Abortion ought to be legal in the United States.

Thank you for responding. Unfortunately, I find that many of your responses seem to apply two different standards of logic when dealing with the same concepts. Allow me to clarify. Before I do that, though, I should note that my original response was well over the limit (by about 7,000 characters), so I'm having to truncate a lot of points. If it seems like I didn't respond to something or that I didn't develop my logic fully, please bring the point up again in your rebuttal, since I may have done so but merely removed it for space. Also, please forgive me if I sound a bit robotic or disjointed. I'll put what I've cut in [Snip: Summary] form when I replace something :) Suppose a woman were to become pregnant, but were to also fall into a coma. Suppose further that this woman were in the middle of the desert, and thus there were no other humans around to care for her. Assess the probability that the human inside would continue to develop until birth assuming that all variables remained the same. [Snip: A zygote has to be actively supported inside the womb, it is not that the zygote will "default" to being born unless interfered, but it will default to dying unless interference gives is nutrients, etc.] [Snip: Distinction between action/nonaction irrelevant anyway.] >>>From what is implied by the definition of sentient, it would seem that something that is sentient is alive. I would find it hard for one to argument that an entity can be sentient and not alive<<< I apologise, but I do not seem to have communicated my point properly. The point is that "life" is not the criterion that we use - personhood is. This is a very important distinction that I will address in a moment. >>>Well, since life is protected under U.S. law <<< Assuming that the Equal Protection clause is not the law you are citing, I would ask that you cite the law that protects "life" in this manner. In fact, I can think of plenty of instances where life is routeinly killed for pleasure, sometimes with the blessing of society. [Snip: Life isn't protected in general. Bacteria is life, but we murder it quite frequently and gleefully.] [Snip: Sentient life isn't protected in general. Most of us eat meat.] To be sure, there is a segment of the population that believes that all sentient life ought to be protected. The refutation of this view will be addressed later as I restate why I support abortion, but as a matter of American law it would seem that neither "life" nor "sentient life" is protected to nearly the extent that you believe. >>>Debating that certain life is not protected is in violation of the spirit of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.<<< As it stands, the wording of the Equal Protection clause would appear to support my point: "No state shall deny to any **person** within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Note that it does NOT say any lifeform: it protects only PERSONS. The 14th amendment that you have cited sets a bar for legal protection in the United States: not the requirement of life, but the requirement of PERSONHOOD. This explicitly recognises that there is a distinction between life and personhood. Thus, your attempts to conflate life and personhood together fail by your own citation. >>>, it seems that the protection of Life is the protection of one living out development.<<< [Snip: When a man is murdered, we mourn his loss of liberty, not merely that his 'potential to die' was interrupted. His liberty comes from the fact that he is a PERSON, not merely that he is alive.] You would put forth that the zygote has the potential of developing into a person, and thus it ought to be considered a person. While you yourself negate this argument when you agree that potential does not equal actual, allow me to once again refute it: We can demonstrate that this "potential" argument is absurd if we simply take it one step further. Sperm, given the right conditions, will also eventually develop into humans. However, we would never punish a man for masturbating or for simply choosing to abstain from sexual activity because we recognise that a sperm is not a person. In response to this, you claim that inaction results in the termination of that potential, whereas an active action must be taken in order to terminate the potential of personhood in a zygote. I should note that this does not address the logical point of whether potential ought to be conflated with actual (and, once again, you agreed with me that it ought not be conflated, which makes this little bit irrelevant), but the statement itself is false: If a mother herself does not take an active interest in providing for her growing child, the child itself will die. Indeed, in the hypothetical where the mother does nothing at all (and, thus, is in a state of perfect inaction), the child itself dies fairly shortly afterwards, indicating that active action is needed in order to *keep* the child, and a form of abortion is the result of *inaction*. [Snip: Just as a mother can abort actively or inactively, the student can fail actively or inactively] However, I need not even do this, because you have not demonstrated how the action/nonaction distinction affects anything whatsoever. And, once again, you already agreed that potential is not actual: Thus, your whole case is negated on the fact that you affirm the idea that a zygote's POTENTIAL to become a person does not, in fact, make it equal to a person. Thus, given its non-equality, that would also imply that there is a non-equality in the rights afforded. [Snip: Animals are sentient, but not protected. Your profile says you aren't a vegetarian. Thus, your position is inconsistent.] However, supposing you were a vegetarian, you may claim consistency. Am I defeated on this point? No! Ultimately, any moral determination is going to be a wholly subjective matter. I can claim "Writing on paper is equal to genocide" without being incorrect, per se, if I believe the statement to be true. When we debate about morality, we debate on two fronts: 1. What is "reasonable" to the both of us given our shared values? 2. Is there any part of your moral system that is inconsistent (that is, it contradicts itself)? On the second front, I have already demonstrated that the way you assign rights (such as the right to life) is inconsistent. Now, let me restate why I have also demonstrated that I meet the first requirement. [Snip: People still eat meat because cows, despite their considerable intelligence, are not sapient.] Clearly neither "life" nor "sentience" are the requirement for being considered a person: sapience is. People give too little credit to human intelligence, for even the small infant or the severely mentally disabled person is stil capable of great abstractions such as high-level metacognition. Compared to most individuals they may be lacking, but they are still persons. The vast majority of life, even sentient life, does not posess this ability to any significant extent (homo sapeins are, obviously, a notable exception). This, ultimately, is what we ought to base the right to life on, because humans are defined not in their biology or their sex organs or anything like that, but rather by their greater ability for experiencing the world. [Snip: A human in a hypothetical supercomputer is still human. Our personhood is what defines us, not our biology.] Thus, ultimately your argument fails to convince me as you have failed to adequately defend the idea that the potential for a thing equals the actual for that thing, and as well you have failed to defend the idea that personhood is contingent upon *sentience*, not sapience or some other criteria. I appreciate how respectful and courteous you have been in this debate, and I want to commend you for bringing up good points. I look forward to your response! :)