Rape and Abortion

I am going to focus this last round mainly on refuting my opponent's points about gradual development. I think that my perspective on the right to life has been has been taken too far. More importantly, the points about gradual development do not suffice to prove that rape is a relevant consideration. First off, the right to life is not like the value of a commodity. A commodity can have any value, ranging from 0 to the highest conceivable amount something might be worth. The rights do not work in the same way. The whole point of a right is that a right cannot be violated under ANY circumstances, barring a few exceptions. In John Locke's theory, unless you violate the rights of others your rights can never be taken away, period. Nature rights theory was created to be much different than the utilitarian calculus, which can theoretically allow for anything if the benefits are thought to outweigh the costs. If something has to right to life, it cannot be killed because it's right to life is outweighed by some other consideration, this completely defeats the purpose of having a right to life at all. What my opponent is essentially arguing for is a utilitarian theory in which certain attributes, in this case the "right" to life, are weighed to a certain extent in value. These such systems have been shown to constantly fail because, as I said, it is impossible to make such precise judgments in a practical situation. There is no way for anyone to objectively judge exactly how much the right to life would be worth; a system in which it simply cannot be violated is far superior. On another note, my opponent goes much too far in his understanding of what happens to those who fall a little short of the right to life. The right to life and the right to be treated well are very different things, and the latter implies a much lower standard. It is my belief that the essential reason why my opponent and I agree on the traits needed for the right to life is that these traits in combination give an entity a stake in it's own existence. Only an entity would these traits would understand itself, life, death, and thus be able to possess a true desire to live and fulfill itself through life. Many higher animals and all but the most terribly impaired humans are up to this standard and therefore should not be killed. But is it wrong to painlessly kill an animal are person that does not comprehend or understand its own existence? This state is so natural to us as humans that we may not realize that other beings do not possess it. Killing animals or people that truly do not understand the ideas of life, death, and self is not in any way harmful to them. That does not mean they should be "butchered to cut costs" any more then all babies should be aborted. Badly disabled people, simply animals, and plants are very often valuable to us for other reasons and should not be made to feel pain when it can be avoided, but painlessly killing them does not violate any rights. I was not aware that the entire civilized world rejects that euthanasia of animals or humans in a vegetative mental state. The more likely explanation is that my opponent has taken my position too far and tried to apply it in the most negative way possible where this was certainly not necessary or implied. To go into the point of individuals having some but not all of the characteristics: many of them frequently occur in combination and all five are needed for the right to life. Consciousness is necessary because it is a prerequisite for the other four traits. Self-motivated activity is important because it demonstrates that the entity has some form of will or desires for itself. Self-awareness is possibly the most vital trait because without self-awareness and entire does not even comprehend its own life and death. Reasoning is also essential for this to occur. Communication is the only criteria I find sketchy, but the point of it is that a communicating creature must understand the difference between itself and others and possesses to desire to express information. These traits together give an entity the capacity to have concern over its own life or death. In essence, the ability to want to life as opposed to the inability to express understanding and desires in matters of life and death is what gives an entity the right to life. This definition is inclusive in that all five criteria must be met, but the standard for meeting any one of them is very low and they all are absolutely essential. Moving on... I will agree with my opponent that for the most part we are only talking about late term abortions here. One note I would like to make is that we are talking about what justifies or does not justify an abortion. The fact that rape is a reason to want an abortion is not what I am arguing against, of course that's true. Now, I have already argued that the right to life does not change it value, if it is possessed then it cannot be overridden. My opponent is supposing that the value starts at 0 and increases to whatever the full value is, so there must be some intermediate phase at which fact that the mother was raped outweighs it. This suffers from far worse flaws that the traditional linguistic/philosophical problem of demarcation that my opponent has referred to. The problem isn't that we can't draw an exact line, the problem is that there is no way of having even the most remote idea of where the line should be or if it exists at all. Anything else could be a factor besides rape and there is no way of knowing how much each consideration is worth. It is much better and more rational to begin with to say that the right to life, if it is indeed a right, can never be violated. There is still the demarcation problem, as always occurs, but the issue with this is pinpointing the line by narrowing down the area. With my opponent's proposal, we cannot narrow down the position of the life because we have no way of knowing where it is. There is absolutely no way to weigh the psychological effect of rape against the right to life. It seems that what my opponent is essentially arguing is that a fetus conceived by rape can be aborted slightly later in normal cases. In my position all abortions are ethical regardless of the development of the fetus, but I can see why distinctions according to development would be made. I cannot see, however, why rape has anything to do with this. Even if a right "develops" gradually, comparing a woman's right to avoid psychological stress to a fetus's right to life is apples to oranges. You can't say one outweighs to other. The solution, of course, would be to recommend that raped women get abortions early on (I can't see why they wouldn't do this anyway). If one is really opposed to late term abortion then rape should not be enough to override the fetus's rights. The fetus is, of course, innocent of any crime. So, I think I have done enough to show that my position is not as my opponent has represented it. I do not arbitrarily choose "human" traits as my standard, I choose those traits which are by rational conclusion necessary for the right to life. They are applicable to any entity of any mental level, whether animal, human, or alien. These traits need to be inclusive because they are so basic and essential, without them the right to life cannot be conferred. My opponent, on the other hand, convolutes rights into some arbitrary scale. This is clearly not the most reasonable way to interpret and apply rights theory. In conclusion, a fetus must either have or lack a right to life. If it lacks this right than it can be aborted regardless of rape. If it has this right then we cannot let psychological considerations override its right to exist. Rights do not exist on a scale or allow for a middle ground. This is a simple antonymic pair. Out of characters.