't changed much in multi-megayears. Furthermore, an unborn human actually commits worse assaults than a vampire. Only the unborn human commits more assault by using its placenta to dump toxic biowaste compounds into the bloodstream of a pregnant woman. Note I specified "worse assaults", plural, in that last paragraph. There is a particular hormone called "HGC" that the placenta generates. htt.../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin Among other things, that hormone causes another hormone to be produced, "progesterone". htt.../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progesterone Progesterone is sometimes called a "feel-good hormone" (there are others). htt.....ww.livestrong.com/article/238195-signs-and-symptoms-of-a-low-progesterone-level/ Logically, when pregnancy ends and the placenta is expelled, HGC and progesterone levels will drop. Well, it is widely known that when pregnancy ends, a woman typically feels something known as "postpartum depression". htt.../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_depression I'm "connecting some dots" here that may not yet have been formally connected in the literature. Basically, the preceding facts indicate that postpartum depression is equivalent to the "withdrawal symptoms" of an addictive drug. So, logically, an unborn human qualifies as the worst type of "drug pusher", using its placenta to force addictive-drug-injection. Of course, an unborn human doesn't have the brainpower to understand the horror of such actions. Nevertheless, those actions make it "guilty as sin!". (5.) Con originally wrote: "the "my body, my choice" argument is invalid." --based on the fact that an unborn human is a distinct organism, different from a woman who happens to be pregnant. However, Con neglected to note the actions being performed by that separate organism. Con also neglected to note that the abortion process stops those actions, while she certainly focused on the consequence that abortion slays that bloodsucking, blood-poisoning, drug-pushing assailant, an unborn human. Well, prohibiting abortion is exactly like prohibiting women from stopping an assault. Therefore I interpreted what Con wrote as assuming this: "A woman is not allowed to control access to her body." I'm fairly sure that most women would consider the above assumption to be absurd. After all, if it was really true, then wouldn't any woman be rape-able at any time? And, of course, she must never swat a mosquito that's biting her, either! (to be continued) I'll respond to Con's other arguments after finishing the above.