Instigator / Pro
Savant's avatar
25
Savant
1740
rating
23
debates
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Topic
#4552

THBT: On balance, abortion should be illegal in the United States from the point of conception [for @AustinL0926]

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
9
6
Better sources
8
4
Better legibility
4
3
Better conduct
4
4

After 4 votes and with 8 points ahead, the winner is...

Savant
Tags
Science
Law
Abortion
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Rated
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
15,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Minimal rating
1,636
Contender / Con
Sir.Lancelot's avatar
17
Sir.Lancelot
1587
rating
182
debates
55.77%
won
Description

RESOLUTION:
THBT: On balance, abortion should be illegal in the United States from the point of conception.

BURDEN OF PROOF:
BoP is shared equally. Pro argues that a law should exist restricting abortions from the point of conception. They can argue for any sort of law that accomplishes this, even one with necessary policy additions. Note that the political feasibility of any given law is not the subject of this debate. Con argues that a law restricting abortions from the point of conception should not exist.

This debate addresses most abortions. However, to maintain the focus of this discussion on general cases, some rare instances fall outside the scope of this debate:
- Abortions performed in cases of rape
- Cases where the offspring is unlikely to survive if not aborted, such as cases where they have anencephaly
- Abortions performed to save the life of the mother or due to medical emergency
- Cases where the mother is likely to have significant health disorders if an abortion is not performed, such as gestational diabetes
- Ectopic pregnancies

DEFINITIONS:
Abortion is “the willful and direct termination of a human pregnancy and of the developing offspring.”
Conception is “the fusion of a sperm and egg to form a zygote.”
Illegal means “forbidden by law.”
Should means “ought to.”

RULES:
1. All specifications presented in the description are binding to both participants.
2. Only AustinL0926 may accept.

Round 1
Savant's avatar
Savant
Pro
#1
Voters: Rule 2 has been waived. Please do not penalize Sir.Lancelot for accepting.

Framework:
Definitions
Harm: To adversely affect
Modus ponens: A logical argument form
Person: An individual with inherent moral value
Prima facie: True under default circumstances

Burdens
I argue that most abortions ought to be outlawed. Con argues that no law ought to exist restricting abortion from the point of conception.

These conflicting positions should be evaluated on the moral basis of protecting human rights. All persons have inherent rights that ought to be protected. Furthermore, the importance of a prima facie right is proportional to the loss in utility caused by violating it. A teenager’s right not to be stabbed, for example, is more important than their right to a high school education. We should default to prioritizing more important rights unless there is a very compelling reason to do otherwise.

Rights of equal importance merit equal weighting in equal situations. If the necessity of taxes outweighs my right to $50 of gold, then it would also outweigh my right to own $50 of silver, all things being equal, if I had silver instead. Similarly, if my right to $50 of gold outweighs the necessity of taxes, then my right to the silver would as well.

Human rights should be afforded to all persons. Per the harm principle, actions causing unwarranted harm to humans are unjust. Hence, I hold that a person is a human being who can in some way be harmed. Furthermore, having one’s lifespan reduced is a harm. Someone with CIPA may not physically suffer when they are killed, but they have been harmed nonetheless.

The merits of each proposal, with regards to abortion legality, should be judged based on how well they protect human rights. If the harm to a fetus from abortion is proportional to the harm caused to a person by violating some human right, then abortion is also a violation of human rights.

Uncertainty Principle
For the sake of argument, suppose we are uncertain about the moral status of an unborn child. In this case, abortion is akin to drunk driving, where the risk of killing someone is low but not negligible. People have the freedom to drink alcohol and drive a car prima facie but not when such actions risk harming an innocent person. Similarly, if there is a non-negligible chance that an unborn child is a person, abortion ought to be illegal.

My Case
Arguments 1-4 will deal with establishing the personhood of the unborn. Arguments 5-6 will show that as a result, abortion is unjust. Argument 7 will deal with the efficacy of abortion bans.


1. Killing Human Beings is Wrong:
Unborn Children are Human Beings
The overwhelming scientific consensus holds that a human being is formed at conception.

Significance of Killing Humans
Note that a human being is a person regardless of their stage of development (infant, teenager, adult). A toddler and an adult are not exactly the same thing, but they are both persons. It hardly makes a difference to someone whether they are aborted as an embryo or killed painlessly in their sleep minutes after their birth. Both actions are immoral, as they achieve similar effects.

