Restricted abortion should be legal

Freedom not restricted unless justifiedI think this is axiomatic. It's not just an issue of being free or wanting freedom or arguably freedom being necessary for well being, even if rejected on those grounds to argue otherwise is self defeating, since you presuppose the freedom to argue as your starting point if you were to even try that non freedom should be the starting point rather than freedom. The right to life/right not to be killed as an absolute is untenableThe right to life/right not to be killed is often invoked as justification for not allowing abortion. Notice those who advocate it don't really believe it them self at least not as an absolute, the most common view where intentional killing is justified is self defense (or some variation of). Then we have issues of drone strikes, war, dropping the A bomb, etc etc. The point is, not even the pro-life-anti choicer believes in such a simplistic absolute right to life and if such a person was to selectively apply such an absolute right to life to justify denying an abortion would be a double standard & hypocritical. Bodily rights argument (the violinist analogy)Judith Jarvis Thomson asks us to consider the following. .. "You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. " [1]Even if we grant violinist the right to life, the question is thus, do you have the right to unplug ? should you be forced to be kept plugged in if you choose you don't want to ? I know of no anti abortion person who has argued that you can't unplug your self, even if it means certain death for another person. Like wise it is argued, a pregnant women can unplug the embryo inside of her, she should not be forced to continue with her pregnancy anymore than some one plugged into the violinist to keep them alive, such is yours & hers bodily rights/freedom. Pregnant Women vs Billionaires (Dis-proportionality argument)The pro life/forced continuation of pregnancy advocates insist their cause is just & noble as they are out to save lives. But notice these people themselves don't justify anything and everything when it comes to saving lives, lives of post born humans who can think, feel and are self aware. You would be hard pressed to find such a person who would demand that we force billionaires to give up nearly all their wealth leaving them with say a few million dollars (still leaving them richer than most on the planet) and using those funds to save people lives. So here is the logical point, if rights and freedoms are such that we can't force the billionaires of the world to give up all their wealth except a few millions to save thinking, feeling, self aware humans, then it would be laughable & disproportionate to then argue that we are justified to force women to give up more, their bodily rights and the dangers of pregnancy in order to save non thinking, non feeling, non self aware, human embryos.3 day human embryo is not morally equivalent to a human 5 year old childConsider the following, you arrive at a burning building, behind one door are 100, 3 day human embryos, behind another a 5 year old child. Who do you try to save first ? Most if not all will try to save the girl, if a 3 day human embryo is morally equivalent to say a 5 year old child then it is simple arithmetic, try to save the 100 hundred all things being equal before you try to save the 1. But as I argue they are not equal, the 5 year old child not only trumps one 3 day human embryo, it even trumps one hundred. But why ? Cause self awareness, intelligence, ability to feel and recognize you are in pain are morally relevant factors that are rightly taken into consideration in such a situation. If abortion is murder (reducto argument)If it is the case that abortion in the embryonic stage is equivalent to murder as some anti-choicers assert then that means all women who have had an abortion in that period should all be in jail doing sentences for murder, maybe even the death penalty, as well as any future women who will have an abortion in the embryonic period. Think about it, the likes of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and next to them endless row cells of women who had an abortion in the embryonic stage. So there are two possibilities. .. .. ..1) Be logically consistent, and start locking up all those woman and future women who have had such an abortion. or 2) Reject such a conclusion based on the realization that abortion is murder in the embryonic stage is false premise to begin with. I argue that this shows that the abortion is murder in the embryonic stage is absurd and should be rejected as such. Personhood & rightsConsider the following argument. .. .. .. .. .. .. .1) Only a person has a right to life2) If X does has none of the characteristics [1-5] it is certainly not a person.3) The human organism in the embryonic stage has none of the [1-5] characteristicsC) Therefore the human organism in the embryonic stage is not a personC2) Therefore the human organism in the embryonic stage is has no right to life[1-5] refers to the following characteristics. .. .1) Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;2) Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);3) Self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control);4) The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;5) The presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both. We can be extremely flexible to the Pro life/anti choice position under Warrens personhood criteria and it still would not matter as Warren argues. .. "All we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus (for my purposes in this debate the human organism in the embryonic stage)is not a person, is that any being which satisfies none of (1)-(5) is certainly not a person. I consider this claim to be so obvious that I think anyone who denied it, and claimed that a being which satisfied none of (1)-(5) was a person all the same, would thereby demonstrate that he had no notion at all of what a person is-perhaps because he had confused the concept of a person with that of genetic humanity. " [2]Consider the characteristic of self awareness. .. ""This sense of self is critical to our status as persons. In fact, philosophers often use the terms self and person interchangeably: a capacity for self-awareness is necessary for full personhood. One has a sense of self if one is able to entertain first-person thoughts, and if one possesses first-person knowledge. " [3]Consider we are visited by self-aware, intelligent aliens, would we recognize them as persons ? I submit yes we would because of various characteristics 1-5 they possess. Characteristics that don't exist in the human organism in the embryonic period. I look forward to Cons opening argument. Sources (1) . http://spot.colorado.edu...(2) . http://instruct.westvalley.edu...(3) . http://socrates.berkeley.edu...