Abortion

Pro CaseIll try and seperate my opponent's points as best as possible:1. A fetus isnt a person - lacks emotions, cant feel pain and lacks introspection.First, my opponent has justified none of her claims. She must prove that these crtieria are legally or morally singificant in determining personhood. Second, the criteria of emotions is morally problematic - some individuals have the "bluned affect" or the condition known as alexithymia. In both cases the individual either cannot process, communicate his/her emotions and in the wrost scenarios lack the ability to even percieve or feel emotions. If my opponents logic is true that emotions grant personhood than it is morally permissible to kill someone with these conditions. [1]Third, on introspection - infants lack the ability to question or understand "the self," as a philosophical conception (i.e. outside the realm of the natural ego). Thus, logical extension says it is moraly permissible to kill infants as well. Fourth, on pain - infants can sense pain at 8 weeks of development. Dr. Willke writes, "By this age the neuro-anatomic structures are present. What is needed is (1) a sensory nerve to feel the pain and send a message to (2) the thalamus, a part of the base of the brain, and (3) motor nerves that send a message to that area. These are present at 8 weeks." [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://www.abortionfacts.com...!2. Cases such as rape validates abortionFirst, statistics and empirics. Rape only accounts for at 1% of abortions. abortiontv.com writes "the overwhelming majority of all abortions, (95%), are done as a means of birth control. Only 1% are performed because of rape or incest." They received this info from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics. This makes my opponents argument insignificant in terms of empirics to weigh in the round. [3] Second, analysis of why pregnancies rarely occur during rape, with statistics. "Of the 200,000 women who were forcibly raped, one-third were either too old or too young to get pregnant. That leaves 133,000 at risk for pregnancy. A woman is capable of being fertilized only 3 days (perhaps 5) out of a 30-day month. Multiply our figure of 133,000 by three tenths. Three days out of 30 is one out of ten, divide 133 by ten and we have 13,300 women remaining. If we use five days out of 30 it is one out of six. Divide one hundred and thirty three thousand by six and we have 22,166 remaining. One-fourth of all women in the United States of childbearing age have been sterilized, so the remaining three-fourths come out to 10,000 (or 15,000). Only half of assailants penetrate her body and/or deposit sperm in her vagina,1 so let's cut the remaining figures in half. This gives us numbers of 5,000 (or 7,500). Fifteen percent of men are sterile, that drops that figure to 4,250 (or 6,375). Fifteen percent of non-surgically sterilized women are naturally sterile. That reduces the number to 3,600 (or 5,400). Another fifteen percent are on the pill and/or already pregnant. That reduces the number to 3,070 (or 4,600). Now factor in the fact that it takes 5-10 months for the average couple to achieve a pregnancy. Use the smaller figure of 5 months to be conservative and divide the avove figures by 5. The number drops to 600 (or 920). In an average population, the miscarriage rate is about 15 percent. In this case we have incredible emotional trauma. Her body is upset. Even if she conceives, the miscarriage rate will be higher than in a more normal pregnancy. If 20 percent of raped women miscarry, the figure drops to 450 (or 740). Finally, factor in what is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy." [4] [3] http://www.abortiontv.com...[4] http://www.christianliferesources.com...Con CaseLegal FrameworkThe consitution is the supreme law of the land. This means that consitutionality is the main driving factor behind legality. Thus, the premise of my case is that abortion violates the 5th and 14th Amendments and thus should be illegal, unless the mothers life is threatened which would be competition over saftey of rights. Roe. v Wade. The Supreme Court case which struck down state bans on abortion was deicded on with an analysis of the right to privacy. The Justices maintained that under the panumbra of privacy, abortion is a privacy issue for the female who is pregnant. But, in the majority decision, the court also held that if biological life was proven, then the right to life would outweigh the right to privacy. This is true because the right to life is a "mother" right, the most basic of the negative rights. Meaning the right to life is a prerequisite for acting out and pursuing all other rights we have. E.g. we cannot own property if we dont have life. At this time, due to technological, biological advances since the time of Roe. v. Wade, we can safely say an embryo, fetus, or almost born baby is a biological human being with life. Beckwith, Professor of bio-ethics and phiosophy writes: "For both ovum and sperm, which are genetically each a part of its owner (mother and father, respectively), cease to exist at the moment of conception. There is no doubt that the zygote is biologically alive. It fulfills the four criteria needed to establish biological life: (1) metabolism, (2) growth, (3) reaction to stimuli, and (4) reproduction. (There is cell reproduction and twinning, a form of asexual reproduction, which can occur after conception. For more on twinning, see below.) But is this life fully human? It is. First, the human conceptus -- that which results from conception and begins as a zygote -- is the sexual product of human parents. Hence, insofar as having human causes, the conceptus is human. Second, not only is the conceptus human insofar as being caused by humans, it is a unique human individual, just as each of us is. Resulting from the union of the female ovum (which contains 23 chromosomes) and the male sperm (which contains 23 chromosomes), the conceptus is a new -- although tiny -- individual. It has its own unique genetic code (with forty-six chromosomes), which is neither the mother's nor the father's." [5][5] Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice