Drinking while pregnant is child abuse due to the damagae it causes.

Contention 1: Definitions My opponent has failed to define some key terms for you in this debate, so I will take the initative to due so since these definitions are very key to the debate and determine how things go. Child Abuse- Child Abuse has been defined as an act, or failure to act, on the part of a parent or caretaker that results in the death, serious physical or emotional harm, Sexual Abuse, or exploitation of a child, or which places the child in an imminent risk of serious harm. ( http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com...) Child- the age span from birth to adolences. (Macmillan Dictionary for Students Macmillan, Pan Ltd. (1981), page 173. Retrieved 2010-7-15) Now this is key to the debate, because it turns the debate to showing that in order for this to be child abuse the child must already be born in order for it to be concidered a child and hence child abuse. This means that by definition that drinking while pregnant is not child abuse. Contention 2: Chances of a Zygotes survival. The chances of the Zygotes original survival is actually pretty slim. The numbers show that 60% of Zygotes do not make it to the first term. "... up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%." (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...) Now you are probably asking yourself what in the world does this have to due with this debate as this debate isn't about abortion, but drinking. The relivency is that a large portion of them do not even make it to the first term of of pregnancy goes to show that the chances of getting pregnant is pretty low and that the signifigence is slow as many of the children don't make it to that point and under the resolution drinking even under 1 day after being fertilized would be concidered child abuse which is perposterous concidering that the zygotes have a little chance of even making it to the first term of pregnancy. Contention 3: Rocks have a greater moral value then that of a fetuas. Now before you size me up in a straight jacket and put me in the nut house here me out. Here I will take a quote from the Self Identity as Memory, ""This sense of self is critical to our status as persons. In fact, philosophers often use the terms self and person interchangeably: a capacity for self-awareness is necessary for full personhood. One has a sense of self if one is able to entertain first-person thoughts, and if one possesses first-person knowledge." Handbook of self and identity (pp. 68-90). New York: Guilford Press, 2002 (http://socrates.berkeley.edu...) Now what that means is that once something is self-aware then it can be concidered a person. A fetus is not a person as it hasn't been born nor does it have the selfawareness. It's because of that the fetus is concidered less than that of a human being. Now as for rocks. Now you see that the rock will always be a rock. Reguardless if it's vandelised, smashed, or even mined for it's ore the rock is still a rock only in a different state of frame. The fetus is not yet a fully functional human and it's because of that the fetus cannot be concidered that greater of a rock, because the fetus has a chance to never advance and become a human, but would die as a fetus. The fetus could become a human, but would then be changing it's state and because it's not staying in it's natural state it is in and it's nature's tendency for things to stay at rest and not change state and if they were to change state then they would be going against they're purpose and meaning which is to stay at rest. Contention 4: My opponent’s argument’s. I do agree that these things are true, but the wording of the resolution changes the debate. Due to the wording of the debate she is basically trying to prove that Person A is guility in this situation. Person A is a Gun Factory Woker and helps make guns. Company A (Where Person A works) sells gun made by Person A to Person B, Person B then goes and kills person C. My opponent is trying to prove that Person A killed Person c. The Resolutions terminology states that drinking during pregnancy causes child abuse, but how can it cause child abuse when the fetus is not a child yet? It cannot and thus we can observe that under the resolution that terminology swings the debate into my favor. I will now pass things back off to my opponent.