Abortion should be illegal ( Tournament )

Firstly, someone needs to fix the autosave feature so I don't lose all my writing whenever I try to close skype on my ****ing computer -_-I shall address "sections" of my opponent, fromy something in bold to just before something else in bold in order to make things simpler:Point 1:My opponent has confused, as he has with most of my topic, being a person with being a human. A human being can be dead, saying that they cannot is ludicrous. If I have been not clear enough on this point, I shall state it again: The difference is important. When we ask is something human, we mean in this circumstance is it a person. Taxonomically, the dead are human, human cells are human, Auto Immune, AIDS and many diseases hold a trait of humanhood. Personhood is what is important. Being 'speciesist' is a completely arbitrary way of classifying something. Can it feel pain is an important trait. Is it self aware? Is it a rational being? These are all traits which people enjoy using to classify something as a person, or intelligent life. Let's apply it here, there is so much more reason to do so.I use the example of Captain Spock as it is one which is used many times: he is not human but he is a person. A person is what is important: We cannot eat Spock, or attack him on whim, or grant him less liberties, neither can we do so to any other intelligent life. This is because being human is arbitrary - or I would be able to shoot Anne Widdicombe on sight. No, being a person is what is important. Also, my opponent took what I said and misconstrued it slightly. To make that sentence more obvious of my meaning, and to stop these erroneous readings from continuing, it was meant similar to "a foetus, for example, does not have the ability...". It was an example rather than a defining characteristic. Point 2 - This continues from my original point: when we say something is a human, we refer to it as a person. The dead, bacteria, bla bla bla can all have the characteristic of humanhood, but personhood is what is important. Point 3 - Great argument.Point 4 - Yes, but it is irrelevant. That makes it speciesist. In fact, asking "is it a human" is just a way of avoiding addressing whether speciesism is favourable - something I would like to be seen defended.Point 5 - I am tempted just to say "I disagree", but that would be a lack of an argument: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.[video1] I want to make it clear here, again, of a simple statement: A person is not necessarily a human, and a human is not necessarily a person. They usually overlap, but my opponent is thinking that the correlation is because of causation. Point 6 - HUMANHOOD is not as important as PERSONHOOD. Captain Spock is better in my eyes than Fidel Castro or Hitler. Spock may not be human - or real - but he is a person in the sense that he has all necessary characteristics. Again, if aliens came to this earth, we'd class them as humans, and grant them civil liberties. We do not give the same to humans who aren't "persons"."Back to the alien thing...but it is not human".*sigh*Point 8 - "I don't have time to give examples." Alright. I shall consider this dropped until you pick it up. I am also extending the possible examples to speaking of urdu, smoke signals or morse code on the womb.Point 9 - "It clears waste"No it doesn't : It produces Meconium, which is released after birth, when it gains the ability to do so. However, this is unerlated to self-concept, or a sense of self. It refers to an individual's perception of "self" in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics (and nonacademics), gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others.[3]Point 10 - "...[people] in a Coma cannot feel pain, think, besides instinct or reason". Does it make them a person? Well, they are suffering from a symptom of the ailment. If they were in peak fitness, without being in..you know.. a coma, then they'd probably be just fine. But if someone is in a lifetime coma? Well, this is another issue for debate, and for the same issue as this: humanity vs personhood. If someone is constantly in a coma, cannot do anything - canot feel anything - then I, personally, feel that we should allow them the release of life, rather than force them to cling onto this world. They are no longer people in the same sense as you or I, they are merely shells of their former selves. Their chance of coming out of a coma is impossibly small, and their chance of coming out of it the same person is zero - comas lead to massive mental breakdowns and neural pathways being blocked and destroyed. Point 11 - any reading of context can be intelligibly recognised here: abortion is murder is a heading, a clash point. This is simply taking me out of context to make it seem as if I have conceded a point, and is obvious. Point 12 - He has failed to address this point. Saying abortion is murder means that it currently is murder. Meaning it currently is illegal. On the other hand, saying it "should be illegal", and not "should be made illegal" or "should become illegal" implies that it is not illegal. So he is saying that it is currently legal. Meaning that he is saying a currently illegal action is currently illegal. Which still makes no sense. In conclusion, my opponent has simply failed to address, if not actively tried to hide, the difference between alive, human, and personhood. He has accepted Warren's constitution for personhood as being a system to 'check', and yet has failed to prove the foetus to have any of the characteristics he has provided. He's even broken my favourite of all laws, a DeMyer's first law, by making the majority of his entire argument simply quotations of my argument (well, not really quotations, more like my argument with his words in between) and is simply fluffing it out. He has wrote less than 200 words (ignoring single-letter words such as "a"), while the rest simply quoting me. I am simply pointing this out in the hope that more shall be written now, so there is more to talk about.I look forwards to my opponent's reply. http://www.youtube.com...http://pregnancy.about.com...;http://en.wikipedia.org...;