Abortion Is Prima Facie Morally Wrong

In this round I will continue to defend the view that not all human beings are moral agents with a right to life. Later on, I will show, once more, why potentials are irrelevant in determining rights. With that in mind, let's look at some of the criticisms my opponent has brought against my arguments. C1: It is not always wrong to kill an innocent human being. If you will recall, I previously gave what I consider to be a knockdown argument against the view that all human beings have a serious right to life. In response, my opponent goes on to suggest that "[] the brain-dead adult is not comparable to a fetus, because the adult is dead, while the fetus is alive and developing at the natural pace for a human being. " But in order for my opponent's accusation to be correct, he has to assume that neocortical death (i. e. , brain death) is sufficient for the death of the human being. Not only do I think that this assertion is unsupported, I can think of at least two reasons why we should reject it. Firstly, there aren't any good reasons to equate brain death with the death of the human being as a whole. Dr. Alan Shewmon, a neurologist at the UCLA medical center, explains: "[M]ost integrative functions of the brain are actually not somatically integrating, and, conversely, most integrative functions of the body are not brain-mediated. With respect to organism-level vitality, the brain's role is more modulatory than constitutive, enhancing the quality and survival potential of a presupposedly living organism. Integrative unity of a complex organism is an inherently nonlocalizable, holistic feature involving the mutual interaction among all the parts, not a top-down coordination imposed by one part upon a passive multiplicity of other parts. Loss of somatic integrative unity is not a physiologically tenable rationale for equating BD with death of the organism as a whole. "[1] Secondly, Don Marquis, a pro-life philosopher from the University of Kansas, has pointed out that the neocortical definition of death is dependent upon the truth of mind essentialism. [2] In his book Human Identity and Bioethics, the philosopher David DeGrazia pulls no punches in his demolition of mind essentialism. According to DeGrazia, "The most devastating problem of mind essentialism [] is its apparent inability to explain plausibly the person-human organism relationship. "[3] He then explains how the notion that the person or mind can be part of the organism leads to numerous problems. For example, it would entail that substance dualism is true, or that persons are simply sets of properties, or that each of us is merely a brain. It is for both of these reasons that my counterexample objection to the second premise of my opponent's argument should stand. Of course, the same objection applies in the case of anencephalic fetuses. Moreover, I won't press my speciesism objection any further because my opponent concedes that extraterrestrials have a right to life. C2: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. In his previous round, Josh has misrepresented Warren's criteria for personhood. He claims that under her criteria for personhood a being cannot be considered a person unless it has all five of the psychological properties that she details. This claim is false. Warren grants that all five properties aren't necessary, and she even admits that the first two criteria may be satisfactory for personhood. [4] As I said in my opening round (and as Warren has argued),[4] since a fetus does not have any of the five psychological properties, there is no intellectual basis to consider it a person. Nonetheless, Josh is correct in pointing out that Warren's views would justify infanticide in certain situations. While this response may be a strong emotional objection to the argument I presented, I don't think it is a very compelling rational one. I think we've seen that membership in a certain species cannot solely establish a right to life. So, my opponent's disavowal of infanticide must stand or fall with the rest of his arguments. Josh also says that the right to life cannot reasonably be linked with consciousness. Well, I don't see any reason to suppose that this view of rights is true. Though it may seem counterintuitive, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that a claim to rights could exist along a continuum while being tied to emergent properties like consciousness. The right to vote, after all, is something that you either have or you don't have. And it is clearly attained by being a certain age. But even if I were to admit that this is a difficulty for my view, Josh's conception of rights has the exact same problems that he alleges my view has. It is clearly possible to imagine a spectrum of species with gradually diminishing natural capacities for consciousness all the way from humans down to amoebae. [5] At some point along this spectrum, people who agree with Josh will have to create an arbitrary cut off line where the natural capacity for consciousness is diminished to such a degree in an organism that it can no longer be adequate in granting the entity a right to life. C3: An entity's potentials cannot grant that entity rights. Notice that my opponent has only decided to attack one of the two arguments I have presented against the potentiality argument. He has presented no criticism of my argument that children do not have the same rights as adults because they have the potential to become adults. In this case, potentials clearly aren't relevant. I previously stated that if potentials can establish a right to life, then we should equally condemn contraception and abstinence. My opponent claims this proposition is incorrect because a sperm is only a part of human. But this is irrelevant. Insofar as a sperm is placed around an ovum in the correct environment (i. e. , a uterus) it has the passive potential to give rise to a being with self-consciousness. Thus, for my opponent's objection to be coherent, he must show why active potentials are morally significant, whereas passive potentials are not. [6] But even if I were to grant that potentials could grant an entity a right to life, a more charitable interpretation of Josh's argument would still fail. Allow me to illustrate this point with a thought experiment by Marry Ann Warren. [4] Suppose that a person gets captured by a group of alien scientists intent on filling the world with thousands of people by extracting the captives DNA and using it to make clones. Imagine that all of these clones would become fully developed conscious persons if only the person being held captive refrains from acting. Even if our captive wound up in this situation by his own choice, it should be clear that he is not obliged to continue to participate in this experiment in order to create clones of himself. The rights of any potential person (e. g. , a fetus) are outweighed so much by the rights of any actual person (e. g. , a pregnant woman) that abortion would still not be wrong even if the potentiality argument were valid. | Conclusion | At this point, it should be clear that the second premise of my opponent's argument is false. Neither a brain-dead human nor a anencephalic fetus has a right to life. Moreover, Josh's assertion that brain death should be equated with the death of a biological organism is not supported by modern neuroscience or made tenable by realistic theories of personal identity. For these reasons, it is still the case that abortion is not prima facie morally wrong. Sources: 1. . http://tinyurl.com... 2. . http://tinyurl.com... 3. DeGrazia, David. Human Identity and Bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2005. p. 130. 4. . http://tinyurl.com... 5. McMahan, Jeff. The Ethics of Killing. New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. pp. 213-18. 6. . http://tinyurl.com...