Abortion is Generally Immoral

I thank Con for his argument and for his willingness to debate this topic with me.I would argue that not only is the syllogism valid, but it is also sound. In fact, the Substance View of persons is the view on abortion with the greatest explanatory power.Premise 1My contention is that from fertilization, the unborn are full-fledged members of humanity, that is, Homo Sapiens. They are biologically human from fertilization.It is true that the universe is expanding; however, there is a difference between growing and expanding. If I place a rubber band on a table and stretch it out, the rubber band itself is not growing. It is merely being stretched out, or expanding. However, living things grow. They start as a small entity and get bigger, remaining the same entity they were when they were smaller. In fact, when a human is first born their head is roughly half the size of their body. After a few years they will grow into their body so that the head is now proportionate to the size of the rest of the body.I have not made a fallacy of the beard argument. Allow me to explain further on the pro-life position being consistent. The pro-life position is that human life begins at fertilization. This view is held by the vast majority of pro-life advocates, with very few dissenters (for example, Dr. Bernard Nathanson alleges taht human life begins at implantation, but his reasoning is seriously flawed).By contrast, pro-choice advocates don't agree when human life begins (or at least when they should be attributed a right to life). Some say at birth, others say at viability, still others say not until the entity is conscious, and other say not until it first "appears" human). There is no general consensus, even among pro-choice philosophers, as to when basic human rights should be granted to the human. This is why the pro-life position is the only consistent one.Premise 2The reason we say "prima facie" is because no pro-life advocate believes it is always wrong to kill a human (such as in self-defense, just war, or capital punishment). As such, this premise is uncontroversial.Premise 3I will defend my third premise in my rebuttal to Con's argument.Opponent's CaseC1 -- ConsciousnessCon has committed the fallacy of begging the question. He merely asserts that consciousness is necessary for being considered a full-fledged member of the human community, but does not tell us why. Human embryos from fertilization have the inherent capacity to fulfill this function, which is why we (pro-life advocates) believe humans are specially valuable from fertilization. We believe the inherent capacity makes one valuable, not the immediately exercisable capacity to perform this function.He does allude to the possibility that you do not harm someone without a pre-existing consciousness, but one can be harmed even if they are unaware of it. If you rob a child of his inheritance and never tell him about it, the child has been harmed even if he is ignorant of the fact he even had an inheritance in the first place.Now, the problem with assigning human rights based on an acquired property that comes in degrees is that anyone with more of that property can take advantage of someone with less of that property, if they wish. If we can kill an embryo because they are not conscious, then we can also kill someone in a deep sleep, in a reversible coma, or someone who has gone under anesthesia before a major surgery. None of those people are conscious, so we would be morally justifiable in killing them for any reason whatsoever.Also, as Francis Beckwith and Patrick Lee would note, if consciousness is required to bestow value on a human, then no humans are intrinsically valuable. Consciousness is intrinsically valuable. This would mean that the moral rule would be to maximize valuable states of functions. It would not be morally wrong to kill a child, no matter what age, if doing so enabled one to have two children in the future, and thus to bring it about that there were two vehicles of intrinsic value rather than one. [1]As such, it is not the immediately exercisable capacity but the inherent capacity to fulfill this function that makes us valuable.C2 -- Conscious Beings Take Precedence Over Potentially Conscious BeingsAll of the examples here commit the fallacy of begging the question again -- they assume that the unborn are not human beings. Thsi is because none of the examples here would be sufficient grounds for killing a child who has already been born. And if the child has already been born, regardless of their level of development, we cannot take advantage of them just because an adult is more developed (e.g. more conscious) than a newborn or a toddler. Secondly, they all commit the fallacy of an appeal to pity. These are very hard situations, but hardship does not justify murder.In Con's first example, he mentions that women often have abortions because they are protecting their children who are already born from economic and attentional disparities. But could a family of five decide to kill their youngest (two-year-old) chlid to give more attention to and better afford to feed their other children? If not, then how can this be used to justify killing an unborn human child for this same reason?Next he mentions that a woman would not have the means to care for the child. But could a mother kill her two-year-old child because she loses a job and life gets hard? If not, then how can she justify killing an unborn human for the same reason?I agree that these situatiosn are very hard, but killing someone is never morally justifiable to avoid hardship. At the very least, she should consider giving her child up for adoption. Adoptive parents even pay all of her medical bills (which si why it's so expensive to adopt a child).Needless to say, these are not grounds on which to justify abortion.C3 -- An Ideal Environment is More Important Than Genetic UniquenessI think this point just fails entirely. If a child is abused by her parents and grows up in a bad situation, do we kill her? No, we take her out of the home and place her in foster care or give her to a family willing to care for her. An ideal environment is just that -- ideal. But the possibility of not growing up in an ideal environment does not justify killing an unborn human (any more than it justifies killing a born human).[1] Paraphrased from Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, (Cambridge Universtiy Press: Cambridge, New York, 2007), p. 50, and Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p. 55.