Abortion (See for scenario)

Counter Rebuttals Choice "..once a fetus has a brain, it is no longer a zygote, and I am arguing for while it is still a zygote." This is one of the central tenets of my opponent's rebuttals in this particular section. Given the above quote, and my opponent's choice to make this debate confined to a zygote, I shall have to shift my argument somewhat. My opponent is saying that since a zygote can't be capable of making this decision, we shouldn't take the choice of an unborn child into consideration. Think about it this way though: Your friend is on vacation. You have one million dollars, and you're ready to give it away to someone. Even though your friend would almost certainly want that money, since he's not around, you completely discount what he would want. This is just like the zygote. Even though it is completely incapable of answering, we know in the future what it would want. Just because you can't get a legitimate answer in the present doesn't mean an extremely likely future answer should be discounted. Plus, how would you feel if you got jipped out of your life because at the time, you couldn't answer? You'd probably feel like it was a totally cheap excuse. Killing and Abortion ".. he is implying and assuming that a zygote is considered a human life." If I implied that a zygote is alive, I apologize. My arguments never had the purpose of trying to render a judgment on the actual status of a zygote, or any other unborn child stage. What I was implying was that a zygote should be treated like a life, since it will become one. To be clear: not a human life, but should be treated like one. It's kind of like if you're building a house for your family. Even if it's not completed yet, you're still going to treat it with the same respect as if it was a fully finished and furnished house, being careful to keep it from harm. "..he is also implying that killing skin cells, sperm cells, and cancer cells is imoral. By this logic, scratching our skin is imoral because it kills skin cells and getting your cancer cured is imoral because it kills cancer." The difference between killing skin cells and zygotes is this: a zygote is eventually going to be an undisputed human being. Your skin cells? They are hardly on their way to jumping off you and growing into a weird skin flake child. This also applies to Pro's statement about sperm cells during sex. A single sperm cell on its own has no capability to be anything more than a sperm cell, and so its death during sex isn't detracting from the numbers of human beings coming into eventual undisputed existence, seeing as only one sperm is going to get to the egg. "Firstly, if you plan to abort it, you are not deriving them of their future because they simply don't have one." How don't they? If you leave it alone it will grow into a human being just like you and me. How can that potential not be considered 'its future'? "..billions upon billions of sperm and egg cells (which are even closer physiologically to a zygote than an actual human being) are being derived of their potential future as zygotes and then as human beings whenever someone performs regulated sex or just sex in general, and menstration. How is this different from killing a zygote?" Because no egg/sperm has acquired a claim to life in the future until it has become a zygote. I won't repeat myself on why a zygote has a claim to life in the future. "Some of these children even end up killing themselves anyway." This quote is expressive of my opponent's next argument, which is basically saying due to the crappy life these zygotes are likely to have, we should just spare them the trouble and not even give them a chance. I would like to note the use of the word 'some'. It is impossible that every child who came into existence through rape will end up killing themselves. That means at least some of them will live out their lives. So what's worse? Nobody living out their lives, or some people living out their lives? And who's to say that all of these people will be miserable with their lives. Some of them would get adopted and live no worse for wear than any normally conceived person. Given this, not aborting would produce more happy lives than aborting would. "And if it is part of the woman's body, the woman should have the right of choice, like choosing to get a tattoo or piercing on your own body." A body part that will eventually grow into a human being? No other body part does stuff like that, yet we can classify a zygote like an arm or leg? Legality "Rape is considered an illegal crime in most of not all countries[2]. Therefore, the zygote is a product of crime. From this trail of logic, one can conclude that a zygote conceived illegally is illegal." You could also conclude that if two parents are murdered, their leftover orphan is illegal, because it came into orphan-hood through a crime. They zygote didn't commit the crime either, why should we try to put the legality of this on the zygote? And yes, they way I am referring to the zygote here is as if it's a life, hopefully this isn't unacceptable to anybody reading this, seeing as I have outlined why I believe we should treat a zygote like a life, even if you don't think it is alive. Crime Reduction Even though a correlation between abortion and crime has been found, we should consider the big picture. My opponent claims homicides in particular are reduced