Abortion

I would like to begin by thanking my opponent for giving me the opportunity to have this debate. "Again, I am not sure how I have not argued my opponents position..." My position is that: A) If a fetus is not a person then there is nothing wrong with killing it. B) There is no objective way to determine whether or not a fetus is a person. C) It is wrong to deny people the right to decide for themselves whether or not a fetus is a person. All Con has said with regard to these points is that he considers his beliefs should be accepted as fact without any justification. "I brought up the story of the Canadian boy simply to give the readers an idea of what brought the issue of abortion to my mind. … I was not using the story as an argument against abortion." Thank you for this admission. "The point is the bill gets paid." Really? Then why have health care costs been sky rocketing for the last few years? To just assume that the money needed to pay for an extra million babies a year is going to appear out of nowhere is irresponsible. "there was an estimated 463,000 children in foster care in 2008." And only 57,466 of them were adopted in 2009 (same source). I find it strange that Con did not even try to address what could be done to solve this problem or how there might be a way to criminalize abortions without aggravating it. Obviously, he can't. "And while this means more "millions" spent by taxpaying Americans, there are many more programs that the government has instituted and suggested we pay for that we could attack all day." So we just turn it over to the government and let them find a way to pay for it? Con wants the authority to force women to have children but isn't ready to take the responsibility of dealing with the consequences. "I have two children and couldn't care more about my family, or the lives of the children in foster care." Then why aren't you spending your time and energy on making their lives better instead of suggesting we make it worse by dumping a million more unwanted children into the system? "My opponent then goes on to name drop people who he feels are not "biased"" I never said any of those people were not biased. On the contrary, I brought them up to show just how prejudiced pro-lifers can be. If Con is referring to the sources I listed regarding these people ( i.e. CNN, CBS News, The Washington Post, etc.) again, I will leave it to the reader to decide how fair these sources are. ""So Pro-life advocates are willing to kill doctors, bomb buildings...Now I'm not saying all pro-choice advocates are terrorists and murderers," ,but now he has just labeled the entire group of Pro-Life advocates as people who are willing to bomb and kill. This, in my opinion, is an obvious contradiction." First, I would like to apologize for my obvious blunder. When I typed "Pro-Choice" I meant "Pro-Life". And I appreciate that my opponent didn't try to use this error against me. Second, if I had said that "all Pro-Life advocates are willing to to kill and murder", then I would have contradicted myself. But I didn't, so I haven't. "If my opponent would have read my source, he would have seen that the "anonymous source from Princeton" is actually a list of sources, plural as in more than one. But who put these quotes together? Was it a student, a professor, a janitor? The web site itself does not identify who authored the web site. To title the source as coming from Princeton gives a false impression that the author actually has some authority. And a closer look at the list shows that these are quotes from biology text books – some over 20 years old – cherry picked to support the author's (whoever it was) assertion that life begins at conception (a point I agreed with, mind you). It's a facade without any real substance. "You can see that at the beginning he is willing to agree that life begins at conception and that aborting a fetus equates to ending a human life, yet in his conclusion, as if he talked himself out of it, he states that it isn't a person and that abortion isn't murder. This, by definition is a contradiction..." My opponent is either unable or unwilling to comprehend the difference between being human and being a person. "Human" is a biological classification that can be tested for and proved to a high degree of certainty. "Person" is a philosophical concept which can be defined different ways under different circumstances. This is especially true when dealing with legal issues. To say that a human fetus isn't human would be ridiculous. What I am saying is that they aren't necessarily people. And Con has failed to show any reason why they should be considered to be people. "In conclusion I'd like to say that an unborn child is still just that, a child. He is separate from his mother in a scientific sense.." Fine. Then I propose that Pro-Life advocates dedicate all of their time and money to finding a way to preserve and incubate aborted fetuses so that they can live on without any help from their mothers and that the Pro-Lifers should be legally and financially responsible for the these children until they reach adulthood. But, as Con has demonstrated, they are not interested in actually bearing any of the burden for these children. They want to leave it up to the birth parents (who are already separate from these children in a "scientific sense") or the government or the tax payers. Conclusion: I have demonstrated that there are circumstances where human beings have been morally and legally deprived of their right to life and I have shown that there are circumstances where it is morally and legally permissible to take the life of a human being. So simply acknowledging that fetuses are human does not automatically guarantee them a right to live. I have raised the philosophical question of how does one define what a person is legally and pointed out that there is no reason why something that has not been born should be considered to be a person. And therefore, anyone who wishes to abort a fetus is both morally and legally justified in doing so. I have pointed out that my opponent's argument is built on biased sources that are riddled with anecdotal evidence, unsubstantiated accusations, anonymous authorities, emotional pleas and blatant propaganda. And when I asked my opponent to show why fetuses should be considered to be people and what would be done to deal with the consequences of prohibiting abortions he ignored and avoided these issues. I feel I have presented a winning case and I hope those who read it will agree with me.