This House believes that abortion is morally permissible.

IntroductionIn this round, I want to offer 2 arguments against the permissibility of abortion. In doing so, I hope to respond to much of Pro’s opening post in the process.I agree with Pro that what’s relevant is not the politics but the morality of abortion in this debate. I also completely accept the permissibility of abortion in certain, extreme circumstances. I’d actually go further and disassociate myself from much of the politics of the Pro-Life movement. Abortion may be a contentious moral issue, but providing easily accessible healthcare to women, for example, shouldn’t be controversial in the least. Anyway, I want to begin by addressing a confusion Pro has between emergency (or indeed any) contraception and abortion. Life begins at fertilisation, or so I shall argue. As such, disrupting or artificially preventing this process is decidedly not the same as terminating a pregnancy. As such, our focus should primarily be on typical abortion cases and methods.Now on to my case.Argument from Personhood (1)Pro admits that if I can establish the unborn are persons, abortion is morally wrong. To do this, it is first necessary to establish that the unborn are human beings. There are 2 reasons to believe this. First, fertilisation results in the formation of a genetically distinct and whole organism, encompassing genetic (human) information from both parents (zygote) (2). Second, as Patrick Lee points out, this organism “is fully programmed actively to develop himself or herself to the mature stage of a human being”, and will do so, if unharmed (3).As such, not only can we establish the existence of a new human being inside the mother, but we can trace our own beginning back to this non-arbitrary stopping point. This point is relatively uncontroversial, as ultra-liberal moral philosopher Peter Singer explains, “… there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.”(4)The dispute, rather, surrounds the distinction between a human being and a human person, as Pro says. Pro offers a performance view of persons - only those with the requisite cognitive characteristics (Consciousness, Reasoning, Autonomy, Communication, Self-Awareness) should be considered persons and thus be granted the right to life. I want to offer 3 criticisms of this view.Slippery slope - Assuming Pro holds that animals aren’t persons, his restrictive performance criteria would have to exclude infants and people with low IQs. As such, both infanticide and the killing of the disabled would be morally permissible on his view as neither would be persons with a right to life. Indeed, Singer (whom Pro cites) admits as much,“we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.”(5)Undermined human equality - If personhood (and by extension, rights) have their foundation in intellectual capacities , then those with diminished capacities would be lesser persons. Indeed, rights would differ as much as the capacities themselves. Episodic problem - Functioning mental capacity can be lost temporary, through sleep or injury, for example. Yet to believe personhood can be turned on and off like a light switch, or that it would be permissible to kill a temporary comatose patient seems absurd, but this is what a performance approach entails.As such, Pro’s conception of personhood is inherently, irredeemably flawed.The substance view (6)On this view, every human being is endowed with inherent moral worth given their essential nature as a de facto rational agent. On such a view, the type of being is what grants personhood, and all human beings (including the unborn) share the quality of having a disposition as a moral agent, regardless of performance. This account is justified by its superior practical application. It suffers none of the problems identified above. It also demarcates the moral significance between humans and animals. Pro’s counter-argument also proves my point. His cultured aliens would be persons due to the type of creature they are - de facto rational agents. Humanity is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition of personhood.As such, the substance view should preferred. Since this entails the personhood of the unborn, abortion is morally impermissible.Future-Like-Ours argument (FLO) (7)This argument starts by asking what makes killing wrong. I submit we’d all agree on some account empathetic to the victim. But in what way?One plausible account pretty close to Pro’s reasoning would focus on our higher functioning capacities as persons and appeal to our desires. Killing thwarts our most fundamental desire (the desire to live) in the most egregious way possible. This accords well with our moral horror of killing. It also covers most adults (as they have this desire) and (arguably) even infants (who have the implicit desire to live) and it excludes the unborn. The problem would be that such an account would also exclude temporary comatose patients or a broken hearted, suicidal teen (who desires death). Not only that but if Pro’s cultured aliens managed to operate without desires, this account would exclude them as well.Alternatively, killing is wrong because it deprives a person of a potentially valuable future - a FLO. This position easily accounts for killing in most cases. It also resolves the coma patient and the suicidal teen - both of whom possess a potentially valuable future. Even the alien persons would be protected in this scenario as a being with this valuable property (FLO).The FLO account would also include the unborn. As Pro-Choice philosopher David Boonin notes,“The FLO argument appeals to an actual property that the fetus already has, the property of having a valuable personal future. This is an actual property it shares with us, not a potential it has to acquire a property which we already actually possess.”As such, the FLO,“cannot be defeated by pointing to the objection that undermines the more common potentiality argument.” (8)Pro’s 3 criticisms of potentiality are therefore totally irrelevant to my case. I’m not arguing the unborn are potential persons, but persons (or at least beings) with a potentially valuable future. A future like ours.ConclusionI want to close with the words of moral philosopher Rosalind Hursthouse, who perfectly captures the profound nature of the issue:"to think of abortion as nothing but the killing of something that does not matter . . . is to do something callous and light-minded" (9)Sources1. Kaczor, Christopher, The Ethics of Abortion, 2011, P91-97.2. http://biology.about.com...3. http://www.blackwellpublishing.com...(P14)4. Peter Singer, quoted in Kaczor, 2011, P7.5. Singer, Peter, Practical ethics, 2nd ed, 1993, P1716. https://bearspace.baylor.edu...7. http://faculty.polytechnic.org...8. Boonin, David, A Defense of Abortion, 2003, P629. Hursthouse, Rosalind, "Virtue theory and Abortion", in Virtue Ethics, 1997, P230