Abortion is prima facie morally wrong.

Let me begin by thanking Mongeese for agreeing to debate with me. I look forward to a respectful and rigorous intellectual exchange of ideas. From my perspective, it seems clear that very few of the abortion debates on this site try to tackle this issue from a philosophical perspective. For this reason, I felt that it was necessary to try and clarify the pro-choice position as best I could by using logic. Everything that follows is my attempt to do just that. C1: It is not always wrong to kill an innocent human being. Mongeese summarizes his argument by setting forth a revised version of the first syllogism I have laid out in my opening round. Unlike the first argument, this revised version relies on the notion that certain potentials can grant an entity rights. P1: It is wrong to kill an innocent member of the species Homo sapiens that can become conscious in the future. P2: A human fetus is an innocent member of the species Homo sapiens that can become conscious in the future. C: Therefore, it is wrong to kill a human fetus. While this revised version of the argument may look interesting, it still has some serious problems. According to my opponent, a person in a coma has a significant right to life because that person has the potential to become conscious. From here, he goes on to conclude that a fetus also has a right to life because it also has the capacity to acquire consciousness. But, clearly, this is not the case. People in a coma do not posses a right to life merely because they have the potential to become conscious. Essentially, this is just a false analogy. A blastocyst, for instance, is nothing more than a cluster of cells that has never had a conscious experience of the world. People that are in a coma, however, have had a conscious experience of the world in the past. Consequently, they previously had the desire to remain alive and the ability to plan for what they wanted in the future. Thus, a person in a coma does not derive a right to life by virtue of the fact that they merely have a potential to become conscious. It is, rather, that person's previous conscious desires along with their ability to regain consciousness that grants them a right to life. Simply put, the basis for personality and memory is present in the brain of every normally developed person, even if they are temporarily comatose. Michael Tooley – the prominent analytic philosopher from the University of Colorado – sums up this point quite elegantly. In response to the question, ‘Why does a comatose person have a right to life?,' he writes that "The answer is that in that case more is present than just certain potentialities, either active or passive. For the individual's brain contains the physical basis of his or her memories, and of his or her personality traits. In short, the states that make for personal identity are present in the brain of the comatose individual, and, because of this, what is present is not just a general potentiality for the existence of an individual who is capable of thought and self-consciousness: there is also the potentiality for the continued existence of the person who enjoyed thought and self-consciousness in the past, and it is this that makes the killing of such an individual seriously wrong." [1] Consequently, there are solid grounds to draw a moral distinction between a person in a coma and a fetus. C2: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. I must admit that I am somewhat baffled by my opponent's apparent understanding of my argument. While trying to clarify my position, Mongeese claims that my argument can be adequately summarized in the following syllogism: 1. An adult is different from a fetus. 2. An adult has a significant right to life. :. A fetus does not have a significant right to life. Unfortunately, my opponent's attempt to summarize my argument demonstrates nothing more than his lack of understanding of the argument. That syllogism is so profoundly detached from anything I have written that it's really hard to know where to begin. For starters, Mongeese, I fully concede that your straw version of my argument is, indeed, logically invalid. Now, if my actual argument were put into a formal syllogism, it would probably look like this: P1: Only a person has a right to life. P2: An entity is a person if it has (1) consciousness, (2) the capacity to reason, (3) self-motivated activity, (4) the capacity to communicate messages, and (5) the presence of self-concepts. P3: A fetus does not have properties (1-5). P4: Therefore, a fetus is not a person. (from 2 and 3) C: Therefore, a fetus does not have a right to life. (from 1 and 4) If my opponent wants to deny (P2), then he must demonstrate why personhood isn't related to the ability to have a conscious experience of the world. I seriously doubt he's going to be able to do this, so I'm just going to wait to see what his views on this matter are. C3: An entity's potentials cannot grant that entity rights. In this section, my antagonist attempts to make a distinction between a blastocyst and a sperm. A blastocyst, he argues, is a potential person, whereas a sperm is not. However, despite what my opponent claims, sperms and blastocysts are both potential persons. The only significant difference between a sperm and a blastocyst is that one has an active potential for consciousness, while the other has a passive potential to acquire consciousness. [2] Nonetheless, both of them still only have potentials to become conscious. Thus, in order for my opponent's position to be coherent, he must show why active potentials are important, whereas passive potentials are not. Perhaps I can better demonstrate why it's nonsensical to think that potentials can grant an entity rights with an analogy. Consider, for instance, the argument made by Stanley Benn's about potentialities, which can be properly summarized in the following paragraph: "If person X is President of the USA and thus is Commander in Chief of the army, then person X had the potential ability to become the President of the USA and Commander in Chief of the army in the years before his rule. But, it does not follow that: The person X has the authority to command the army as potential President of the USA." [3] Thus, it's absurd to conclude that a being can derive actual rights from its potential to have certain characteristics at a later time. When Barrack Obama won the presidency in 2008, he had the potential to become the next Commander in Chief. But, of course, he was not the actual Commander in Chief the day after he was elected in November of 2008. He did not acquire the actual rights of the presidency until he assumed the office in January of the following year. It is quite clear that his potential to be president in November did not give him the legal authority to command U.S. armed forces before January of 2009. Obviously, the potential to acquire certain properties cannot grant something rights. ::Conclusion:: Up until this point, my opponent simply hasn't given a compelling reason to show that an unconscious being has a serious right to life. Moreover, his attempt to show that potentials can grant an entity rights is clearly reliant on a logical fallacy. A fetus, unlike a person in a coma, has never been conscious, and is therefore not losing anything if it never attains consciousness. This is why it is intellectually defensible to draw a distinction between a fetus' potential to become conscious and a comatose person's ability to regain consciousness. For these reasons, a fetus still cannot be said to have a right to life. Sources: 1. http://spot.colorado.edu... (2. Potentialities, or the Persistence of Memory and/or Personality?) 2. http://spot.colorado.edu... (1. Active versus Passive Potentialities) 3. http://www.iep.utm.edu...