Rape and Abortion

I'm going to start this round by answering some of the questions in my opponent's introduction. As I originally argued, it doesn't matter how we determine personhood or the right to life. We will come to the conclusion either that the fetus has a right to life or that it does not. In either case, rape does not affect the conclusion that it is or is not wrong to kill the fetus. That being said, I will move on the address my opponent's statements and explain why they do not uphold the resolution. :Personhood isn't all or nothing: Even if personhood isn't all or nothing, but the right to life is all or nothing. A being either has the right to life or it does not. Since there is no such thing as partial killing or partial life, I don't see how the right to life can be extended partially or gradually. In any case, I will contend that personhood IS all or nothing. In order to do this, I will appeal to Mary Ann Warren's five criteria for determining personhood: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the ability to communicate, and the presence of self concepts. The combination of these five criteria give a being a stake in its own existence and give it a meaningful value. Any being without all five would be too deficient in this regard to be considered a person. A few of these traits do not make a partial person, they make a being on the way to personhood that is still not a person at all. It is not necessary to regard animals and the mentally disabled as "a worthless hunk of meat" in order to understand that they are not people. Likewise, though they are not extended the right to life it does not necessarily mean that killing them at our first convenience is necessarily the right thing to do. Note, furthermore, that a fetus in the beginning stages of development, conceived by any means, is significantly less mentally advanced then the animals and people my opponent is referring to. In any case, I do not see where this is going toward supporting the resolution. This attempted argument does not show that rape is relevant to ethical considerations with abortion. If this in an attempt to find a third possibility between having the right to life and not having the right to life, no attempt has been made to show this. As stated before, even if it could be shown that personhood is gradual the right to life could not be gradual. :The fetus: I'm not addressing any of this specifically because it is a list of facts that are of no relevance to the resolution. The stages and process of fetal development are considered fairly basic knowledge for an abortion debate and I see no reason why this needed to be explained. The fetus does indeed grow continuously but the state of personhood and the right to life do not. "The final stage: As I said before, the fetus's right to life cannot grow. The right is life, as was originally expressed by John Locke and is commonly understood, is that a negative right is bestow on an individual against being killed. That is, no one may ethically kill a being with the right to life. Killing tends to be a pretty all or nothing affair; either someone is killed or they are not. A right, in the traditional sense of what rights are, cannot be weighted to a varied extent. If a right exists then it is absolute. What my opponent intends to argue is that the fetus has a sufficient right to life that it cannot be killed for no reason, but it can be killed if conceived by rape. It seems both difficult and absurd to define and justify the traits an individual would have such that it has a right to life in some situations or not others. Why would the mental strain on the mother because of rape be the exact cut off at which we determine the right to life is "not weighty enough?" Could that point not also occur when the fetus becomes an inconvenience or interferes with the mother's lifestyle choices? I ask my opponent to justify, for one, why the right to life should not be absolute when it deals with a perfectly absolute act and more importantly why he makes the exact distinction that he does. There is absolutely no reason besides whim to declare that psychological trauma is sufficiently unpleasant to outweigh the life of the fetus but the significant difficulties of pregnancy are not. The right to life, as I have defined it, is based on the capacity to have a stake in one's own existence and is purely absolute. My opponent's attempt at defining the right to life is for one thing subjective and for another arbitrary. It seems we are at a profound philosophical disagreement. This ornery stemmed fruit will rest its case for this round and resume its ideological tirade in a more organized format in the next round once my opponent's viewpoint has been exampled and can be better understood. Sources: Warren: http://en.wikipedia.org... Locke: http://en.wikipedia.org... The Locke article is not particularly elaborative but there are links to other articles, such as those on right and Locke's political theory that may better explain what I mean by certain terms/phrases.