Abortion is generally immoral

I thank zmikecuber for his calm response to my somewhat distressing arguments. I will firstly address his counter-arguments, which will lay a good context for the countering of his original arguments. Relevancy to abortion “My opponent has argued that it is immoral to bring a person into the world. But it's not clear how this applies to abortion.” There are two options when it comes to abortion: 1) Aborting 2) Not aborting If we do not abort, then we continue to bring sentient life into this world. “It may be immoral to bring an agent into the world, but as is the case with abortion, there already is an agent in the world. There is a human organism, with a future like ours.” The agent does not have the same capacity as a fully-functioning human. In particular, a foetus, prior to ~20 weeks, does not have a welfare state (i.e. a capacity to suffer and experience death): “At 20 weeks, the foetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body…” - Dr. Paul Ranalli, neurologist, University of Toronto [1] “…while eletroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in … probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks.” [2] “…it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation.” [3] So, the agent, prior to this, is most certainly not like ours. Abortion, if not the only other alternative (my opponent hasn’t suggested any others), correctly deals with the problem of bringing a potential welfare state into existence. A summary of my opponent's argument My opponent’s summary is accurate. Fallacy of composition “Even if every instant of our lives were filled with anguish, this doesn't mean that the life as a whole is "bad."” *Hypothetically, seeing as: 1) Discomfort is bad 2) Anguish (suffering) is a more extreme form of discomfort 3) *Every instant of our lives is filled with suffering 4) These lives are horrendously bad, due to the constant suffering Suffering is bad. Unless you can nullify, then it follows that all our lives are bad. “Procreation doesn't inflict suffering upon people.” Not directly, yes, but it gives us a deprivation mechanism, by which we are granted the ability to suffer. It is of no doubt that procreation almost certainly leads to suffering (but definitely discomfort), as: 1) Procreation leads to life 2) Life involves the production of perpetual discomforts 3) Some discomforts are bad enough to be considered suffering Discomfort is bad? “I will admit that generally discomfort is bad, but it really depends upon the circumstances.” My opponent tries to see discomfort, through context, in order to determine whether it is bad or not. The context element my opponent is arguing, is exceedingly detrimental to revealing the true nature of discomfort. Again, we have to first establish the true nature of discomfort, and I have done that: 1) In the absence of context, if given the choice between discomfort and comfort, all sentient humans would choose comfort 2) Therefore, discomfort is (inter-subjectively) bad Feeling discomfort before comfort “I feel happiness all the time. When I am driving to work, thinking about my girlfriend, and how life is so good…” I’m not sure my opponent quite understands the meanings I have used. I’m not referring to literal discomfort, necessarily (i.e. stubbing your toe). You can only feel happy in driving to work, if you had the desire of not driving to work (discomfort), beforehand: 1) I enjoy driving to work 2) I am not driving to work, at the moment (and I am in discomfort) 3) Therefore, I am going to drive to work 4) I am now driving to work (and I am now in comfort, relative to this individual scenario) “We experience happiness in relation to how things could be. Not to how they have actually been in the past.” Yes, so you could be driving the car, but you’re not, therefore you’re in discomfort (albeit, probably mild discomfort). Once you are driving the car, you’re then happy, and not worrying about the discomfort in the past. There is no pleasure to be had in scratching, if there was no itch beforehand. The Surprise investment “What is wrong in my opponent's analogy is that the agent is clearly able to make the investment choice herself. In the case of procreation, this isn't the same.” So, because the foetus is not able to make the decision his/herself, it makes it okay to continue birth? I’ll address this under the next quotation… “Is it immoral to make decisions about where your comatose relative will live? No, because she can't make them for herself. If she could, then this might be immoral.” This analogy isn’t quite appropriate here. You see: Consent, in regards to child-birth, pertains to production of the deprivation mechanism, in which discomfort can be produced. The consent, in regards to the comatose patient, is somewhat irrelevant, as the patient: 1) Will