Abortion is always Morally Permissible

PrefaceNote that BoP only means I need to give evidence that positivly demonstrates the resolution, it does not mean Con wins automatically if just one of his arguments passes. Contrary to Con's assertion, I will be undermining all three of Con’s arguments by undermining his presuppositions regarding morality.Con's Moral Presuppositions are IncoherentCon has left the terms 'Right', 'Wrong' completely undefined in his opening statement. Yet these are essentially the crux of the entire debate!! These crucial words are labels for concepts, but Con has not established what that concept is. Hence, Pro is effectively throwing darts at a wall and drawing the circle around it, since there are no established goalposts.This is largely because Con is attempting to affirm some form of moral realism, which is a futile task. Con makes two such realist claims, both of which I will demonstrate are incoherent 1. Moral Realism 2. Existentialism Incoherence of Moral RealismMoral realism essentially states that moral truths exist independently of cognition, bias and opinion. While it is easy to see why one would be sympathetic to such a presupposition, as it allows for imperative statements such as “The Holocaust was wrong!”, etc. It ultimately leads to incomplete and question begging statements. A system which fails on either of these is incoherent.[4]For instance, why is the Holocaust wrong. One could either justify this in moral or non-moral terms. Both fail:1. Either objective moral statements reduce/justified in moral or non-moral terms2. If justified in moral terms, then the moral term begs the question3. If justified in non-moral terms, then the statements are no longer “oughts”C) Objective moral statements are either question begging or incompleteTo defend P2, this should be rather apparent. Take the following:“The Holocaust was wrong”One can simply keep asking why at each moral term “why.” Each euphemism used such as “moral, incorrect, inappropriate, imperfect, bad, corrupt, etc.” These gives no content, nor any closer to what “wrong” means. For example, for one to claim there is a ‘best’ football player, or a ‘best’ flavour of ice cream necessitates there to be an objective standard by which one is ‘better’ than the other. But this statement is logically incomplete, since ‘best’ is a useless word on its own.To assert a ‘best’ football player one is necessarily going by some specific measure. One football player may maximise the game score, another may team morale, another player may maximise team publicity and funding. Clearly a bare ‘best’ football player is meaningless, as it is not a relational attribute in of itself.This is exactly that Con does in his entire opening round. He gives a plethora of determinations of ‘moral’, such as utilitarian, Kantian autonomy, pain, etc. which demonstrates my point exactly. Con ends up trying to define morality into moral systems, but he does so inconsistently, since these moral systems are incompatible. He cannot affirm both.P3 is easily demonstrated with 4 words.“I do not care”Any statement made in non-moral terms, as soon as a definition is hit, then it comes down to value judgements to determine whether or not one should care about that moral statement. For example, perfectly complete moral systems which maximise suffering, minimise altruism etc. can be constructed, and would virtually the same claim to being ‘moral’. Essentially every moral statement comes back to our own values one way or another.E.g. “You ought not to increase suffering”Why? Why ought I not increase suffering? Such a justification cannot be given in moral terms, and to not explain why is just declaring something true by fiat. It is a fundamentally incomplete statement, the only way it can be completed is to make it a conditional:“You ought not to increase suffering IF you value less suffering”Here we quickly find that to make ANY moral ought coherent, then we necessarily need to make it subjective.Moral ExistentialismCon’s entire argument from Personhood presupposes inherent human worth. What is this ‘inherent human worth’, what does it even mean? What is a unit of ‘human worth’, and what does it even compare to? Much of this relates to my argument that objective morals, or moral realism is incoherent, so is the notion of ‘intrinsic human worth’.To state that humans ‘have worth’ is to literally state that ‘Humans are worth *something*’, what is this something?Is it a lump of gold, a pleasurable deed, where does it even come from? From our understanding of economics we can clearly see that things have value if and only if it is of value to the conscious agents (subjective agents) doing the ‘valuing’. For example, in a universe with no conscious agents, a flawless diamond the size of the moon would have no more worth than a lump of clay. It’s only to us that they have value.Inherent human worth however by definition divorces from a subjective value judgement, and as such any claim to human worth is both question begging and meaningless, and is much akin to stating that a 100 dollar bill is ‘inherently worth a lump of gold’, when the bill actually has no inherent value.RebuttalsInherent Human WorthMuch of this I have already addressed in my refutation to existentialism and realism, Con’s arguments are hence incoherent. Con pretty much concedes this when his best justification is:“Whatever your justification, it is intuitively obvious that life has to have some kind of moral value”It also seems intuitively obvious that the Sun goes around the Earth, and the Earth is flat. Con simply does not have an objective justification here. Our list of cognitive biases is far from trivial.