There are good logical and scientific arguments for why a fetus is not a human person

I'm sure we'll have a respectful debate and I will do my utmost to remain grounded in logic and fact rather than personal bias or belief. I will use only credible sources accessible to my opponent so as to ensure total objectivity and validity of argument and I trust my opponent will do the same. As my opponent has laid out in the challenge, Pro must demonstrate at least one 'logical [or] scientific argument for why a fetus is not a 'human person' and presumably not considered a 'human person'; ergo, Pro must have a non-fallacious argument explaining why law should not recognise all fetuses as 'human people', as the law defines personhood in any meaningful sense. I am, as was implied, defining 'human person' in the sense used by the law (namely in the US), as I consider the legal instance to be the least controversial secular definition. It must be noted that my opponent's overall argument, which is by necessity a refutation of 'there are good logical and scientific arguments for why a fetus is not a human person', is logically speaking at odds with a parenthetical aside my opponent added in the first paragraph of Con's Round 1. Pro does not need to prove that 'abortion is an ethical procedure'; this is a logical trap laid out that presents an impossibly and irrelevantly high Burden of Proof for Pro, as many would contend that the consumption of meat is somewhat unethical, as higher vertebrates can by almost all standards feel pain [1], although very few would argue that it should be considered murder of a 'human person' and thereby illegal. Pro simply needs to have a solitary 'logical [or] scientific argument' for why a fetus is not considered a human person; once more, in the eyes of the law, as the law is the only appropriate arbiter. I would also like to reiterate for the record that Pro's Burden of Proof requires 'logical or scientific evidence' but not necessarily both; therefore, as long as Pro's argument is well supported by logic, it cannot lose points for sources. However, Con's Burden of Proof requires an appropriately sourced rebuttal of each point made by Pro, which should be noted by the voters in the debat. I define a 'human person' as a natural person, or a living human being with legal personality; hereupon in the debate, I will use natural person as a substitute for 'human person', as it has a more precise definition. In the United States, natural people have both legal rights and legal responsibilities assigned to them without their consent; except in extreme cases, they are typically able to benefit from these rights and serve these legal responsibilities [2]. Even should natural people be unable to fulfill their responsibilities due to extenuating circumstances, they are still able to meaningfully benefit from the rights granted to natural people under the Constitution, as long as they retain crucial brain function. Notably, we do not, nor have we ever considered, all organisms of the species Homo sapiens natural people, as they are not uniformly considered living and suitable to be endowed with legal personality. Contrary to popular misconception among those within the so-called 'pro-life' movement, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the most commonly cited piece of legislature by those seeking to show that fetuses are natural people in the eyes of American law, the UVVA is agreed by both its supporters and opponents to conclusively not endow fetuses with legal personality and thereby to not consider them natural people [3] [4] [5]. To endow fetuses with legal personality, of course, would also challenge the Supreme Court's reading of the Constitution, as Roe v. Wade explicitly establishes that fetuses are not natural people in the eyes of the United States; as is common knowledge, it is not within Congress' purview to overturn a ruling of the Supreme Court should the Supreme Court not do so themselves; to do so would require an Amendment to the Constitution. To look at the issue of natural personhood and the legality of termination of what can be said to be life from a different perspective, we can simply consider the example presented by the idea of what it is to be 'brain dead'. The National Institute of Health has a relatively uniform definition of what it is to be brain dead; in essence, to be unresponsive to stimuli, incapable of substantial unassisted movement or breathing and to lack overall brain function throughout [6]. When someone should meet these criteria, they are considered legally dead in all 50 states. According again to the National Institute of Health, fetuses do not satisfy any of these criteria in a substantive sense until the 26th week of pregnancy [7], although at birth healthy babies comfortably meet all of these criteria. In other words, whether the fetus is 'viable' is already held to be irrelevant, as viability with assistance does not preclude termination in the case of those who are brain dead, and therefore lose their natural personhood. Furthermore, the argument that any cell or collection of cells should be considered human is simply preposterous, even if viability with assistance is held to be a prerequisite; sperm cells can be kept alive in the laboratory setting for several days and yet none would argue that they are human in any meaningful sense. The reason they are not considered human is not because they lack necessary organs, nor because they lack all copies of the chromosomes necessary, as fertilised eggs are not considered humans. The reason they are not considered human is because they lack the vital brain function necessary to be eligible for natural personhood, a set of criteria we hold even to those with all organs and chromosomes present and functioning. In other words, the 24 week cutoff currently established nationwide in the United States is established because it corresponds relatively closely to the brain function we use as a prerequisite for natural personhood. Finally, I must bring out the well-used and well-established argument that banning abortion is not an effective method of curtailing abortion, leading to no substantial effect on the number of abortions performed [8] while causing 13% of maternal deaths [9]. Using the slippery slope fallacy, or claiming that we ban other things which are not totally eradicated by the ban but still continue to ban them, such as murder and rape, so we should therefore maintain the ban on abortion, is not only simply fallacious but even more unwarranted in this case, as the ban on murder does not somehow lead to 'unsafe murder', and the ban on rape does not lead to 'unsafe rape'. In these cases, the act can be made no more dangerous by the ban; in the case of abortion, the ban itself is directly responsible of the deaths of women; safe abortion under the supervision of medical professionals has caused somewhere in the vicinity of six deaths since the beginning of record-keeping, all of which can be said to be somewhat due to the error of the manufactuer of the drug used [10]. This counterargument will hopefully, however, be unnecessary, as my opponent committed to avoiding fallacies. Sources:[1] . http://www.wellcome.ac.uk...[2] . https://www.law.cornell.edu...[3] . http://www.legalaffairs.org...[4] . https://www.aclu.org...[5] . http://www.gpo.gov...[6] . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[7] . http://www.nlm.nih.gov...;[8] . http://www.nytimes.com...;[9] . http://www.who.int...;[10] . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...;