Instigator / Pro
6
1761
rating
31
debates
95.16%
won
Topic
#3528
THBT: On balance, the US ought to make abortion illegal.
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Winner
6
6
After 10 votes and with the same amount of points on both sides...
It's a tie!
Tags
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One week
- Max argument characters
- 17,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
6
1724
rating
27
debates
88.89%
won
Description
THBT: On balance, the US ought to make abortion illegal
BoP:
The burden of proof is shared.
RULES:
1. No Kritik.
2. No new arguments are to be made in the final round.
3. The Burden of Proof is shared.
4. Rules are agreed upon and are not to be contested.
5. Sources can be hyperlinked or provided in the comment section.
6. Be decent.
7. A breach of the rules should result in a conduct point deduction for the offender.
Round 1
Pro
#1
Thx Whiteflames,
THBT: On balance, abortion ought to be illegal.
I. Distinguishing the case of PRO and CON & the argument from inconsequential differences
To establish the contention between the PRO and CON, we ought to first determine commonalities between the parties. PRO’s position is that the actualization of biological humanity suffices as a criterion for ascribing personhood, whilst CON holds that only after some finite time post conception, whether it be consciousness, birth etc, personhood ought to be ascribed. The commonality can be observed in the fact that both parties hold that only beings with biological humanity can be considered (whatever CON chooses as the additional criteria [consciousness, birth etc] their additional predicate is applied on the backdrop of biological humanity) as possessing personhood, with the difference being that CON advocates that biological humanity is not the sole determiner of personhood.
The commonality and differences between the two positions is crucial and ought to be clearly understood.
- PRO holds that all beings who are humans possess personhood.
- CON holds that all beings who are humans and possess X characteristic (be it birth, self-awareness) possess personhood.
The additional burden which CON carries is clear - they must maintain that, not only must being human be fulfilled as a criteria, but also some additional predicate which they must define. PRO opines that the onus of identifying an additional predicate which does not result in logical inconsistencies is impossible. I propose three reasons for this. The first regards the logical impossibility of proposing a sound criteria for instilling personhood between conception and birth, the second observes that even if a criteria is conjured, it is subjective and ambiguous, thereby failing to satisfy the criterion of legal certainty, and the third finds that the creation of an additional predicate is itself an unnecessary ontological burden.
Impossibility of proposing a criteria from inconsequential differences
The differences between a fetus and a born baby is three fold.
- Level of development
- Environment
- Degree of dependency
I assert that these differences are insignificant in determining the moral agency of an individual.
Level of development
Children are generally less developed than adults yet this does not mean that children are morally inferior to their parents. Some people with developmental disabilities are also less developed than children, yet society never argues that these conditions are a reason for them to be executed.
Environment
The geographic location of an individual surely has nothing to do with their moral worth. Just as moving from the garage to the bedroom does not affect one's moral worth, moving from inside the womb onto the delivery room table shouldn’t either.
Degree of dependency
It is often opined that "as a fetus is reliant on a separate entity, it has no serious right to life”. This argumentation can be applied to all human beings. No person isn’t reliant on some external entity, whether it is food, water, or oxygen - it just so happens that fetuses are also dependent on their mothers. Fetuses which rely on an umbilical cord in the womb should be as human as those who rely on a feeding tube outside the womb.
Thus, it can be seen that the differences between a fetus and a newborn are nonconsequential. There is no stage between conception and birth that allows for people to soundly prescribe moral agency. Thus, if we are to pursue the notion that human beings ought to have rights, the only appropriate time to establish this is the actualization of biological humanity.
Subjectivity and ambiguity
Suppose that we compare the value of a fetus and a newborn. Ceteris paribus, a newborn, possesses more moral worth than a mere fetus. However, consider what a mother who, after countless attempts of conceiving a child and who finally succeeds, would think of their “fetus”. Surely, she would hold the moral worth of the fetus to equal, if not higher, moral regard when compared with live humans. Notice how, in the two examples, a very different moral worth has been yielded when considering the fetus’ value. Who is correct? The layman who cares little for the fetus, or the future mother who can finally fulfill her dreams of being a parent and who cares very much for the fetus? Notice that, even if one were to articulate a factor which determines moral worth, another party can simply object and propose their own criteria, thereby casting the conversation into a standstill. The fact that one being (the fetus) can be subjected to contrapositive moral treatments from differing individuals is wholly illogical - in reality, the fetus either has rights, or it doesn’t - a third option is impossible via the law of excluded middle. It seems clear, therefore, that a vehicle for determining moral worth which creates two contradictory assessments is not sufficient in prescribing personhood. Thus, even if CON can propose a criteria, it is purely speculative and merely an articulation of their personal values. Such ambiguities are wholly to contradictory to the stipulations of what makes a law, according to The Rule of the Law, subarticle, consistency.
- Introduction
- The requirement of consistency is deeply rooted in English Law. The rule of law requires that laws be applied equally without unjustifiable differentiation.
- Inconsistency is one of the most frequent manifestations of unfairness that a person is likely to meet.
As has been demonstrated via the previous arguments, the creation of an additional predicate outside of the actualization of biological humanity leads to inconsistencies which nullify the rights of born humans (those who are developmentally disabled, those who require a feeding tube etc) and thus squares perfectly to what The Rule of the Law stipulates oughtn't be in a law - unjustifiable differentiation.
Another document that ought be referred to is the principle of legal certainty, which stipulates
- The legal system needs to permit those subject to the law to regulate their conduct with certainty and to protect those subject to the law from arbitrary use of state power.
CON's position prohibits certainty - if we argue that only self-aware being ought have rights, those who are temporality unconscious would lose their rights to life. It becomes a very real possibility that people lose their lives due to "loopholes" and "legal technicalities". PRO's position, however, is congruent with the principle of certainty - there is no contradiction in the postulation that all beings who have been concepted ought to, ceteris paribus, have human rights. To contend PRO's criteria of biological humanity entails that no human, born or unborn, have rights. Our society is one which grants moral rights to humans, so we can grant that it is axiomatically true that humans have rights, and thus my position too, axiomatically follows.
Ontological burden
Even if CON can propose a criteria which evades the insurmountable burden which they face, the notion prescribing of an additional predicate (consciousness etc) is itself a mere ontological burden. The study of embryology and biology is not bettered or improved by the creation of some subjective criteria. Suppose that we adopt “consciousness” as the predicate - how does this further embryology or biology? When terms such as “life” are coined, they serve a purpose - to distinguish animals and plants from inorganic matter. Adding “consciousness” as the stage in which people get moral worth solely to permit abortion is a purely ad hoc and unnecessary maneuver.
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II. Principle of uncertainty
One fact that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers can agree on is that in order for abortion to be justified, there must be absolute certainty that it does not murder a human person. When considering the nature of abortion, there are only four possible outcomes which can arise. They are as follows (consider with ceteris paribus):
- The fetus is a person and this is known.
- The fetus is a person and this is not known.
- The fetus is not a person and this is not known.
- The fetus is not a person and this is known.
The ramification of abortion in each of these situations are:
- You have intentionally killed a human being.
- You have unintentionally killed a human being
- You have intentionally risked killing a human being.
- You have done nothing wrong.
Notice how all the above scenarios either involve criminal activity or are simply impossible. Scenario 1 is plain first-degree murder. Scenario 2 is akin to shooting toxic chemicals into a building which you believe, wrongly so, that there is no one in. Scenario 3 is comparable to fumigating a building without knowing whether there are residents inside. Scenario 4, as aforementioned is the only morally permissible situation however is impossible to recreate in reality, due to the indistinct measurements used to assess personhood. As it is there is no way to determine with absolute certainty that abortion does not kill a person, abortion at best requires its adherence to commit criminal negligence, and at worst is 1st-degree murder.
Notice how this issue of subjectivity is seamlessly resolved when adopting biological humanity as the criteria for who ought to have moral agency. When defining personhood in terms of CON's subjective metaphysical benchmark, the difficulty of the Principle of Uncertainty emerges.
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III. Comparison to unjustified killing
P1. If abortion is killing and the reason for aborting is unjustified, abortion is unjustified killing.
P2. Abortion involves killing.
P3. The reasons for aborting are unjustified.
C1. Abortion is unjustified killing.
P4. Unjustified killing ought to be illegal.
C2. Abortion ought to be illegal.
P1.
Fairly axiomatic and tautological.
P2.
To kill is to deprive of life. Thus, as 96% of biologists believe that life begins at fertilisation (additional scientific evidence can be provided if pressed), and abortion involves the depriving of said life life, abortion is killing.
P3.
Merely establishing that abortion is killing is not sufficient in ruling that it is immoral - after all, the killing of a home intruder to defend your family can be argued as being a moral imperative. Thus, we ought examine the reasons people have abortions, in order to understand whether these reasons surfice in justifying what has been established as killing.
According to the Guttmacher institute the two most common reasons for having abortions were "having a baby would dramatically change my life" and "I can't afford a baby now" (cited by 74% and 73%, respectively). Obviously, these reasons do not justify the killing of a born human lives, and thus should not be justifications for killing unborn human lives.
C1.
The conclusion is thus valid via modus ponens. The implication of the fact that abortion is unjustified killing entails that it is immoral.
P4.
Unjustified killing is, tautologically, killing of which cannot be justified and thus, it ought not to be legal.
C2.
The conclusion follows - abortion ought to be illegal.
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Conclusion
Through the three arguments proposed, the intellectual price tag of CON's position is clear - the ontological burden of manifesting an additional predicate on the backdrop of biological humanity is simply impossible and incongruent with the operation of the law. Furthermore, through the second contention, the uncertainty principle exemplifies the cumbersome burden which CON bears - not only must their position be probable, but it must be certain in order for abortion to be justified. The final contention draws a comparison to unjustified killing shows that abortion is akin to some of the most heinous crimes our society condemns. Thus, the resolution is upheld and CON's position is yielded untenable.
Con
#2
Thank you for inviting me to debate this, Bones.
My position is simple:
P1: Policies that inflict structural violence ought not be implemented
P2: Making abortion illegal would inflict structural violence
C1: Abortion ought not be made illegal
I) What is structural violence and why is it important? (P1)
This framework precludes all other moral considerations because it necessarily includes all affected parties in any moral calculus, drawing attention to those who would otherwise be excluded as subjectively unimportant, “becom[ing] either invisible, or demeaned… so that we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer. To reduce [the] nefarious effects [of moral exclusion], we must be vigilant in noticing and listening to oppressed, invisible, outsiders. Moreover, as government policy has the greatest capacity for harm, it must be held to the highest standard as the degree of violence and the lasting effects of that violence are far greater for a government than for any individual. Particularly when those resulting harms are unavoidable and cause severe physical and psychological harms, a government ought not inflict structural violence.
II) How does a ban on abortion inflict structural violence? (P2)
A) Elimination of care
1) Miscarriage and non-viable pregnancies
In cases of miscarriage where medical intervention is required, a ban on abortion eliminates access to both trained professionals and medications, yielding bleeding and infection risks that can cost lives. Also, “doctors may hesitate to treat patients with ectopic pregnancy, inevitable miscarriage, or previability rupture of membranes when fetal cardiac activity remains.”
2) Reproductive coercion
Health centers function as “invaluable safe space[s] where providers can screen patients for reproductive coercion and intervene if necessary. They can prescribe contraception and provide abortion care. They are also important vehicles for advancing research on reproductive coercion.” They would either be shut down or rendered ineffectual, removing opportunities for potential mothers to escape abuse from their intimate partners. 34% of domestic violence survivors report that the abuse they suffered was tied to their childbearing decisions. That abuse often escalates during pregnancy and abortion provides a crucial means of escape. These abuses will be made inevitable for many when access to the most common female contraceptives is eliminated. The birth control pill and IUDs are considered “life-ending” by many because of their potential effects on implantation post-fertilization. Women will have to rely on men to prevent pregnancy during intercourse, but women will be saddled with the legal and physical consequences.
c) Patient-provider relationships
Pregnant mothers will have to delay treatments for illnesses like cancer that may kill the fetus, regardless of the health risks. Any treatments that are teratogenic or potentially abortion-inducing may become unavailable to any woman as a precautionary measure to prevent lawsuits against providers. Any basis for claiming a medical emergency will be contested in court. Patients who miscarry could be accused of having induced pregnancy loss as their physicians would be required to report them, with black and low-income patients being reported most often. Physicians could be investigated for treating miscarrying women for helping end their pregnancies. Women considering abortions would avoid doctor visits in order to hide their pregnancies, resulting in illnesses and injuries that harm the mother and fetus going untreated (e.g. higher rates of birth defects, stillbirths and perinatal deaths).
B) Destructive alternatives
1) Self-managed abortions
Medication is the safest means by which to manage an abortion. Other interventions come with additional risks, which get a lot worse in self-managed cases. An abortion ban necessarily reduces or removes access to these medications, leading “[p]atients [to] use unsafe methods… [that] may require lifesaving critical care for sepsis, hemorrhage, pelvic-organ injury, or toxic exposures.”
2) Bringing to term
a) Base risk
Those who choose to carry a child to term and deliver it accept a 14 times greater mortality rate than those who abort. Excluding unsafe abortion practices, mortality rates would increase by 7% within a year and 21% over subsequent years post-abortion ban.
b) No exceptions
No one should have unnecessary and undue suffering imposed on them. Mothers should not be required to carry non-viable pregnancies to term. They should not be required to give birth to a child with Tay-Sachs disease who will die in agony within 4 years. Pro makes no exception for these cases, so these women would be subjected to pointless suffering.
They also should not be required to continue with pregnancy when their lives are in serious jeopardy. Pregnant women should be able to give consent to make medical decisions to save their own lives, yet Pro makes no exception for them, either.
c) Overburdening the medical system
Many of the children carried to term will be born with “with substantial medical needs in infancy and beyond, whose parents might have ended their pregnancy after receiving fetal anatomical or genetic diagnoses… families of children with disabilities or complex medical needs will" have to watch their child suffer in an overcrowded medical system that will result in death and harm to children far beyond those directly affected by this ban. “The perinatal mental health needs of pregnant patients who are continuing undesired pregnancies, including those resulting from sexual assault, will undoubtedly intensify as well, further stressing an overtaxed mental health care system.”
