No abortion outside of extenuating circumstances should be permitted

Defence of utilitarianismUtility is essential to all human existence because everything we do, we do it for utility. The single reason why a person does something is that he believes that doing so will increase the happiness of himself or others. We simply cannot act without justifying our action by appealing to utility.Even the existence of rights and liberties only serves to maximise peoples' happiness. If people would generally be more happy without rights or liberties, then we would not value them. Hence Con is misguided in implying that rights and liberties form the basis of a governmental ethic. Instead, rights and liberties are extrinsically valuable insofar as they lead to a happier end. Therefore, it is happiness that forms the basis of a governmental ethic.Note that, by affirming utilitarianism, all I am asserting is that the government ought to make laws on the basis of maximising happiness for all parties involved. I am definitely not asserting that the government ought to maximise happiness on a case-by-case basis, since this goes beyond the government's role as a legislative authority. This is essentially rule utilitarianism, where we make laws on the principle of maximising peoples' happiness.Con states that:'a utopian society with maximal happiness for all is not possible'Which I agree with, but it does not follow that the government is wrong to attempt to maximise happiness. To use an analogy, it is not possible to totally eliminate poverty, but it does not follow that we ought not to attempt to eliminate poverty.Next, he writes:'political devices, such as human rights (of which I affirmed liberty is one of the most fundamental) are required, which does not entail maximising happiness on a case-by-case basis.'Whilst they (rights) do not entail maximising happiness on a case-by-case basis, they entail maximising happiness if a rule is instigated that enforces them. If we have a law that states 'everyone shall have human rights', then the presence of this law will cause more net happiness for the people involved than the absence of the law. This is the reason why human rights exist, because their existence maximises overall net utility.If legally-enforced human rights caused a net decrease in happiness for the people involved, then there would be no reason to have them. This is because human rights only exist because their existence causes an increase in net happiness, even if this does not happen in each individual situation where rights conflict with utility.Quantifying happinessAlthough we cannot exactly define happiness, we can still recognise both the presence and magnitude of it. Generally, there are things that we almost universally find to be conducive to happiness; such as life, liberty, love and knowledge - so even if we cannot exactly quantify happiness, we can still recognise an increase of happiness as well as compare people's happiness.Furthermore, most humans are involved in the 'pursuit of happiness', viz. the existential drive to seek happiness. Since the pursuit of happiness will most likely lead to some form of happiness, it follows that we can also maximise happiness by maximising one's opportunity to pursue happiness. This is where liberty comes in as a concept that serves to maximise happiness. So utility does not necessarily have to know what happiness is defined as, it just needs to allow the maximising of happiness indirectly by allowing the pursuit of happiness.JusticeCon presents two scenarios.Scenario 1 has a greater net happiness, yet is far more imbalanced than scenario 2. Con argues that this presents a case where stable society =/= more net happiness.The fallacy here is that this examines specific scenarios. This is classical utilitarianism whereas I argue for rule utilitarianism. Whilst it is true that scenario 1 would have more happiness in the enclosed bubble of that scenario, if this scenario was applied to everyone throughout wider society [a] then the lack of equality would lead to an unstable society. An unstable society would lead to overall unhappiness and hence have negative utility.As we can see yet again, everything comes back to happiness at the end of the day. In individual cases, enforcing equality can lead to less happiness, but for a whole society, the overall happiness is maximised by having equality.Transplant Surgeon objectionAgain, this objection only rebukes classical utilitarianism. This is a straw-man fallacy because my tenet of a utilitarian-based legislative body emphasises rule utilitarianism.Whereas classical utilitarianism ignores rights and privileges (because there are cases where happiness can be increased when we disregard rights), rule utilitarianism upholds them because it recognises that a society will generally be happier if we establish certain rights.Rule utilitarianism would disallow the killing of a man to harvest his organs because if this was allowed