Abortion should be legal in the United States

5 rounds
72 hours
10,000 characters

I will be arguing, clearly, that abortion should be legal in the US. Con will argue that it should be illegal.

Distinctions such as in the case of rape or life endangerment, etc., are flexible. I only ask that you argue against abortion, in some cases, immediately after conception. It would be a less interesting argument if all we were debating was late-term abortions.

Thank you, and I'm looking forward to some fun, some practice formulating a solid argument, some learning and some widening of both of our views on this topic!

I accept this debate. I look forward to hearing my opponent's arguments.

Extend my arguments to this round.

My arguments against abortion:
Abortion is killing a fetus. A fetus is human and alive therefore it is a human life. Killing an innocent human life is murder. Murder is wrong. Therefore abortion is wrong.
The right to life is more important than the right to end a pregnancy.
The right to life is more important than convenience to the mother.
Adoption is a great alternative that does not involve killing.

Fetuses develop quickly. For example, in 8 weeks the eyes, nose, mouth, and tongue have formed. Electrical brain activity begins at week 6. By week ten the fetus can make bodily movements. The heart begins to circulate blood at day 22. We can establish that fetuses being aborted have the basic features of a human life [1].

Lack of development is not an argument for abortion because a newborn is far less developed than an adult but has the same right to life.

1: http://frc.org...

Hello everyone. This debate is still going on and you can find my opponent's arguments for this round in the comments section. I want to address some of her arguments.

Abortion is Safe

I agree with my opponent that abortion is safe.

Ability to feel Pain

My opponent argues that the fetus has very little ability to feel however according to her own words, "The evidence is not absolute, though, and it is very likely we simply do not know enough at this point to tell." Now, while we don't know, it is best to err on the side of cation because what if it turns out that he pain for a fetus is hideous? Even if they can't does that mean they don't have a right to life? If you lost your ability to feel pain, would killing you be morally acceptable? No, of course not.

Adoption

According to my opponent adopted kids can be very socially dysfunctional and jump from foster home to foster home. I actually got to experience this personally because my Aunt adopted six Russian children and teenagers. These kids had problems with drinking, drugs, and teenage pregnancy. However some of them eventually turned out all right, especially the younger ones.

As it turns out, the younger you are when you get adopted, the more functional you are because you spend less time in an orphanage and more time with a family. From the article sourced, there are too few babies to be adopted, so giving your baby for adoption will likely get them to a family quickly (1).

However, even if my opponent is right about the adopted children, emotional scarring is still better than being put to death. In fact lets take a poll of all adults in the US who were adopted as children and ask them whether they would have preferred that their mothers had aborted them. I wonder what the results will be?

The Mother

This is the main argument for abortion. Women are often left taking care of children as single parents and this can damage their careers and lifestyle. However this is still better than killing a human being. In the last round I argued that a fetus has just as much as a right to life as an adult because your development stage doesn't affect your right to life because if it did infants would have less of a right than adults. Also fetuses gain the major human characteristics in a matter of weeks. These arguments went unchallenged.

My question to anyone is lets say you were in this bad financial situation my opponent mentioned, and killing someone you knew could get you out of it. Would you do it? No. What if that person was the child you were taking care of? Again, even though the child is causing this lifestyle, the child's right to life supersedes your desire for a more comfortable lifestyle. The only difference between this and abortion is that the child is inside the woman's belly.

So this brings up the right to not be pregnant vs. the child's right to life. The right to life is greater. if you poll women and ask them whether they would rather go through a pregnancy or die? We all know what the answer to that will be. The right to life is more important. One doesn't have the right to kill someone to end their pregnancy and improve their financial situation. The reason murder is the greatest crime is because the right to life is the greatest right we have.

Also, as mentioned before abortion is a great alternative. The argument from financial problems associated with child care is irrelevant because children and infants can be put up for adoption.

Criminalization Makes Abortion Worse?

Imagine if I was arguing for murder and claimed that since murder is criminalize it is far more dangerous to do. Lets say I also argued that many people get away with it anyway so it should not be criminalize. Crazy huh? Yet that is what my opponent is trying to claim about the murder of fetal infants. If you suffer harm in the process of trying to kill someone else, I really don't feel any sympathy. However, most of these abortions were not dangerous and it is estimated that 9 out of 10 abortions were done by licensed doctors (2).

Even if few aborters are caught at least we know some are being caught. If something is wrong and should be illegal, then we should make it illegal no matter how well we can enforce it. If we were not able to catch child pornographers, I would still support making that disgusting practice illegal.

Contraceptives and Abortion

My opponent states that 5% of unintended pregnancy happen when people take birth control correctly. If this happens, adoption is a great alternative if necessary. Again, killing a life is worse than financial inconvenience.

I will end with a quote from Susan B. Anthony a major figure in women's right:

"No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime! (2)"

1: http://hamptonroads.com...
2: http://frc.org...

My opponent against posted her arguments in the comments section. She included many new arguments in this round so I am forced to do the same. I wish I was able to bring these arguments up before, but my opponent forfeited several rounds. Anyway, lets go over these arguments. I will summarize them below:

If it is wrong to kill a fetus because it is alive, it should be wrong to kill a pig, and wrong to kill bacteria ... You might then argue that it"s because it"s human, and then to avoid a circular argument, you would have to explain why being human is different than being anything else ... you would explain that there are several things that make humans unique and, apparently, superior...