3) Punishing miscarriages
Pro argues that the unborn ought to be treated the same under the law as any other stage of human development. A case of suspected abortion, therefore, is equivalent to a case of suspected murder or manslaughter, resulting in investigations that include obtaining access to medical records and determining whether the patient or anyone close to them was responsible, as well as investigations of their medical providers who may have aided and/or abetted.
However, pregnancy loss is not cut and dry. “[A]s many as 26% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage”, and while some of these cases have obvious causes, “[i]n most cases, it is too early to determine the exact cause”. As a result, almost every instance of miscarriage is grounds for investigation post-abortion ban. Women have already been convicted of manslaughter for miscarriage, but Pro’s case will make prosecutions far more common and widespread. “Pregnant patients who have bleeding in pregnancy or pregnancy loss may be vulnerable to reporting and criminal prosecution, whether they took measures to end the pregnancy or are having a miscarriage; spontaneous pregnancy loss and self-managed abortion with medications are virtually indistinguishable.” Given that medication-induced abortions are by far the most common form of abortion at 54% of all abortions, that’s a big problem.
Setting aside basic issues of court clog, classism will be rampant with this system. These women will be coming off of expensive, emotional health crises and may have to pay steep prices to defend against state and federal prosecution. All pregnant women will suffer; a miscarriage is already a would-be mother’s worst nightmare, but this would result in the legal system castigating her for its loss.
III) Case conclusions
Given the clear harms caused by banning abortion, it ought to remain legal. (C1) To be specific, abortion ought to remain legal for any reason up through 15 weeks (the latest point that medication-induced abortion can be used, amounting to well over 90% of all abortions in the US), with exceptions beyond that point for medical needs of both the mother and fetus and to address cases of reproductive coercion.
IV) Rebuttals
A) Policy considerations
This debate regards policy. The term “ought to” “refer[s] to a recommended future action.” As such, issues including what the action - making abortion illegal in the US - would yield and how it would be carried out are necessary considerations. Instead, Pro assumes a ban will solve. His P4 and C2 are used to convert from a purely moral issue (abortion is unjustified killing) to a policy stance (abortion ought to be illegal), yet that conversion is only meaningful if said policy is effective. Yet, both the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute have found that the number of abortions in countries with and without a ban are basically the same. Pro can stand on principle, but that dulls his impacts.
B) Principle
So, let’s talk about those principles.
1) Distinguishing our cases
Pro ties a lot of his arguments on personhood to additional burdens for me. A reminder: rule 3 of this debate is that BoP is shared. We agreed to this ahead of the debate. I don’t suddenly acquire burdens because he makes pre-rebuttals that he believes require answers, though most of it stems from incorrect predictions about my case. My position regarding the beginning of personhood is that of uncertainty - we don’t and can’t know. The beginnings of personhood do not influence my case.
2) Inconsequential differences
Pro wants to have it both ways: he acknowledges uncertainty regarding when personhood begins, but claims with absolute certainty that fertilization is the first possible moment of personhood. Any stage of development, including those that come before fertilization (e.g. the separate gametes), is only distinguished by the “inconsequential differences” Pro claims cannot determine moral agency. If they are inconsequential distinctions from later forms of human development, the same applies to those that came before. Pro appealing to popularity and authority among a vague group of “biologists” via a broken link in his syllogism’s P2 doesn’t validate his certainty. Thus, Pro bites his own critiques about arbitrary selection and using subjective criteria for personhood.
3) The principle of uncertainty
This is Pro’s only argument that links his principle to his policy. He asserts that legal abortion can only be justified if there is absolute certainty regarding the personhood status of the unborn. This is false. Abortion policy is often driven by multiple factors. See: my case. What’s more, the factor Pro banks on is uncertainty, the harms of which range from having done nothing wrong to 1st-degree murder. These are all theoretical, so all 4 scenarios are, as he puts it, “impossible to recreate in reality due to the indistinct measures used to assess personhood.” It’s similarly impossible to weigh such a wide range of potential harms.
By contrast, known harms and benefits have legitimate weight. We know what effects an abortion ban will have. Pro must weigh these known harms against the harms that result from uncertainty, yet the 4 scenarios he gives have no probabilities, yielding impacts with no probabilities. Pro has conceded that he cannot weigh his impacts at all because of the very uncertainty this point relies upon.
4. Unjustified killing
Pro presents a syllogism for why abortion should be banned. Two additional (I’ve already addressed other points elsewhere) problems.
One, Pro claims that the most common reasons for obtaining an abortion are unjustified (his P3). Pro doesn’t explain why either of these reasons are unjustified and provides virtually no distinction between justified and unjustified reasons. Pro’s link complicates this further since the numbers indicate that surveyed women often provided multiple reasons for getting an abortion, so Pro’s decision to restrict it to these two reasons is flawed.
Two, Pro labels all abortion as unjustified killing. His P3 didn’t say “Many of the reasons for aborting are unjustified,” just as his C2 doesn’t say “Most abortions ought to be illegal.” These statements offer no exceptions, just like his case. Yet, these reasons exist, and some are even featured in the link in his P3 justification, including the health of the mother and fetus. Protecting oneself from physical harm is justified. Not all abortions kill the unborn and many result from non-viable pregnancies where the unborn would die anyway.
V. Summary
My case details many types of structural violence that an abortion ban would inflict on women in the US. A ban would severely harm women's health care, reproductive freedoms and protection from abusers, yielding increases in mortality rates, pointless suffering and subject grieving would-be mothers to legal action. Pro’s case, by contrast, never considers the impacts of his policy aims, instead focusing on an unweighted argument for uncertainty and a flawed syllogism.
Back to you, Bones.
Round 2
Pro
#3
Thx Whiteflames,
Preliminary
- CON appears to be right about the broken link in PRO's opening which attempts to prove that human beings come into being at the moment of conception. The operating link is here and is also corroborated by the following sources, which states 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilizations (5212 out of 5502).
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Contention IV. (Additional) The narrow scope of CON's argument
Observe that the resolution of this debate emphasis the term "balance", commonly defined as a predominating amount; a preponderance and interpreted in this manner by other debaters on this cite. A large portion of CON's argument hinges on statistically acute scenarios - medical interventions, Tay-Sachs disease etc). These anomalies do not represent the spectrum of possible scenarios for an abortion to take place.
CON argues that illegalising abortion necessitates that these anomalies oughtn't be provided with abortions and thus should be taken into consideration. This mistakes the legal system as one of unwavering inconsideration. Consider, for example, theft, defined legally as the situation in which if one dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. Would it be a reasonable to argue for the abolition of this law on the grounds that there exists scenarios in which the appropriating of someones property is morally necessary (you steal your kidnappers pistol to free your family)? Obviously, there exists reasonable exceptions in every law and thus illegalising abortion ought to be considered within that category. All laws operate with the assumption of ceteris paribus principle, that is, if all else is equal, X law ought to be abided by. The PRO position does not need to justify every possible scenario for one to find themselves in need of an abortion - they merely need to find that abortion as an act is itself, when all other factors are equal, immoral.
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Affirmations I. Distinguishing the case of PRO and CON & the argument from inconsequential differences
CON alleges PRO for burden shifting and expresses dissatisfaction at their share of the burden. The nature of this debate is such that PRO must prove biological actualization as sufficient in granting human rights, whilst CON must find some other criteria to be sufficient. PRO merely articulates that any predicate proposed necessarily falls on top of the backdrop of biological humanity (consciousness, neural activity etc are all present after biological humanity). Not establishing a criteria results in the absurd conclusion that no humans have rights.
CON then opines that their stance on personhood is uncertain, and that it is a fact we don't and can't know. I take three issues with this.
- The first is that, when CON stipulates that the beginning of personhood is an unknowable fact, they are appealing to incredulity - they are asserting that their world view does not possess the vehicle for determining personhood. The "don't and can't know" reflects only their position and oughtn't be understood as a universal difficulty which involves PRO's position, for PRO can easily prescribe a stage in which human beings possess human rights (personhood).
- Though CON alleges that the prescribing personhood is an undoable task and involves a fact which we "can't know", their case (and the doings of humanity) hinges on the notion that human beings have personhood. CON's assertion that we can't prescribe personhood (they stipulate "my position regarding the beginning of personhood is that of uncertainty - we don’t and can’t know") carries great difficulties - if it is the case that we cannot prescribe personhood, it follows that no humans have personhood, which implicates the notion that no humans have rights. Obviously, CON disagrees with this sentiment - they don't really argue that "personhood" isn't an unknowable fact, but rather that it is a vague occurrence which takes place somewhere between conception and birth. This vague and ambiguous prescription is both morally indefensible and legally unacceptable (elaborated in PRO's r1, subsection subjectivity and ambiguity.
- CON essentially concedes the entire uncertainty principle argument here - I will elaborate on the significance of this in the relavant section.
Regarding the inconsequential differences, CON argues that the principle can be applied to the PRO position and that a fertilized and nonfertilized being differs only in inconsequential ways. However, this refutation can be rendered false by axiomatically granting that human beings ought to have rights. We live in a society in which human beings (at least grown) have rights and liberties which are upheld by the law. We can thus grant that human beings have rights. As a human beings come into existence at the moment of conception, it is axiomatically the case that it is significant - for they have become what is apodictically granted as worthy of human rights. Thus the burden falls on CON to assert that, not only is the adding of an additional predicate not an ontological burden, but that it is significant in conveying personhood.
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Affirmations II. Principle of uncertainty
CON argues that, as the potential range of harm inflicted by abortion is uncertain, it thus pales when compared to the known harms of abortion. This is a disingenuous comparison on three grounds.
- CON argues the harms of abortion are uncertain by virtue of PRO's uncertainty principle. This is false - the uncertainty only arises when we adopt CON's subjective benchmark for prescribing personhood - it is an issue only for those (CON) who wish to deny biological humanity as solely sufficient in converting personhood.
- If it is accepted, as I have postulated, that the unborn are deserving of human rights, it follows the killing of them (over half a million of them) is a far more morally depraved act than any negative effect of abortion which CON has postulated.
- The helplessness of the unborn human oughtn't be compared to the unlucky "mother". Consider the following thought experiment.
- Suppose there exists a room which gives all those in it a natural spike in dopamine for a period of 20 minutes. The entrance is free, however, there is one condition - if you enter, there is a 2 percent there about's chance that you will exist with a human being, whose life is contingent upon your body, attached to you for a duration of just under a year. Now suppose that you enter this room multiple times with no repercussions, however, after a number of trips, you find a human being attached to you. Are you morally allowed to kill this human being?
- I assert that, in the thought experiment, it is a moral crime to kill the human being attached to you. Observe that the above is not some make belief scenario - it is the bedroom in which people have sex. The argument that there are risks in carrying the human (a risk which is well documented, observed and understood by any with minimal knowledge) does not hold - it is clear that these minute dangers were present before one enters a room and are implicitly accepted upon entrance.
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Affirmations III. Comparison to unjustified killing
CON provides multiple refutations. The first is that their allegedly exists a leap from the moral to the legal, in which the legal impact of abortion bans is neglected. I have two refutations.
- The alleged "leap" is merely one which assumes that "unjustified killing" (killing which is tautologically unjustifiable) ought to be illegal. CON's argument that abortion bans are not effect does not harm this argument, for if it were the case that abortion bans did not work, the fundamental immorality of unjustifiably killing a human being still remains. For example, if it were the case that slavery bans did not lower the number of slaves that were captive, it does not follow that slavery ought to be legal, for the very principle of allowing slavery is itself a terribly immoral and negligent act.
- CON's fundamental postulation that abortion bans do not work is erroneous.
- Demands for abortion among residents in Ireland was steadily declining for a decade until 2019, in which a 142% increase for the demand for an abortion was observed. Coincidently, the legalising of abortion in Ireland took place a year prior.
- Demands for abortion among residents in the UK was steadily declining for a decade until 2017, in which a 58 percent increase for the demand for an abortion was observed. Coincidently, the UK began funding abortions in the same year.
- CON's own source is problematic for its numerous extraneous variables. The study only observed similar abortion rates when comparing poor countries such as Mexico (where there is minimal sex education, low contraception use) with technologically and educationally advanced countries which are, in the article, described as the "richer" countries which "have strong health care systems". An honest comparison between these two populations is simply impossible - obviously the country where there is no education (hence leading to more unwanted pregnancies) or culture (the US for example, through education, as fostered a culture in which sex ought to take place with contraception) is going to be the one with more unwanted pregnancies and a higher number of abortions. PRO's source compares a country before and after the policy, which removes many extraneous variables.
- CON opines that the two reasons I provided which I charge as "unjustified" are not substantiated. Recall that they were "having a baby would dramatically change my life" and "I can't afford a baby". I had assumed that these were obvious - if I were to attempt to justify the killing of my hypothetical child on the grounds that the child would drastically change my life and that I don't have the money for it, these would surely be absurd. One would surely say that I could have at least with them up for adoption. But notice how the advocation is for adoption, and not killing the child. In the case of abortion, there is no third option, so the "adoption" hypothetical can be nullified. If one is not willing to allow for the killing of the child on the two reasons proposed, they oughtn't allow for the killing of the unborn on the two grounds.
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Rebuttals
Overview
I fault the second premise of CON's argument, for carrying within it implicated presuppositions which are unproven.
- P2: Making abortion illegal would inflict structural violence
The premise is complex, especially considering the implications of PRO's arguments and can be interpreted in two ways.
- The unborn are not deserving of human rights (PRO's argument that they are deserving of human rights is false), thus the net harm of terminating them is lesser than the net harm which abortion entails.
- The unborn are deserving of human rights (PRO's argument that they are deserving of human rights is true), however, the net harm of terminating them is lesser than the net harm which abortion entails .
1.
It is clear that the presupposition here (that the unborn are not deserving of human rights) is unproven, via PRO's contentions. CON has not proposed a sound predicate for instilling personhood thus currently, in their analysis, no persons have rights. The only way for CON to escape this is to propose a criteria which overcomes the plethora of difficulties highlighted in PRO's first contention (non-consequential differences, subjectivity and ambiguity, and ontological burden).
2.
If it is conceded that the unborn does indeed possess personhood and thus ought to have rights yet it remains the case that the damages of banning abortion exceed that of actual abortions, CON's position can then be rendered false by comparing the unborn to the born.
