Debate: Abortion is a selfish action to alleviate an undesirable consequence
Side: True

‘’You've stated the third characteristic, yourself: it's human. We don't raise a pig the importance of a child because, although they both display sentience, one is a human and the other isn't.’’-----------So, ultimately it’s not about sentience and thoughts, it’s about whether we’re dealing with a human being. Since modern embryology and biology tell us that every new distinct human being begins its life as a fertilized egg, we must therefore conclude that abortion is not morally permissible as it terminates the life of human beings. While one can argue that aborting fetuses is permissible because they are not conciously aware of what is going on - it’s no different from killing a sleeping person who is not conciously aware of what is going on. Just because a human being isn’t using his potential capacity for sentience doesn’t mean that he is not a human being anymore or that he has no rights. When I’m sleeping, I do not cease to be a person just because I’m not utilizing my capacity for sentience just like a fetus doesn’t cease to be a person merely because it is not using its capacity for sentience. Both the sleeping me and the fetus has the potential capacity to gain sentience (I can by waking up and the fetus can by developing it), so there is no moral difference between the two.And I still haven’t been given a good definition of what sentience is. Is it the ability to have abstract thoughts, the ability to remember and have hopes, ideals? What is sentience?----------‘’In the sense that clipping your nails is "taking the life" of the nail, but no further. A zygote can be said to be organic matter, but it isn't alive in the same way a human being is alive.’’----------My nails will never grow into a thinking, emotional, sentient human being with hopes and dreams. Saying that a zygote is just organic matter is a euphemism for the sole purpose of distorting the reality of the situation. A zygote is simply a human being at its very first stages of development just like a baby is a human being at a certain stage of development, just like an adult is etc etc.Calling a zygote organic matter and a clump of cells is if I would call deformed people Defective Homo Sapien Organisms. It’s fine to sterilize deformed people as they’re not humans in the sense a healthy person is a human - they are DHSP’s.--------‘’How about having any thoughts, in general? A zygote, which looks a bit like a blood clot a girl might pass on her period, has no thoughts or consciousness or sentience at all. So literally any degree of brain activity gives the baby a one-up on the zygote.’’--------Well, a newborn baby has no sentiece and thoughts either. It can’t even recognize its parents for the first few weeks, it’s a being of instinct - tabula rasa. It certainly reacts to stimuli, but so does every other living organism. Secondly, brain activity may have absolutely no bearing on sentience and thoughts. You need to differentiate somatic and non-somatic nerve impulsses. A person in a coma may have lost his sentience and consciousness, but the brain still keeps the lungs and heart and muscle control functioning.Since brain activity has no bearing on sentience and personality, you will have to sain why brain impulses define humanity, but a bloodstream, developed fingers and eyes don’t. It’s completely arbitrary.------You can harm something that reacts to the physical stimuli of pain. A zygote cannot be harmed because it doesn't feel pain.-------Now you have set a very dangerous precedent. If I am killed under anesthesia, I feel no pain. Since I’m incapable of feeling any pain, emotional or physical, can I be harmed? If I’m painlessly killed, then by your definition, I am not harmed.What about people who are born with damaged nervous systems who are incapable of feeling pain - congential indifference to pain - by your definition, people who suffer from this disorder cannot be harmed. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-334924/The-billion-boy-feels-pain.html If a stab Ben Whitaker, I do him no harm as he does not feel pain.-------You really can't see the difference between you, a sleeping human being, and a lump of bloody cells 8 months from becoming a human?------I am still a clump of cells, you know? I’m just a bigger clump.And yes, by the definitions and arguments I’ve gotten - there really is no difference. I have not gotten a definition for what sentience is in the human sense nor have my arguments been given any attention. They have just been brazenly dismissed without any good justification.