Legalizing Abortion in the US
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 3 votes and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...
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- So you would rather see a young girl be raped and be forced to give birth to a fetus which may or may not damage her physically and mentally than to see an organism that most likely isn't sentient yet to be terminated? I and many other people would rather see a non-sentient being suffer than see a sentient being suffer and possibly die.
Consciousness isn't the only trait a being with sentience has, more importantly, a fetus after 5 months feels pain and well being. Consciousness is important, however, feeling pain and well being is even more important.
Humans do have value for several different traits that human and life in general possess. Intelligence and more important sentience is the most important trait that a human possesses.
Even the most well behaved of men succumb to the primal urges to have sex for pleasure, this is why abortion should be legal too act as a safety net.
So you would rather see a young girl be raped and be forced to give birth to a fetus which may or may not damage her physically and mentally than tosee an organism that most likely isn't sentient yet to be terminated?
"C-sections are certainly not good for the well being of the mother as there are many side effects"
incorrect for several reasons however the biggest reason is that people who are unconscious still feel pain. According to sciencemag.org, "
- Again condoms still break, and birth control fails.
- I've stated my argument already, my argument is that abortion is moral if the mother became pregnant outside of her control IE rape, the condom broke, or birth control failed, or if it's in the first 5 months before the baby becomes sentient.
Um no I already stated that people who can feel pain have a right to life. ... even unconscious brains in vegative states still register pain. Going off of this, the mother would still be able to feel pain and therefore it would be wrong to kill her.
Ok so then if your main value of life is in existence and NOT on sentience nor intelligence, are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?
condoms still break, and birth control fails.
abortion itself doesn't cause the mother to have the mental and physical toll that childbirth and pregnancy have on the mother. The only reason most mothers experience mental issues from abortion is due to society seeing it as immoral.
I've stated my argument already, my argument is that abortion is moral if the mother became pregnant outside of her control IE rape, the condom broke, or birth control failed, or if it's in the first 5 months before the baby becomes sentient.
"Again so are you against women, not fertilizing eggs, men masturbating which terminates sperm, the unintentional killing of micro bacteria, or killing ants and other bugs? "
"If existence, sentience, and intelligence aren't the meaning of life, then please explain what is the meaning of life. "
"The murder rate is also statistically rare, so then should we just not have the police force?"
"Abortion only fails 2-3 % of the time. Compared to the high chances of women feeling pain in pregnancy and birth, and possibly women dying from giving birth. "
"This is not how society works, I do not have to prove that something is ethical, you have to prove to me why it isn't. Every action by default is morally neutral"
"that is the mothers own fault for not realizing that the fetus had no value, this has nothing to do with abortions. "
"This is society and the mother's fault for valuing a non-sentient nor intelligent being. Again what about the negatives for giving birth or carrying a baby? Babys are not cheap and cost a great deal of money and time for the mother. Carrying the baby and giving birth also can cause many different mental and physical issues. For example, my boyfriend's mother giving birth to 3 children directly caused depression for her and caused her to have weight issues."
"You still have not provided me with a trait that a fetus has that justifies its existence aside from it existing. "
Fetuses are pure potentiality, and by aborting one you're transforming that into an actualized negative death.
The value is just significantly less relative to a human.
If you were to massacre enough insects the ecosystem would collapse; likewise, if you kill enough babies society will collapse.
That IS quite the thing to ask of me. I know that it certainly isn't sentience and intelligence. I just don't think anyone is equipped to answer that. You're approaching life like it's a problem to be solved when the truth lies in the experience.
The primary difference here is that the police aren't there as a safety net. They are a preventative measure like condoms. If the police were simply a safety net, they would love for people to break the law, probably even encourage it.
Also, psychological trauma (which is real pain) is linked to abortion and miscarriage at a higher rate than birth, so this point simply doesn't hold.
If you want to prove something should be legal, you have to prove many things. Namely, that there's actually a reason for it to be legal.
Every action can't be morally neutral, it's simply not possible.
It's the mother's fault for valuing her child. This is incredibly wrong, from a biological standpoint and a moral one.
From a sociological perspective alone abortions cost outweighs the benefit.
"This would be an appeal to potentiality which is not a very good basis to measure life on. If you think life is just simply based on potentiality""Since you are framing your entire argument on potentiality and existence, than again what makes a human different than a bug in your logic. In my logic, humansmatter more as they are sentient and intelligent. "
"Before I begin, I am NOT justifying the genocide of people or babies. Well ecosystems can directly impact humans, mostly in rural areas. For example if an entire population of ants dissipated from an area, the local bug pesticide company may go out of business. If the local foxes or deer become an endangered species, than the local hunters will be forced to find other animals to kill or may go out of business. The point is that ecosystems can impact human civilization. "
"OK I'm sorry I think I asked the wrong question, what gives life it's value than? Since you don't care about sentient nor intelligence, and existence wouldn't make you logical consistent and is very arbitrary, please explain to me the value that life has. "
"First of all, cops whether as a safety net or preventive measure or not, don't activily enjoy people breaking the law."
