Abortion

I understand the following to comprise my opponent's convictions: 1. The life of an individual is more important than the quality of life of another individual. "The woman may have a reasonable right to control her own body, but this does not confer on her the entirely separate (and insupportable) right to decide whether another human lives or dies. " 2. All individuals have a right to life, from which all other rights are derived. "All other rights, including the mother's right to choice, surely stem from a prior right to life. " 3. Laws should be promulgated to protect the life of the unborn regardless of the cost to personal autonomy, because their rights to life precede and therefore have priority over the right to autonomy in themselves and others. "if you have no right to any life, then how do you have a right to an autonomous one? " "Where a restriction in someone's freedom is the price to pay for protecting innocent life, then so be it. " 4. The manner in which life is generated is inconsequential to the rights that attach to that form of life. "There are cases where the mother is sometimes raped. I still think that abortion is wrong because it isn't the child's fault that she got raped. This is why I say that adoption is a better option. " 5. For all these reasons, my opponent asserts that abortion is wholly wrong. "I think that Abortion is wrong. " My argument to the contrary is as follows: ABORTION IS NOT ALWAYS WRONG 1. No person's right to life is greater than any other person's. This must be true for you to argue that women should not have the ability to deprive unborn children of this right. (I. e. the aborting women do not get to choose murder to avoid personal inconvenience because the life of the one to be murdered is as valuable as the murderer. ) 2. A person who's existence is known to be beneficial for society is more valuable to society than a person who's value is unknown (because the unknown could be beneficial or detrimental to society). 3. A person with a positive value to society should have her life protected from the consequences of the generation of a person with an unknown value to society, because both lives are equal and the only distinguishing factor between the two is societal value. 4. Therefore, I resolve that a woman with a known positive value to society, who's life would be endangered by the generation of life with an unknown value (birth) has the right to abort the generative process in preservation of her own life. 5. Therefore a single instance of abortion is shown to be right and abortion can not be absolutely wrong. A PRECEDING RIGHT DOES NOT NECESSARILY SUPERSEDE SUBSEQUENT RIGHTS 1. The value to society of a right may be observed in the effects of protecting that right. 2. The relative observed value of a right should determine the extent to which it is protected over other rights, where those rights are competing. 3. As evidenced throughout history, particularly in the foundation of the United States, people will sacrifice the right to life in exchange for the right to personal autonomy. "Give me liberty or give me death. " 4. Therefore, while one right may give rise to the other (life-->liberty) the other takes precedence over the prior (liberty>life). This may be due to the fact that humans, as living beings, recognize that the value in organic over inorganic existence as the ability to experience existence. Sacrificing autonomy for existence would negate the advantage of being a living organism, which is illogical. Therefore existence can not hold a greater value than autonomy. 5. Therefore, I resolve that where the right to autonomy and the right to life conflict, the right to autonomy supersedes the right to life. 6. Therefore it is shown that where a woman's right to autonomy is in conflict with a child's right to life, the woman's right to autonomy is superior to the child's right to life. As a consequence, abortion is not wrong.