Unborn human beings should have a legal right to live.

I would like to remind my opponent that the main rule of conduct we established was no name calling, and “anti-choice” is surely a pejorative. If he does not want to use the term “pro-life” to describe my side, than he could at least use the term “anti-abortion” or “abortion opponent.” He should keep in mind, that I refrained from using terms like “pro-abortion” in my opening argument. Now I am first going to address his comments regarding illegal abortions. He stated In fact abortions before Roe vs. Wade case in 1973 when it was illegal was still practiced and over 1.2 millions of Abortions a year we’re committed. However the late Bernard Nathanson, the founder of NARAL, admitted that such numbers we’re over inflated. He stated. “We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000.”- Bernard Nathanson[1.] Now it’s true that there was a time in the U.S when the number of women dying from illegal abortions was high, however this number began to drop in the 40’s and 50’s before abortion was legalized. The number of deaths really dropped due to use of penicillin not the authorization to kill fetuses. In fact according to the world health organization Ireland, Mauritius and Chile have the lowest maternal death rates in their continental region (Ireland actually has the lowest maternal death rates in the world) and all three of these countries had abortion mostly illegal [2.] My opponent also attacked the second pro-life contention. Claiming that the humanity of the unborn is a matter of subjective opinion. He claims that fetuses are human in the same way that a piece of dandruff is human. However this is a false comparison. Dandruff is a part of a whole human being. The fetus however is the offspring of two human parents. I don’t know how I can make this any clearer. Offspring inherit their species hood from his or her parents. We can therefore say with certitude that the prenatal offspring of two human parents is a human being. In fact they are human beings my opponents own definition of a human being. “Human Being- a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance.” Offspring and child are reasonably synonymous. Therefore my second contention still stands. My opponent also points out differences between the fetus and born people. Like size “The fact that anti-choicers want for a woman voice to be shut and over-ridden by a cluster of undifferentiated cells the size of the period at the end of this sentence is not only bizarre, it's insulting.” Degree of dependency “The biggest difference between a fetus and human being is that the fetus solely depends upon one woman to survive. While a newly born baby can be kept alive by anyone else other then his/her mother. Now before the opponent states that the newly born still is dependent upon people, this is true but the difference is that a fetus is dependent upon solely one person.” And even societal differences “What makes us human beings is our personality, our soul and our way of communicating, understanding, love, feelings this is what makes us human beings.” “Many anti-choicers demand that fetuses have rights like us human beings have, such as the freedom of speech, media, bear arms, assembly etc. Since fetuses can not practice any of these rights why should they be granted with them? This puts fetuses in an entirely different category from human beings now doesn’t it?“ My opening statement already rebuts the size difference. In regards to comparing fetal dependency to newborn dependency, the fact that the fetus is more dependent on a specific person does not make them less worthy of the legal right to live. This is because degree of dependency does not make it okay to kill another human being. Now I did not mention societal differences within my opening arguments, quite frankly because I was not expecting such a bad argument. Does a newborn really have a personality, understanding or even love either? No, but that doesn’t make him or her less of a human being. Also I don't know of any pro-lifer who's said that fetuses should have first amendment or second amendment rights. Those are rights that, as we grow, we learn how to practice. Newborns can’t practice them either (unless you want to count crying as speech.) However, a right that we should have at all ages is the right to live, which is what this debate is about. My opponent also points to the issue of bodily autonomy. “even if fetuses are allowed the right to life this doesn’t mean that woman are required to save his/her life by loaning her body to the fetus for nine months against her will” Now the bodily autonomy argument is probably the strongest pro-choice argument (I’m not saying it’s right I’m just saying it’s strong.) Primarily why it’s so strong is that it concedes prenatal person hood rather than rely on all those anti-fetal-person hood arguments that I just rebutted. However even it comes up to problems, when considering the fact that abortion involves initiating homicide rather than simply letting the fetus die. It also fails to see that the fetus’ youth puts it in a different category than adults who can care for themselves. A hospital can’t claim to not be obligated to take care of newborns. They would be charged with starving children to death. Finally the fetus’ placement within the mother is an involuntary characteristic of the fetus rather than a willing act of assault that would otherwise justify retaliatory violence. We can’t kill other human beings for primary characteristics that are beyond his or her control. Also in regard to the life of the mother issue, it is not as if we pro-lifers regard the fetus’ life less or more important than the mother’s. It is that usually the fetus is un-savable anyway and thus the only life we can save is the mother, and it also becomes a question of losing two lives v. losing one. Now my final rebuttal will be to my opponent’s legal argument. “In the United States a fetus can not be considered a person nor have right since American citizenship are limited to those“born or naturalized within the United States.”” Well actually citizens are not the only ones who the U.S. Gov’t prohibits from killing. The 14thamendment states that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” We for example are not allowed to initiate homicide against illegal immigrants. Now I understand that the Roe v. Wade denies fetal person hood. However this debate is about whether or not unborn human beings should have a legal right to live. Not whether they do have a legal right to live. Legal concepts of person hood can change and I am making the case that it should change to include more human beings than it does now. Again I think my opponent for taking up this challenge, and I humbly await his response. [1.] http://www.aboutabortions.com... [2.] http://secularprolife.org...