An alternate view holds that moral value should come from intelligence, past experiences, ability to feel pain, level of dependency, or level of development. But a number of obvious counterexamples show this view to be flawed:
  • An infant born in a coma with no past conscious experiences is a person, and killing them is wrong.
  • Adult dogs and dolphins are smarter than newborns, but killing a newborn is more evil than killing a dog or a dolphin.
  • Newborns are dependent on their parents and on society, but killing them is wrong.
  • Killing a child is as bad as killing an adult, if not worse. Thus, it is clear that the potential to live a long life is morally significant, while a human’s level of biological development is not.
Therefore, we should treat human beings as persons, regardless of past experiences or stage of development.


2. Future Like Ours:
Coma Analogy
Suppose there is someone in a deep coma, who will awaken in nine months. They have lost all their memories and will not recognize anyone. Clearly, killing them is still murder. But any argument against killing the comatose individual can also be used to show that abortion is wrong. Murder affects a person’s future, and unborn children have a future like ours.

Associated Harms
The harm principle holds that actions should generally be considered moral unless they cause some kind of harm to someone else. Therefore, if the action of killing the comatose person is wrong, it must be because it has one or several harmful effects. I can think of several:
  • Missed opportunities: Upon awakening, the comatose individual could have lived a long life
  • Lack of choice: No choice was given to the individual whose opportunities were lost, because we made the decision for them
  • Violation of a social contract: We would not want someone to kill us or steal our opportunities, so it would be wrong to do so to someone else
All of these harms also occur when an unborn child is killed. If these harms make killing the comatose individual wrong, then they certainly make killing an unborn child wrong.


3. Continuous Development:
Drawing a Line
At any point, a being is either a person or not. Since a toddler is clearly a person, my opponent will have to designate some point in pregnancy at which point a non-person becomes a person, despite the “non-person” and “person” sharing similar DNA, cell structures, etc. Designating all human beings as persons avoids this problem.

Transitive Property
I hold that a human adult is the same person that they were as an unborn child. I think we can agree that people remain the same person throughout their life—otherwise Ted Bundy was an innocent person being held in prison for crimes someone else committed. I think we can agree then that someone in a coma is the same person that they were before and the same person after they awaken. We can credit this to several factors:
  • Equivalent DNA
  • Continuous development
  • Narrative continuity (the location of the person remains unchanged or changed gradually)
But if we accept any of these factors to argue that people in comas are the same person as they were before, then we must also accept that adults are the same person that they were in utero—due to similar DNA, continuous development, etc.


4. Harm of Removing Potential:
Operation Thought Experiment
Suppose there exists an operation that can be performed on an unborn child—one that will hinder their eyesight in the future with no medical benefit. Performing this operation on an unborn child would be immoral, even though it removes potential experiences, rather than ones that the unborn child is currently capable of.

Removing more potential experiences (hearing, taste, etc.) would be worse, not better.

Modus Ponens
  • P1: Removing an unborn child’s potential conscious experiences is wrong.
  • P2: Abortion is removing an unborn child’s potential conscious experiences.
  • C1: Therefore, abortion is wrong.

5. Killing vs. Letting Die:
My View
It is true, in earlier stages of pregnancy, that an unborn child depends on their mother’s body to survive. But due to the circumstances of pregnancy, abortion is not “letting someone die.” Because it involves directly making a person dependent on oneself and then withdrawing that support, it is a direct killing.

Prima Facie Violations of Bodily Autonomy
  • Forced labor (such as carrying heavy objects)
  • Forced medical procedures
Bodily autonomy is a prima facie right, meaning that with all things being equal, violating it is unjust. However, in the case of abortion, all things are not equal. This is why pregnancy is not listed above; it never occurs in a prima facie scenario.

Three States of Dependence
Consider the following three states of dependence:
  • A: Person X does not require your body to survive
  • B: Person X does require your body to survive, and your body is currently supporting them
  • C: Person X does require your body to survive, and your body is not currently supporting them
Third Syllogism
  • P1: Actively making Person X go from states A -> C is morally equivalent to murder.
  • P2: Abortion involves making Person X go from states A -> C.
  • C1: Therefore, abortion is morally equivalent to murder.
P1
Suppose Sam is a doctor who can fix a stab wound. Sam stabs Jack (A -> C). The point is not whether Sam would be legally forced to heal Jack (though he certainly has a moral obligation to). The point is that an action from A -> C is murder.