not have his/her deprivation mechanism erased, regardless of the relocation 2) The decision itself would probably be better than no decision, seeing as there is already a deprivation mechanism So, the decision made for the foetus is morally wrong, because there is a deprivation state created, without consent, whilst the relocation isn’t all that serious. Question begging epithets (Serious Catastrophe) These aren’t loaded questions. There’s no question that these things happened/ are happening, and that these things produce an enormous amount of suffering. I was merely trying to establish how all this misery could be justified. I’ll try again: how could a Holocaust be equalled, in terms of positive affect? How about WWII? How much excruciating suffering must there be until you say that it’s too much? Why so serious? “My opponent is simply giving a pessimistic view of life. I can just do the opposite, and debunk her argument entirely by taking an optimistic view.” No, you can’t. I repeat: “It is not sufficient a counter-argument to say that for every negative there is an equal positive always met, because discomfort requires only the existence of a sentient psychology; whereas, elimination of discomfort is not necessarily assured. For example, you cannot be sure that you will be hired for a certain job, yet you can far more easily wish that you could.” Discomfort is perpetual, comfort isn’t necessarily. Life is not "bad" “P1: If life were a bad thing in itself, then people wouldn't desire it.” Counter Counter-argument: Relativity scheme There is no objective determinant in which humans decide value, rather valuing comes through comparison. For example, a soft arm-chair has, in reality, no real value. It has value, when viewed through human perception, because it serves the purpose of something to rest upon. It is more valuable than a pile of sticks or simply the ground, in this regard, as the chair will likely be far more comfortable than either. However, if a person has never sat on a chair in her life, and has only sat on sticks, won’t then sticks be considered to be the most comfortable for the person? Won’t then the sticks be the measure for what is most comfortable? Similarly, when a human comes to valuing her life, it is not done via an objective table of values; rather it is done by comparison: ‘it could be worse’, ‘one in the hand is better than two in the bush’ etc. If a person has lived in the bush her entire life, would she consider the ground to be comfortable? Probably, don’t you think? Why? She doesn’t know of any better, and the other things to sit on are, comparatively, not as comfortable as the ground. Since individual human value is not necessarily grounded in reality, rather it can be, at best, somewhat accurate in reflecting comparative value, would it then be silly to say that all human judgements are based in reality? Quite clearly, the best a human could do is decide what is better, rather than what is best. So, if we (not as individuals) understand ALL the possibilities of what can be done with a life (in terms of satisfying discomforts), then it should be apparent that not all judgements are based upon reality; just because someone has determined his/her life as valuable, this doesn’t mean that the value judgements that comprise this decision were done in accordance to any real value. Rebuttals to round 2 Hopefully, with the context of my round 3 rebuttals, my points will be clear, so I won’t have to elaborate. When does life begin? This really isn’t a relevant argument, as life, in itself, has no value. That’s why you don’t fret when you accidentally squash a bug, or when millions of sperm die in sexual intercourse(!!!). Neither has a welfare state, wherein discomfort/suffering could occur. The Future Like Ours (FLO) argument As I argued at the top of this round, a foetus only develops a capacity to suffer at around 20 weeks of pregnancy. Killing things that have no welfare state, does no real harm, to the thing killed. So, murder isn’t necessarily immoral, so long as the foetus has no welfare state. "It's my body though!" A rebuttal of bodily rights arguments. Someone could bump feminism off a dock, and I’ll happily watch it drown. The reverse violinist argument. Still, there’s no consent to conception/birth, life (in general) is basically about more discomfort than comfort and nothing of real value is lost/harmed, if the foetus is aborted before 20 weeks. References [1] http://www.mccl.org... [2] Lee SJ, Ralston HJP, Drey EA, Partridge, JC, Rosen, MA. A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence. Journal of the American Medical Association. 294:8 (2005) 947-954. [3] Fetal Awareness: Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice. Report of a Working Party. Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. March 2010.