No abortion outside of extenuating circumstances should be permitted

FrameworkBecause mine & Pro’s case both start from the axiom that government ought to create a stable society, then it comes down to contrasting cases and values. While I have defended my value of liberty - Pro’s defence of his value of utilitarianism has severely lacking.Rebuttals to Pro’s defence of utilitarianismJust how is utility essential to all human existence and being? Pro’s quote only goes as far as to define utility in terms of augmenting or diminishing happiness – and doesn’t go anywhere in defending the principle as something that a government should do. I assert, that the act of creating a stable society transcends this, and thus a utopian society with maximal happiness for all is not possible. The government needs to make practical choices in the waves of human selfishness, imperfections, lack of omniscience, and imperfect reason. As a result, 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.Utilitarianism is impossible to define & utilise pragmatiallyWhat is happiness? What is defined as “a lot” of happiness? What is defined as “no happiness? Utilitarianism lacks any quantifying nature, and thus assessments cannot be reasonably be made between two parties. It is only by subjective assessment that one party is deemed to be “happier” than another, thus it is useless as a device for separating out the preference of one act over another – especially if it strips away the context.Furthermore, it entails unjust environments, such as the following scenario:Scenario 1Person 1: 0 Arbitrary units of happinessPerson 2: 1000 Arbitrary units of happinessScenario 2:Person 1: 450 Arbitrary units of happinessPerson 2: 450 Arbitrary units of happinessUtilitarianism would posit that scenario 1 is preferable to scenario two (1000 units of happiness vs. 900), despite the massive unjust disparity between the two people involved. Yet this is exactly what we see on some level in heavily wealth-segregated countries, where the rich live in luxury at the expense of the poorer classes. With large power gaps in wealth, influence, and freedoms. Scenario 2 is clearly more concoctive to a stable society since everyone is equal, and nobody is feeling unfairly treated, and hence is less likely to object to this specific circumstance. Scenario #1 would entail 50% of people are feeling unfairly treated, and will want things to change.Even if we assume that scenario 2 is more concoctive to happiness, we cannot pragmatically know, assess or judge this – since happiness is a super-nebulous term. It is far clearer to make a judgement based on liberty, since either rights are equal, or they are no – it comes with no surprise to libertarians that scenario 2 a preferable one.Transplant Surgeon ObjectionUtilitarianism completely ignores human rights and privilages, and human rights are the bedrock of how a society is pragmatically held together. While human rights are not objective, they are demonstrably an effective way in ensuring a stable society. For example, in the transplant surgeon objection, we have a healthy person in a hospital, who happens to be a match for five people needing different organs to survive. Under utilitarianism, assuming utility per person or total utility, they should kill this man, take his organs and transplant them. By doing so we have saved five lives, however at the expense of violating the man’s human right to bodily autonomy, to life, safety, etc. Clearly a society that enables this would be disastrous in terms of stability. Thus, our implementation of human rights prevents these cases, allowed increased stability – at the cost of not maximising happiness – which contradicts Pro’s value assertion.[13]RebuttalsReductio - Rape-CultureAs well as being incoherent, utilitarianism to concoct a stable society is also self-refuting by assuming virtually identical lines of reasoning such as permitting people to rape at will without contraception would entail maximising utility, since it would entail an increased number of pregnancies (not to mention that pro must also assume that these pregnancies cannot be aborted under utilitarianism), thus the following is mandated:1. Legalised rape2. People must otherwise have sex as often as humanly possible and birth as many children as possible3. Those who are infertile are obliged to undergo IVF/other methods to ensure pregnancySuch measures would quite obviously lead to a critically unstable society, yet these follow when assuming utilitarianism in the manner Pro assumes it. Because utilitarianism entails parallel situations that clearly do not concoct a stable society.Happiness per Person vs Net HappinessPro makes a subtle equivocation in his argument, between how he affirmed utilitarianism as a value, and how he applies it to abortion. See the following:“I propose that laws based upon the principle of utility are the most conducive to a stable society. This is because utility is essential to all human existence and living, and hence it is the most prudent principle upon which to make laws."This strongly implies utility per person, i.e. how happy each person is in society – however he affirms his arguments for abortion in a sense that he is maximising total or net utility. These are two completely different measures, and hence he cannot hold on to his argument that “we lose a total of 71 years of happiness if we abort” with his current arguments for his value of utilitarianism – as it is a fallacy as it stands. Utilitarianism under Pro’s assumptions mandates perpetual growth of the population in order to maximise utility, there is no end point. However this seriously neglects the existing population:Population A: 500 PeoplePopulation B: 1000 PeopleWhich society is happier? There are two ways of looking at this, one is to take a sum, and hence add up the happiness each person has – in which case if we assume positive happiness for each person (which Pro is light years away from proving, and Pro has made it his job in handwaving his job here), then obviously Population B is happier. However, “happiness per person” is ignored – and for a society to be stable, then it is more concoctive to maximise the happiness of the members of society that already exist.If Population A has a slightly higher happiness per person than B, then the population will exhibit greater content, and less rebellious/corrupt behaviour than Population B. The number of people in a population is irrelevant to how stable/content/corrupt and thus how stable a society is.Given that we live in a world with limited resources, and limited growth and limited space, then these points are directly relevant to the world we live in. Contrasting India with Norway for example, the former has a population of well over 1 billion, thus we have many more years of happiness in that country than Norway, with a population of only ~5 million. Yet it is Norway that tops the Human Development Index at 0.944, compared with India’s 0.586 – Norway does better in virtually every category of adult literacy rates, adult poverty, employment, well being, etc. It is Norway that is the more stable state by an extremely large margin.[14]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.Illegal Abortions vs Legal AbortionsPro makes the claim that prohibiting the ban on abortions would entail far fewer abortions than enabling them – but provides not a shred of evidence to substantiate it or quantify the scale of it and its impact. I already provided evidence to the contrary. Counter-RebuttalsLiberty of FoetusAll of Pro’s defences to my arguments assumes that the foetus is equivalent to an adult human in its rights and liberties – to which I have already provided reason why this is not the case. I have already given evidence why they are much less considerable than our fellow animal kingdom – to whom we do not grant anywhere near the same rights to.IdentityPro appeals to comatose people, however ignores that identity is four-dimensional and the continuity is provided by one’s memory. If a person was both comatose AND amnesic (a far superior analogy), then Pro would have to provide very good reason why the government should not kill that person. Just because the government maintains liberty of the person in the eyes in the law doesn’t mean it does so coherently nor correctly. Pro begs the question here.Moreover Pro doesn’t object to any of my facts regarding what foetus is, a cluster of cells with no ability to feel pain or experience anything (especially in the first few weeks). With many weeks needing to pass before the foetus can be argued to surpass even a rodent.MemoryI don’t intend to demonstrate the connection of the permissibility of killing – I intended to demonstrate that the lack of memories means that the foetus is for the purposes of liberty – dead as a person. Regardless of whether or not its cells are dividing and it is undergoing respiration – if it has no personal identity on any level, then it is dead. There is a reason why the government permits the killing of brain-dead patients – despite their bodies being perfectly sustainable via. life support.“However, it is not demonstrated that one can only have liberty if they value it. It is a bare assertion.”And this is a strawman, since I prefaced the conclusion with an “even if one does not accept my liberty value”. Furthermore my argument isn’t about being aware of one’s value of identity, only that we do (as a society) value our identity (hence why we prohibit actions that affect it, such as murder) - thus we cannot value the foetus in the same way since it clearly does not have an identity in that regards.References13. http://goo.gl...14. https://goo.gl...