Suppose a woman carries her newborn child into the forest full of wild beasts (A -> B). She then decides she is tired, or perhaps she is scared of being slowed down by the weight of an infant. For whatever reason, she leaves her child in the forest (B -> C) where it is then eaten by wild beasts. This action is clearly infanticide, and lawmakers have a duty to prosecute a parent who makes such a decision. Going from A -> B and then from B -> C is therefore unjust killing. The “extra step” of A -> B does not absolve the woman of murder.

P2
Before conception, Person X (the unborn child) does not yet exist. Therefore, the period before conception is State A.

Abortion in most cases involves actively taking an action that then leads to pregnancy (A -> B) and then terminating the pregnancy (B -> C). Hence, like the forest analogy, it is an unjustified killing of a human being and should be classified as murder.


6. Duty to Save:
Even if we granted that abortion was simply “letting someone die” instead of direct killing, it should still be illegal.

Weighting of Rights
Since the government has a duty to protect human rights, we should default to protecting the right that is more important prima facie. Being killed at a young age prevents someone from experiencing their entire life. Being pregnant lasts for nine months, and despite being inconvenient, it does not deprive the pregnant person of life.

Drowning Child Thought Experiment
Virtue ethics are fundamental in our understanding of human rights. Furthermore, one person's moral obligation towards another is proportional to how directly responsibility toward that person falls on them. Individuals have some responsibility to support the poor in their communities in the form of taxes—that responsibility is shared, because there are many people in the community. Individuals have stronger responsibilities to help those in their immediate family, because the responsibility is spread less thin; hence, it falls more directly on each family member.

Consider the following scenario from a pro-choice philosopher:
You notice a child has fallen in a pond and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet, and by the time you go home and change you will have missed class.
It’s clear from the doctrine of virtue ethics that saving the child is a moral obligation, because you are the only one who can do so. Failing to save the child would be similar, morally speaking, to directly killing them. The government often enforces this moral obligation via duty to protect laws. Since everyone has the responsibility to save a child in the circumstances I outlined, it follows that duty to protect laws ought to apply to everyone. These laws are even more ubiquitous when Person X has directly endangered the person who depends on them. If Person X throws the child into the pond, not rescuing the child is murder.

Hence, a pregnant person has the duty not to let their child die. The child is depending on them specifically, and a human life is much more valuable than the utility lost from pregnancy. We’re discussing abortions on pregnancies that result from consensual sex, making this moral obligation even stronger.

Responsibilities of Parents
Infanticide was common in Ancient Rome. These killings were clearly unjust, so it stands to reason that parents have a moral obligation to prevent their children from dying. In ancient times, this would include carrying a child around, feeding them, housing them, and in many cases, breastfeeding.

Comparison to Pregnancy
  • P1: A child’s right to live outweighed their parent’s right not to raise them in ancient times.
  • P2: Pregnancy in modern times is less inconvenient than raising a child in ancient times.
  • C1: A child’s right to live outweighs their mother’s right to avoid pregnancy in modern times.
The infanticide example establishes P1. Hence, I will argue for P2. It is simply the case that raising a child in ancient times would require physical labor, which can lead to all sorts of health conditions. The loss in utility from raising a child is greater than that lost from pregnancy, but it does not follow that infanticide in Ancient Rome was somehow justified. Recall that rights of equal importance merit equal weighting in equal situations. By similar logic, the right to avoid pregnancy is less pressing than the right to avoid years of labor. The child’s right to live outweighs the parent’s right to abandon them, so it certainly outweighs the parent’s right to avoid pregnancy. 


7. Effects of an Abortion Ban:
Laws against abortion give women plenty of strong incentives not to get an abortion, but no reasons to get an abortion that they wouldn’t have before. Arguing that no woman will decide against abortion due to a ban is simply illogical.

Lives Lost From Abortion
In 2020, there were 620,000 abortions legally performed in the US.

Efficacy
It’s not enough to compare a country where abortion is legal with a country where it’s illegal. Extraneous factors must be controlled for. We should ideally compare different abortion policies in contexts where other factors are as similar as possible. In Northern Europe, the restrictiveness of abortion laws explains 72% of the variation in the abortion ratio (the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion). Pregnant women before Roe vs. Wade had dramatically lower abortion rates. States with legal abortion before Roe had reduced birth rates; in fact, legalizing abortion had a higher impact on pregnancy rates than contraception. Abortion rates by state of residence show that states with heavier abortion restrictions have lower abortion rates, even when accounting for women who cross state lines.