If it is conceded that the unborn has a right to life yet abortion still ought be legal, we can substitute "unborn" for "born" in order to test for CON's consistency. This shouldn't be an issue - if CON agrees that the unborn has a right to life, we can genuinely substitute "unborn" for anything which possess the same right to life.
- Unborn = human right to life
- Born = human right to life
- Unborn right to life = Born right to life
We can now return to my aforementioned "dopamine room" thought experiment and scrutinise the claims of CON - it is clear that many arguments cannot apply to born human beings ("if its not legal people will do it anyways" doesn't stick). It is clear that if it is understood that the unborn has rights, akin to it's born counterpart, then the killing of it for many of the reasons CON cited is insufficient.
Further critique
CON's analysis is deeply rooted in utilitarianism - the notion that abortion ought be legal because its negation results in X amount of decrease in suffering. A notorious difficulty of utilitarianism is that it neglects to protect individual human rights, a difficulty which CON's argument faces. Even if it were the case that banning abortion causes more harm than good (a notion which has already been disproven), it doesn't follow that we ought "abandon ship" and accept the systemic killing of human beings.
- Consider the hypothetical scenario in which 20% of the population act as slaves for any family who wishes to have their services, and that this has been a common practice for half a century. The slaves do many mundane jobs - they ensure that the streets are clean, that people get their food (some of the slaves work on farms and produce products) and that the city is liveable and safe (roads are paved etc). Now suppose that, after a while, the population begins to wonder whether the keeping of these slaves is moral. One side argues that it is wrong - the slaves are humans who ought have rights and liberties. The other side, however, argues two points - 1) the net happiness is higher than if we allow these slaves to go free and 2) as we have already had these slaves for half a century and become accustomed to their service, the removing of them will cause much harm (people will starve, driving amidst unmanaged potholes and uncleared obstructions will result in deaths and diseases will spread as no one is sanitising the streets).
Notice how both the arguments cited are, whilst technically true, morally depraved. The net utility of the hypothetical slaves is not justification for it's legality. Further, the net harms which will result from banning them isn't an argument either - the fact that the population has become reliant on an immoral practice is no justification for it's legality. Fundamentally, abortion is an act that is so morally depraved that practically no utility can justify it's legalisation.
Specific refutations
The overview sufficiently address a large number of CON's arguments, however, some of them are of an amoral nature, which I will refute in this section.
Reproductive coercion
The banning of abortion will only remove abortion clinics, and not the crucial clinics which investigate reproductive coercion.
Self-managed abortions
The continuation of a crime and subsequent harm it causes is not an argument. Making theft illegal puts many people in danger - the bank robber in a shoot out with the police harms both parties and pedestrians, yet this isn't a reason to make theft legal.
Overburdening the medical system
Argument can be made for live humans - out system is full thus we ought kill the orphans who no one really wants.
Punishing Miscarriage
CON holds that the PRO position necessitates the charging of women who undergo abortions. This is not necessarily the case. In the legal sphere, mens rea is a criterion which, in most scenarios, must be met in order for criminal charges to be made. It is unclear that this is the case regarding abortions - institutes such as PlannedParenthood often relay misinformation with euphemisms such as "it's just a cluster of cell" to downplay the severity of abortions, and thus deceive women. This is akin to if an individual invited a pedestrian to "press a button for a prize" which in actuality set off a bomb killing numerous lives. Just as how the person who pressed the button isn't in the wrong, so too, in many cases, is the mother - they are merely ignorant to all the facts.
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Conclusion
From the analysis provided, PRO has sufficiently satisfied their burden and substantiated the notion that abortion ought to be illegal. CON's case been largely exposed as incongruent, from it's ambiguous entailments and inability to render born human rights.
Con
#4
Thank you, Bones.
I. Setup
A. Definitions
Pro defines “balance,” severing it from its context. The term is “on balance,” defined as “taking everything into consideration”. This topic does not preclude debate over “statistically acute scenarios.” If anything, it demands their inclusion.
B. Burdens
“Rule 3: The Burden of Proof is Shared”
That is the sole burden analysis required. Pro chose to use his framing of personhood as the basis for his argument, but his choice doesn’t require that I present an alternate criteria for personhood. It also does not foist any additional burdens onto me, nor does the resolution state or imply this burden.
II. Case Frameworks
Con’s framework is unclear. He opposes unjustified killing, but never distinguishes unjustified from just reasons. He argues that personhood begins at conception, though that only emphasizes that reasons should be justified. The policy side of his case is inherently utilitarian. He even cites a number to award value to the unborn population, quantifying their loss for comparison while he simultaneously argues that utilitarianism is a flawed framework that yields terrible outcomes. Pro does state that the rights of others are comparatively irrelevant because they aren’t sufficiently “morally depraved” or are too “statistically acute” to warrant consideration, so at least his framework has clear exclusions.
My framework is simple: structural violence is bad. Contrary to Pro’s slavery hypothetical, my case isn’t “rooted in utilitarianism”. I’m not arguing that my numbers are bigger; the efforts to render people invisible in order to deem their suffering irrelevant, particularly when the cause is institutional, are the most insidious and therefore hold the greatest weight. Pro’s hypothetical validates this: both slavery and a ban on abortion inflict structural violence by making these people and their suffering invisible.
III. Case Overviews
My case examines the ways an abortion ban results in violence and the populations that would be affected. As my syllogism shows, an abortion ban subverts the needs of many to those of the unborn, so the aim of my case is to prevent the resulting imposition of structural violence that would marginalize and oppress those people.
Pro’s response is to claim that my P2 has “implications” that aren’t implied. I didn’t omit arguments regarding who is and isn’t inherently “deserving of human rights” because that is not relevant to my argument. Due to the “indistinct measurements used to assess personhood” (Pro’s quote) that make it difficult to objectively designate what personhood is or when it begins, other metrics should be used to determine what legal protections the unborn ought to have (e.g. whether those protections inflict structural violence). I also do not presuppose whether someone should terminate their pregnancy; my position is that the availability of abortion is necessary to prevent structural violence.
Pro’s case had neither stated nor implied exceptions in R1, but now Pro inserts vague caveats like “reasonable exceptions” and says that it is “not necessarily the case” that women will be charged for seeking/obtaining an abortion. The former are never clarified beyond alluding to “medical interventions” that could apply to any number of cases, nor is it clear who would be charged for violating the ban. Pro’s case is on shifting ground making it impossible to determine where and how it applies. We only know that some abortions will be banned and that someone may be held responsible if they violate the ban.
IV. Advantages/Disadvantages
A. Pro’s Advocacy
1. Pro’s Policy
This is built on a single impact: lost lives of the unborn. He quantitates this at “over half a million.” Any reliance on that number to outweigh my impacts encounters three problems:
- It relies on utilitarianism as a framework, which Pro has rejected
- My framework should be preferred (see: II)
- Lack of solvency means he can’t access it
On Pro’s solvency, my article cites two papers and neither rely on comparisons between developed and developing countries. The Lancet paper shows that the percentage of pregnancies that were aborted decreased between 1995 and 2008 (down from 36% to 26% in developed countries - see Table 3). The BMJ paper shows that Europe and North America have the lowest regional average rates of abortion (note: that excludes Mexico) between 1990 and 2019. Abortion was legalized in several of these countries over these periods. These are better indicators for how the US is likely to behave because they focus on trends among nations rather than asserting that two developed countries will behave similarly despite distinct legal structures, enforcement and population dynamics.
Meanwhile, Pro’s claims of solvency are both cherry-picked and poor comparisons. The Ireland case is a shift from illegality to legality, so it cannot show the dynamics of abortions after a ban is imposed. "Once a procedure becomes illegal, the need is still there… Women will look for services, safe or unsafe, to terminate their pregnancy." The numbers given are also questionable. Their source before 2019 is “the UK's Department of Health and Social Care”, so they exclude anyone who traveled to other countries and any instances of illegal abortions. The UK case only involves increased access, which means it is even less indicative of the effects of a ban. It also only begs the question on his solvency; Pro has provided no mechanism for his policy and thus no way to assess how effective it will be.
2. Pro’s Principle
The principle-focused arguments Pro gives all have the same problem: any impacts are solely symbolic, lacking any substance. Pro uses comparisons to establish their importance, but they are all flawed.
a. Theft analogy
Like the next analogy, this argument assumes that abortion is immoral. It is broadly agreed that theft (and slavery) is immoral. The same is not true for abortion, regardless of Pro’s assertions. We cannot presume the immorality of abortion, though even if we did, that does not make a policy banning it moral. If the ban bars individuals who had morally justified reasons for seeking out an abortion, then the morality of a ban is mixed. Also, whether we’re talking about theft or abortion, if a ban failed to decrease the number of thefts and increased structural violence, then the ban is clearly flawed and the response ought be changed.
b. Slavery analogy
This argument ignores the harms of a ban and focuses solely on his lack of solvency. If banning slavery accomplished nothing and resulted in dramatic increases in structural violence, then yes, the ban would be harmful no matter the principle it upholds.
c. The Dopamine Room
This is an oversimplification, reducing all considerations to consent alone (i.e. if those who enter the room accept the consequences, then the harms of those risks cease to be important). The room isn’t comparable to conception. Pro reduces every harm down to one: “exist[ence] with a [contingent] human being… for just under a year”. Pro also lumps every other harm into the category of “the unlucky ‘mother’” as though all harms stem from that choice alone. Structural violence is an external imposition to which no one consents. Pro also doesn’t explain how consent mitigates any of the harms I’ve presented.
The “thought experiment” also assumes informed consent is a given, implying that every person who enters the room does so of their own volition, is of legal age to provide consent, is fully informed of all the potential consequences of entering the room, and fully understands those consequences. Even if we assume that risks are “well documented, observed and understood by any with minimal knowledge”, it is fallacious to assume that everyone who enters the room knowingly consents. If any of these are inaccurate, then the person in question has not provided their consent and Pro’s conclusions do not follow.
3. Burdens and Inconsequential Differences
Pro’s argument violates the latter argument, as he arbitrarily selects fertilization as the beginning of a human being. Pro believes that fertilization uniquely confers personhood, but he begs the question: what criteria for personhood does it satisfy that separate gametes do not? Pro appeals to popularity among “biologists” as vague authorities but that just begs the question of what criteria they use. Pro’s three inconsequential differences - level of development, environment, and degree of dependency - apply equally well to phases pre- and post-fertilization.
By contrast, neither argument applies to my case (see: I.A. [our burdens are equal] and III [I have no criteria for personhood]). The only responsive point Pro gives here is that conceding uncertainty regarding the beginnings of personhood somehow strips all humans of their rights. Pro calls this uncertainty “morally indefensible and legally unacceptable,” but his warrant for that point focuses on the arbitrary selection of criteria for personhood. Nowhere in any of his arguments does he explain why uncertainty is, itself, harmful. And yes, that includes the next argument.
4. Principle of Uncertainty
There are two ways that this argument could work.
He could be using it to evaluate the consequences of uncertainty in isolation, yet Pro resigns those harms themselves to uncertainty; the 4 scenarios he gives have no probabilities, yielding impacts with no probabilities. Pro also drops that known impacts that will happen outweigh unknown impacts that might happen, particularly when he concedes that one of the plausible impacts is that no harm is done. Despite this, Pro asserts that killing the unborn is “a far more depraved act than any negative effect of abortion”, providing no means to weigh depravity and dismissing the depravity of imposed structural violence.
Pro could also be weighing his certainty regarding personhood against my uncertainty. Pro turned this framing against himself, since he says that it only applies to cases that apply a “subjective benchmark for prescribing personhood.” I haven’t (see: III). Pro has: fertilization (see: IV.1.c.). Pro also concedes that uncertainty is a given since it is “impossible to recreate in reality due to the indistinct measures used to assess personhood.” Unless he has suddenly come up with a criterion to assess personhood (his “Inconsequential Differences” point rejects any such criterion), his case is the only one to which this applies.
5. Unjustified Killing
The only impact I can find here that isn’t tied to solvency is that he achieves a symbolic victory, which I covered in IV.1.b. Symbolism has no impact.
Even Pro’s symbolic victory is fraught. Pro continues to assert that the two reasons he has cited are unjustified, though his only explanation for why is that they are “absurd” and that adoption is an option.
On the former, Pro never establishes where the line is between a justified reason and an unjustified reason. He just wants voters to trust him. Even if you buy that these reasons are unjustified, Pro drops that his own source shows that women often provide multiple reasons for getting an abortion (note how the numbers don’t add up to 100%). Since Pro hasn’t demonstrated that any other reasons are unjustified, voters should assume that any of them could be justified, and since Pro’s syllogism relies on absolutes, it fails. Even if you grant that his case presumes exceptions, his syllogism does not. This is a principle argument, and the principle is absolute.
Adoption is a red herring. It remains an option for those considering abortion, and structural violence is inflicted no matter who gets the child.
B. Con’s Advocacy
1. Elimination of Care
a. Miscarriage and non-viable pregnancies
Pro’s response relies on his exceptions (see: III). Also, those exceptions don’t solve. Pro drops doctor hesitation, lack of medication and training - all these harms stem from providers’ fears of criminal prosecution.
b. Reproductive coercion
Many of these reproductive health clinics provide abortions, making them abortion clinics and ensuring that will be closed by Pro’s policy. Funding for reproductive health centers will also be in jeopardy; groups like Planned Parenthood (which operates more than 600 health centers nationwide) that play key roles in both reproductive health care and abortion services will have their funding stripped and their clinics closed. This will make emergency abortions more difficult to get, rendering Pro’s exceptions useless.
Even if these clinics stay open, Pro drops that intimate partner abuse is uniquely tied to childbearing decisions, escalates during pregnancy, and that abortion is a crucial means of escape. Pro offers no alternatives to these women. He also drops that the birth control pill and IUDs will be banned, stripping essential reproductive freedoms from women and subjecting them to greater abuses by their partners. Clinics that cannot offer abortions will not solve these problems.
c. Patient-provider relationships
Pro drops this point wholesale. Women could be subject to litigation under his ban, but even if they aren’t, their doctors will be. Any case of medical emergency will be scrutinized and doctors who perform them will be investigated. They will hesitate to give pregnant patients any treatments that could harm the unborn, regardless of the patient’s status. Treatments of cancers will be delayed. Treating miscarrying women would be fraught as every case would be investigated as they may have helped end their pregnancies. End result: doctors will let patients suffer and die, and patients won’t trust their doctors.