throughout society, people would not trust doctors, be afraid to go to hospital and consequently have poor health. This would cause an overall decrease in happiness.'Rape culture' reductioCon misunderstands the principle of utility, it is not:'Maximise happiness'instead, it is:'Maximise happiness for all parties involved'.The former has absurd conclusions because it includes potential beings as well (of which there are near-infinite amount of) which would render it impossible to pragmatically assess the utility of a certain law. The latter only considers actual beings, which is much more pragmatic because there is the ability to know (roughly) the resultant utility of our actions by seeing how it will affect those involved.Con's argument is actually a rebuttal of the principle of 'maximise happiness', yet this is not what I argued for. I argued for the latter principle. Hence this reductio is another straw man fallacy.Happiness Per PersonI affirm that the principle of utility I support concerns happiness per person (HPP). This applies to abortion in the way I presented.In cases of abortion, there are two persons significantly affected. The mother and the foetus. With a law based on the principle of utility, we should consider the comparative HPP of the foetus and the mother. It just so happens that the foetus stands to lose a greater HPP than the mother if the abortion is carried out, so it follows that the law should ban abortion.This does not, as Con implies, entail the growth of the population. This is because potential human beings are not actual human beings, and hence are not considered when comparing HPP. In contrast, a foetus is an actual, not potential, human being (1). Therefore when we consider HPP, a foetus should be considered in this.So my argument definitely does not entail that we ought to maximise the population, all it entails is that we ought to maximise the happiness of each person within the population.When Con states:'When applied to Pro’s argument, it no longer follows that by allowing an “extra 71 years of utility” by adding a new person to the population is most concoctive to a stable society, and nor can it.'He demonstrates a fatal misunderstanding. This is because not-aborting doesn't add a new person to the population. The person already exists in the population! [b] Hence the government ought to consider their happiness when making laws.Illegal/legal abortionsCon states that I haven't provided 'a shred of evidence' to support my claim that prohibiting abortion would reduce the frequency of abortion. This is completely false. My source in Round 3 stated that banning abortion would deter most women from having one. (R3 source 5).Furthermore, a study concluded that the number of abortions decreased by 22.22% from 1990 to 2005, and wrote that 'one factor that played a role was the increased amount of anti-abortion legislation that was passed at the state level.' (4)Liberty of the foetusCon continues to present differences between adult humans and foetuses, yet fails to demonstrate why these are relevant differences.IdentityCon moves the goalposts here from 'sense of identity' to 'subconscious memory of identity'. Again, he has yet to explain why this is relevant to the liberty of a person. He presents a modified analogy where someone is both comatose and amnesiac. Oddly, Con thinks that it would be okay to kill this person. Although if Con was comatose and amnesiac, I imagine he wouldn't be happy with being killed!I accept that a foetus is presently just a cluster of cells. But we must consider the future of the person in a utilitarian calculation (since the past is irrelevant and the present infintesimal). It is a fact that a foetus will feel pain/pleasure in the future. A rodent, which may be more sensous in the present, has little capacity to develop in the future.MemoryCon makes the comparison with how the government supports the killing of brain-dead patients. But this is only in cases where there is no chance that they will live a future life. If it is known that a brain-dead patient will recover and live a long life thereafter, then the government certainly wouldn't be justified in killing them. Yet the latter scenario is more analogous to a foetus.ValuesWhilst it is true that we value identity, we also value having identity in the future (I value having identity next year). Since a foetus has future identity, society should value a foetus.(out of characters)_[a] As a rule utilitarianism-based government would do.[b] Population is defined as 'the body of inhabitants of a place' (2) and 'inhabitant' is defined as 'a person... that inhabits a place'(3). Since a foetus is a person (1), it is an inhabitant and therefore a member of the population._(1) US Senate report on senate bill 158, cited by [Kaczor, Christopher 'The Edge of Life: Human Dignity and Contemporary Bioethics' p48](2) http://dictionary.reference.com...(3) http://dictionary.reference.com...(4) http://www.jstor.org...