When policies are studied in isolation, these effects become much more pronounced. When Bulgaria liberalized its abortion laws, the abortion rate increased by a factor of over 30. Furthermore, abortion is measurably reduced, not simply “driven underground.” Restricting abortion in Bulgaria, when controlling for other factors, increased fertility rates by 12%. If you think an abortion ban would be hard to enforce, consider the difficulty of enforcing child pornography bans, in which case both the buyer and the seller have an incentive to remain secret. The government still tracks them down.

Policy Additions
Abortions bans already save lives, but going abroad to obtain an abortion can also be made illegal, similarly to laws against sex tourism.

Sir.Lancelot's avatar
Sir.Lancelot
Con
#2
Thanks, Pro. 

This debate was originally intended for AustinL, but the max time had already passed and there was a day left, so I accepted. Pro waives this rule. 

Preamble
I will be arguing that most abortions should be allowed on the basis that.:
  • Women who seek out abortions are usually unable to care for the child. Subjecting that child to a life where he is a burden is cruel. 
  • A fetus is a human by scientific terminology, but there is nothing “human” about a brainless body. 
  • A fetus is not a person. 
  • Life within the stages of development where abortions are allowed is not functional. 
  • Potentiality does not constitute objective moral value. 

Mothers and Abortions

If a woman is seeking an abortion, it is unlikely that she is ready or prepared to bear the burden of responsibility of caring for a child. Whether that be for financial reasons, an absentee father, or because she is not in the right mental frame. 

Forcing a woman into motherhood because of one night of irresponsibility is not a proportional consequence. It is reasonable to assume that the child will also suffer under these circumstances. 

Inconsistent Moral Values

Pro-life advocates assert that the life of a fetus is too valuable to be stopped, but this POV is abandoned once the baby is born. That is, the potential suffering they will have to endure because they are unwanted or born at the wrong time is a life sentence more undesirable than abortion. 

Mothers who are forced to give birth have been known to smother their newborns or abandon them completely. 

Babies that are born to one parent will likely grow to have poor social skills, and stunted growth as a result of inadequate nourishment. Society has the obligation to ensure these children have the best life available. 

There is nothing human about a brainless body

For the sake of the debate, I concede that a fetus is technically “human.” But it is not alive in the conventional sense. Its life is on autopilot. In the same way your body digests food and pumps your heart and you have no control, the fetus’s life is like that. 

Minus the sentience or consciousness. 

Pro says: 

1. Killing Human Beings is Wrong:
Unborn Children are Human Beings
The overwhelming scientific consensus holds that a human being is formed at conception.

Significance of Killing Humans
Note that a human being is a person regardless of their stage of development (infant, teenager, adult). A toddler and an adult are not exactly the same thing, but they are both persons. It hardly makes a difference to someone whether they are aborted as an embryo or killed painlessly in their sleep minutes after their birth. Both actions are immoral, as they achieve similar effects.

An alternate view holds that moral value should come from intelligence, past experiences, ability to feel pain, level of dependency, or level of development. But a number of obvious counterexamples show this view to be flawed:
  • An infant born in a coma with no past conscious experiences is a person, and killing them is wrong.
An infant born in a coma is unconscious, whereas a fetus is preconscious.
  • The reason it is immoral to kill an infant in a coma is because they already went through the stages of development and surpassed the abortion timeframe. The mother has already chosen to birth the child, and ending its life is a waste of one year of growing the child. This point is void, if the kid demonstrates no possibility of recovery. 
  • An infant born in a coma is unconscious. Its consciousness remains intact, but it is temporarily inactive. Like a switch that has been turned off.
  • A fetus is preconscious. There is no consciousness, no sentience, or autonomy. No ability to think, feel, or reason. The starting point for consciousness is the 18th week and abortions are usually stopped by the 14th week. There is no switch because the light does not exist. 


Round 2
Savant's avatar
Savant
Pro
#3
Thx, Sir.Lancelot,

Framework:
Extend. Con does not dispute that the importance of a prima facie right is proportional to the loss in utility caused by violating it.


1. Killing Human Beings is Wrong:
Pro provides two contradictory measurements for personhood. The first is based on whether an organism has the capacity for consciousness. The second is based on the effort required to create the organism. These benchmarks contradict each other, but I will rebut them both.