[3]Now onto Con’s syllogism:P1. Persons ought not be terminated.This fails because of my attack on moral realism, as the statement is fundamentally incoherent and incomplete. It is simply just an imperative statement, and Pro has not given any justification to believe this premise. The only way to make this statement coherent is to present it as a conditional, but this necessarily makes it subjective. Pro can possibly try to affirm this via. emotivism, or universal prescriptivism, neither view however is consistent with Pro’s arguments.P2. Fetuses/Embryos are Persons.Pro simply cannot demonstrate this premise true because he defined personhood as:“an agent or thing that has inherent moral worth”. And the notion of inherent moral worth (existentialism) has been challenged. However, a more useful definition of ‘Personhood’ is one that is conscious, intelligent, and holds values, since its only with these attributes that we care about staying alive or not. However I already demonstrated a foetus lacks all of these. Con even concedes this in his own argumentation(!):“The difference between myself and a chair, or the difference between myself an gold fish, is that I can make moral decisions”While I do not agree with this statement, even assuming Con’s position he cannot affirm a foetus is a person because a foetus cannot make moral decisions either! He hang himself on the noose here.Both of Pro’s supporting arguments for fetal viability and full development fail, since Pro has already defined personhood differently to what a foetus is. I could concede both these arguments and it would do nothing at all to prove P2.For example, my arguments for abortion would work even if an 18 year pregnancy were possible and a fully grown adult would be born. The exact same considerations regarding consciousness, intelligence, sentience, and most importantly, values would apply. The key difference between a baby that is born and one that is not is that the latter is now aware, and is now actively forming the a priori mental semantics required to hold values. Con implicitly concedes this when his sentient aliens argument, which would be morally relevant because of their sentience.Future Like Ours (FLO)To see what Con is actually arguing here, a syllogism is most adequate:P1: Any action which intentionally denies a FLO is immoralP2: Abortion intentionally denies a FLOC: Abortion is immoralOf course, P2 is true, so I can only address P1. First of all, P1 is incoherent for reasons already explained regarding moral realism and existentialism. Pro’s presuppositions here are thick, for example when he considers "what makes killing wrong," presupposes that killing is objectively wrong, which I challenge. There is no reason to accept the imperative “killing is wrong”.Furthermore, Con even concedes himself that killing is not always ‘wrong’:“There are cases where this presumption can be overridden”The fact that Con concedes this much concedes his presupposition in P1 as false, and this is assuming Con’s own position is even coherent.Con argues that denying future goods is wrong, but what is ‘a good’, what is a ‘unit of good’. The only coherent statements one can make is ‘good for me’ or ‘good for society’, but I refuted both of these in my opening. There is no ‘me’ to be good for (since the ‘me’ never existed), and that is a subjective, not objective value. Furthermore, assuming P1 also leads to the absurd notions like “wearing a condom is immoral”, “not unprotected sex having sex at every opportunity is immoral" and "not breeding like bunnies until the Earth becomes dangerously overpopulated is immoral."Societal BenefitsPro’s argument for selective abortions is largely beyond the scope of the debate at hand, as it attacks the manner in which abortions are performed, or even eugenics rather than the act of abortion itself. Pro concedes this himself:“Discrimination on the basis on immutable characteristics is not only unfair, but widely regarded as immoral.”Discrimination =/= abortion. Also, by assuming Con’s logic, it is moral for Indian citizens to copulate, and abort males to balance the gender population, if it is the case gender imbalance is inherently bad. Con also commits the slippery slope fallacy by appealing to sequential dubious assumptions.References3. http://tinyurl.com...4. http://tinyurl.com...