If the fetus is a human person, then abortion is generally immoral

Introduction: For the last round, I'm going to address Pro's rebuttal point by point and then address the offensive points in his conclusion. I will not make any criticisms of his original case that he won't be able to address or build on any of my offensive arguments. I accept Pro's formulation of my argument as reasonably fair, though he seems to have misunderstood it at points, as I will discuss. Jumping right it... Defense of My Case: Point 1: Freedom and Arguments Pro draws the distinction between argument and argumentation and points out that free-floating propositions are different than the act of arguing. I am only talking about the social interaction of arguing, not about logical principles. Freedom is not a presupposition for logic being valid, but it is a presupposition for the act of arguing being meaningful. The fact that some people refuse to engage in argumentation does not invalidate discourse ethics either. An SS officer concedes that his position is morally invalid by refusing to debate it. Nothing Pro says here is at all problematic for a proponent of discourse ethics. Point 2: The Limits of Property Rights All Pro does here is list examples of property rights being violated. Just because rights are routinely violated in our society does not make it just to do so. Pro does not actually provide a moral justification for such violations beyond vacuous references to the common good. This is an appeal to common practice [1]. Slavery was once considered a valid limitation of rights but it clearly is not. Point 3: The Existence of Duties and Positive Rights I won't address Pro's thought experiment directly because it's beside the point. Pro concludes his analogy by saying, “If you believe that this baby has a positive right to be cared for...” Once again, this is what we are debating. I don't believe that, and the audience votes on the content of the debate, not their prior beliefs. This positive right is not justified, it's just quietly assumed. Point 4: The Rights of the Fetus In my affirmative I established that force may be used to end a rights violation. Thus, if minimal violence is used against the fetus in an abortion, the procedure doesn't violate its rights. That was not rebutted and just carries. The moral agent vs. patient dichotomy doesn't matter because I am contending that we are not acting immorally toward the fetus, not that we don't have to behave morally toward it. Construing abortion as the use of a fetus as a means to have sex without giving birth is a rather twisted interpretation of my ethical approach. The fetus is clearly not used as a means to have sex in any sense. This is just broadening the meaning of the word 'use' beyond its relevance to the topic. In my original context, the word 'use' referred only to using a body as a physical instrument (a life support system, specifically). 'Using' people in a looser sense does not violated the NAP. In his continued unsupported assertion of the positive right to life, Pro points out that he has a right not to be placed in a volcano because he cannot survive there. However, the reason he cannot be placed there according to negative rights is because dragging him there without his consent violates the NAP, not because the heat will kill him. If he has invaded my inner-volcano fortress, I may toss him out into a fiery doom without violating the NAP. This was clearly established with my analogy of a comatose person dropped onto a moving vehicle. Response to Round Four Offensive: CA1: The Meaning of Personhood Pro claims that I conceded the existence of a positive right to life when I accepted that fetuses were people. That is not the case: no definition of 'person' was provided and there is nothing in the conventional use of the word 'person' that necessitates any specific moral characteristics. What the United Nations chooses to proclaim (without justification, as Pro admits) has no bearing on our definitions for the debate. A 'person' was understood to mean a member of the moral community. If Pro believes all members of the moral community have a right to life, he has to prove it, not just assume it. CA2: Discourse and Potentiality Nothing about discourse ethics places an obligation on us to help other beings engage in discourse, it just places rules on how we interact with beings who do engage in discourse. Pro's argument would lead to the conclusion that we have an obligation to build sentient robots that can engage in discourse and thus have a moral duty toward metals that can be mined from the Earth. Clearly there is nothing in my affirmative argument to suggest a strange conclusion like that. This is simply a mischaracterization. CA3: Born Children and the Right to Life Pro claims that he does not have the obligation to defend the premise that born children have a right to life. Why should this be so? Again, this is the definition of question-begging. In a debate about ethics, we have to justify ethical statements, not just assume that the ones that support our conclusion are correct. Because Pro has no justification for this point, he resorts to appeal to emotion [2] and appeal to popularity [3]. Just because we feel a certain way doesn't make something morally right or wrong. Just because something is commonly believed doesn't make it true. This is rudimentary logic; Pro's attempt to shift the burden of proof is clearly based on a fallacious line of reasoning. He is the one proposing a moral statement and I am responsible only for negating his claims, not for disproving claims that were never agreed to or argued for. Even if this wasn't the case, I have attacked positive rights in every round of this debate and I proposed my own coherent moral theory which allows for abortion. This would easily sustain that burden. Another substantial issue with this point is that even if the born do have the right to life, and this has hardly been proven, it would not necessarily mean fetuses do too. Children qua children are not violating anyone's rights simply by existing while this may very well be the case for a fetus. If a child assaulted someone, this would certainly be grounds for that person to stop taking care of it. The fetus does exactly this by living of its mother against her will. CA4: Final Comment on Fetal 'Innocence' I am not going to make new comments on this because it is not part of Pro's offensive, but I will remind readers that I specifically addressed Pro's point about active and passive rights violations in my affirmative case under C6. CA5: Ad Hominem Attacks While crying “ad hom!” is a commonly abused tactic in a debate, I think many of Pro's comments warrant this description. Not only is it in bad taste to characterize your opponent, either specifically or in the general sense of people who disagree with you, it is not a valid means of argument [4]. Pro has no proof that I and those who agree with me are “broken human being[s]” and even if we were, it would not negate what I am contending. My argument could be presented by a robot with no emotion at all because objective moral truths are determined by logic, not our feelings. If our moral and legal system was based just on how people felt, it would obviously be dysfunctional. We should dismiss Pro's ad hominem; it is uncordial and unconvincing. Conclusion: The Pro affirmative case is mostly based on defending propositions that were already agreed to, and it does not sufficiently defend its moral claims. Pro tries to resurrect his case through the debate by defending positive rights, but he makes few arguments and relies on assumption. The Pro case relies on appeals to common practice, emotion, and popularity rather than normative analysis, which it seriously lacks. My negative case has a strong framework which Pro's criticisms have fallen short of addressing as all of his objections were soundly refuted. Vote for my sound normative theory over Pro's exhortations. References: [1][2][3][4] http://www.nizkor.org...