Abortion Before a Fetus Has a Functioning Brain is Not Wrong

1. Brain function is inadequate in determining one's personhood. "This is false. Lack of brain function equates to lack of personhood. Nobody seriously thinks that if my brain is removed or somehow disconnected/deactivated that I retain personhood. No brain, no personhood. Without a functioning brain, an individual cannot be either alive or a person. Consider - is an empty body with no brain at all alive OR a person? Obviously not." My opponent assumes the fetus has no activity whatsoever, but that is not the case. The fetus doesn't have ZERO function one second and LOTS of brain activity the next. It's not dead than--poof--alive. It develops gradually over time, starting with a tiny bit of activity and increasing from there. The fetus has some, even if just a little, brain activity, even if only to cause muscle reflexes and minor movement. Keep in mind that the resolution is discussing the fetus, not the embryo. If the fetus has more and more brain activity each day, when is there enough activity to denote human-hood? 2. Brain development is too gradual to make an effective diagnosis. "This may be true, but does not address the notion that at some point in time, the brain is simply not capable of supporting the human organism." This doesn't solve the problem. The brain doesn't suddenly and fully support the entire organism. It happens over time, gradually taking over more and more bodily functions. So, my opponent is still burdened to show exactly when the brain is supporting the organism enough to be considered human. If he says 'x' brain function supports the organism, then he must be prepared to explain why 'x-1' or 'x+1' wasn't the answer. 3. Life emerging does not correlate with life departing. "There is some point where at one moment, the fetus is NOT a person and the next moment it IS. We know for a fact that bodies without functioning brains are not people." Agreed. But asserting this doesn't give you the right the kill the fetus because you have not offered any way to identify that moment. Until then, you're killing the fetus on a hunch, in which case, why argue this resolution at all? You should have just said the we'll pretend it has no brain functions and kill it at our convenience. If you want a scientific way of qualifying the humanness of a fetus, then you must provide the necessary criteria or show that the fetus has ZERO brain activity until this magic moment. "Furthermore, the fetus IS essentially an organism on life support until its brain is developed enough to take control of the functions that "life support" sustains." If a patient with little to no brain activity was on life support and there was a high degree of certainty that the patient would get increasingly better and then live, killing him/her would be immoral. This is the state of the fetus. Therefore, it is not the same as pulling the plug on a brain dead human and the correlation is false. If you feel that killing the fetus in this state is moral, then knowingly killing the recovering-from-brain-death patient is also moral. ---------- "By this logic, it is immoral to kill an ant. What is the difference between an insect and a human except brain capacity? Furthermore, the ant is alive when it is killed. Without a functioning brain, a fetus is not even alive in any sort of meaningful way - this is to say that plants are alive, but not in a meaningful way." I submitted that killing a PERCEIVED sub-human is wrong--that is, a human deemed to be less than human. Such thinking can easily lead to genocide and violates all widely accepted standards of human rights. By sub-human, I was not referring to insects and plants, which are not sub-humans but non-humans. So, the fetus, if it is a sub-human, still has basic human rights. Only if it is determined to be non-human can it's human rights be completely obliterated. 1. Brain function is too ambiguous a measuring stick to determine personhood. "But not to determine life. The only determination to make rests on "Is it alive?" No functioning brain, not alive in any meaningful way. Brain activity is a prerequisite for life and personhood. HOW MUCH activity is too ambiguous. But we're talking about FUNCTIONING. No function, no life, no personhood." My opponent's logic is based on the assumption that there is ZERO brain activity, but fails to recognize or even refute my claims that there is some activity, even if just a little. 2. Brain development is too gradual to determine exactly when a non-person becomes person. "Again - no brain functionality, no personhood." Again, we are discussing the fetus, which has brain activity. Therefore, by my opponent's logic, the resolution is negated. 3. Killing a fetus is not the same as pulling the plug on a patient. "Right - at one point in time, the patient was alive. The fetus has never been alive." Alive or is a person? My opponent just said that plants and ants are alive, just not considered human. The fetus is alive as it is a living organism. The issue here is personhood, not life-ness. My opponent's statement does nothing to refute this contention. 4. Killing someone for being a non-person without having clear criteria on determining personhood is wrong. "There is a clear criteria - no brain functionality - no personhood." But the fetus has brain functionality, so my opponent must define how much. If zero is the only criteria, then he loses the debate. ---------- My opponent is under the delusion that the fetus has no brain activity until a specific moment in time, at which point it bursts into humanhood. I contend the fetus develops gradually, starting with a tiny amount of neural activity and ending with a massive amount of brain activity, which continues to develop into the person's early adult years. Since the process is gradual, my opponent must tell us when that magic tissue-to-human moment occurs. If he insists that it begins with even the slightest brain activity, then he loses the debate. The core of my argument is that the development of the unborn child is a process. If an adult was undergoing a similar process in which we KNEW the outcome was survival, killing him/her would be immoral. And so it goes with the fetus. It has brain activity, which makes it a human-in-progress. Ergo, aborting the fetus is wrong.