“Its life is on autopilot…Minus the sentience or consciousness…There is no consciousness, no sentience, or autonomy. No ability to think, feel, or reason.”
This describes the infant as well. Yet Con concedes that killing the infant is wrong, specifically due to the possibility of recovery and because the infant has the capacity to be conscious in the future.

“An infant born in a coma is unconscious, whereas a fetus is preconscious”
This is inconsistent with the definitions provided. Both the infant and fetus are preconscious, since neither was conscious in the past. When Con says that the infant’s consciousness remains intact, this simply means that the infant has the mechanisms required to awaken in the future. If certain parts of the brain are nonfunctional, the infant lacks the capacity for consciousness in that moment, but can achieve consciousness in the future. The light switch is “off” for both the infant and the fetus, and it will take some time to turn on in both cases.
  • Consider someone in a coma who cannot be awakened at that moment, but who will awaken in nine months. This person’s brain does not afford them the capacity for sentience at that moment, but it affords them the capacity to develop sentience in the future. If someone’s brain is damaged, time is required for the brain to be repaired such that it can then exhibit consciousness in the future.
  • Con puts a lot of emphasis on the infant exhibiting “possibility of recovery.” The difference between an infant who does exhibit the possibility of recovery and an infant who doesn’t is the ability to be conscious in the future. Con is attributing a lot of value to a human’s capacity to be conscious in the future, regardless of that human’s capacity to be conscious in the present moment.
  • If Con believes that these people have a right to live, then their definition of personhood can be summarized as “an organism that is conscious, or with the capacity to achieve consciousness in the future.” I’m not trying to strawman Con here, but I believe this is the logical conclusion of what they have said regarding an infant in a coma.
If we hold Con to this definition, then an unborn child is a person as well. There’s simply no moral difference between an infant who can develop consciousness but does not currently exhibit it, and an unborn child who can develop consciousness but does not currently exhibit it.

“There is no switch because the light does not exist.”
  • If the “light” simply means a human being that could exhibit sentience at some later time, then the light does exist, because unborn children are human beings and can later become conscious.
  • If the “light” means an organism with the capacity to exhibit sentience in the current moment, then then this “light” does not exist for someone in the coma either, but that does not justify killing them.
  • Similarly to how brain cells in the infant can develop the components necessary for sentience, an unborn child can also develop the components necessary for sentience.
“The mother has already chosen to birth the child, and ending its life is a waste of one year of growing the child.”
This is a sunk cost fallacy. The value of something is not based on the effort required to achieve it.
  • An eighty-year-old man is not more inherently valuable than a five-year-old, even though the eighty-year-old man has gone through more effort to survive to that point. In fact, it would be more logical to save the five-year-old if we had to choose between them, since the child has a longer life ahead of them.
  • If a woman has tried for years to conceive and finally becomes pregnant, then Con must hold under his framework that the embryo now has more value than the typical infant, since it took more time to create the unborn child than it takes for the typical infant to go through all stages of pregnancy.
  • It can take someone five years to write a book of very low quality. Yet a two-year-old is more valuable than a book, even if the book took a long time to write.

Arguments 2-7:
Extend. My other arguments for personhood stand on their own, and all of them establish that an unborn child is a person, despite not being conscious. I won’t repeat everything I’ve said, but I will emphasize a few points here that I believe especially sink Con’s case.
  • Con does not dispute the harm principle and does not dispute that having one’s lifespan reduced is a harm. Killing an infant in a coma and killing that same child in the womb has the same effect and causes the same amount of harm. Per my framework, which has gone unchallenged, this means that each of these acts is equally egregious.
  • Con does not dispute the operation analogy, which shows that removing potential conscious experiences from unborn children is immoral. Despite the fact that an unborn child cannot hear yet, removing their future ability to hear is wrong. By the same token, despite the fact that the unborn child is not conscious yet, removing their future ability to be conscious is wrong.
  • Con does not draw a line between when a human goes from “preconscious” to “unconscious.” But Con seems to value preconscious beings as having inherent moral value anyway, which would mean that unborn children are persons.
  • There are other parts of my opening that Con hasn’t addressed, but these are the main ones.

