On balance, abortion is immoral

On my opponent's request, this debate will actually concern whether or not abortion should be legal. Nevertheless, morality will still have a major part of the debate, considering many of our laws are shaped around moral sentiments.Note that I will make the following concession, that I accept that abortion should be legal in cases where it is necessary to save the mother from death or severe physical injury. This is because the killing of abortion starts to be considered as proportionate self-defence, which I believe is morally and therefore legally acceptable.Nonetheless, only 0.00014% (1) of abortions in the past ten years in the UK have been to save the mothers life. It is absurd to suggest that we should make the other 99.99986% of abortions legal to allow for such a negligible minority of cases, especially considering that in every single one of these cases a human life is destroyed unjustly.ArgumentMy argument takes the following form of premises and conclusions:P1: A human foetus is a human beingP2: It is wrong to kill a human beingP3: An abortion kills a human foetusC1: It is wrong to have an abortionP4: Wrong acts should not be legalC2: Abortion should not be legal.This argument is deductive, which is to say that the conclusions follow logically from the premises. All I need to do now is justify the premises.P1Consider the definition of 'human being':'any individual of the genus Homo, esp. a member of the species Homo sapiens.' (2)Firstly, a human foetus is an individual organism; it has unique DNA with a distinct body.Secondly, a human foetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens because it has DNA that pertains to this species.Therefore, a human foetus is a human being.The US Senate report on Senate Bill 158 summarised this premise:'Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.' (3)P2This premise is somewhat more challenging to verify. First we must consider why killing human beings is wrong.It is a hard question, as many take it as indisputable fact that homicide is wrong, but it seems that there must be a particular reason why we all share this sentiment.But when one thinks about it, it becomes apparent that the reason that homicide is wrong is because it denies someone their future life.This is demonstrated by how people often mourn the dead by saying: 'He had so much to live for!' or 'He had his whole life ahead of him!'.Furthermore, if one was to be diagnosed with cancer and given 2 weeks to live, probably the main reason why the patient would feel saddened would be that they feel disappointment with the prospect of missing out on a future life.So killing human beings is wrong because it denies them of a future life. Even if this future life can seem to be undesirable, it is still valuable insofar as it has the potential to be desirable. For example, the future of a homeless person may look bleak, but the future life is still valuable because it has the potential to be desirable, through the autonomous deliberation of the individual.Therefore, as pretty much all human beings have a future life with the capacity to be desirable, and that killing is the removal of this future life, then we can conclude that the killing of human beings is wrong.P3This is an uncontroversial premise, as it is entailed by the definitions that were accepted by my opponent in round 1.C1This conclusion is a logical deduction from P1, P2 and P3.P4Immoral acts are immoral because they generally share some negative trait - namely the decrease in the general welfare of all parties involved. In other words, if there are two actions, X & Y, then if Y causes a general decrease in the welfare of the involved parties, then Y is immoral.So to summarise, immoral acts are such because they harm the welfare of others'.Now, consider that the role of government is to promote the welfare of its citizens (as it is democratically elected by them). If legalising something will cause a general increase in welfare, then it ought to be legalised. Conversely, if something will cause a general decrease in welfare, then it ought to be prohibited up until the point at which further prohibition would decrease the general welfare.Therefore, as immoral acts decrease the general welfare of society and those within it, such acts ought to be legally prohibited.C2This conclusion logically follows from C1 and P4.ConclusionThis valid argument, which I have sufficiently defended, demonstrates why abortion should not be legal. (1) https://www.gov.uk...(2) http://www.thefreedictionary.com...(3) Kaczor, Christopher 'The Edge of Life: Human Dignity and Contemporary Bioethics' p48 (available on Google Books - http://bit.ly...)