New Member Tournament: Abortion

I am going to be arguing that a fetus has the same rights as a person, and thus abortion is comparable to murder and should almost always be illegal. My argument is as follows: P1: A fetus is a human. P2: It is morally wrong to kill a human. C: It is morally wrong to kill a fetus. This is a logically valid argument, so it can only be false if the premises are false. My opening argument is going to be short as I do not know how my opponent will argue against it. P1. A fetus is a person. I think most of the debate will be on premise one, so I will devote little to no time to P2 and my conclusion. If my opponent does wish to argue those points, I will take them up. A fetus is merely someone who is going to be a person. If it is not interrupted, it will be a thinking, rationalizing human being no different from you and I. While a fetus is not currently thinking and rationalizing, it will be. It is essentially a person in a temporary coma. Neither can think and do other things that we identify as human, but they both will be able to. A situation: A baby is born. However, it is born into a coma that will last for 9 months. Would the parents be justified in killing the baby? If not, why? Until my opponent can give a reason why a fetus is not a person, I will not further argue this position. P2: It is morally wrong to kill a human. I do not see this point being contested. Conclusion: It is morally wrong to kill a fetus. If the premises are true, then it must necessarily follow that the conclusion is true. Refutations 1. Self-Ownership My opponent has listed the risks of pregnancy and argued that the right to self-ownership trumps the right to life. Does she believe that these justify a murder? If a fetus is a person, would these arguments also justify the murder of a completely sentient human being? Does the right to self ownership justify murder? "Legality does not affect the rate at which people decide to get abortions" People still murder despite murder laws. Does that mean murder should be legal? Not only that, legality does effect abortion rates. "the number of legal abortions declined by 22.22 percent[...] one factor that played a role was the increased amount of anti-abortion legislation that was passed at the state level."[1] In fact, simple things like reducing Medicaid funding lessens abortion rates[1]. If things as small as a hike in price reduce abortion rates, it seems obvious that abortion rates would lessen because of legality. The link my opponent posted used this study[2] as its source. In it, it says "Almost all unsafe abortions (97%) are in developing countries". Almost all of the data is comparing unsafe abortions in developing countries where abortion is illegal to safe abortion is first world countries where it is legal. Applying data gathered in third world countries to first world countries is a wee bit flawed. 2. Responsibility of Parent and Value of Life. The parent's responsibility does not extend to the right to kill their child. If it is "the paren'ts responsibility to decide for themselves what determines the value of life" then they should have free reign to kill their own children. If we take the view that a fetus is a human, then abortion must necessarily be immoral. Conclusion A fetus is a human. If things like self-ownership and the responsibility of a parent give the right to kill fetuses, they must also extend to the right to kill other human beings. If killing a human is immoral, killing a fetus should be immoral, and abortion should be illegal in almost all cases. Sources [1] http://spa.sagepub.com... [2] http://www.who.int...