Abortion

I think you misunderstood my opening statement. I intended for you to simply reply with 'I accept', and then we can start from there. No matter, I will simply post my opening argument as I would have done if you had followed my instructions, but underneath it I will post a rebuttal to your opening statement. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Section 1: My opening argument: Abortion is morally wrong for a number of reasons, and even certain circumstances do not legitimise it in my view. We have to start with the question, is human life after birth worth anything? If the answer is no, than abortion is not a concern to you, and you wouldn't care either way. If it is, and you are pro abortion, then you must reach a point either in development or circumstance where the destruction of the fetus is justified. For example, if you consider an unborn fetus not worthy of life at all, then what about premature births? If the fetus is delivered prematurely, it is considered human if it survives, but during the same stage in development, and it is unborn, it could be susceptible for abortion. Of course, this may not be your view, in which there are only two options remaining. 1. You believe human life begins at conception, and therefore agree with my view. 2. There is a cut-off point in terms of development as to what constitutes human life, and what is worthy of human rights. If your answer is 2, there is a fundamental error in your reasoning. The only way to instate a law regarding development is to base it on a set time period on when abortions can occur, and anything after that point is murder. This is the problem with this solution: In a hypothetical scenario, a fetus is close to it's termination deadline. Let's say it's April 8th. At 23:59 on April 7th, destroying that fetus is no more legal or morally wrong than plucking a hair from your head, as that fetus isn't recognised as a human life. So you could get the abortion on April 7th at 23:59, no problem. How is it right then, that exactly one minute later, that would be murder? How can one minute decide the legitimacy of human life? In that split second between 23:59 and 00:00, the entire moral and legal standing of that fetus goes from morally worthless to the highest value ever issued in our communities and legal system. Nothing special happens in that split second, nothing drastically changes withing the fetus that somehow makes it eligible for human life. So, if it is valued at 00:00 and then onwards forever, but is worthless before hand, it must also be valued before that, at conception at least. The problem is with the whole 23:59 --> 00:00 scenario is that it is illogical to attribute worth to something over a millisecond where nothing changes. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And now for my rebuttal to your opening argument: Right off the bat, your opening argument isn't correct. Your statement was this: 'Bodily integrity or bodily autonomy means that you have the right to control what happens to your body even if that hurts or kills others.' Using an example I will show you how this statement is ridiculous. Imagine a situation where a man has a knife, and is about to stab a child in the throat. As he brings his arm down holding the knife, what do you do? You can... A. Grab the man's arm, therefore preventing the death of the child B. Allow the man to murder the child, as you do not have the 'right' to control his body. It's obvious what any rational person would do in this situation. Any reasonable person would prevent the man from murdering the child. Here's another statement of yours: 'Abortion is the most basic form of freedom that exists, the freedom to do with your body whatever you wish.' The problem with this statement is the the fetus is not part of your body, It is simply living inside of it. Consider this analogy: There are two men. Man A has man B tied to his leg. The rope which ties them together cannot be broken, and man B cannot move, let's just say he is paralyzed. If man A doesn't feed man B, man B will die, as he is not capable of feeding himself. However in 9 months, the rope will break and man B will be separate to man A. Man B is not a part of man A's body, he is only attached to man A's body. After 9 months, man A will be without man B, so if man B was part of man A's body he would never come off. In the same way that man B is separate from man A, and is only temporarily attached, the fetus is not a part of the mother's body, as it is only temporarily attached. Now for your second point: '...then my second point would be that abortions lower crime rates.' Now here you expect me to dispute your claim. I will neither dispute nor accept your claim that abortion lowers crime rates, mostly as I have not done my own research into this part of the abortion debate, but more importantly as I do not believe it is relevant. I believe that life begins at conception, so from my point of view, murdering a child because you suspect them of being a future criminal is monstrous. In my point of view it is a rigged trial, where the punishment is execution, all for a crime you didn't commit.