Abortion is wrong

Once again, my opponent has posted a very confused and confusing set of "arguments," but we will try to make sense of what we can and show how little support for the proposition has been presented. Regarding the argument about "consciousness" (at least this is what I THINK was intended; my opponent seems to repeatedly confuse the notions of "consciousness" and "having a conscience," two things which I hope at least are clearly separate concerns in the minds of most people): My opponent writes: "A person who is brain dead is alive and sends out minute pulses from its brain but it is still a person none the less." Again we need to clearly distinguish between two concepts here: the question of being "human," and the question of being "a person." The latter state implies a set of legal and moral rights, whereas the former has to do with simply being an individual of the species Homo sapiens. They are NOT identical, especially when it comes to questions of law. Individual cells, for instance, can rightly be labelled as "human" (e.g., "these are human skin cells") but clearly are not "persons," either morally or under the law. And, both morally and under the law, a "person who is brain dead" is NOT a "person" at all; brain death is widely recognized as the primary criteria which distinguishes a living person from a corpse. A body which has been declared "brain dead" but is being maintained by artificial means is most definitely not a "person" - life support may be terminated, again with no legal or moral repercussions, and the "person" is no longer considered as being present. So in fact we DO regularly consider both consciousness and brain activity in determining the "personhood" status of individuals. That a given mass of living tissue possesses human DNA is not relevant to this question; to be considered a "person," a living consciousness has to exist. The brain-dead body is still clearly "human," but we no longer see it as a "person" or deserving of the full legal or moral consideration that goes with that status. And this is precisely what is lacking in the embryo or fetus during at least the first trimester of pregnancy. There is no consciousness, no mind present, nor is there even the possibility of one, given the state of development of the nervous system at this point. You would be more justified being concerned about the consciousness of a mouse than worrying about that of a 8-week-old human embryo. That it has the POTENTIAL for further development is not in question here - but then, many with this potential will never see this potential realized. One fact which is routinely overlooked by the anti-abortion camp is that a very large number of conceptions terminate in "spontaneous abortion" (also known as "miscarraige") - actually a greater number than are terminated through artificial means. It is estimated that up to 50% of fertilized eggs spontaneously abort, generally before the woman even knowns she is pregnant; in known pregnancies, at least 10% similarly end in spontaneous abortion (Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health). If one is arguing that abortion is "wrong" on moral or religious grounds, it would seem that leading the list of offenders would have to be "Nature" or "God" himself/itself. And yet we do not hear anything of what, if we are to accept my opponent's position, would have to be considered a huge moral tragedy. If we again ignore the apparent confusion between "person" and "human" on the part of my opponent, we also find the following two arguments being made simultaneously: "You are and were still a person would you want me to kill you because I was to irresponsible to care for you or did not want any one to find out. My opponent gave no actual evidence that a fetus is not a person. He only stated that it would be a stupid person yet a person none the less. So with that in mind is it survival of the fittest, kill the weak? What changes from when it is born to when it is still alive and well in the mother's womb." and "What is the defying characteristic of a human? It is a conscious. Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? (Micheal Ruse) It is not just the ability to compute but to think." From the latter, again assuming that the word that was intended was "consciousness" (are you actually reviewing what you write before submitting it?), I have no choice but to conclude that my opponent agrees that the defining quality of a human being, that which qualifies them for moral and legal consideration as a "person," IS in fact "consciousness" or the "ability to think." But we also appear to be agreeing that there is no possibility of thought or consciousness in the fetus until very late in fetal development. Given this, the first quoted section makes no sense whatsoever - we have agreed that the fetus is NOT a person, by my opponent's own definition, and yet it is claimed that I "gave no actual evidence that the fetus is not a person." My opponent goes on to assert the following: "Without a conscience we would act like computers. We could not think. The defining character that makes a human a person is a conscience, the ability to have feelings. There has never been a human that did not have a conscious. A embryo/fetus/baby must have a conscience. When it is born a conscience is not zapped into him. Nothing has changed." Here again, it is difficult to determine whether my opponent means "a conscience" or "a consciousness" - however, since possessing a conscience implies that one is conscious, I will assume the latter as it pushes the bar back the farthest in time, re being a possible support for my opponent's position. We agree that nothing especially "magical" happens at the moment of birth; a consciousness is not, at that point (and to use my opponent's terms), "zapped into him." But then we are faced with a troubling question - exactly when DOES "consciousness" enter into the picture? If we are to follow my opponent's arguments to their logical conclusion, he seems to be claiming that "consciousness" IS somehow "zapped into" the embryo at the moment of conception. But there has never been a case of "consciousness" found to exist in organisms whose complexity is on the order of a single cell or even a mass of dozens of cells, so it seems to be quite a stretch to claim that the fertilized egg possesses consciousness. We have also never seen a case of "consciousness" existing independently of a certain degree of brain development and activity, neither of which exist at this point or for quite some time to follow. So apparently, consciousness must be "zapped into" the new human at some time later. Exactly when is unclear, but we seem very same in concluding that it cannot be prior to the existence of the structures and activity necessary to support it. My opponent also raises the old question of mind/brain duality, something which has certainly plagued philosophers for years (and which I doubt we will resolve here), but it is interesting to see what, if any, implications this has on the subject at hand: "There is a difference, though, between the brain and the mind. Were [sic] is the conscious is in are brain? No one seems to have found it; the reason is because it is not there. The mind although interacting with the brain is separate." That's an interesting assertion, but if the mind IS separate, then why does it seem to be so very dependent on this physical structure we call the brain? Going down this path would seem to be taking us toward a question that apparently my opponent does not wish to raise directly - the question of a "soul." But that, of course, would take this debate away from questions of morality and law and into the field of religion. I suspect we will likely get there in round 3, but for now space limitations will force me to conclude this round here.