2. Destructive Alternatives
a. Self-managed abortions
Similar to my point about assuming abortion’s immorality (see: IV.A.2.a.), voters should not assume the criminality of abortion. The comparison to theft is also generally unwarranted, as abortion involves issues like access to health care and reproductive rights. Harms of sepsis, hemorrhage, pelvic-organ injury, or toxic exposures still apply.
b. Bringing to term
Pro drops the base risk. Extend the increase in mortality rates up to 21%.
Pro tries to dodge the no exceptions point by claiming exceptions (see: III).
Pro argues that overburdening the medical system is nonunique. Two problems. One, Pro drops that the population born as a result of this ban will have an outsized number of “fetal anatomical or genetic diagnoses… disabilities or complex medical needs” and how the burdens that forcing their families to have them impose. Two, Pro is granting new legal protections to a large set of humans who currently do not have them and, in many cases, might not even be born into the world alive. This harm is unique in that those legal protections threaten access to necessary medical interventions for those who have been born into the world alive and are already protected under the law.
3. Punishing Miscarriages
Pro continues to dodge with exceptions (see: III). Pro never says that women won’t be charged, only that they won’t “necessarily”. Pro also drops that women have already been convicted of similar crimes. Pro’s case doesn’t shift away from that; he doubles down.
Pro can’t seem to decide how much solvency his case will have. He has two options.
- Abortion is banned and law enforcement investigates widely including a many miscarriages, which yields the harms I laid out in R1
- Abortion is banned and law enforcement must establish intent (mens rea) before proceeding with investigations and bringing charges
Pro suggests the latter, so he concedes that the vast majority of abortions will go undetected. Any medication-induced abortions won’t be investigated because miscarriages and medication-induced abortions are indistinguishable. Pro provides no means by which intent can be discerned for these cases. That’s 54% of all abortions, which will increase under an abortion ban since Pro is creating a loophole through which these abortions are impossible to prosecute. And Pro helpfully provides another way to avoid prosecution, since he claims that mothers “are merely ignorant to all the facts”, which makes malice aforethought impossible to establish (this also undercuts his Dopamine Room argument - you can’t both claim that they have perfect reproductive knowledge of pregnancy and every associated risk while simultaneously claiming that they’re prone to accepting reproductive misinformation). This alone destroys most of his solvency.
V. Conclusion
Pro really wants this debate to be solely about the morality of abortion divorced from policy. Yet, this debate is about policy, which deals in real world solvency and consequences. Turning a blind eye to those consequences yields structural violence, destroying lives for some purported “greater good.” In this case, Pro does not even achieve tangible benefits as he willfully dismisses the harms his ban would cause. Pro wants to stand on symbolism, but if doing so rejects the needs of women and perverts the medical system, then his stance isn't worth the cost.
Back to Pro.
Round 3
Pro
#5
Thanks Whiteflames for an intriguing debate.
CON's weighing off the harms of abortion on women can be considered strong only in our society - one in which the unborn are presupposed as being subhuman and whom's killing thus elicit a lesser outrage than the "pointless suffering" of "pregnant women". I ask voters to approach this debate from a purely logical ground - one in which the aforementioned presuppositions are dropped.
0. Preliminary
CON's misunderstanding of PRO's thought experiments
CON has disingenuously misrepresented my thought experiments and thus avoided their principled stipulations. I wish to highlight that my thought experiments were not all supposed to be analogous to abortion - they are merely supposed to falsify certain facets of PRO's principle. Consider,
- Theft analogy
- Intended only to prove that a law oughtn't be universal in order to be implemented
- Slavery analogy
- Intended only to prove that
- Utility is not synonymous with moral
- "Structural violence" as a result of banning X is not necessarily negative
- a racist aristocrat who dies because he no longer has slaves to get him food and himself has become reliant on slaves is not a deterring factor to banning slavery, though it is technically "structural/systemic violence".
- CON's critique is that if banning slavery resulted in "structural violence" then they would oppose it. Notice how they ignore my previous argument,
- Consider the hypothetical scenario in which 20% of the population act as slaves for any family who wishes to have their services, and that this has been a common practice for half a century. The slaves do many mundane jobs - they ensure that the streets are clean, that people get their food (some of the slaves work on farms and produce products) and that the city is liveable and safe (roads are paved etc). Now suppose that, after a while, the population begins to wonder whether the keeping of these slaves is moral. One side argues that it is wrong - the slaves are humans who ought have rights and liberties. The other side, however, argues two points - 1) the net happiness is higher than if we allow these slaves to go free and 2) as we have already had these slaves for half a century and become accustomed to their service, the removing of them will cause much harm (people will starve, driving amidst unmanaged potholes and uncleared obstructions will result in deaths and diseases will spread as no one is sanitising the streets).
- Though lengthy and already mentioned, this is extrodinarly crucial. Notice how this example results in structural/systemic violence, yet I would wager that CON would not allow, in the above scenario as opposed to their vague "structural violence" one, that allowing slavery is morally depraved. Much the same is for abortion, though there may be harms, the fundamental immorality of allowing abortion is simply unignorable.
On balance
It is evident that demanding no exceptions is incongruent with every other law. To prove this, PRO used the theft analogy - that though theft is illegal, there are still exceptions to the law. CON counters this by asserting that the comparison is disingenuous, on the grounds that it "assumes abortion is immoral". This is a clear misunderstanding on CON's part. The cogency of the analogy does not require abortion to be immoral - as highlighted above, the analogy deals with the very specific claim that a law can have exceptions. Take, for example, the non-criminal law that gives people the right to vote. Though this is a law, there are exceptions to the law - some people (specific criminal) do not have the right to vote. Does this mean that we ought abolish the law which permits a right to vote, on the grounds of some minute aberration? CON's critique is simply disingenuous.
Structuring of PRO's conclusion
Though CON does with to admit it, the debate hinges entirely on the philosophical determining of whether the unborn ought to have rights. If we do not establish whether the unborn have rights or not,
- There exists no criteria for instilling personhood, thus no humans have rights.
- It is impossible to weigh the alleged structural violence of banning abortion with the act of abortion.
Neglecting to determine a criterion for personhood and subsequently arguing about how we ought to treat the unborn is akin to arguing, prior 1868, that black people ought to have the right to drive. There is no point for discussion, for it has not, at this stage, even been decided whether a black person ought be considered human beings. If we do not know whether X being has rights, how can we decide whether violating ought to be illegal? It is clear that we ought to act differently if X has rights, compared to if X doesn't have rights, thus, the most fundamental question in this entire debate is whether the unborn ought to have rights. To understand this better, consider the following syllogism
p1. If the unborn are ought to have rights, the effects of killing them is more immoral than the effects of banning abortion.
p2. The unborn ought to have rights.
c1. The effects of killing the unborn is more immoral than the effects of banning abortion.
Though the formulation of this argument is new, the content is not, evidenced by the fact that all the substantiations of the premises are merely rebuttals and affirmations of previously made stipulations. Consider this a contextualisation of the debate thus far.
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Premise I. If the unborn are human beings, the effects of killing them is more immoral than the effects of banning abortion.
Here, I will tackle CON's structural violence arguments under the assumption that the unborn ought to have rights (moral status of the unborn will be examined in p2 [affirmations of PRO's contentions])
Case Frameworks
CON alleges that PRO "opposes unjustified killing, but never distinguishes unjustified from just reasons". PRO clearly highlighted in r2 that "if I were to attempt to justify the killing of my hypothetical child on the grounds that the child would drastically change my life and that I don't have the money for it, these would surely be absurd", thus clearly establishing a framework -in order for the justification for killing the unborn to be sound, it must also serve as sufficient for justifying the killing of a child.
CON alleges that PRO's critique of utilitarianism is hypocritical, as they use numbers to quantify the deaths which abortions cause. This conflating of soft and hard utilitarianism is disingenuous. There is a clear difference between arguing that the holocaust was wrong because of the number of people, and thus utility, it harmed/decreased, with arguing that the world ought to enslave all Australians because the number of people, and thus utility, in Australia does not compare the benefits their slave labour can bring to the world. There are obviously situations in which the utility of a given act does not justify the act, yet there are also cases in which the utility is simply too great to ignore.
Even we grant that both forms of utilitarianism are the same, CON frames my position dishonestly - my original mentioning of the utilitarian based argument from the number of humans abortion kills was a response to CON's utility argument. It was merely IF it is accepted, as CON has, that utility is the primary determinator of whether a bill ought to be a law, THEN abortion ought be illegal as the harms of killing 70 billion people far outweighs any possible harm which CON can provide, for the IF principle which CON advocates actually supports the PRO position. The PRO position is not contingent on this principle - they are merely using it as a reductio ad absurdum, whilst the CON case is entirely contingent upon it.
CON states that "my framework is simple: structural violence is bad", because banning abortion renders the suffering of people"invisible". However, it is immediately apparent that if we accept that the unborn have a right to life, the only beings who are being rendered quite literally invisible are the unborn. CON bears a cumbersome burden if they wish to pursue this line - they must find some act so morally depraved that the institutionalisation of the murder of almost a million unborn.
Case Overviews
CON's unproven implications see PRO's r2, Overview
CON asserts that they "didn’t omit arguments regarding who is and isn’t inherently “deserving of human rights” because that is not relevant to my argument". This is as close a deal breaker as voters will get - the literal concession that CON's proposition does not allow for the determining of who ought and oughtn't have have human rights entails that there exists no criteria for personhood thus no persons have rights
CON argues that the exceptions to abortion bans PRO highlights are unclear. To clarify, my standard is that the justification for abortion must be justification which suffices in allowing for the killing of a child. The mothers life being in danger, is an example which I am compelled to add only occurs 0.005 percent of times.
PRO's policy doesn't work?
Recall my foremost stipulation under this premise before engaging.
CON argues that abortion bans don't work. It is clear that this does not mitigate the immorality of abortion. If PRO were to argue that a ban on rape does not lower the number of rapes that occur, this clearly that this does not suffice, for it would mean that law enforcement could do nothing if confronted with such a case.
CON argues that there has been a decrease of abortions globally. Even if this were true, funnily enough, there has also been a "jaw dropping" global crash in children being born since 1950. CON also states that the US has far less abortions and implies that this is because the practice is legal. This is a clear example of the mistake whereby one mistakes correlation for causation, CON never shows, nor do the statistics strongly imply, that there is a causation link.
CON attacks PRO's sources for it only providing a single year after the ban was imposed. To expand
- 2018 - 2872
- 2019 - 6959 (abortion is legalised)
- 2020 - 6577
- 2021 - 4577 (a drop resulted by the pandemic)
CON's advocacy
Reproductive coercion
CON argues that Planned Parenthood would be in "jeopardy" if abortions are banned. Funnily enough, Planned Parenthood often assert that abortions accounted for 3 percent of the nearly 10.6 million total services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics in 2013, according to its annual report, so a ban would only effect minimally to their services. Planned Parenthood can still provide sexual education and psychological support to those who require it.
Patient-provider relationships
CON states: Pregnant mothers will have to delay treatments for illnesses like cancer. This can be refuted on the grounds of
- Being an acute minority
- An exception (mothers life's in danger)
Bringing to terms
CON states: extend the increase in mortality rates up to 21%. The source cites "49 additional deaths". This is incomparable to the millions of human lives killed in abortions.
Punishment
CON cites technical difficulties of punishment however, appeals to incredulity. The same reasoning can be used to legalise killing. "How could we ever determine if X killed Y, if no one was watching and there are no camera's". No one ever said this would be easy, CON ought to have more optimism in our criminal justice system.
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Premise II. The unborn ought to have rights.
Inconsequential differences
CON argues that the PRO position falls victim to uncertainty, because PRO has arbitrarily selected fertilisation as the beginning of human life. When confronted with the fact that 95 percent of biologists agree to the PRO position, CON states questions what criteria they use. CON is asking for an objective criteria. This is simply impossible, for no knowledge can be truly objective as postulated by the Munchhausen trilemma (all knowledge is either circular, regressive or axiomatic). The PRO position, however, is as "objective" as the mainstream would consider climate change is "objective" (PRO's logic would allow for one to prescribe to climate change skepticism, as all scientists fundamentally use reason, which they cannot epistemically justify).
Furthermore, using the inconsequential differences on conception was already refuted preemptively in the first round
- To contend PRO's criteria of biological humanity entails that no human, born or unborn, have rights. Our society is one which grants moral rights to humans, so we can grant that it is axiomatically true that humans have rights, and thus my position too, axiomatically follows.
The above quotation truly highlights the intellectual necessity for CON to propose a criteria - if there is no criteria, then it follows that no human beings have rights. As CON has not stipulated any criteria, their position entails no human rights. PRO, however, prescribes a clear line for when humans ought to gain rights, a line which is immutable and ultimately the only sound criteria.
Principle of Uncertainty
CON again misunderstands the uncertainty principle. The subjective metaphysical benchmark only exists if we deny the scientifically established criteria for the beginning of life. In the PRO worldview, there exists clear and absolute harms from abortion. The confusion and ambiguity only exists in CON's postulation.
PRO asserts that CON "concedes that uncertainty is a given since it is “impossible to recreate in reality due to the indistinct measures used to assess personhood.”. This again misrepresents PRO's argument - PRO was referring to the impossibility of CON to propose a criteria because their criteria is inevitably indistinct. It is clear that PRO's methods for measuring personhood are absolute and unwavering - for all beings that have been through conception, they are prescribed human rights.
Thus, we can observe that, as CON concedes that his understanding of personhood "is that of uncertainty - we don’t and can’t know", there institutionalising of abortion is essentially the legalising of a roulette, in which thousands of human beings (CON concedes that at least some of these will be human beings worthy of human rights) are institutionally murdered. Such a position is wholly untenable, from both a legal and moral perspective.
Unjustified Killing
CON argues that there is no line between justified and unjustified. See CON's unproven implications. CON does not accept that the reasons (huge impact on life and I can't afford it) and argues that labelling them as "absurd" is unacceptable. I hand this to voters, for I maintain that it is an axiomatic bedrock to hold that killing a child for those two reasons ought not be legal.
