Abortion Is Prima Facie Morally Wrong

I’ve read several of Freeman’s debates, and he is an excellent thinker. While I may not convince him in one debate to change his views on abortion, I do hope to communicate how strong the pro-life position actually is, when it’s properly communicated and understood. Sadly, it appears to me that most pro-life advocates on this website have communicated a weaker version of the actual pro-life position, leaving it open for easy refutation and dismissal. I hope to change that perception during this debate. I’ll open by offering a syllogism for the pro-life position that I will defend during this debate. After making a case for my argument, I’ll take the remainder of my space to respond to some of Freeman’s arguments. The Pro-Life Position:[1]P1: The unborn entity, from the end of the fertilization process, is a full-fledged member of the human community. P2: It is prima facie morally wrong to kill any member of that community. P3: Every successful abortion kills an unborn entity, a full-fledged member of the human community. C: Therefore, every successful abortion is prima facie morally wrong. The majority of abortion advocates take issue with P1, pointing out a difference between the unborn and older humans, to show why we are justified to treat the fetus differently from older humans. Those four categories are: Size Level of Development Environment (or location) Degree of Dependency I don't believe any of those four differences are morally relevant in the way pro-choice people need them to be. In other words, they don't disqualify you from personhood. Said a different way, I don’t think we should grant basic rights to some humans but not other humans based on what they can do functionally. I offered brief illustrations refuting these four criteria in the opening round of my first debate,[2] but my opponent was apparently overwhelmed and not only forfeited the debate, but deleted his entire Debate. org account. [3] For Freeman, consciousness is everything. The unborn aren't conscious in the way that we are. Since consciousness is so valuable to us now, doesn't it follow that the unborn aren't fully human before they are conscious? The pro-life view is not that humans become something new after they gain a certain level of consciousness. Our view is that humans are moral agents that have thenatural inherent capacity to perform basic functions, like think and talk. We don’t believe that you gain more rights once you acquire the present capacity to perform those functions. The "right to life" is a categorical property. You either have it or you don’t. How can you have a categorical property if it’s tied to a property that comes in degrees, like consciousness? You can have more or less of that property. My conclusion stands that the unborn is a full-fledged member of the human community, that ought not be discriminated against simply because she has yet to achieve her natural capacity for consciousness. I'll now respond to some of Freeman's arguments. "C1: It is not always wrong to kill an innocent human being. " ~Freeman I agree, and that’s why I say it is “prima facie” morally wrong to kill a human being. I believe that it is morally justified to pull the plug on a truly brain-dead adult. But the brain-dead adult is not comparable to a fetus, because the adult is dead, while the fetus is alive and developing at the natural pace for a human being. All she needs is a proper environment and adequate nutrition, and she will grow through her various stages. “Clearly, the notion that all human beings have a serious right to life is untrue. ” ~Freeman [emphasis mine] No, but all human beings have a prima facie right to life. I believe your case that the fetus does NOT have a right to live is faulty, because it depends on a present or past capacity for consciousness for personhood, and I will demonstrate during this debate that a person only needs a natural inherent capacity for consciousness. "In philosophy, it's very rare that you can get a knockdown argument against someone's position. But here I think we have one. The position of the pro-life advocate is made incoherent by virtue of the fact that brain-dead humans don't have a right to life. " ~Freeman Yes, that strawman version of the pro-life position, which is admittedly espoused by many less-read pro-life advocates, is incoherent. But that is not my position. (I don't think Freeman is attempting to make a strawman fallacy here; I'm simply stating that the pro-life position I started with is much stronger than the one outlined by Freeman. ) “So, for example, members of a self conscious species of extra-terrestrial would certainly qualify as people, even though they aren't human. Because many pro-life advocates' views are too narrow in qualifying personhood, their views should be rejected. ” ~FreemanFreeman, do you know any pro-life advocates who would reject granting personhood to extra-terrestrials? At least one of the advocates you debated granted it. I would as well. "In her book On The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, the philosopher Mary Anne Warren details five psychological criteria for personhood. According to Warren, these qualities include consciousness and in particular sentience, the capacity to reason, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate messages, and lastly, the presence of self-concepts. Since a fetus does not possess any of these qualities, it can rightfully not be considered a person with a serious right to life. " ~Freeman I believe Mary Anne Warren’s criteria for personhood are demonstrably wrong. Based on Warren's five criteria, 6-month old infants as well as disabled adults are not persons. That is crucial, because if a 6-month old infant is only a member of the human species but is declared a non-person by our government, than there would be nothing stopping infanticide. Not just infanticide for anencephalic newborns - the killing of ANY infants until they fulfilled ALL five of Warren's criteria! "A fetus' potential to acquire characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness is not a sound basis for granting it a right to life. As the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer points out, this principle simply cannot be adopted as a rights criterion since contraception and abstinence could be equally condemned by its own standards. " ~FreemanSinger makes the biological mistake of confusing parts with wholes in that argument. Generally speaking, I think Singer makes very strong arguments. That's why this one is particularly disappointing to me. As Scott Klusendorf points out in his book, The Case for Life,[4] "The difference in kind between each of our cells and a human embryo is clear: an individual cell's functions are subordinated to the survival of the larger organism of which it is merely a part. The human embryo, however, is already a whole human entity. True, it's an immature human, as is an infant, but it's a whole human organism nonetheless. .. It makes no sense to say that you were once a sperm or somatic cell. However, the facts of science make clear that you were once a human embryo. "Singer's argument that contraception or abstinence could be construed as murder is just a really bad biological argument. Unless Freeman can demonstrate that a present or past consciousness is a necessary condition for personhood, his case fails. I look forward to the rest of our debate. Sources:1. Beckwith, Francis. Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii. Print. Note: I’ve edited P1. Beckwith uses the phrase “moment of conception,” and there is still debate about what precise moment during the 12-24 hour process of fertilization the life of a new organism begins.2: . http://www.debate.org... 3: . http://www.debate.org...;4: Klusendorf, Scott. The Case For Life. 1st ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2009. 38. Print.