Abortion is generally morally wrong.

I’ll begin by thanking Con for pointing out my typos with grace. His correction is indeed accurate: Premise 1 should read “it is generally morally wrong to kill a newborn human baby.” Additionally, I substituted ‘sound’ for ‘valid.’ We proceed.Let us keep in mind that Con has attempted to demonstrate that my second premise is untrue: That there is, in fact, a morally significant difference between a human zygote and a newborn human baby; namely, sentience. However, Con has made several key errors that completely undermine his assertion, and much like a mosquito in a nudist colony, I’m having trouble deciding where to begin. It is ridiculous conjecture to say that I might respond to the question of the wrongness of murder as Con has assumed. It is not on personal preference that I say murder is morally wrong. But neither do I think it wrong solely because the life taken is a currently sentient one. In fact, Con’s question of the moral wrongness of harming a puppy demonstrates that this indeed is not the fact, or killing a puppy would be morally equivalent to murdering a human. This alone serves to demonstrate the insufficiency of Con’s definition of morality. I contend that currently realized sentience is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition of moral value. Con, however, defines morality as “a guiding doctrine for us to avoid pain and promote happiness in the overall well-being of sentient creatures.” Aside from begging the question—that is, assuming what Con is trying to prove (that sentience is a morally necessary condition)—this definition of morality is insufficient.Claiming that currently realized sentience alone defines moral worth reduces some persons of moral value to non-valuable persons. A human person undergoing a surgical procedure that requires anesthesia is not self-aware, cannot feel pain, and is unable to have subjective experiences. In other words, a human person under anesthesia is not sentient [1]. Thus, by my opponent’s standard, this human person has the equivalent moral value of a housefly. Speaking of houseflies, let’s talk about capacity. My opponent fails to distinguish between inherent or inborn capacities and currentor realized capacities. This failure is fatal—literally, in the case of the unborn, and metaphorically, in the case of my opponents analogy. You see, a housefly is not sentient. Nor does the housefly ever, at any point in it’s development, attain sentience. It is not the kind of being that ever has sentience as a property of its existence. In other words, the housefly does not have any inherent capacity for sentience. The zygote, however, does have an inborn capacity for sentience in that, aside from any extrinsic interference, the zygote will attain sentience. (As an aside, this falls under the “level of development” category I listed as not morally significant in my opening argument). Thus it has an inborn capacity for sentience that has not yet been realized. Con has unfairly equivocated between a zygote with an unrealized potential sentience and a housefly without any potential sentience—this is, quite frankly, an absurd comparison.As Con presented me with the question “is it morally wrong to hurt a puppy?” so I present the following: In case of fire, do you save a puppy or a newborn baby first? By Con’s standard,—and remember, he has stated that being human has “very little, if anything at all, to do with it”—the puppy and the newborn are equally morally valuable. It quickly becomes clear that being human does indeed have something to do with it. Or more aptly, it is the kind of being that you are that gives you moral value. Even if we accept Con’s definition of morality (I don't, save here for the sake of argument), his assertions fall flat, because it is being the kind of thing that has the inherent capacity for sentience, regardless of whether that capacity is currently realized or not, that defines your moral worth. Otherwise, you and I would lose our moral rights when we fell into a deep enough sleep as to cease to be self-aware, and I submit to you, dear reader, that this is an absurd notion. Now I’d like to briefly explore that aside from earlier. Sentience is a developing characteristic of the unborn, and as such, fits into the second of the four categories I originally laid out as differences between a human zygote and a newborn human baby: Level of Development. Con’s objection is linguistically disguised, in that he has asserted that the unborn does not have the capacity for sentience, but it does not warrant a new category. Again, to demonstrate that currently realized sentience is not a necessary condition of moral value, one must simply ask if there are any other developmental changes that would be morally significant between the zygote and the newborn. If there are not, then Con’s selection of sentience is arbitrary, and should be rejected.Con has failed to meet the burden of proof required to demonstrate conclusively that sentience is the deciding factor in questions of moral value. His definition of morality is question begging, and his theory of morality is ad hoc and insufficient, in such a manner as I have demonstrated. I do not see that Con has given us any reason to believe that a currently unrealized capacity for sentience is less morally valuable than a currently realized capacity for sentience, and as such, he has failed to raise any substantial objection to my argument. In sum, Con has failed to show that a zygote is not deserving of the same moral treatment as any other member of the human community, and my argument stands unassailed. 1: My opponent did not provide a single clear definition of sentience, so I assume from his usage and context that he is referring to a definition in agreement with this one (http://www.merriam-webster.com...).