CON again brings up the 1 percent (literally 1 percent) scenario regarding why people have abortions. This is wholly impudent and would be akin to me crafting my entire case around third trimester, 8 month and 30 day abortions. I have not done so, despite such an argument being essentially unfalsifiable, because such would render PRO unsportsmanlike and be an argument from an extrodinarly minute aberration. CON states that PRO never mentions these exceptions in their opening statement. PRO can similarly say that they have not defended third trimester abortions anywhere in their case. Just as how literally every other law that exists has exceptions, we ought to allow for minute exceptions to a ban on abortion.
Fundamentally, CON has complicated this argument. It was initially very simple - the reasons (having a child is too big of a commitment and I don't have the money) for killing what is scientifically understood as a human being are unsatisfactory and thus abortion is unjustified. CON never engages with the reasons and instead opts to focus on the literal 1 percent.
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Conclusion I. The effects of killing the unborn is more immoral than the effects of banning abortion.
The conclusion clearly follows. The CON position fails on the grounds that it does not prescribe human rights to anyone and essentially institutionalises the killing of what has been scientifically and philosophically determined as being human. The so called harms of banning abortion pales in comparison to the genocide which it allows. CON wishes that the debate regards only the legal aspect, however, overlooks the impossibility of such without first understanding whether the unborn ought to have rights.
Con
#6
Thank you, Bones.
A couple of overviews to start.
OV1: New Arguments
“Rule 2. No new arguments are to be made in the final round.”
Pro has clearly violated this rule. Every response to my structural violence framework is new. Pro quotes those words once in R2 in the context of my syllogism, but never addresses them. He also presented a new syllogism that relies on those responses. Voters, this warrants a conduct violation, and these points should not factor into your decision.
OV2: Pro’s Shifting Case and Framework
Pro’s Case
In R1, Pro’s argued for banning abortion, providing no exceptions. In R2, he provided vague exceptions for “medical interventions”, arguing that “there exists reasonable exceptions in every law”. In R3, he clarified what some of those medical interventions could be.
I don’t have a problem with Pro’s case having exceptions; he could have presented every plank of his plan up front, exceptions included, and I would have accepted them. Instead, Pro presented those exceptions after the first round to evade harms that applied to the ban he argued for in R1, and then repeated that trick in R3. These tactics are clearly abusive, and voters should reject them. Do not reward him for recognizing his omissions too late.
Pro’s Framework
Pro added utility to his impact calculus, arguing that the number of unborn deaths outweighs my case. Regardless of whether said utility is soft or hard, regardless of the size of the impact, it violates his critique: “neglect[ing] to protect individual human rights” in favor of a net positive. Pro’s whole argument may not be contingent on utility, but this impact absolutely is, and it is the only impact Pro has with any substance. Voters, you should buy Pro’s critique, which aligns well with my framework as neglect is a tool for inflicting structural violence and dismiss Pro’s own utility-based impacts as “morally depraved” (his words) for rejecting consideration of individual human rights.
This debate breaks down to three questions.
1) What is structural violence and why is it important?
Yes, this is my P1 from R1. It's still crucial to this debate, and Pro decided it was worth addressing here in R3.
A) What is structural violence?
“Structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic or cultural traditions,” resulting in those people being “morally excluded… so that we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer... produc[ing] suffering and death as often as direct violence does.” This shows that there are three factors required to qualify as structural violence:
1. Someone(s) be morally excluded from consideration
2. Some external imposition, e.g. a new law
3. Said external imposition inflicts lasting trauma/death upon those affected
Taking all three factors into consideration, structural violence is always harmful. Pro claims that positive structural violence exists, but his examples don’t qualify.
The racist aristocrat fails to satisfy #1 and #3. They are an aristocrat so, by definition, they are part of a ruling class that is not morally excluded. They are also included by virtue of their wealth, which also grants them influence. That purchasing power also means that the loss of slaves does not inflict lasting trauma. If he dies because he doesn’t have slaves anymore, then the aristocrat has made the choice not to pay for the help he needs despite having the resources. They inflict that trauma on themselves.
The slavery hypothetical has the same problems. Slaveholders are not rendered invisible (they are active participants in determining whether slavery should remain in place, often by virtue of their wealth and social placement) and reduced “net happiness” does not qualify as lasting trauma.
The unborn are not rendered invisible just because abortions happen, as they are central to any discussion of reproduction and abortion policy. They also fail to satisfy #2. Structural violence requires that the system impose these harms. Refusing to implement a ban cannot cause structural violence because it does not impose anything. Any infliction of harm is done by individuals, not an institution.
Pro also places these cases in a vacuum, excluding their context and, thus, ignoring the net effects of structural violence. Slavery yields substantial, pernicious and long-lasting marginalization that persists well after slavery ends. We must address those instances of imposed structural violence that mete out the worst harms. Even if we accept that some structural violence is inevitable, preventing the most egregious forms of it should still be preferred.
B) Why is structural violence important?
This framework precludes all other moral considerations because it necessarily includes all affected parties in any moral calculus, drawing attention to those who would otherwise be excluded as subjectively unimportant. “To reduce [the] nefarious effects [of moral exclusion], we must be vigilant in noticing and listening to oppressed, invisible, outsiders.”
Unlike utilitarianism, my argument doesn’t blindly favor majorities: it draws attention to those who are marginalized regardless of their numbers. Governments have a greater capacity for inflicting structural violence, and when those resulting harms are unavoidable and cause severe physical and psychological harms, a government ought not inflict structural violence. The harms a government can cause via structural violence are massive, regardless of who they directly impact. These function as independent reasons to prefer my framework to Pro’s, as his argument explicitly furthers the very mentality that expands and entrenches structural violence.
II. Can we determine the beginning of personhood and is it necessary to do so?
Pro argues that personhood begins at fertilization under the assumption that all stages of human development are human. This view stemmed from his position that there are no consequential differences between any stages of human development after fertilization. That only begs the question: what distinguishes the steps that come before the zygote from the zygote itself and those that come after? Pro relies on fallacies, appealing to a “scientifically established criteria for the beginning of life” that he never provides and appealing to popularity among an assumed authority of vague “biologists.” Pro even concedes that there can be no objective criteria for personhood, which also precludes any scientific validation. The Munchhausen trilemma doesn’t help him, either; we can accept that certainty is impossible but still seek the truth objectively by considering the available evidence as we do with climate change, but Pro refuses to do so. Pro’s decision to eschew objectivity when establishing his criteria for personhood is an abdication of this self-assigned burden.
Failing to meet this burden is a big problem for Pro. In R1, Pro argued that a lack of certainty borne of subjective criteria for personhood “entails that no human, born or unborn, have rights.” Pro made clear that any degree of uncertainty at any point along human development yields this result, yet he has conceded that his own position lacks objectivity and therefore certainty, and thus concedes that his view of personhood would also entail the revocation of human rights from all humans.
Pro’s personal certainty does not render his argument immune to his own critiques. Pro’s position on the beginning of personhood is subjective, making his position subject to his principle of uncertainty argument. This means that every single one of Pro’s impacts on the lives of the unborn are relegated to uncertainty, as the degree of harm caused by their loss is entirely unclear. Pro even dropped the sole weighing mechanism he put on this point – based on the Dopamine Room thought experiment – because he knows that issues like the consent of the mother have no bearing on this debate.
Pro’s impacts are the only ones that require certainty with regards to the beginnings of personhood. Mine simply apply the existing legal standard for granting rights to persons and examine the consequences of extending it to all the unborn. That still applies in the face of philosophical uncertainty, and it is the only non-contradictory means of assessing arguments that either of us has presented.
III. What would an abortion ban achieve/cause?
A. Pro’s solvency
Pro keeps claiming increasingly large numbers of the unborn killed by abortion, and though none of them are cited, the biggest question hanging over his case is whether or not a ban reduce them. To that end, Pro presented two sources. Their relevance rests on a correlation between Ireland, the UK, and the US that Pro has not established in the face of distinct legal structures, enforcement, and population dynamics. Pro also claims that the imposition of a ban (his case), Ireland’s removal of a ban, and the UK’s expanded access to abortion produce correlatable results, though he never supports this and he ignores my source that cites demand as the key factor that does not change if abortion becomes illegal. Both sources also exclude pertinent data, including abortions that took place in other countries and instances of illegal abortion.
My data shows that, as a percentage of all pregnancies in developed countries, abortions have declined. As percentages, they aren’t affected by the raw number of children being born, which is a non-sequitur. Remember: this is about Pro’s solvency. He needs to show a causative link between a ban and a reduction in abortions. This data demonstrates that the number of abortions decline even as the number of countries that legalize abortions increase, which suggests that Pro’s link is unclear at best, reversed at worst. Pro also drops that data trends are more applicable to the US.
Pro has also undercut his own solvency. By invoking mens rea, Pro has effectively hamstrung his case, reducing its effectiveness to 7% of all abortions at best, since 93% of abortions occur during the first 13 weeks. Abortions that occur during these 13 weeks will become more common due to this loophole, so his solvency will be far less than 7%. The lack of distinction between a miscarriage and an early-stage abortion is an unsolvable impediment to enforcing Pro’s ban. By contrast, forensic investigators are trained to determine causes of death in developed human beings, whether it happens on camera or not. Pro is neither adding new expertise nor affording them magical tools to solve this problem, so incredulity necessarily follows when Pro claims it can somehow be done regardless. His optimism is severely misplaced.
B. Unjust killings
Pro’s syllogism is absolute: “The reasons for aborting are unjustified”, “Abortion is unjustified killing”. These statements don’t leave room for exceptions, even if you grant that his case does. Pro’s choice to add those planks functions as a concession that some reasons are justified and, therefore, that not all abortions are unjustified killings.
Pro also undercuts his syllogism by reducing all reasons to the two he asserts are “absurd”. If you buy that assertion, it only tells us that these two reasons are unjustified. That’s a problem, as Pro’s own source shows that women often give multiple reasons for getting abortions. Voters should assume that all these reasons are justified, including: relationship problems (48%), completed childbearing (38%), physical harms to the mother (12%), health of the fetus (13%). These numbers reveal that Pro’s analysis excludes most abortions since his argument applies solely to people who give these two and only these two reasons; each of these could be second, third or fourth reasons for getting an abortion, and each independently justifies that abortion.
Finally, the only impact here is symbolic. If the ban does nothing to reduce the numbers of abortions, then its impact is similarly negligible. If the ban inflicts structural violence to achieve a symbolic victory, then it is a pyrrhic victory that only causes harm.
C. Consequences
Given the predictable harms of his plan, Pro can only try to mitigate their impacts. Pro keeps referring to a phantom "1 percent", reducing the harms his ban would cause to a minute number to then dismiss them as “aberrations”. This is the definition of marginalization, and an effort to subvert the needs of these groups that Pro relegates to a small minority to his unborn majority. Setting aside the obvious contradiction (Pro’s own slavery hypothetical critiques this calculus), these groups are worthy of consideration, and Pro’s efforts to lump them into this “1 percent” undervalue and even demonize their suffering.
1. Effect on patients
Mothers would be subjected to investigations, trials and jail time. To avoid those harms, they will hide their pregnancies, resulting in illnesses and injuries to the mother and fetus. But even setting that aside, all pregnant women will suffer from this ban; a miscarriage is already a would-be mother’s worst nightmare, but this would result in the legal system castigating her for its loss. Anyone considering pregnancy will live in fear of what the system will inflict on them if they miscarry.
2. Effect on providers
Providers would also fear prosecution. Any case of claimed medical emergency will be scrutinized and the doctors who perform them will be investigated. They will hesitate to give pregnant patients any treatments that could harm the unborn, regardless of the patient’s status. Treatments of cancers, even if they eventually receive them during pregnancy, will be delayed, facilitating metastasis and other harms. Treating miscarrying women would be fraught as every case would be investigated as they may have helped end their pregnancies. Anyone going through or considering pregnancy will have to face a new reality: they could suffer and die while their providers are legally barred from helping them. Those providers would also lack the tools, treatments, and capability to help them, as they will not receive training for abortions or have access to abortion medications for treating miscarriages, so even if they don’t hesitate, doctors will still be unable to help their patients.
3. Diminished resources
No matter how many clinics remain standing after the ban, reproductive coercion will continue in the absence of abortion. Abortion serves as a crucial means of escape that can never be replaced. 34% of domestic abuse victims have their suffering tied to childbearing decisions; that suffering will only increase due to the concomitant ban on birth control pills and IUDs, which will place more power over their reproductive choices in their abusers’ hands. Pro’s ban also uniquely overburdens their families (particularly the poor) and the healthcare system as a whole with medically fragile patients and perinatal mental health crises. This could result in countless lost lives under the stresses of rationed care as the system struggles to address this influx, harming many who depend on the medical system.
4. Actual violence
Pro cherry-picks the wrong number when assessing loss of life from these additional pregnancies: a 21% increase is 140 new deaths per year, not 49. That only represents those who die during pregnancy; many more will suffer medical complications. Add the harms of sepsis, hemorrhage, pelvic-organ injury and toxic exposures still result from a lack of legal access to safe abortions, since this paper doesn’t include these deaths. Add the threat of violence that these cases pose, since every pregnant woman is now subjected these risks without recourse.
Conclusion
This is the group over which Pro plasters his "1 percent" statistic, a group he renders faceless and nameless to obscure their suffering, considering it "wholly impudent" to focus on their concerns. These are each deeply and broadly affecting instances of structural violence. Pro’s ban would pervert the medical system and subject pregnant mothers to extensive physical and mental trauma. These harms cannot be ignored or marginalized by society without abdicating moral responsibility entirely. We cannot claim to be acting morally in a world where we inflict these harms without due consideration of the many people who will suffer from it. We cannot claim any moral high ground these consequences take a backseat to a philosophical question that we may never be able to answer objectively, or to a ban that is ill-conceived, vague, and achieves nothing more than a symbolic, pyrrhic victory over a practice that will remain common.
Voters, the harms that this ban will inflict are clear. Pro is willing to accept or ignore these losses in a vain attempt to seek a greater good but has never acknowledged their scope and depth, and instead doubled down on the very mentalities that make structural violence so insidious and damaging.
