Abortion is prima facie morally wrong.

Now, on to the contentions. C1 : It is not always wrong to kill an innocent human being. My opponent claims that I have made a false analogy. This is false; he simply disagrees with P1 of the syllogism. The syllogism itself is valid. My opponent claims that the reason that it is immoral to kill Coma Guy, but not immoral to kill Dead Guy or a fetus, is because they "have had a conscious experience of the world in the past. " This, in my opinion, is merely an overcomplication. The start of personality and memory should not be the determining factor in whether or not one has a right to life. One's DNA, however, is fully formed at the moment of conception; this seems to be a better gateway to use for determining the right to life. My opponent ultimately claims that he can make a moral distinction between a coma and a fetus, based on their brain development, but I disagree. Allow me to present a purely hypothetical scenario to illustrate this: Suppose a man is in a coma, but the doctors have determined that a virus in his brain has eliminated his memories, and his personality is temporarily void. The man will, after a few months, slowly regain a new personality, and will have new memories. In this scenario, is it moral to kill the man? He is, after all, still a living human with the same DNA as he ever had. Personally, I wouldn't want to die. C2-: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. I apologize that my syllogism appeared to be a strawman. I based it off of my opponent's statement here: "Given these criteria, it logically follows that a human fetus cannot possess the same right to life that a grown adult has since it does not qualify as a person. " As a clarified syllogism: A. A human fetus and grown adult are different in that a grown adult qualifies as a person. B. A grown adult has a right to life. C. A human fetus cannot have the same right to life. My opponent's clarification of his own argument, I agree, is valid, assuming (P1) and (P2) to be true. My opponent is correct in that I won't attack (P2); however, my opponent does have a lack of any arguments to prove (P1). The claim that only a person has a right to life is backed up only by the opinions of my opponent and Michael Tooley. My opponent will need to put forward a serious argument as to why (P1) is correct before his syllogism has any merit. C3-: An entity's potentials cannot grant that entity rights. My opponent claims that a sperm cell has the potential to become conscious. However, I disagree; as I had clarified earlier, a sperm cell is not a potential person, but a potential half of a potential person, which seems like a fairly important distinction. As a sperm cell, it could be half of a number of different potential people; however, a blastocyst is a whole, specific potential person. As for my opponent's example involving President Obama, every example of his is only that Obama is not yet X, but will probably be X, but that doesn't make him X. This seems rather obvious; if the potential to be X make Obama X, Obama wouldn't potentially be X, but would rather actually be X. However, by being a potential president, Obama gains a huge amount of respect that he wouldn't otherwise have. This instance of having respect is more comparable to having a right to life than being a person. ::Conclusion:: My reason for a fetus having a serious right to life, being human, is no less powerful than my opponent's reasoning of personhood. My opponent claims that my reasoning involving potentials granting rights is fallacious, although he names no fallacies, and doesn't respond to the claim that the only difference between Coma Guy and Dead Guy is potentials, proving that potentials do play an important role in deciding who has a right to life. My opponent claims that a fetus loses nothing upon death, but it does: it loses the chance to ever actually become conscious, which is no less important than Coma Guy's chance to regain consciousness. Although there is a difference between a fetus and Coma Guy's history, this does not mean that there must be a difference in their right to life. In conclusion, my opponent offers no real reason why his own criteria (personhood) is superior to my criteria (humanity). Until he can do that, his contentions are worthless. Good luck with your final round, Freeman!