Abortion is generally immoral

IntroductionAn intriguing argument presented by my opponent. I'll reiterate what she stated and request that voters not let their emotional repulsion (if they have any) to affect their voting decisions.Recall that I argued that it is best to err with caution when there is a good possibility of life present. So my opponent needs to present a tremendous amount of evidence to meet her burden. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as I shall show. Her arguments are weak at best, and fail to give strong support that abortion is a morally permissible action.Relevancy to abortionMy opponent has argued that it is immoral to bring a person into the world. But it's not clear how this applies to abortion. Even if it is immoral to bring a child into the world, how does this make abortion moral? It may be immoral to bring an agent into the world, but as is the case with abortion, there already is an agent in the world. There is a human organism, with a future like ours. And, as I've argued above, it is immoral to kill such a being.The closest she gets is when she states, "As such, at the risk of bringing into existence terrible suffering, abortion seems like the only merciful option."But this is an argument from ignorance (1). Simply because my opponent has not presented evidence for other alternatives, or there doesn't seem to be any, it doesn't follow that abortion is the only alternative. Furthermore, even if abortion is the only alternative, this doesn't mean it's moral.Furthermore, my opponent's argument would mean that any continuation of the human species is immoral. This is highly counter-intuitive, so if I can show that her argument is unsound, or that there are better alternatives with less counter-intuitive results, then it is debunked. A summary of my opponent's argument I've read and reread the argument, and I think I have done it justice in my summary: P1: It is immoral to inflict something bad upon someone else without their consent. P2: Procreation inflicts something bad (life) upon someone else without their consent. C: Procreation is immoral. I agree with P1 but not P2. Fallacy of compositionMy opponent also commits the fallacy of composition. She claims, "Life is essentially a ‘negative-sum game’, in which there are states of comfort that all fall below the ‘0’, rather than anything that is truly positive." She also argues that we experience persistent states of discomfort, and that death is inevitable. Unfortunately, this proves absolutely nothing in regards to whether "life" is "good" or "bad." Even if every instant of our lives were filled with anguish, this doesn't mean that the life as a whole is "bad." This is the fallacy of composition (2). What is true of all the parts, or even most of the parts, is not necessarily true of the whole. So even if a person were to go through life in constant misery, this wouldn't mean that their life as a whole is a bad thing!This is detrimental to my opponent's case. It literally debunks her entire argument. Procreation doesn't inflict suffering upon people. It bestows life upon them. Suffering is parasitic upon life. Thus, the two are not the same, since something can't be parasitic upon itself. Discomfort is bad? I will admit that generally discomfort is bad, but it really depends upon the circumstances. Discomfort for no reason whatsoever may be bad, but not all discomfort has no reason at all. I may think discomfort is bad when I stub my toe, but the discomfort of working to provide for my family is not. Discomfort can also be a means towards strengthening us. Suffering can have good effects. Feeling discomfort before comfort My opponent argues that in order to feel any comfort, I must first feel discomfort. This is absurd. I feel happiness all the time. When I am driving to work, thinking about my girlfriend (ya hear that, Lizabeth?), and how life is so good. I am realizing what my life could be like, but then seeing what it is like. I don't have to go through the discomfort of having my arm chopped off to realize that having my arm is a good thing. We experience happiness in relation to how things could be. Not to how they have actually been in the past. The Surprise investment My opponent commits a fallacy of false analogy (8). What is wrong in my opponent's analogy is that the agent is clearly able to make the investment choice herself. In the case of procreation, this isn't the same. Is it immoral to make decisions about where your comatose relative will live? No, because she can't make them for herself. If she could, then this might be immoral. So my opponent is paralleling two completely different situations, and it just doesn't work. Question begging epithets The whole catastrophe section of my opponent's argument is question begging epithets (9). She is asking questions with a pre-conceived biased that is unfounded. The tone in every single one of these questions is, "How could you possibly say yes to this?" Thus, they're all loaded questions. Why so serious? My opponent is simply giving a pessimistic view of life. I can just do the opposite, and debunk her argument entirely by taking an optimistic view. Life is so good. I am so lucky to be living here, and have a roof over my head, food on the table, and family and friends. Things could be alot worse. I am so lucky to have been given this one chance to live this life, and make the world a better place. Everything is so wonderful. As you can see, I am simply reversing my opponent's argument. But I think that both of these options are false. I would take the option that we should look at the world with hope. Yes, there's suffering in the world. Yes, everyone dies. However, we can also look at the good, and strive towards this. Little kind acts of love are what make life worth living. It's the small acts of love that completely refute all the horrible atrocities in the world. I'm not going to paint the world out to be a beautiful flower garden, since this would be fallacious for the same reasons as my opponent's hell-hole world is. But I am going to argue that we should strive, with hope, towards making the world a better place. Life is not "bad" This seems intuitively true to begin with. We all love life, even if it sucks sometimes. I'll give a few arguments as to why life is not bad per se, and is in fact good. To quote John Stuart Mill, "The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it" (3) My argument... P1: If life were a bad thing in itself, then people wouldn't desire it. P2: But they do desire it. C: Life is not a bad thing in itself, and is in fact a good thing. There are 7,000,000,000 people on earth (4). Only 1,000,000 of those people commit suicide (5) annually. This means that only 0.14% of people kill themselves! Clearly, if life were such a horrible and un-desirous thing, we would have more than 0.14% of people killing themselves. Furthermore, the majority of suicide victims (90%) were suffering from a mental illness, as well as a substance abuse problem (6). Even those who attempted to kill themselves, and survived, claim they had a change of heart. Kevin Hines jumped from the Golden Gate bridge, and survived. As soon as he went over the edge, he thought to himself, "What the hell did I just do? I don’t want to die." (7) In addition to this, the majority of suicide victims don't really want to end their life, they want to end their suffering in life. Once again, suffering and life are not the same thing. So it seems pretty obvious that everyone desires life, and that it is a good thing in itself.My opponent's argument Recall that my opponent's argument is summarized: P1: It is immoral to inflict something bad upon someone else without their consent. P2: Procreation inflicts something bad (life) upon someone else without their consent. C: Procreation is immoral.This has been completely debunked. Particularly the second premise. It leads to absurd conclusions, and for this reason alone we would be justified in dismissing it. Since it leads to such insane conclusions, it needs a tremendous amount of proof. This has not been given. Life is a gift If we view life as something good, we see that life is a gift. The receiver of this gift can dispense it at any time. And if it were a bad thing, they would probably do so. But ironically, most don't. Instead, they cling to it. Conclusion My opponent simply has not met her burden. She has argued that it is immoral to procreate, but she has not shown that abortion is moral. At best, my opponent has shown that nobody should have sex, and the human race should die off. But even her arguments for this are extremely weak. They rest upon the fallacy of composition, and many other fallacious forms of reasoning. I have debunked her arguments, and offered arguments to think that life is a good thing, far surpassing my burden. And we've not seen a rebuttal to my arguments yet. I assume this is forthcoming, but as of now, they stand untouched and unrefuted. So while we've been given good reasons to think abortion is immoral, we've not been given the tremendous amount of proof we needed to show that abortion is moral.==Sources== (1)http://www.fallacyfiles.org... (2)http://www.nizkor.org... (3)https://www.marxists.org... (4)http://www.worldometers.info... (5)http://www.medicalnewstoday.com... (6)http://www.save.org... (7)http://www.newyorker.com... (8)http://onegoodmove.org... (9)http://www.fallacyfiles.org...