Vote Con.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Yes, I changed my mind upon review. I apologize for taking so long to vote.
Full decision and analysis (over 3.5 Thousand words):
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/97ia4f02gbaydahjfltdl/Untitled.paper?dl=0&rlkey=r2ezb6gm3zms7h87q3ptofleq
Excerpt documenting final section:
I judge debates on the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. Pro’s moral equalization established that the unborn ought to have human rights and protections carrying the same rights as a born individual. Con does not propose any criteria, he calls it irrelevant to his case, however, if this is true, as the instigator shows, how does con establish that anyone has rights at all? He says his argument applies “the existing legal standard for granting rights to persons and examine the consequences of extending it to all the unborn,” however he does not attempt to justify the current legal standards in respect to pro’s argument, and this harms his position. It also clashes with his previous assertion: “I have no criteria for personhood.” Both propositions come in conjunction, and I am left as a voter to defer to the grounded and consistent argument, not the ontologically vacuous one.
Con has the less philosophically consistent framework, his position does not attend for this counter. Con also states that I ought to assume that all reasons for abortion are justified, ignoring pro’s moral equalization arguments. This entails that I ought to also assume that they are justified for killing born children, and the implications for this are drastic and unaccounted for. Con does not engage with this point when countered, thus I grant it to the instigator.
Next, con falls to the slavery analogy as his position entails that we ought not to ban slavery if such a ban causes any form of structural violence at all. While focusing on the absolutes of pro’s case, he forgets about the absolutes of his own syllogism, and pro exploits this mistake quite well. This is proponent from flaw (II. a), and con does not deal with this in his argumentation while pro deals with the majority of his own flaws. Con’s conception of structural violence was vague from round one, and while seemingly clarified in round three, the criterion does not do due diligence, it can seemingly be applied to any policy. It also isn’t clear is to why con’s justification for 15 weeks is sufficient because if such a policy created structural violence (Flaws II. e), even if just to a single person, con also tells me it should not be implemented, This is self defeating. I can only conclude that the syllogism that con defends is poorly constructed so long as he does not falsify his own policy as in-congruent with premises one and two.
As for pro’s syllogism(s), he is able to defend that the notion of “illegal,” always entails exceptions, and consequently, his position does not commit him to arguing that every single abortion that exists will be prohibited.
Addressing impacts, I give con the upper hand in establishing harms stemming from this policy, at least potential harm given that his data does not seem to give me a more strictly empirical analysis of the majority of them. However from pro’s sources, it is clear that the legality of abortion in part creates such a large demand and expansion of it, and I get the impression that the removal of abortion services in the public domain has a deterrent effect. There is a slight epistemic gap here as con does not prove that abortion bans do not decrease abortions (comparing undeveloped and developed countries without controlling for pregnancy rate does not demonstrate this). Thus, con convinces me that there will be both harm and structural violence that exists as a result of this policy, just not to a sufficient degree that offsets the killing of people proven to have a morally equivalent right to life to born children especially as pro counters many of the proposed impacts from the contender.
My verdict: con’s argument suffers from reductions, and is logically unstable. This is enough to shift me from voting a tie to voting for the instigator narrowly. Pro could have argued much better, saying such may even be an understatement, but his case is on balance the stronger of the two. Deductive arguments go to pro for the aforementioned reasons.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
In R1, Bones states the burden of proof within this debate is shared. Bones refers to a study saying 96% of biologists believe that life begins at fertilization. It has been shown that this is not true (see in my comments). Con states that policies that inflict structural violence ought not be implemented and making abortion illegal would inflict structural violence. In R2, Pro argues that abortion bans do work. Con gives some more sources arguing that bans don't work. Pro's main issue here is that they haven't argued that the number of abortions prevented outweighs the structural harm mentioned by Con. In R3, Pro moves this debate into, if the unborn should have rights at all, without adequately defending against the harms and lack of shown benefits to his proposal.
Con closes with Pro having violated Rule 2 which is "No new arguments are to be made in the final round.” My opinion of the debate is that Con has more convincing arguments and better conduct.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cygx85Yt7pDjS65jVxrgyjq_ftp6k_3HzK3X2nSzOwk/edit#
What a debate. I missed out on many small points and clashes, but I hope I made enough sense. Feel free to contest me on any points I've made.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tCv13jOLlGAQZMd-wrOh9sx1TH6R7DWdswtbTTEtccw/edit?usp=sharing
This was a good debate, although long and convoluted. I hope this RFD made sense. If not, I can clarify.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Overall, I think Pro wins on personhood. Obviously, Con's case did not rely on this, and Con took the path of arguing that abortion bans fail from a policy perspective. It's a risky strategy, but let's see if it pays off.
R1:
Con argues a number of harms from abortion bans. These arguably don't outweigh the harm caused by abortion, but he also argues that abortion bans don't work anyway. I suspect "whether abortion bans work" will decide the debate. He also argues about several rare scenarios (and as I'll address later, I think Pro wins this point in the end by arguing for exceptions.)
R2:
Pro points out some flaws with Con's source and argues that abortion bans do work. Pro argues from principle as well. Con gives some more sources arguing that bans don't work. Pro's main issue here is that they haven't argued that the number of abortions prevented outweighs the structural harm mentioned by Con. It will depend on the strictness of "new arguments" and what counts as expanding on an earlier argument in R3 if Pro has a shot here.
R3:
Pro argues exceptions well here, but that doesn't get them out of the woods yet. Pro argues here that abortions have decreased by a lot (as they mentioned earlier) which does seem like it would outweigh the structural harms given and I don't think Con specifically rebuts this all that effectively. I won't criticize Pro as contradicting themselves on utilitarianism; I think their argument is that abortions should be banned no matter what because they are immoral and they don't contradict themselves. They do argue effectively, however, that banning abortions would also succeed in the benefits outweighing the costs (a framework that Con establishes rather well), so as a result Pro's argument still works.
Now it's Con's turn. There's an appeal to emotion at the end that comes across to me as annoying, but that's probably due to my bias and I won't hold that against them. Con reiterates several of the harms from earlier and argues that we should assume all abortions are justified (Pro did better arguing morality, so I don't think Con wins on that point.) But Pro's numbers (as Con points out) don't address abortions that people could obtain in other countries. If the burden of proof is equal, Con hasn't established that abortion bans will fail (their sources aren't perfect either and plenty of bans for other things work) but there's one point that settles things (at least imo):
Con stated in R2 that "And Pro helpfully provides another way to avoid prosecution, since he claims that mothers “are merely ignorant to all the facts”, which makes malice aforethought impossible to establish (this also undercuts his Dopamine Room argument - you can’t both claim that they have perfect reproductive knowledge of pregnancy and every associated risk while simultaneously claiming that they’re prone to accepting reproductive misinformation). This alone destroys most of his solvency." Pro didn't respond to this directly, and it does seem to provide a loophole that destroys their argument. The examples of solvency they gave didn't allow such loopholes. Arguably, if anyone can get away with an abortion easily, the only harms to women are time wasted on investigations and patient-provider trust. But still, this helps Con.
Con wins on a few small details, which isn't great, but they do poke holes in Pro's argument. In the end, I can't give the win to Pro if there are several points they don't address that would destroy their solvency entirely. I'd have liked if Con restated the last point in R3, but a win is a win.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Reasons fully explained in comments.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Pretty much, this debate comes down to a single question which Bones poses and reiterates throughout his rounds. The question is, is the unborn alive? If yes, then the damages of legalising and structualising abortion results in the deaths of the unborn which far outway the harms which whiteflames cite. If not, well, that would nullify Bones’ entire argument - however, Bones knows this, so he dedicated his entire 1st round to proving that the unborn ought to have rights. If whiteflames wanted to go down the route of asserting that the fetus doesn’t have rights, they would have to address the philosophy, which they pretty much didn’t. Whiteflames’ entire case was “making abortion illegal would result in bad things for the women such as XYZ” but as bones said, this is only the case if we assume that the unborn doesn’t have rights, which whiteflames essentially assumes (I will cover their rebuttal of bones’ case later, but they are evidently secondary in his argument and very short).
Bones also brings up the slavery example which is quite extrodinary - it is that EVEN IF we give whiteflames the benefit of the doubt and say that even if having no abortion causes structural violence to a greater extent than rights of the fetus, this STILL is not a reason to kill it the fetus because they have rights even if their utility is lower.
Whiteflame’s only attempt at disapproving the philosophical grounds of bones’ argument is his refutation of the inconsequential difference (he only refutes the others through showing that they do not have “solvency”, which, essentially, concedes the philosophical aspect and argues instead on the pragmatic front. However, as bones says, the pragmatic falues for whiteflames, because the killing of the fetus is worse than that of banning abortion)
Whiteflames’ attempt to use the argument onto the fertilisation stage is disingenuous. As bones said, IN THE FIRST ROUND (preemptively) “ To contend PRO's criteria of biological humanity entails that no human, born or unborn, have rights. Our society is one which grants moral rights to humans, so we can grant that it is axiomatically true that humans have rights, and thus my position too, axiomatically follows”. Whiteflames never engages with this and merely repeats themselves.
The only way he could have won was to say that the unborn ought not have rights, but as bones had already preemptively destroyed this position and exposed the inherent flaws (first argument from him), they probably knew to stray away from there. To end with some opposites, I'll cite some issues with bones and positives of whiteflames. The issue with bones is that 1. He speaks too complicatingly and 2. He dropped his dopamine experiment which is unstoppable. Also, he should have mentioned the words “structual violence” when refuting, and made explicit the fact that whiteflames is contributing to structural violence, something which bones should have clearly mentioned. The good thing with whiteflames is that his case appeals greatly to emotion - it is difficult not to think about the pains of the mothers who are denied abortions. However, bones does come back and make this philosophical and puts a rational objective lens, which is where he wins.
I’ll leave with this, which pretty much recaps the entire debate - Whiteflames entire case is the “structural violence” of banning abortion, however, as bones says, If the unborn are human beings, the effects of killing them is more immoral than the effects of banning abortion”, essentially underminding CON’s entire case.
Good jobs to both contestants!
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
With pro's proposal seeming to wish abortion to equal first degree murder, and no problem with miscarriages equaling manslaughter, and no benefit listed for anyone from this, it's a wide margin win for con.
...
R1
Pro lengthily attempted to frame con's stance in his opening, which as I can't see whatever discussion they had outside this debate, became highly awkward to read.
This became worse under the rule of shared BoP, and pro opening with trying to move the goalposts onto con based on declarations con presumably made in a PM? I can only grade based on the debate that's been presented, to include con's lack of having made various statements about if fetuses are or are not people.
Pro moves on to declaring that abortion is in fact already illegal via being first degree murder... I've never understood why anyone thinks such an impassioned declaration is effective at changing peoples minds. Worse, it's a piece of hyperbole which is notoriously easy to flip.
Con opens with a completely different stance than the one pro promised he would have.
I dislike the term "structural violence" but with it supported by an EDU site, I'll not dismiss it out of hand as hyperbole...
Ok, con brings up harms from forced non-viable pregnancies being carried to term. Con follows up with abortion bans likewise banning birth control in general; which seems to fit well with pro's definitions of personhood.
Con uses a source from Duke University for likely increased mortality rates which might be caused by such a ban.
Con brings up suffering of babies (I dislike pathos appeals, but it was supported with evidence). And follows up with how the legal system would punish woman for miscarriages (apparently 26% of pregnancies end in miscarriage anyways).
Con gets into statistics of abortions not being prevented by bans, further questioning the benefit of the proposed policy.
R2:
Pro argues that extenuating circumstances could be argued as a defense during the criminal trails, which therefore makes it best to still make it illegal.
Pro moves back to his attempt to pre-define cons burdens, seeming to wish to talk about when personhood should begin rather than the policy benefits of his proposal...
Pro dismisses the effectiveness of abortion bans with "were the case that abortion bans did not work, the fundamental immorality of unjustifiably killing a human being still remains." This doesn't actually challenge what was presented, merely says he wishes to go ahead with the law regardless of the cost/benefits analysis. Using obvious propaganda sites to challenge edu sites only makes this worse.
Pro ends this round with a defense that women who suffer miscarriages wouldn't necessarily be investigated for murder under his proposal, instead planned parenthood would be... This is a critical fault found in the proposal, and I can't make sense the defensive logic here. It's a weak round from him, exemplified by seeming to complain that the opposing case was "complex" and "utilitarian" as if either thing is inherently bad.
Con leverages pro's slavery argument back around, as another form of structural violence, which ought to be prevented.
He moves on to mostly repeat himself; a highlight of this is women already being sent to prison for manslaughter if they have miscarriages in the USA.
R3
Pro ties to move this debate into if the unborn should have rights at all, without adequately defending against the harms and lack of shown benefits to his proposal.
Con closes with mostly more repeats (what looks like some copy/pasting of his previous rounds).
Thank you for voting!
“You say it was impossible for you to explain the relevance. However, you had 3 rounds. All you had to do was post a source that doesnt obviously contradict to your claim. Pro was able to do that, when he posted source about Mens rea.”
That’s actually not the point I was making. I did argue why it was relevant to my point. I’m saying that you then took your own independent look at the evidence, came to a different conclusion, and dismissed it. If you were in the debate and had argued that something was wrong with one or more of my sources, I would have had the opportunity to further demonstrate their relevance or address supposed contradictions. You weren’t, so addressing them would have been needlessly defensive and covered points that weren’t made in the debate. I’m sure why you wanted me to preemptively cover every potential contradiction in my sources, but that’s what you’re demanding of me.
FYI, I’ve voted on debates where I’ve felt similarly about certain sources. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t point out the problem or even weigh the source differently, but there’s a big difference between saying that a source isn’t consistent and therefore doesn’t support the argument as well as the debater wants vs. saying that the source nullifies itself and should be dismissed entirely.
The newest vote here takes the initiative to argue against the instigator for some reason.
So for that debate, my vote would be like: "Since Con supported his claim with 10000 cat pictures in the last round, and since Pro couldnt respond to that as it was the last round, Con wins the sources and the debate."?
"Imagine a situation where as a voter you are forced to take cat pictures as valid evidence, and weight that against the actual evidence as if they both supported the claim."