To argue why humans can never be killed, or why certain groups of animals can never be killed, but others can, you would need to pinpoint one or more characteristics that defines the difference and make a good case for why it makes sense to use that as a measuring stick. I have never heard of one...but a fetus itself doesn"t even possess the characteristics that you could try to point to to make the distinction...

You would then argue that it WILL eventually have them...People are generally not afforded things until they have reached a certain point, even if it is certain they will get there... Our sense of morality is an evolved trait, as seen in precursors and necessary components in other species. It evolved because it was practical.

Our sense of morality is an evolved trait and yes, humans don't have any more of a right to life than any other species just because we have human traits. The sense of morality I will be arguing for is more practical. Since we are discussing morality from a legal perspective I will argue the morality of murder from a legal perspective.

A Legal Argument Against Murder

The purpose of a government is to benefit its citizens and to get us to do thing together we might not do separately for the common good that benefits everyone as a whole. Societies where human life is respected tend to do better than ones where it is less respected. In many places in Africa it is OK to go around killing people because you don't like them and look at these places.

In the ancient world it was acceptable to attack another city because you simply wanted their money. Because of that life was dangerous and miserable. Entire cities were killed or enslaved, and many of these were previously the ones doing the enslaving. When human life is respected, we can go about safely and have a high quality of life without spending a lot of money on personal security.

Killing Animals

This principle cannot be extended to all lifeforms because then we would have no way of eating. Also, animals won't cause any excessive trouble for us if we do kill them. So you can have a great human society while killing animals.

Killing in Self-Defense

If someone is trying to kill you then it is all right to kill them because that person has broken our pact to respect human life and that pact doesn't apply to them. Also, if we are not allowed as a society to kill in self-defense , then there will be less reason for others to keep the pact and will ruin it.

Killing the Weak

I argued that we can kill animals because they can't make human life miserable if we do. One may then try to say that killing newborns, people with Down Syndrome, or fetuses can also be ethical. The problem with this thinking is once we believe it is OK to exclude some humans from the right to life, some societies may try to exclude some humans for wrong reasons.

For example, the Nazis believed that there were some reasons to kill innocent humans, they took this reasoning too far and made life miserable for millions. Pretty much the whole benefit of not murdering was canceled out. Saying that all innocent humans cannot be killed and drawing a solid line there helps prevent us from making excuses to kill other people.

We also don't kill weak minorities like fetuses, infants, or mentally impaired people because we love many who are in this situation and want them to be protected so it makes sense to ensure that these whole classes of people are protected. Plus we will become like this ourselves when we get old. Really old people cannot fight back when they are attacked. So it makes sense to protect all innocent human life and allow all of them the right to life.

Abortion and Murder

So in the case of abortion, if we decide that fetuses can be killed then we will have to logically say that other groups of humans can be killed too. This is the way a society begins to rationalize murdering and cause misery for itself. We need a strict policy that innocent human cannot be killed.

Religious Morality

The argument I have given may not seem very moral because it is completely based on self-interest. Personally I don't believe in abortion for moral reasons as a Buddhist. In Buddhism enlightenment is a perfect state to reach and this cannot be achieved when it is in one's nature to harm others. Empathy and morality creates real happiness for all and that is why it is better than evil. However, I don't want to try to prove Buddhism to you, so I hope this amoral argument I have given is sufficient.

Is a fetus Human?

I have shown that human beings should not be killed and that this is murder. Some may argue that fetuses while genetically human lack many of the traits that make them human and therefore should not be considered human legally. However as explained before they do gain basic human traits very quickly in the developmental process.

Also lack of development cannot be cited because babies and youths have the same right to life yet also are undeveloped. Infants lack the basic intelligence adults have that is characteristic of humans. They are not even nearly as smart as a dog even when they become toddlers (2).

My opponent's Inconsistency

My opponent's arguments may have seemed to be clever but really they come from desperation. Since my opponent has argued that abortion is acceptable, and that no one animal group has any more of a right to life than any other then according to my opponent it seems that there is nothing wrong with killing anyone including babies, pregnant women, or grandpa.

"Opponent mentions only difference between fetus and baby is that the fetus is inside the mother"s belly, which is correct, but fails to acknowledge that this is significant because the former violates the mother"s rights but the latter does not."

If you read my opponent's statement below, she seems to believe that babies have a right to life and wants a moral separation between a fetus and an infant. Yet she argues that there is no proof any human has a right to life.

Too Many Adopted Babies?

My opponent argues that every baby that is saved from abortion and adopted will mean that another child won't be adopted. However adoption can cost from $5,000 to $40,000 within the United States so if we have a excess of children to be adopted, just lower the cost (1). Also, the right to life supersedes the right to a more comfortable life.

This is the last I will say about this subject. It has been a pleasure debating here and it has been fun listening to my opponent's thoughtful argument even if they all were in the comments section.

1: http://costs.adoption.com...
2: http://www.cnn.com...