Abortion is a force for moral good.

Young poor teenage single mothers can be spared an astounding amount of hardship and heart ache and dangers that go with carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. Society is spared a good number of poor and unwanted children who, more than other demographics, grow up to be criminals. The relief and option of either keeping or terminating a pregnancy is itself another moral good. The benefits to women and society are measurable and demonstratively on the positive side. My opponent wishes us to consider, rather than demonstrative improvements in society, measuring the good of something by looking at the modern religious interpretation of bronze aged texts filled with unproven claims about magical beings and all powerful creators Gods, talking snakes, magic trees, and false histories. I'm sorry, but no. There's a clear way to measure the force for good that something has, you can measure how well off everybody was before and how well off everybody is after accounting for all the other variables. Taking that measurement finds this a better society. Furthermore, my opponent neglected to note that the Bible is, beyond fiction, not even against abortions. ---- 1. There is every reason to call something good when it leaves a society a better place than it found it. There is every reason to consider the quality and happiness of individuals within a society a moral good. We can measure such things and render a clear and unambiguous result. My opponent necessarily implies that a more holy society is a more good society. Are we are all better off in every measurable ways since the dark ages? Is it worse now that the church no longer has roving death squads. To know that people do not want to be murdered, suffices to suggest that murdering people is not conducive to the happiness of everybody. To know that starving people want food, sick people want to be well, hurt people want to be healed, and innocent people want to be safe, suffices to allow us to make moral choices as to what we should do to help them in these ways. Their desires are human and our actions towards the greater good are good actions. I contend that this is exactly the same judgment used to suggest religious good. My opponent claims we should do what God wants us to do, so that we should go to heaven. This only holds if heaven is a good place to spend eternity, heaven actually exists, and doing what he suggests lets us go there. Why should we want to go to heaven without such judgments? What if hell is a better place? Hell is more conducive to fun and enjoyment and excitement and heaven is simply dreadfully boring? Then shouldn't we want to go to hell? Why does claiming that heaven is paradise and filled with constant bliss and hell is fire and constant torture compel us at all? What if God said that heaven was fire and constant torture and hell was constant bliss and peace. Should we still want to go? If what is moral is what is dictated by God, then we should have no motivation to go to a blissful hell anymore than we should for a tortured heaven. We should be unable to judge the merits of either. Similarly, we are judging what type of society we want to live in. Do we want to live in a happier, healthier, better off society or not? If you can judge heaven over hell, you can make this same moral determination of happier society over more troubled and tortured. Further, his supposition that without divine command there is no moral judgment is wrong. In fact, considering his God could just as easily dictate raping, genocide, and slavery (and does several times in the Bible) as moral goods. My opponent is suggesting that morality is subjective to the will of God, which has no evidence to such a being exists. We are outsourcing our morality away from our own will and to a nebulous construction of the babbling of bronzed aged primitives. - 2. My opponent secondly argues, what can only be construed as silly. Since I argue that there is moral value and worth for abortion, I am wrong. Why am I wrong? Because he says so. I am wrong because he does not agree with me. And because I am wrong, he is right. If you want a better society, and if abortion makes a society better, then you ought to to have a society which allows for abortion. - 3. Third, he argues that the Bible prohibits abortion; it does not. Please read the very passage he presented carefully. It does not refer to the induced miscarriage caused by the scuffle, rather it refers to the injury that follows. "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life." -- Exodus 21:22-23 - If men are fighting and a woman is hurt and suffers a miscarriage. If there is no injury, then the man must pay the woman's husband for his loss of property. If there is injury, then the law of retribution applies. We must then understand that simply causing a miscarriage is a civil offense resulting in a fine to be paid to the loser of property, the woman's husband. Whereas if there is death in the fight then the criminal punishments apply. The woman's husband get's to ask for some cash to make up for his losses. That's all. Other places in the Bible give similar accounting. When told by God how to count up the value of various people the following values were placed on children: "And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver." -- Leviticus 27:6 Anything younger than 1 month was worthless. There is nothing directly concerning abortion, but judging from context would simply be a property matter and if the husband consented it wouldn't be any issue at all. - 4. Finally, he argues that disobeying God is evil and thus abortion is a force for evil. Considering the lack of Biblical proclamation against it it, this is hard to accept even within the context he offers it. Further, the debate topic is whether or not it is a moral good. He seems to be arguing that even though it benefits society in measurable ways it isn't good because some book of mythology says something he reads wrongly. That simply won't do. --- Is saving a billion lives a moral good? The green revolution did exactly that largely via the hybridization of plants. However the Bible is, unlike on abortion, clearly opposed to that. Lev 19:19 "Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee." Am I to also understand that Noble Prize Winner Norman Borlaug is a force for evil having saved more lives than anybody in the history of the planet, and improved the lives and quality of life of most people on the planet? In order for Con's argument to even be remotely consistent, I'd like to ask that he first clearly say that there is no way for me to judge the saving of a billion lives as good. And that, Dr. Borlaug's actions are a force for evil. --- We are discussing what is good for society, not what is approved by your mythology. Claiming that everybody is wrong because you have a book that says so, comes completely out of left field. Your God doesn't exist. Your book is just a stupid book. Helping people and saving people and preventing harm is good. I can determine that slavery is morally repugnant without regard to a silly book, moreso considering that it condones it. In order to accept your worldview, you should first establish God exists. Proving the existence of God is a necessary step in accepting your argument is valid.