I have considered that scenario, and yes unless their opponent points out why you shouldn't accept it as evidence than you should weigh it equally.
The debate is an arena. This isn't academia where sources or who is right and wrong matter. It's an arena where two sides fight, not for truth, not for persuasion, but to win.
I would say outside of this arena, you would do well to analyze sources. In this arena you shouldn't even click on them or look at where they came from.
Post 95 response.
I know I disagree usually with votes against and for me and sometimes report ones for me. I won't publicly say anything about one for me though because I don't want to alienate that voter.
Generally most votes on this site are terrible because they voters are stupid and biased.
I am not joking
It was easier to get a large number of quality votes on DDO.
Imagine a situation where as a voter you are forced to take cat pictures as valid evidence, and weight that against the actual evidence as if they both supported the claim.
While this scenario is unlikely to happen, one must make sure that all similar scenarios give voters the ability to question the relevance of evidence.
Of course, a voter must present a good reason to question the evidence using only what was presented in evidence itself or debate.
Another thing you aren't consider when arguing against a debater in your vote is that sometimes debaters, at least I do. Is I take and try to bait somebody with a weak looking source or argument, so they can spend too much time tearing that apart. Either I have a good response or I drop the point and they fucked themselves up with all the space usage.
If an opponent doesn't take the debate and allow me to defend myself, it's none of the judges business
Yes, in theory, you could generalize the evidence. Unless the opposing party calls out on your generalization, and demands specific explanation for each of the 10000 photos. Some of those could even be cat photos. Some could be random buildings. Some could be citations in Chinese.
I mean I would think he could just be like "dick photos just prove your inability to satisfy a woman and have no use in proving the point you made", and that statement would in fact be enough without mentioning each one individually.
Gish gallops are tough to deal with, whether they come in the form of arguments or number of citations, but generally you can dismiss all with a short statement sense the person doing it has traded depth of an argument for width of argument
You could post 10000 such photos and unless Con calls out on each one specifically, they are to be accepted as valid evidence for the claim.
You shouldn't be challenging sources as a voter. That is the job of the opposing debater. I should be able to use a picture of my balls as a citation and unless my opponent calls me on it, the judges should accept it.
You may find that to be unfair. However, my ability to question the relevance of evidence is limited. I can only question it in cases such as these, where source obviously contradicts the claim. As a debater, you have a task of making your case evidently supported. If I cannot find the evidence about the argument you are trying to make, I cannot treat that case same as the case of your opponent that has evidence. With all else being equal in this argument, it would be unfair to treat Pros evidence the same as Cons lack of evidence.
Every voter takes the task of weighting arguments.
However, a voter cannot just say "this evidence is irrelevant". He must provide a reason. If the evidence contradicts the claim right at the start, that is sufficient reason to mark it as irrelevant.
You say it was impossible for you to explain the relevance. However, you had 3 rounds. All you had to do was post a source that doesnt obviously contradict to your claim. Pro was able to do that, when he posted source about Mens rea.
Would you be interested in having a debate with me on if the idea of reincarnation has any logic too it? I will obviously take the pro side.
lmfao, michael_K does that on all my debates too.
"But PRO himself advanced that the question in uncertain and the rights with which the USFG must concern itself with are not the human rights of zygotes but the Constitutional rights of people of people born or naturalized on US soil. The founding fathers gave the Federal govt no powers to preserve zygotes, though abortion was common enough in their era. The states may assume some new powers that the Federal govt may not, but the power of states to ban abortion is not our topic here."
The first 1v2 in Dart history.
CON with the late comeback, possibly reverse sweeping the scorecards.
THBT: On balance, the US OUGHT to make ABORTION ILLEGAL
Overall, one gets the impression that PRO had a prepared argument for ABORTION is IMMORAL and decided to shoehorn that argument into a public policy debate. PRO never really talks about impacts, costs benefits, the rights of citizens and particularly the rights of women or even whether his plan for outlawing might be an efficient means of producing the desired result (i.e. fewer abortions).
PRO failed to define his terms and wastes 80% of his opening argument on irrelevant assumptions trying to box CON in.
PRO builds a an elaborate series of interdependent arguments depending on the presumption that CON must argue that personhood begins at birth. The entire thing is one gigantic straw man built expressly for PRO to knock down before CON even has his say.
CON must argue that personhood requires more than just humanity but also some other not yet defined but already necessarily inconsequential and inconsistent quality.
PRO argues CON has the higher burden of proof because CON will make a personhood case that relies on more than mere humanity.
CON wisely destroys PRO's whole house of cards by denying that the question of beginnings of personhood have any influence on his case. PRO will continue insist but he can't force CON to play PRO's game. The whole gambit corrupts PRO's argument because PRO seems to just presume that all he has to do is prove that a fetus has human rights and all US Public Policy will follow. But US Public Policy must prioritize the rights of US citizens before the human rights of others and the obligations of US citizens towards non-citizens is never established by PRO or even discussed.
PRO's long prefutation also makes a lot of strange declarations without a lot of evidence
" logical impossibility of proposing a sound criteria for instilling personhood between conception and birth"
what about brain activity? heartbeat? response to external stimuli? PRO says any criteria must be subject and ambiguous but heartbeats and kicks are pretty objective.
"I assert that these differences are insignificant in determining the moral agency of an individual. "
PRO is arguing human rights from conception but this argument only compares fetus to newborn, ignoring the first 10 weeks( and so, the majority of all abortions.) Even this argument is manifestly false but would anybody really say that the difference between a 4 celled zygote and a newbord baby? Also, MORAL AGENCY is an individual's capacity to know right from wrong. I'd agree that you can't tell any difference between the moral agency of a fetus and a newborn but I'd never use a baby's moral agency as a criteria for moral worth. I assume PRO is simply misspeaking here.
PRO's argument that the "moral worth" of any fetus is subjective relative to the mother is self-defeating: if the Mother is the best source for assessing moral worth, doesn't that argue that the USFG is better off staying out of the moral question and leaving that expert to weigh values vs harms?
PRO's argument for legal consistency will prove self-defeating in ROUND 2, when PRO tries to shift his framework to allow "reasonable exceptions."
PRO is still assuming that personhood is the whole of his argument when he argues that uncertainty of personhood demands that conception be the starting point of personhood to avoid any harm.
CON is correct when he argues 1) This is the only of PRO's arguments that connects his principles to his plan. 2) That PRO never considers the harms to the born, to society, to the rights of citizens, and most particularly the rights of women condemned to unwanted or unsupportable motherhoods. If all the harms of legalized abortion fall upon non-citizens (whether proved persons or not, whether imbued with human rights or not) and all the harms of criminalizing abortion fall on US citizens, isn't the US obligated to prioritize the citizen? 3) Certain harms must outweigh uncertain harms. Only CON is arguing against certain harms.
Furthermore, PRO tries to shift the greater burden of proof on CON because PRO prefutation is so undeniable. CON easily dodges PRO's elaborate, unsupportable construction and wisely reminds PRO that BoP was set before the debate. In fact, as the instigator PRO necessarily the higher BoP here to show how making abortion illegal will improve US but PRO demonstrates little interest in welfare of the state.
80% of PRO's R1 is wasted negating an argument CON never employs. PRO's only real affirmative comes in a convoluted, circular syllogism.
P1. If abortion is killing and the reason for aborting is unjustified, abortion is unjustified killing.
P2. Abortion involves killing.
P3. The reasons for aborting are unjustified.
C1. Abortion is unjustified killing.
P4. Unjustified killing ought to be illegal.
C2. Abortion ought to be illegal.
That is:
P1. If A is B and if A is C then A is B+C
P2. A is B
P3. A is C
C1. A is B+C
P4. C should be D
C2. Therefore A should be D
D ( illegal) is not properly distributed- PRO's only affirmative argument fails formally.
P1 depends on PRO proving P3
P4 depends on PRO proving P3
C1 and C2 depend on PRO proving P3
The WHOLE of PRO's argument rests on this single evidence:
"According to the Guttmacher institute the two most common reasons for having abortions were "having a baby would dramatically change my life" and "I can't afford a baby now" (cited by 74% and 73%, respectively). Obviously, these reasons do not justify the killing of a born human lives, and thus should not be justifications for killing unborn human lives. "
PRO's whole argument sits on circular PROOF by ASSERTION: abortion is unjustified because the two most common justifications are obviously insufficient, no evidence required.
PRO should have scrapped his whole argument before this and start by explaining why the USFG must not respect the disruption and financial hardship of US citizens as sufficient harms to outweigh the right to life of non-citizens. Instead, PRO just rests his case as "it's obvious" and "CON can't possibly argue anything worthy of consideration."
By contrast, CON's affirmative is straightforward:
P1: Policies that inflict structural violence ought not be implemented
P2: Making abortion illegal would inflict structural violence
C1: Abortion ought not be made illegal
tight. The USFG must never make policy that creates inequality. As a US citizen who has read the Declaration of Independence, I accept this as axiomatic.
CON supports hist middle term "structural violence" with 6 compelling and well-documented harms.
CON tears down PRO's case effectively
"His P4 and C2 are used to convert from a purely moral issue (abortion is unjustified killing) to a policy stance (abortion ought to be illegal), yet that conversion is only meaningful if said policy is effective."
"The beginnings of personhood do not influence my case."
"Pro bites his own critiques about arbitrary selection and using subjective criteria for personhood."
"Pro claims that the most common reasons for obtaining an abortion are unjustified (his P3). Pro doesn’t explain why either of these reasons are unjustified and provides virtually no distinction between justified and unjustified reasons. "
In R2, PRO argues that CON's case is overnarrow because the application of the law is sufficiently flexible to provide exceptions for all of CON's harms. This directly contradicts PRO's assertion that Inconsistent application of the law is "one of the most frequent manifestations of unfairness" PRO does not bother to explain how such exceptions are suddenly no longer unjustified killing because once he admits that there are some considerations that outweigh the harm of unjustified killing, his "these reasons are obviously unjust" P3 from R1 must be revisited with consideration of relative values.
PRO tries to shift the BoP as second time by repeating his R1 argument
PRO falsely attributes the uncertainty principle argument as one of CON's arguments but correctly faults his own argument as an appeal to incredulity.
PRO ignores the fact that CON's case does not depend on "the beginnings of personhood" and continues his R1 argument that CON's position on the beginnings of personhood is untenable.
PRO argues:
" We live in a society in which human beings (at least grown) have rights and liberties which are upheld by the law. We can thus grant that human beings have rights. As a human beings come into existence at the moment of conception, it is axiomatically the case that it is significant - for they have become what is apodictically granted as worthy of human rights"
That is, even though PRO argued in P1 that the beginnings humanity are uncertain and unknowable, now he states as axiomatic that conception is the starting of personhood and therefore fully vested with human rights (PRO still doesn't bother to explain how US law applies to non-citizens). A is always B therefore A is always B.
At several points PRO seems to be directly attributing his R1 straw man arguments to CON that PRO actually wrote.
For example: "This is false - the uncertainty only arises when we adopt CON's subjective benchmark for prescribing personhood - it is an issue only for those (CON) who wish to deny biological humanity as solely sufficient in converting personhood. "
CON never offered any benchmark, PRO wrote one for him. CON never denies that biological humanity is solely sufficient in converting personhood, that was an argument PRO wrote in R1 that CON correctly sidestepped as irrelevant to public policy.
If this VOTER had an option to deduct points for conduct, that deduction would have been clicked at this point.
PRO denies that there is any great leap between what's morally unjustified and the law but this is manifestly false. Nuclear weapons, for example, are morally unjustified but well-justified if not essential public policy. Police shooting an unarmed civilian is never morally justified but a natural and tolerated side effect of the 2nd Amendment as Constitutional public policy. Not every public policy that kills unjustly must be or should be banned. There is a great leap that PRO is blind to and this blindness is what makes his argument fail.
PRO improves his P3 in R1 with adoption but makes no argument that a pregnancy with adoption wouldn't still be life-changing or financially devastating.
PRO really doesn't address the integrity of any of CON's claims. He merely extends his strawman.
"CON has not proposed a sound predicate for instilling personhood thus currently, in their analysis, no persons have rights."
Neither CON's argument nor any USFG have been shown to necessitate any predicate for instilling personhood.
PRO's specific refutations are far too slight considering that CON's harms are the most substantial part of this debate. PRO offers little evidence and zero sources to support these essential claims.
Criminalizing abortion won't reduce family clinics.
Criminalizing abortion won't increase less safe illegal abortions.
Criminalizing abortion won't increase burden on hospitals
Criminalizing abortion won't increase unfair prosecutions of miscarriage.
CON gave us a lot of sourcing to justify his harms and PRO gives none. PRO blows off most of CON's affirmative with some very slight, less than compelling dismissals.
In R2, CON points out the shifts in PRO's argument and repeats that his argument is not dependent on any determinations of when personhood starts.
CON effectively rejects PRO's argument that US abortions will increase based on the fact that UK increased abortions when paid for by govt and Ireland increased abortions when legalized. PRO gave us much more international and focused study including the Guttmacher Institute PRO relied on.
CON effectively challenges all of PRO analogies and mostly just extends his R1s to refute PRO insubstantial counters.
In R3, PRO's intro and conclusion summarize the problem of his argument pretty well. In spite of being the instigator of the debate he focuses entirely on CON's argument, even his opening argument just mostly tried to presage CON's.
"CON's weighing off the harms of abortion on women can be considered strong only in our society - one in which the unborn are presupposed as being subhuman and whom's killing thus elicit a lesser outrage than the "pointless suffering" of "pregnant women".
An amazing statement considering that 1) PRO was only supposed to be considering policy for the society he condemns, and 2) if there some country that bans abortion but enjoys better childcare outcomes than the US, I don't know it. PRO invokes pure logic but PRO's logic has been far inferior to CON's. Take the dueling syllogisms for example.
PRO brings some much stronger counterarguments to bear on CON's harms but I think I have to agree with CON's objection to these as a violation of PRO's rule against new arguments and set these aside from consideration (I don't think they saved PRO at any rate).
PRO re-summarize his R1 straw man personhood argument which is still castrated by CON's lack of dependency on personhood.