8. “Mothers and Abortions”:
“Forcing a woman into motherhood because of one night of irresponsibility is not a proportional consequence.”
I am not suggesting that the woman ought to be punished. I am arguing that killing a child is unjust. Con and I both oppose infanticide, yet this is not because we think women should be “punished” by having to raise a child. The argument I’m making is that the right of the child to live outweighs the woman’s right not to be pregnant, and that directly killing a child in order to avoid supporting that child is unjustified.

“It is reasonable to assume that the child will also suffer under these circumstances.”
I disagree with Con’s assertion that being killed is preferable to being raised in poor conditions. Killing an infant painlessly is still murder, even if that infant will be raised in poor conditions. Furthermore, we would not advocate for a child to commit suicide, even if that child is raised in poverty. The point is that preventing a child from being raised in poor conditions is not a justification for unjust killing. If abortion is unjust killing, as I am arguing, then the fact that the child will be raised in poor conditions does not change that.


9. “Inconsistent Moral Values”:
“Pro-life advocates assert that the life of a fetus is too valuable to be stopped, but this POV is abandoned once the baby is born.”
This is an ad hominem fallacy, and it’s not even directed at me. Con seems to be attacking pro-life advocates for not caring about children. Even if that were the case, it would not mean that killing a child is justifiable. But I don’t grant that premise anyway. If politicians were advocating infanticide on children being raised in poor conditions, I’m pretty sure that most pro-life advocates would oppose that as well.

“the potential suffering they will have to endure because they are unwanted or born at the wrong time is a life sentence more undesirable than abortion.”
Extend my previous argument that being killed is not preferable to being raised in poor conditions.

“Babies that are born to one parent will likely grow to have poor social skills, and stunted growth as a result of inadequate nourishment. Society has the obligation to ensure these children have the best life available.”
I do not believe that killing a child is “giving them the best life available.” Recall that we are not debating welfare or any particular social program. The dichotomy is whether these children should be killed in the womb or allowed to live.
Sir.Lancelot's avatar
Sir.Lancelot
Con
#4
Pro asserts that, morally speaking, an infant in a coma is the same as a fetus. I wish to contest this on the basis that.
  • An infant is its own individual. Killing them is denying their autonomy.
  • An infant has already passed the stages of early development just to be born. They deserve the right to have the chance to experience life, coma or not.
  • The mother went through pain and suffering, as well as a year of misery just to give birth to a child she wishes to raise. Ending the infant’s life is a waste of a year and undermining the mother’s wishes.
  • When a mother has already birthed an infant, she has already developed an emotional attachment to it, so ending its life would cause trauma.
  • Terminating a fetus’s life, however, is different because it lacks the faculties of sentience, consciousness, or autonomy. It is also a part of the mother, so its body is not its own.
  • The fetus is technically a parasite. So preventing an unwilling mother from getting an abortion is sentencing her body to a year of suffering, just so she can deal with another 18 years of responsibility and suffering she is not prepared for. Granted, if the mother suffers, so too will the child.
“When a person is barred from accessing abortion care, she is compelled to continue a pregnancy against her will. This is, itself, a violation of human rights.”

Let’s have a look at another significant consequence of outlawing abortion.

Unwanted Births + Financially incapable parents + Restrictions = Overpopulation.

Not to mention this also dramatically increases the infant mortality rate through factors such as child poverty.
“Research confirms the positive effects of abortion legalization on a range of economic indicators, including labor force participation, educational attainment, earnings, and child poverty”
Moreover, when women are denied access to abortion, it can negatively affect their economic security and that of their families, and state and local economies can suffer significant financial losses.5”

The Light Bulb Analogy

““There is no switch because the light does not exist.”
  • If the “light” simply means a human being that could exhibit sentience at some later time, then the light does exist, because unborn children are human beings and can later become conscious.
  • If the “light” means an organism with the capacity to exhibit sentience in the current moment, then then this “light” does not exist for someone in the coma either, but that does not justify killing them.
  • Similarly to how brain cells in the infant can develop the components necessary for sentience, an unborn child can also develop the components necessary for sentience.”
I wish to offer an alternative lens for viewing the Light Bulb analogy.
Pre-Conscious
  • There is currently a project undergoing construction.
  • Part of the architectural designs is to plant a light bulb installation, but the light itself does not exist yet.
  • It is still early on in the project that it is not too late to disabandon it completely. Architects believe it is convenient to abandon it because they are not so far in that they must finish what they started and there is a reason they must stop the construction.
  • There is no consequence at all of destroying the house and not much money will be lost.
Since the light does not exist yet and neither do the tools for properly installing it, then it stands to reason that the house is too underdeveloped for any plans of any light holding any significance.
Unconscious
  • The house has already been constructed, but the light bulb that has been installed won’t turn on. 
  • Destroying the house makes no sense, as it’s already been built. Too much money has been wasted on it. It would be more convenient to hire an electrician to identify the problem and fix it accordingly.
Since the infant has already been birthed, the purpose is to keep it alive. And if it demonstrates the possibility of recovering from the coma, what then is the point of terminating its life only to subject the mother to another year of excruciating pain to start all over? 






