Abortion should be illegal

Dare I say, Con's strategy is quite "Trumpian." Misrepresent the opposition, sound as confident as possible, and say "I win" with comical frequency. Unfortunately for Con, all the confidence in the world cannot substitute for actual content. I have not dropped a single argument. Con has only made two arguments, and I have refuted both at length: 1) Governments should embrace utilitarianism 2) Only sentient life deserves protection, and a fetus is not sentient. I do not believe Con has overcome my rebuttals for either argument, so I will summarize below. == Summary of Rebuttals == 1) Government should embrace utilitarianism - It is laughable that Con says "Pro does nothing to prove any of those philosophies [Fukuyama, Hobbes, Locke, Hamilton]," when this is actually what he is doing! Con is the one presenting a government philosophy (utilitarianism) as true and authoritative without proof - and the entire point of my rebuttal in presenting alternate philosophies was to expose that. Con is the one presenting a positive claim here - that the role of government is to make utilitarian calculations - so Con must provide proof this is true. I need prove nothing, I am not claiming anything about the role of government. I need only to cast doubt on Con's claim, which I have done in spades by showing there are many other political philosophies to choose from. Con complains that I have no alternate standard of government, but that is irrelevant. I'm not the one making the claim - Con is. I have no burden to offer an alternate definition, I merely need to attack Con's, which I have done successfully. This is not a debate about political science, I have forwarded no arguments relating to the role of government. I have merely shown that Con's strange argument about the role of government is baseless and therefore empty. Con's insistence on "interests" is completely subjective. Con has not responded to my questions of whose interests we are talking about and who gets to decide which interests are most important. Con's weapon of choice throughout this whole debate is semantic tap dancing. When I attacked his "harm principal" Con said he was merely using the "word 'harm' for convenience." (i.e., "I didn't really mean it...") When I refuted their claim that (quote) "the role of the government is to maximize the desires of the people," Con backtracks and says they didn't really mean "what policies the people want," but rather positive mental states that are "good," and that "good" means to "fulfill positive interests." Then he says that interests are "just desires of the people." Even a novice can see that we have now gone in a circle. Con is going round and round and is using semantics to appear clever. He is either using very imprecise language, or he's saying nothing at all. Conclusion: Con has provided no proof beyond semantics for their positive claim that government should legislate based on utilitarian standards. This argument must be discarded. 2) Sentience - Con continues to avoid my challenge of defining their "dimensions of sentience" they mentioned in Round 3. At best, he returns to saying sentient means "able to have interests." But this is a terrible metric. I am unable to have interests while sleeping. Do I lose my humanity when I sleep? An unconscious person has no interests, are they no longer human? A drunk girl passed out at a party no longer feels, perceives, or experiences subjectively - has she lost her rights? To say that life's value is contingent on its ability to pursue interests alone is absurd. Con then quotes my source (while subtly not denying its claim that the 24 week mark is merely a scientific guess). But Con fails to engage my first source, which plainly states "but brain activity at this stage is no more than a precondition - it doesn't demonstrate that the foetus is actually 'conscious'". Contrary to Con's ridiculous claim that I have dropped the sentient argument, I've repeatedly exposed that it's a horrible metric for granting human rights. The only qualities Con has attributed to sentience are ability to feel pain and ability to pursue interests. There are full grown adults who cannot do either of those things, and yet I'm sure Con would still grant them human rights. Why, then, is a fetus any different? Con can give no answer. The "Back Alley Abortion" rebuttal stands, as Con mounted no response to my reductio ad absurdum rebuttal. == Conclusion == We both agree that a fetus is human life at every stage of development. The argument over political systems is a distraction. The only real point of clash in this debate is whether ALL human life deserves protection, or only SENTIENT human life deserves protection. I maintain that you cannot consistently define or identify sentience. Con's two components - pain and interest - are hardly sufficient, so we know there must be more to sentience than this. My point is there is vast uncertainty as to when human life truly becomes "valuable" and what sentient even means in the first place. As such, if there is uncertainty in this area, then the best policy is caution. I advocate a policy that guarantees the maximum protection for the maximum people. The ONLY consistent definition of human life's beginning is conception. Any later definition is subjective, uncertain, and contrary to scientific fact. As such, the safest policy that ensure maximum protection of human life is to make abortion illegal.