The option to abort should be the mother's choice

Answers What assumptions do you have regarding the unborn having human rights? The one thing that a human and all living things in the environment have is sentience. Merriam-Webster defines “sentience” as feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought (8). This is something that the fetus takes a while to develop. The Scientific American in September of 2009 shows that the neural networks needed to perceive and think are not developed until the 24th and 28th week of pregnancy (8). Thus, it is unjustified to give human rights to something that has no way to even perceive these rights over those of the mother’s. Do you believe in the situational ethics that utilitarianism espouses or do you assume moral realism? For the judges who may be unaware, moral realism is the idea that there are moral truths and facts (9). Utilitarianism needs to be applied as bioethicists do in their decision-making process. This was mentioned beforehand, but the World Health Organization explains this by offering examples when restricting rights is needed. For instance, the SARS disease prompted a response by the US and Asia to shut down social events and quarantined people. In hindsight, these actions were not necessary and people’s rights were violated, yet it is still justified because the outcome was potentially catastrophic and had to be contained. The spread of harm to others based off the decision of a few is also a moral qualm that needs to be considered too, and maximizing good for people must be contained by the granting of rights. All I claim is that there needs to be shown a net benefit to restricting the rights of women to choose abortion, or the restricting of the mother’s right to liberty is not justified. Can rights be taken away? Certainly, if there is justification for them that results in the betterment of society for the whole. The social contract is a good model here then, since people give up certain rights to live in a civil society with protection from the government. This idea means that if one lives in a society, laws are necessary to restrict liberty in some cases which is measured against utility to the people. Which is more absolute, the right to liberty or life? I don’t see why we can’t achieve both under the resolution, so since both can be achieved I will say that both are equally important. C3: Abortion affects women disproportionately The idea that women should not decide the medical operations that she undergoes is ridiculous, but that is the resolution. For the resolution "The option to abort should be the mother's choice" He is saying that mothers should not be the ones given the option to abort, not that the practice should be banned. This has nothing to do with the moral implications of aborting a pregnancy. What the resolution is asking me to prove is that when abortion is available, should it be the patient that gets the right to the option of abortion, or another party? In the US, where abortion is legal, the right of the women to determine whether to undergo the medical procedure is waived, and determined by some unknown party since my opponent did not specify it. I have proven the practical effects of abortion denial, since that will likely happen if the women are not given that right, yet there are problems in relation to denying women the option to it in place of another party. Since undergoing abortion will have dire impacts to the patient’s social standing due to stigma, clearly the person who is most affected, the patient, should be deciding whether to have the procedure. The University of Chicago in 2011 offered a survey that studied the effect that stigma plays in abortions, and concluding that nearly 60% of women feel the need to keep their abortion a secret from friends and family, and 17% of women believe that their medical practitioner would treat them differently if they knew about the abortion (1). This is not helped by events such as the recent Planned Parenthood shooting in Chicago which killed three people as USA Today reports last year (2). Consider these effects in the rest of the developing world which is already entrenched in sexism and realize the effects are manifold. In countries like Yemen, where women have no protection under the law, you are further withering away their ability to make medical decisions by my opponent’s case. By giving this right to another party, you are substantially reducing the right to autonomy in making medical decisions for no good reason, proving a harm under the Utilitarian standard, and thus my opponent’s case. C4: Medically needed abortions Despite popular claims from people like Joe Walsh who believe that there isn’t “one instance” in which an abortion will save the mother’s life, the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2012 fact checked this statement and found absolutely no basis for its claims, while also citing information from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists which concluded that 600 women die a year due to complications in childbirth, and the number would be much higher if access to abortions didn’t save people’s lives. This information is furthered by the Guttmacher institute in 1998, which after conducting a study on 1,773 women, found that 2.3% of them did so because of potential danger to lives. Examples of a condition that necessitates abortion could include Ectopic pregnancies, where a fetus develops outside of the uterus where it is supposed to (3). The amount of these pregnancies has increased even with medical technology becoming incredibly refined in recent years. In Northern Europe and the US there was increased prevalence, with Ectopic pregnancies being roughly 5 times as prevalent in 2000 than 1970 according to the NCBI in August of 2000 (4). Ectopic pregnancies are classified by the National Institute of Health as life threatening and an instance in which the fetus will not live either (5). The sort of uneasiness in providing abortions has put a significant burden on health care providers who provide the service. One Wisconsin provider told Rewire Magazine in 2012 that physicians typically struggle in allowing for abortions when it threatens the mother’s life. “Should an abortion be considered when there is only a 20% risk of death to the mother?” The provider asks (6). If there is a risk to a mother’s life, not only should she ought to know, but the idea that physicians face significant moral boundaries to performing an abortion shows that even if a woman is likely to die, there might still be problems in allowing abortions. If a woman has the right to an abortion, this problem is averted as she could undergo the medical procedure by consenting to the operation. Since this is taken away by my opponent, the violation of the mother’s rights is at risk. CX Why would the resolution only specify that women couldn’t make these decisions if you want to outlaw abortion as opposed to just saying Resolved: Abortion should be banned? How would allowing unsafe abortions to become more prevalent via the taking away of rights from women be a benefit to the fetus anyway if it dies with the mother? Why should we value the baby over the mother in the case of life-threatening abortions? What is the benefit of reverting to “moral facts” in this debate if there is literally no right to liberty for women to be choosing their own procedure anyway? What party, if not women, would be determining who gets an abortion since women will not receive the option? Could this unknown party force women to undergo abortions if there are population growth spikes as the right is seemingly not given to women, but not established to be illegal? 1. (http://tinyurl.com...) 2. (http://tinyurl.com...) 3. (http://tinyurl.com...) 4. (http://tinyurl.com...) 5. (http://tinyurl.com...) 6. (http://tinyurl.com...) 7. (http://tinyurl.com...) 8. (http://tinyurl.com...) 9. (http://tinyurl.com...)