Round 3
Savant's avatar
Savant
Pro
#5
Framework:
The framework I presented has essentially gone uncontested. Con does not dispute that the importance of a prima facie right is proportional to the loss in utility caused by violating it. If we are unsure whether the unborn child is a person, then abortion becomes child endangerment and should be made illegal, similarly to drunk driving. As in the case of drunk driving, the right to life is so important that simply avoiding the risk of ending a life overrides other rights (such as the right to drive a car and drink alcohol).


Are the fetus and the infant morally equivalent?
It is insufficient for Con to list developmental differences between an infant and an unborn child. If these differences are not morally significant, then the unborn child must also be a person.

Prefer my definition of personhood
I defined a person as a human being who can in some way be harmed, and Con makes some indirect challenges to this. The problem Con runs into here is that their value premise doesn’t line up with the criteria they provide. Con never provides a concrete definition for a person as I did, but given the light switch analogy and the emphasis on consciousness, I think a definition is implied. Essentially, Con attributes personhood, or moral value, to a human individual’s capacity for consciousness. This can be measured either as (a) the human’s capacity for consciousness at that moment or (b) the capacity to develop consciousness in the future. Both the infant and the fetus lack (a) but have (b).

However, Con uses the wrong criteria to measure capacity for consciousness. They note that the infant is more developed than the fetus, and the “light switch” presumably refers to brain cells. But the brain cells in their current state are not capable of generating consciousness in the infant. We should also focus on interactions between the cells, not just the cells themselves, since a conscious brain is not simply the sum of its parts. Essentially, the infant cannot be conscious until synaptic reorganization occurs. The current formulation of cells and interactions between them have the same capacity for consciousness in the fetus and in the infant. In other words, both humans will be capable of consciousness once they develop the features necessary for consciousness.

Since Con agrees that a comatose infant is a person, and the fetus has the same capacity for consciousness as the infant, then Con’s value statement leads to the conclusion that the unborn child is a person from the point of conception.

“Pre-Conscious vs. Unconscious”
Both the unborn child and the fetus have some features required for consciousness (being alive) but require additional development (synaptic reorganization) in order to develop the features necessary for consciousness. So a “project” is underway in either case. The lightbulb is not fully completed in either case. Yes, there are differences in what steps remain to create the lightbulb, but these differences are not morally significant if our criteria for personhood is based on “capacity for consciousness.” Capacity for consciousness in the future given continued development is clearly sufficient for personhood.

“Too much money has been wasted on it.”
This seems like a repeat of what Con said before, which I already responded to. Killing a child is as bad as killing an adult, if not worse. Thus, it is clear that the potential to live a long life is morally significant, while a human’s level of biological development is not. If a woman has tried for years to conceive and finally becomes pregnant, then Con must hold under his framework that the embryo now has more value than the typical infant, since it took more time to create the unborn child than it takes for the typical infant to go through all stages of pregnancy. And Con does not address my contention that this is the sunk cost fallacy. It can take someone five years to write a book of very low quality. Yet a two-year-old is more valuable than a book, even if the book took a long time to write.

“It is also a part of the mother.”
This is untrue. An unborn child is its own individual with unique DNA. As one source put it, “A Chinese zygote implanted in a Swedish woman will always be Chinese, not Swedish, because his identity is based on his genetic code, not that of the body in which he resides.” When a woman is pregnant with a male child, she does not suddenly have testes and a penis. As Dr. Peter Nathanielsz puts it, “the unborn’s brain sends a message to his own pituitary gland which in turn stimulates the adrenal cortex to secrete a hormone which stimulates the mother’s uterus to contract. A woman goes into labor not because her body is ready to surrender the unborn child, but because the unborn child is ready to leave her body.” A fetus depends on the mother, but children depend on their parents, and killing them is still unjust.