"the literal concession that CON's proposition does not allow for the determining of who ought and oughtn't have have human rights entails that there exists no criteria for personhood thus no persons have rights" But PRO himself advanced that the question in uncertain and the rights with which the USFG must concern itself with are not the human rights of zygotes but the Constitutional rights of people of people born or naturalized on US soil. The founding fathers gave the Federal govt no powers to preserve zygotes, though abortion was common enough in their era. The states may assume some new powers that the Federal govt may not, but the power of states to ban abortion is not our topic here.
I'll say again that this felt like PRO started with a pre-fab elegantly written moral case against abortion which he rewrote as a preconception of CON. CON wisely deflated the structure of PRO's straw man leaving one weakly supported "it's obvious" argument standing against 6 real and well-evidenced harms. All of which sits on a solid principle: The USFG must never make law that creates new inequalities- an argument PRO never addressed.
Having accused PRO of new argument, CON is careful to merely flesh out the impacts of structural violence and expose PRO's hypotheticals as insufficient by that standard and then restate the case.
I think CON summarizes PRO's R1 well " Pro’s position on the beginning of personhood is subjective, making his position subject to his principle of uncertainty argument. This means that every single one of Pro’s impacts on the lives of the unborn are relegated to uncertainty, as the degree of harm caused by their loss is entirely unclear."
CON correctly call PRO on merely assuming the impacts rather than relying on hard data. PRO calls abortion genocide at one point and assert 70 billion dead another but never get into the actual numbers of abortions, and especially whether those abortions were a net economic, social, legal benefit for US or a net harm.
PRO brings a moral argument to a policy debate. He illogically prioritized uncertain degrees of harm to one group of non-citizens over certain and specific harms to US citizens. The structure of PRO's argument unwisely depended on CON's participation and CON's smart deferral rendered much of PRO's argument unconvincing. CON parried with a simple, direct. logical, policy-based argument that PRO was unready and slow to refute.
Arguments to CON.
You don’t need to get defensive with me about whether your vote meets the standards laid out in the voting policy. I’m not arguing that.
I am, however, making a point about how a voter introducing concerns with sources and/or arguments of a debater that are not presented in the debate effectively make it impossible for the debater in question to explain their reasoning. It is an imposition that goes beyond just weighing arguments, one where the voter is providing entirely new reasons to dismiss the points in question without providing a means for the debater to respond. Even if you feel that it’s justified in this instance, it does effectively nullify portions of the debate based on work the voter did rather than the work of the debaters.
Nowhere in the voting policy does it say that challenging the relevance of an evidence of source by a voter requires previous challenging of relevance by Con or by Pro in the debate.
The line Barney mentioned was about the reliability of a source, not about the relevance. Source can be reliable, yet unrelated to the argument.
Also, sources are supposed to contain evidence that supports the point. It says so in the voting policy. Merely repeating claims is not evidence.
This leads to conclusion that I need to read the source until I find the evidence, if I am to make sure it has the evidence that one side claimed it to have.
I didn’t want to butt in here, especially as I’m trying to steer clear of any discussion of the specifics of this debate, though as this regards a style of voting, I think I can keep it general.. I do still think that source supports my point, though more pertinent to this discussion, I would have explained how it supports my point if I had been pressed on it. What you’ve done here is challenge that relevance independent of what my opponent did, and while I agree there’s a point to be made here, by making that point as a voter, you’re denying the debater (me) the opportunity to explain themselves. You may believe that that’s justified because this looks like a clear-cut case, though I’d argue that that requires a certain amount of voter intervention above and beyond the given arguments. I’m not going to get into a discussion regarding whether the voting policy allows that as I have little doubt that your vote will stand (and, if I had a choice on the matter, I would agree that it should stand), but it doesn’t come off as just weighting the arguments, either.
Are we reading the same policy?
From debate art voting policy:
"Sources:
Goes to the side that (with a strong quality lead) better supported their case with relevant outside evidence and/or analysis thereof."
Note it says relevant. Cons source neither supported his case, neither was it relevant to his argument.
"In this case, it was pro's job to read the source and find that weakness to it."
So are you implying I must accept the source as a valid support for the claim, despite that it contradicts to the claim it was supposed to support? Am I supposed to accept the claim as "supported" by a source that literally negates it?
Your argument literally:
Because Pro didnt find a flaw:
Voters must accept the source contradicting the claim as if it supported it.
Also, must weight that source as equally valid to other sources.
So where in the voting policy say that source contradicting the claim can be treated as if it supported it?
Voting policy about sources is related to sources actually supporting the claim. If the source doesnt support what the claim is saying, then voters treat the claim as unsupported by any source.
"Further, overly studying a source beyond what was presented"
"If neither debater even alluded to details from a source"
Con presented "punishment for miscarriages". I studied the source within that. All I said was about the very detail Con alluded to from the source, that detail being "punishment for miscarriages".
> read it entirely, you will find:
Again, when we vote it is not our job to defeat one of the debaters on behalf of the other one. In this case, it was pro's job to read the source and find that weakness to it.
> Actually, this is a special case which you didnt consider...
When I wrote the voting policy, I considered just this type of bias hitting.
From the voting policy:
"Further, overly studying a source beyond what was presented, risks basing a vote upon the outside content of your own analysis instead of that offered by the debaters. If neither debater even alluded to details from a source a voter mentions, the vote has probably crossed this line."
Look at the Cons source, read it entirely, you will find:
"When she arrived at hospital seeking treatment, Poolaw admitted to using illicit drugs while pregnant.
Later, the medical examiner's report, obtained by the BBC, found traces of methamphetamine in her unborn son's liver and brain."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544
This is the source Con used to support his claim of punishing miscarriages. In it, you will find what I talked about.
"I can't find said quote anywhere within this debate"
Read cons source. Its in the very report he provided.
"as it reads as not one where you fairly weighted the arguments; but rather as one where you wish you were a debater and are trying to add missing contentions to bolster a preferred side."
Where did I add anything that was not used in a debate?
"such as if the other side called attention to the flaws"
Actually, this is a special case which you didnt consider. If Con provides a source that literally contradicts the claim that he is trying to support with the source, I have no any obligation to consider that source to be supporting of his claim. The case where source contradicts the claim means either the source is wrong either the claim is wrong.
> She actually got convicted for manslaughter, not for miscarriage.
*facepalm*
> "the medical examiner's report..."
I can't find said quote anywhere within this debate, nor did I spot anything which alludes to it. This exemplifies why I am being so critical of your vote, as it reads as not one where you fairly weighted the arguments; but rather as one where you wish you were a debater and are trying to add missing contentions to bolster a preferred side.
Regarding sourses form the voting policy:
"A side with unreliable sources may be penalized, but the voter must specify why the sources were unreliable enough to diminish their own case (such as if the other side called attention to the flaws, thereby engaging with sources in a more effective manner with impacts to arguments; thereby flipping the source and harming the opposing argument)."
Note the part that explicitly spells out "if the other side called attention to the flaws."
I've had plenty of times where I wish one side had argued better, but end of voting against them (whiteflame included).
The definition for Mens rea was given by Pro in his source. I dont want to add unmentioned definitions, because this is related to my vote. From Pros source, Mens rea is, to put it most simply: The knowledge that your actions would commit a crime. So if I know that shooting someone would be a crime, doing it would mean I would fullfil the Mens rea criteria.
However, I can almost certainly tell you that my vote heavily leans towards pro, despite me most likely scoring a tie later today.
Bear in mind, it is possible you could be using terms/concepts Barney does not understand, and I just want this to be a productive interaction. Maybe explain these fallacies/legal terms if necessary?
Round 2 Pro:
"CON holds that the PRO position necessitates the charging of women who undergo abortions. This is not necessarily the case."
-Separation of position from punishing women. Separation of abortion ban from punishing women for abortions.
Pro then explains that in cases of abortions, women are not to be punished unless they are proven guilty under Mens rea.
The link for Mens rea says: "The knowledge that ones actions will commit a crime"
- This obviously excludes miscarriages.
Con never refuted this.
Con provided counter argument, a source that is literally correlation argument, assumption, link to someones twitter account, and much less than 1% cases. The constant reliance on these >1% cannot possibly be treated as equal to Pros arguments that are supported by definitions of law.
Have you read the Cons source entirely? This is his own source explaining the case where woman got convicted for "miscarriage". She actually got convicted for manslaughter, not for miscarriage.
Source says:
"Later, the medical examiner's report, obtained by the BBC, found traces of methamphetamine in her unborn son's liver and brain."
Is Con claiming that women who give harmful drugs to their underage children are actually not supposed to be punished? What is Cons argument here? Remember that his entire argument is linked to this source. This source is literally trying to justify drug use during pregnancy. I am sorry, but taking this "source" and Pros source as equal is unreasonable.
This is why in this argument I give advantage to Pro. Mens rea is a reasonable criteria to be applied in abortion cases. Since Con never refuted this properly, advantage was given to Pro.
>> what evidence did pro use to show that abortion bans result in women no longer being imprisoned for miscarriages?
> The fact that abortion ban is separable from imprisoning women for miscarriages solves that problem.
What about pro's arguments suggested that it would actually be separated?
I would think that religious people would be pro-abortion. The Bible says that only 144,000 humans go to heaven and there are now 8 billion people in the world.
Yeah, definitely.
I would say that such position is difficult to defend if we assume human rights should be protected. There is a state of dependency between protecting the fetus and protecting human rights. The latter cannot exist without the former. Even if you deny rights and personhood to the fetus, you cannot deny the state of dependency of human rights on the fetus.
If you say: "only the ones that are born have rights" it follows that if we want for people to have rights, we must make sure they are born.
This creates the dependency:
1)The existence of rights depends upon being born. 2)The condition to be born is to be protected as a fetus.
From this, it follows: The existence of rights depends upon protecting the fetus.
From that, it follows: To secure the existence of rights, we must protect the fetus.
Finally: Destroying the fetus destroys all human rights that depend on its existence.
This dependency implies that fetus contains personhood and human rights in some form. The fact that humanity depends upon protecting fetuses to secure its existence means fetuses are not some random cells but the very thing that enables humanitys existence.
If you want me to claim some sort of objective morality, this isn't the debate for that. Within the current framework and based on how humans form societies (in the modern day) it is completely impossible for me to be less consistent in my position than my opposition, unless someone wants to argue against human rights. Its not arbitrary once we presume the axiom that humans ought to have certain privileges and expectations within a society. Once we assume this axiom (human rights) my position will always win. Unless you want to argue we should get rid of human rights, unless you argue we should disband everything we have build, and go back to living in caves, it is not arbitrary.
Everyone agrees abortion is immoral (anyone with sense).
I agree.
Locke actually contradicts his own philosophy by being against abortion because Locke's religious views clouded his judgements. Intelligent Man sees that his original philosophy supports abortion.
I'd argue your equivocation of legality with morality and bodily autonomy with personhood are arbitrary and based on your own subjective applications of those ideas.
This is why the whole abortion debate, as it is currently bring carried out today, is arbitrary. It all depends on what a person's premises are. Therefore, it is entirely subjective and not based in any sort of objectivity or fact.
You argue personhood as a legal right. Who says? The law? Which law? Whose law? And why is that law any more valid than any other law? Your whole argument is subjective.
Before anyone can even begin to debate this subject, they need to agree to certain frameworks based on arbitrary standards. Nobody is bothering to sit down and ask "what are the facts, and where will they lead?"
This is because the facts will undoubtedly lead to abortion being wrong. Yes. I would debate that position. But it would take significantly longer than a 5 round debate, so due to the constraints of time I choose not to debate it starting from ground zero without assuming anything.
Personhood laws are not arbitrary in the least if they're either:
1. personhood is decided at the point of conception
2. personhood is decided when bodily autonomy rights should be given (which means independent viability). It must be rememebered, our bodily autonomy rights are the reason murder is illegal, same with rape and so on. Therefore attaining bodily autonomy rights is akin to attaining personhood, you cannot have one without the other.
There's nothing vague about that, there's nothing subjective here. if i can show which one lacks consistent, and which one doesn't, we have a very clear answer to when personhood should be given. Giving personhood at the point of conception is not consistent with the current way the world is run (economically, based on private property and labour rights). The only way to defeat this argument is to literally go back to tribal times, where people didnt have human rights. The pro life position also has the increased burden of proof of showing people (outside of the womb) couldn't be organ harvested, or abused in ways which based on their abortion position would be appear to be permissible if we're to be consistent. Unless we roll back the right to private property (therefore people not having a right to their own body as their own) my argument is never going to lose. You would have to argue against basic human rights, constitutional rights to be able to defeat my argument.
There is no fallacy here, my friend. I'm not saying abortion (based on current laws) should be legal (although it should) im saying it OUGHT to be legal. I don't care about the current laws. I would concede abortion is immoral. That doesn't mean i think everything immoral should be illegal.
"An appeal to the law (argumentum ad legem in Latin) is a fallacy in which someone tries to encourage/defend an action purely because it is legal, or tries to discourage an action purely because it is illegal. This line of reasoning is faulty because the law of the land does not necessarily match up with the morality or sensibility of an action." [1]
Just because something is legal or illegal, that does not mean it is moral or even right. Laws are just as subjective and relative as anything else.
Sources:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_law
"I won't get into specifics about it (at least not here) because those points that I would make at least partially relate to this debate and the arguments I made, but I think both sides make arbitrary arguments with problematic implications when it comes to what is considered the beginnings of personhood. We can discuss it elsewhere if you're interested."
Do you think there was any realistic flaws you seen in the argument i used against bones in his forum post? As FLRW said, it seems the lockean view is easily the most consistent position legally speaking. FLRW is actually wrong that Locke was ok with abortion (this is why i know he got the idea from me). Locke actually contradicts his own philosophy by being against it (based on his theory of private property and theory of labour). Locke's religious views clouded his judgements on abortion, to the point where he contradicts his entire philosophy in 2 lines.
"yeah, but the "personhood" debate is silly because people come to the table with different ideas of what personhood means."
Its actually really not that silly if we all axiomatically agree we should be given "personhood" rights when we would consider one to be legally protected against things such as murder, etc. Personhood simply means the point at which one should gain the status, According to law, of being a legal person. A legal person has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability. The real argument is at which point in time is this.
It’s all good. Doesn’t even have to be in a forum if you just want to discuss it via PM, though I’m good with leaving it be regardless.