Abortion should only be legal until a way is found to safely bring an embryo to term in a lab.

Greetings and warmest regards to my honored opponent. Regarding the debate rules stated, they are mostly acceptable; I would challenge Rule #4, however, as it is factually inaccurate; were I to make a new argument in Round 4, Con would be amply able to rebutt it in their Round 4 reply. It is Con who should be refrained from new arguments in Round 4, as there is no Round 5 available for me to respond to any new argument. My opponent makes the first moral argument that a human fetus meets the criteria to be considered alive at conception. I happily and eagerly cede this point; my argument in favor of abortion does not require the fetus to not be alive. My opponent's second argument presumes that I would declare the fetus a non-person; I don't, necessarily, but it is worth pursuing the fact that if I did consider it a non-person, then I would most certainly would not give it equivalent status to a domesticated animal. The most obvious comparison would be to that of a chicken egg, given that both are unformed versions of the animal that they are to become. Regardless, let us concede for the sake of debate that the fetus qualifies as a person. My opponent states that a potential human life "should be held in higher moral regard than the convenience of the mother or father", and this is where our philosophies diverge. It has been stated, in the United States Declaration of Independence, that among the inalienable rights of people are the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I therefore assert that, in terms of moral regard, the child's life and the mother's liberty carry equal weight. The insoluble dilemma of the abortion debate is that it brings these core rights into conflict; one cannot currently honor both, because the act of removing the fetus inevitably results in its death. The second that one can honor both of those, termination of the fetus becomes unacceptable, and human society has an obligation to deny a mother the right to terminate a fetus because, as a hypothetical example, abortion might be cheaper than transferring the baby to an artificial womb, or the woman has some emotional desire to ensure that she doesn't have some child "out there somewhere" that she doesn't know about, and aborting it would give her a greater peace of mind. But we're not there yet, and until we get there, the simple fact remains that one of those two core concepts must be violated in favor of the other; the only question is which one takes precedence. My opponent argues that life trumps liberty; I respectfully disagree. Carrying a baby to term is not a "minor inconvenience"; it is an expensive, weighty prospect which overrules all sensibilites for roughly 2% of someone's lifespan (assuming an average lifespan of 75 years). It requires months of morning sickness, time off work, a more rigidly controlled diet, purchasing a maternity wardrobe, perhaps cessation of a smoking habit, and ultimately a truly legendary amount of pain (at least, women keep telling me I can never possibly imagine the amount of pain, so I have to assume so), followed by post-partem depression and about fifteen extra pounds to lose. My opponent argues that the fetus is IN the mother's body, rather than part of the mother's body, and that therefore the woman's right to control her own body isn't necessarily applicable. Putting aside for the moment all the physical changes I just described that quite definitely happen TO the woman's body as a result of pregnancy, this argument actually lines up perfectly with the philosophy I'm proposing: the mother/fetus relationship, viewed in this context, can be seen as something akin to a landlord/tenant dispute. If the property is also the landlord's primary place of residence (which her body clearly is), and the tenant has no lease (which the baby clearly doesn't), then society recognizes the right of the landlord to throw out the tenant at any time, for any reason or no reason, regardless of any detrimental effect this might have on the tenant. If there were a way for the baby to survive eviction, then we would be morally obligated to take that option, but such option does not currently exist. Until it does, the mother, as the citizen with seniority who will feel the burden for nearly a year, takes precedence over the fetus, who will be inconvenienced for all of a few minutes and likely not cognitively process it while it occurs.It is worth pointing out, as an aside, that if all the money that anti-abortion organizations spent on rallying and lobbying and legal fees was instead devoted to the scientific research of finding a way for the fetus to survive in an artificial womb, the problem could very possibly have been solved years ago and all of those lives might have been saved as a result. The remainder of my opponent's arguments fall into submoral caveats that fail to address the core principle stated above. The double standard regarding what qualifies as murder and what doesn't can just as easily be fixed by going the other way with it, and regarding whether or not the basis for someone's abortion choice is more or less petty, it is irrelevant to the principle that the woman's right to liberty is inherently superior to the child's right to life. That notion would have to be disproven for any of those moral sub-arguments to carry any weight.