Abortion is generally immoral

Pro's argumentPremise 1: I construe this to mean that all fertilized eggs are individual organisms of the species homo sapiens, and will not dispute this.Premise 2: I contend that Pro has not justified this premise.Pro asserts that not giving intrinsic value to pre-birth humans because of a characteristic they have would allow discrimination against post-birth humans who have the same characteristic. However, I do not have the burden to falsify premise 2 by showing that pre-birth humans lack such a characteristic; rather, Pro has the burden to show that premise 2 applies as a universal.Pro also asserts that pre-born humans have the inherent capacity to perform functions that make humans valuable. He has observed that they share this characteristics with the infantile, asleep and comatose. However, there is a difference between not having the capacity to do something, which applies to certain fetuses, and having the capacity but by happenstance not doing it at the moment, which applies to the others. More on this below.Premise 3: This premise can be construed in two different ways:3a: It is prima facie wrong to actively kill a human being.3b: It is prima facie wrong to take an action that, as a secondary effect, results in the death of a human being. Neither 3a nor 3b follow from 1 and 2. Pro has given no reason why it is prima facie wrong to kill an organism that happens to belong to homo sapiens, even if it might have intrinsic value. His remark on "responsibility" is addressed below.Premise 4: Again, this premise can be construed in two ways:4a: Abortion actively kills a human being.4b: Abortion is an action that, as a secondary effect, results in the death of a human being.If 3 is construed as 3a, then 4 must be construed as 4a to maintain validity. The same holds with 3b and 4b.I do not dispute 4b. I do dispute 4a; abortion is not the action of killing a human being, but of terminating a pregnancy, which is the set of physical interactions between a post-birth human and a pre-birth human. This usually has the secondary effect of depriving said pre-birth human of life.I will now present two counter-arguments that abortion is not generally immoral. If either succeeds, then Pro's case fails, since you cannot have two sound arguments with contradictory conclusions.Lack of harms argument1) If abortion generally does not result in an overriding harm, then it is not generally immoral.2) Abortion generally does not result in an overriding harm.3) Therefore, abortion is not generally immoral.Premise 1: Something being immoral necessitates that an overriding harm arise from it; this premise is simply the converse of that principle.Premise 2: This premise can be supported in either of two ways.ValuesThe death of an organism that happens to be human does not in itself trigger the shared values of personhood of all non-sociopaths, which is necessary for an overriding harm to occur.Take the scenario of a burning house, the roof of which is about to cave in. In one room, there is a canister of 100 embryos which are perfectly viable, and will remain so as long as they are immediately removed from the house and returned to cold storage. In the other room is an eight year old girl. There is only time to rescue either the canister or the girl, not both.I submit that all non-sociopaths would elect to save the girl. Anti-abortion rights (hereafter AAR) partisans can justify this however they'd like, but the fact would remain that even they value post-birth humans more than pre-birth humans. This is not to say they don't greatly value pre-birth humans; but if they valued them in the same way that they valued post-birth humans, then the choice between allowing one moral harm or 100 equivalent moral harms should not even trigger hesitation in the AAR advocate.DesiresIronically, the strength of this point comes from an AAR proponent, Donald Marquis, who argued that abortion frustrates the desire that a fetus will have to live, if it is not killed. This right should be respected, he argues, because it is shared with temporarily comatose adults, who do not presently desire to live but will in the future, and suicidal teenagers, who presently desire the exact opposite but will want to live again in the future.[1] Marquis, however, failed to distinguish between two different types of desires: active and ideal. For example, if I am having a severe bout of depression, then I would have an active desire to die; however, since I know I want to live when I am healthy, and would actively desire that if I were healthy, I have an ideal desire to live. Ideal desires are actual desires that have been corrected to allow for cognitive distortion.[2] At what point, then, does a human begin to have active desires on which abortion would impose? The answer is, when organized cortical brain activity begins to take place, which occurs no earlier than the 25th week of pregnancy.[3] Abortions which take place after the 25th week are exceedingly rare, and thus constitute an exception to the rule of generality. Prior to the 25th week, abortion frustrates neither an active nor an ideal desire of the fetus, and thus results in no harm.Moral obligations argument1) If allowing a state of affairs exceeds one's moral obligations, then terminating that state of affairs is not generally immoral.2) Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy.3) Allowing a pregnancy exceeds one's moral obligations.4) Therefore, abortion is not generally immoral.Premise 1: To exceed one's moral obligations is to take an action for which no obligation existed in the first place, and immorality only arises when an existing obligation has been violated.Premise 2: Common knowledge.Premise 3: In support of this premise, I offer J.J. Thompson's famous "Violinist" argument by analogy.[4]Suppose a person is kidnapped by a group of music lovers, who connect her circulatory system to that of a famous violinist. The violinist is suffering from a fatal kidney disease, and as a result of the connection the person's own kidneys are filtering toxins from his bloodstream. Hers is the only compatible physiology; if she unplugs herself from the violinist, he will certainly die.Thompson's argument is that the person here has the right to "unplug" herself from the violinist. If she chooses not to, if she chooses to allow the violinist to use her body for his benefit, then she is exceeding her moral obligations; being a "Good Samaritan."To my knowledge, no AAR proponent has ever seriously argued that the person does not have the right to unplug herself; rather, they raise points of dissimilarity between this scenario and pregnancy. As with any analogy, points of dissimilarity are inevitable; however, again to my knowledge, no AAR proponent has raised a morally relevant point of dissimilarity. In both cases, the woman is allowing another organism to use her body, does not necessarily consent to this state of affairs (although she is free to consent if she wishes) and is not depriving the other organism of any right to life it may have, merely of the use of her body.Perhaps anticipating this argument, Pro asserted that engaging in a consensual act that results in the creation of a new and needy life carries the responsibility to care for that life. However, he needs to clarify what creates this responsibility: the neediness of the life, or consenting to and performing the act that resulted in this life's creation. He also needs to argue, either way, why this should be the case.ConclusionPro's argument has not been established as sound. In addition, I have offered two counter-arguments that abortion is not generally immoral. Quite the contrary.[1] Donald Marquis, "Why Abortion Is Immoral," 1989.[2] David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge Press, 2003).[3] Harold J Morowitz & James S Trefil, The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy (Oxford University Press, 1992).[3] Judith Jarvis Thompson, "In Defense of Abortion," 1971.