abortion

My opponent has definitely improved from our last two debates; unfortunately, my opponent's entire argument misses the point of the abortion debate. It is not a constitutional or a scientific problem (though these disciplines are intertwined with answering the issue of abortion), but rather a philosophical one: what determines personhood. A person is a morally and legally relevant entity, and the question becomes whether or not a fetus is a person. If it's a person, then killing it would result in murder and I have no desire to argue in favor of murder. However, if it's proven that a fetus is not a person, then killing it would not result in murder and thus give me a steady foundation to stand upon - unless my opponent is against the termination of any kind of life in any circumstance, which I doubt. So let's examine his two argument and see how they fare: ==================== Constitutional argument against abortion ==================== "I respect the men who wrote the constitution. .. Would they support the burning and poisoning of an innocent baby. " ----> I could care less about what the Founding Fathers thought about abortion. This is a logical fallacy commonly known as an appeal to authority; the Founding Fathers are not overflowing resources of knowledge. And while their opinions and beliefs should be held in high regard concerning politics (namely the founding of our nation), I'd doubt their authority concerning philosophy of ethics. Even then, saying you have a big hotshot name supporting a certain belief gives you little, if any, credit for proving that belief. "It states that a fetus is the stage between embryo and birth, but in fact it never says that a fetus is not a baby. " ----> This is another logical fallacy, and a simple scientific error. The fallacy here is similar to the argument from silence[1], which states that just because someone hasn't responded to an argument or claim doesn't mean that argument/claim is true. In context, you are inferring from the observation that just because Wikipedia doesn't say fetus' aren't babies, then the inverse must be true, that fetus' are babies. This is obviously false. Furthermore, a simple scientific fact will reveal that babies are infants and/or newborn children[2], meaning it's an organism that is AFTER birth. Finally, you have no philosophical reasoning for demonstrating why it should matter that killing babies is wrong - just because they are cute does not necessarily mean they are persons. "I have a question for you, do you think a fetus feels pain? " ----> Only in the last trimester, since the necessary nerve pathways have finally formed (just having the receptors does you no good, you need something to receive the information). Even then, just because they feel pain doesn't matter - we kill animals all the time just for food. As Puck states in the comment sections, this would damn you to vegetarianism. If you want to defend the doctrine that sentient beings are persons, then go ahead - but in my second round I'll be sure to pounce on that. "This seems like a pretty important amendment, does it not? Why would people go out of their way to create such an important amendment, if they know it would start heated debates, like this very debate. " ----> This is yet another very common logical fallacy: the appeal to popularity. Just because most people approve of X does not make X true, reality is not dependent on the minds of people (unless you want to argue for that, which would be fun). ==================== Conclusion and determinant of personhood ==================== I've refuted what I perceive to be very weak arguments. Since I'm done with those, I will present shortly why I argue for abortion. Basically, I will use consciousness, more or less, as the deciding factor for determining who is a person. This is obviously a debatable point, so I'll leave further discussion for the next round, seeing as we have 5 rounds. ---References--- 1. . http://skepticwiki.org... 2. . http://dictionary.reference.com...