“she has already developed an emotional attachment to it”
Con gives another criterion for personhood (emotional attachment), without much justification. An orphan is still a person, despite the fact that their parents are dead and would not feel trauma if they died. SImilarly, a child without friends who is neglected by their parents still has a right to live. If the infant in the coma has parents who don’t care about them, this does not justify killing the infant.

“The fetus is technically a parasite.”
A parasite is typically defined as a member of another species, so “technically a parasite” is false. That said, I don’t think semantic technicalities from either side are relevant to the resolution. If we’re simply drawing an analogy to parasites, newborns are dependent on their parents and on society, but killing them is wrong. Clearly, a child depending on someone else for survival does not justify killing that child.


Is there value to potential conscious experiences?
Even if Con’s definition of personhood was consistent, they’ve given us little reason to prefer it to mine. Specifically, I highlighted the importance of attributing rights to unborn children, and Con has largely dropped these points.
  • The harm principle holds that actions causing similar amounts of harm are equally wrong. Killing an infant in a coma and abortion cause the same harm (reducing the infant’s lifespan) and are therefore equally egregious.
  • Con does not dispute that value comes from a person’s future and that unborn children have a future like ours.
  • Con does not dispute that adults are the same person they were as an unborn child, and that therefore unborn children are persons.
  • The operation analogy has gone completely ignored by Con—removing future conscious experiences is wrong even if those experiences don’t exist yet.

Which rights are more important?
I spent a lot of time on this in my opening, so I will repeat some of what I have said here, since I think it addresses Con’s new objections.
  • Recall that the importance of a right is proportional to the loss in utility caused by violating it.
  • A child’s right to live avoids their parent’s right to avoid pregnancy or labor. Abandoning children in ancient Rome was unjust, despite being common at the time.
  • Despite the woman in the forest assuming some additional risk by carrying the child, which may slow her down, abandoning the child in a forest is still unjust. Even if the woman assumes some additional risk from pregnancy, this does not justify killing the child.
“Overpopulation”
Overpopulation as a concern does not justify killing people. Murder is still murder, whether of teenagers, toddlers, or adults. Overpopulation does not mean that serial killers are justified in their actions or that infanticide is morally permissible. Since the unborn child is also a person, as I have argued, then killing them remains unjust, even if we are concerned about overpopulation.

“child poverty”
As I said before, killing an infant painlessly is still murder, even if that infant will be raised in poor conditions. Furthermore, we would not advocate for a child to commit suicide, even if that child is raised in poverty. The point is that preventing a child from being raised in poor conditions is not a justification for killing that child.

“Economic security”
Human lives are more valuable than money. A woman in the Roman empire might save money by abandoning her child in the forest, but that does not justify infanticide. Con agrees that killing the infant in the coma is wrong, regardless of economic conditions, so killing people to save money is unjust. Since the unborn child is also a person, as I have argued, then killing them remains unjust.


Conclusion:
On just the arguments that Con has dropped, we can reach the conclusion that killing an unborn child is unjust and that the government ought to make it illegal. Furthermore, Con’s sole contention regarding the infant in a coma is flawed, as I have explained. Voters, remember not to consider any new arguments that Con introduces in the final round that they had the opportunity to make before, as I would be unable to respond to them.
Sir.Lancelot's avatar
Sir.Lancelot
Con
#6
So Pro has asserted that it is more morally acceptable to force an unwilling mother to give birth and subject the child to a lifetime of suffering where they die by circumstances beyond their control because doing the alternative he believes is murder. 

Pro must prove that abortion is murder based on the following definition.: 

Murder is the unlawful killing of another humanwithout justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought.
Extend my previous argument about how the life of a fetus is only valuable, up until birth. In which the life of the fetus is disregarded by Pro-Life activists. 

Now regarding Pro’s framework, how do we measure the value of a life? 

In places where abortion is illegal, 40,000 mothers die every year. Such is to be the case with the U.S. if these policies are authorized. 

Without access to abortion, not only is the kid subject to a life of a single mother who is too financially inadequate to care for him but if she surely dies, the child will be left parentless. Then how good are the kid’s own chances of survival? 

Experts measure that this ban on abortion will make The United States nation #1 in the rates of Infant Mortality globally.:

In parts of the world where abortion is illegal, botched abortions still cause about 8 to 11 percent of all maternal deaths, or about 30,000 each year.