Abortion should be illegal

Thanks to Pro for a provocative continuation to what has become a very intriguing debate. The nuance, clarified in the comments, is acceptable, so long as harms to children and their families are within its domain. While I didn't present such a moral wrong directly in response to Pro's 3rd contention, my points indirectly addressed it. Always preferring the life of the potential child to any other due to its relative innocence, I would say, could lead to much the same end, since those lives are far less likely to be able to create children given that they may never reach reproductive age. But I don't think this factors heavily into the round. But let's move into his responses. I like his formatting, so I'll stick to it as well. Humanity and personhood: Pro drops my analysis about what distinguishes something that is biologically human from a human being. He states that there is no scientific way to evaluate this separation. Consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate and the presence of self-awareness are all able to evaluated. I also provided a separate delineation based on on "brain birth." We can detect brain waves in the higher brain by EEG. I've provided two separate mechanisms to make this delineation. These objective mechanisms haven't been addressed. Ignoring these arguments doesn't make them "prejudicial, arbitrary and unfounded." So long as a fetus is only biologically human and lacks actual personhood, Pro's argument that legal action should be taken to protect their lives at the cost of any human lives is insufficient. In fact, his initial contentions are couched in them being persons, so the Second Formulation fails to apply. He discusses the morality of killing or maiming a fetus. Pro will find no disagreement from me with regards to the morality of causing harm to a fetus simply because they are not deemed to be persons. However, while it has value (and its potential to become a person affords it more value to humans), that doesn't mean that it has same value as the mother. The mother is not potentially a person; she is a person. I'll grant that miscarriages will likely be a small issue. However, Pro has not addressed the issue of in vitro fertilization. If aborting a zygote is banned, then so is IVF, which removes the capacity for many couples that are infertile or face genetic concerns with no capacity to have children. Those lives have meaning too, and under this ban, they have no chance at a human life. Value of mother vs. child: Pro provides no response to my argumentation, allowing that the mother's life should be preferred. As such, health issues that could result in the mother's death or maiming should always be preferred to the life of the child, and therefore a ban would wreak major harms. Some of those physical harms are posted here.[1] I will explain the point on sperm and egg (gametes) vs. zygote in terms of human life. Pro states that potential human life is to be valued. He doesn't provide a cutoff for what that potential must be for it to be valued in this way. Since any life before what is viable outside the womb is potential life, and since a zygote has a far lower potential of becoming human life than a 12 week old (about 75% chance of miscarriage to 5%)[2], any potential life should be viewed the same here. Every gamete is a potential life. Even if its potential is significantly lower than that of a zygote, the potential remains, and therefore it must be regarded in the same light. On back-alley abortions, we again have to go back to the burdens. Pro has to prove that significant harms aren't caused by making it illegal. The reality is that this is a significant harm. Not to mention that each mother killed or made infertile by the practice is another who can never have a child. Victims of rape: Again, Pro falls short of a full response. He provides no response to the basic fact that forcing them to go through the full pregnancy and the labor at the end of it is making the state complicit in enhancing their mental anguish. If I prove nothing else here, this showcases a significant harm of such a ban. When the trauma can result in harm to other life, and the life being lost is not yet a person, there is room for permissibility. The paper I cited here does state that "rape-related pregnancy...it is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence," so no, it doesn't address the issue of abortion specifically. Instead, what it showcases is that rape-induced pregnancy can cause major mental concerns. My point is a logical extension: the longer they're forced to deal with that pregnancy, the further the mental trauma and therefore the more likely these abuses are. On the 1% of abortions point. Remember, Pro is the only one here arguing for denying every single one of them access to an abortion. 1% of all women who get an abortion in a year is a substantial number: 1.21 million people got an abortion in 2007,[3] so that's 12,000 people. Pro could have argued about restricting abortions to rape victims. He didn't. Under this ban, their access is denied, and this means a number can now be attributed to the harm caused by it. Fate of the child: I disagree with Pro's assessment of my heartlessness. Sure, I'm a terrible person, but that's in no way reflected in my argument. Pro's argument suggests that there should be no choice on the part of the mother or the child " if the child should have to endure Tay-Sachs, then it will have no choice but to endure it over the course of its extremely abbreviated life. The prevention of intense suffering is not heartless. On sickle-cell, the stem cell treatments have yet to be approved by the FDA, hence the vast majority of people suffering from it will continue having to suffer and aren't certain to ever have access. As for the bone marrow treatments for alymphocytosis, they can be effective, but come with high risk. Both of these come at high cost, supercharging arguments about classism. Huntington's can have symptoms as early as 1 years old, can't be treated, and in most cases do include mental and physical harms, such as corea. Personality changes, cognition, and motor control issues are common. It's so bad that 5-10% of people who get the diagnosis commit suicide[4] Pro is completely non-responsive to Edwards Syndrome and Tay-Sachs, and as a ban would require that these kids be born, he still has to answer for the suffering that the vast majority of them will endure for their short lives. His arguments about child abuse are all well and good in an ideal world, but not sufficient. We have strict laws meant to deal with abuse. It still happens, and as I've explained, this linearly increases the problem. And since those children suffice as persons, whereas these don't, there is a difference between making those two arguments. The claim that there will be fewer pregnancies following such a ban is unwarranted. The fact that some people currently use it as a form of birth control when they could use preventative measures that are much simpler, have fewer associated dangers, and are less costly is a sign that they're going to make the same decision after the ban is implemented. The link he provides is factually incorrect. The highest rates of teen pregnancy are depicted here.[5] The article Pro posted mentions that pregnancy is down in every state that requires notification of parents. Here's the list of states that require it.[6] Looking back at the map, many of them have the worst teen pregnancy rates in the country. Given this, and the fact that he's otherwise non-responsive to my point about overtaxed adoption systems, Pro is making a bad situation far worse for many. Classism: The ineffectiveness of minimum wage laws to combat bad labor practices of companies doesn't make those laws bad. The fact that we have laws against child and slave labor that don't function overseas doesn't make them bad. However, when a law creates classist issues by removing alternatives to the extremely expensive process of raising a child, that is a problem. When that law has loopholes that are only easily accessible by those with sufficient resources, that law now only applies to those with the fewest. Remember, it is part of Pro's burden to prove that he doesn't cause substantial harms by implementation of this law. Such a policy does substantial (and mostly untouched) harms to the poor, even if that's not a part of its intention. With that, I await Pro's concluding post. 1. http://www.nlm.nih.gov... 2. http://www.pregnancyloss.info... 3. http://www.operationrescue.org... 4. http://www.sciencedirect.com... 5. http://www.thenationalcampaign.org... 6. http://www.guttmacher.org...