"Despite the fact that your source isn't from a medical professional and looks to be from a bias source"
"Regardless I have already proven as to why abortion should be legal, you have still yet to give me good enough reasons to believe it should be illegal. "
"In the context of this scenario, the fetus is not alive yet as it is not sentient nor intelligent which is proven by biology and science. If the mother values a non-sentient nor intelligent being, this is not abortions fault this is the fault of society, and the mother. "
"Lets examine the costs, the costs of abortion are the mother possibly might experience trauma and depression. The benefits are most likely the mother does not have to go through physical pain of carrying the baby or giving birth, the mother saves a great deal of time and money from not raising the baby, and the assuming their are birth complications that may put the mother at risk the mother's life would be saved. "
"This is a straw-man argument, I NEVER said that all actions are morally neutral, I specifically states that all actions are morally neutral by DEFAULT. "
Firstly - please try and maintain consistent formatting : it makes my job much easier!
For abortion debates - normally the only important argument is the discussion around what rights an unborn child should have, why, and how this can be measured - these are all normally boiled down to arguments concerning “person hood” or “humanhood”.
The remainder of the discussion about the morality and generalized utility of abortion is often just talking over one another’s disagreement of this basic fact. If I agree that an unborn baby does not deserve to be treated as a person - then abortion is moral - or not if it does.
So this is the part I will focus on - and unless this is firmly established one way or another - I won’t deal with other arguments either way.
So let’s begin!
Pro: pro argues that the treatment of a fetus as less than human is due it not being sentient, conscious or being able to feel pain.
Cons states that babies are not fully conscious and are not born with autonomy.
Pros counter here with the following quote was excellent: “This is the same reason why we don't value micro bacteria, as micro bacteria has no intelligence and no sentient, this is why as a society we've come to the conclusion that micro bacteria cells aren't worth saving. “
Cons argues that consciousness and the ability to feel pain change and can change during our lives - (like his grand mother).
Con argues that the “potentiality” of a fetus renders it murder.
Con argues that there is more to humanity than those things - there is an appeal to the universe here - that we’re lucky to be here, and no one should be derived of that right.
Pro argues that just being knocked unconscious doesn’t mean there is not a response to pain.
There’s some talk about the meaning of life, con talks about the relative value of different types of life
For potentiality - pro argues that if the potentiality argument applies then why not masturbation. Pro asks what is it that gives life its value.
Out of all of this, what pro does well, is provide me a good reason why I shouldn’t necessarily treat an unborn child as having all the same rights as a person. The appeal to microbes together with sentience showed to me that there is a key difference that allows us to treat life differently based on how what it is and what it does: if an embryo is functionally equivalent to something we treat differently - why not treat it differently.
The only real argument from con was relating to potentiality - and in my view what con was missing is a clear line between when potential is just potential - and when it makes something equivalent to a full human. Pro pointed this out, after some prompting.
What thus meant, is that con primarily gave reasoning to support his position based on what appeared to be arbitrary and subjective determinations. Where as pro used more specific comparative examples.
Out of this, pro did not show that the unborn had no rights at all - but gave me a baseline of how to view where those rights are.
Reading through the arguments provided - cons primary arguments are all predicated on his position that unborn children are not simply blobs of cells”, and that they deserve protection due to the rights established by the arguments I mentioned, and as I do not feel this was established by con - most of cons objections to the 5 month limit fall away as not established.
Con does raise some practical issues with abortion: specifically related to trauma - specifying that regret is present at a rate of 31%, and 11% being prescribed medication. Together with an increased risk of psychosis. Con would have done MUCH better had he gone into much greater detail here and broke down the sources and the outcome - without this, it’s almost a throwaway accusation without any detail on the harm caused - this meant pros response comparing it to the outcomes of pregnancy sufficiently muddied the water for me to not accept it.
As a result Arguments to pro - all other points tied.
ok so I just read the rules for voting and they seem pretty straightforward. I am kinda on the pro side so i may be a tad bias however regardless here's my vote.
Reliable sources should go to pro since one of Cons youtube sources was bias on the subject due to it being created by a religious person who is a known liar, and his other sources he didnt incorporate into his arguments very much partularly with the abortions causing psychological issues argument.. Although I did like the way he sited them by numbering them. con also didnt provide a source about how the majority of abortions happen after 5 months which is a common fact amoung the medical community. They also didn't provide any statistical data to back up the 1 % argument used during the debate.
Conduct goes to Pro since Con avoided the questions pro asked. for example, pro asked " So you would rather see a young girl be raped and be forced to give birth to a fetus which may or may not damage her physically and mentally than to see an organism that most likely isn't sentient yet to be terminated?" And than all con said was pull a red herring and start talking about how the baby shouldn't be punished. pro very obviously put con inside of a trap so con pulled a red herring. Cons over abundence of red herrings on the name the trait argument and the safety net argument by talking about completely unrelated stuff to pros questions and using the red herrings to dodge questions during the debate is very poor conduct on cons part. Not only this but Pro established very clearly in his opening argument that all religious arguments will not be allowed, however than at one point con stated that " The purpose of life is to be found in existence itself. Depriving someone of such a pursuit is equivalent to a universal sin." Here Con is using an appeal to religious morality argument which is poor conduct since pros rules strictly prohibeted these types of arguments.
In short, Pro caught con in several different corners and con resorted to pulling red herrings to dodge the questions, and broke the rules which very obviously bad conduct.
Arguments easily goes to pro. Pro kept debunked cons argument on existence by talking about how " are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?," con never answered this question. what was even funnier was seeing con in the comment section trying to squirm away from the question lol. con also conceeded on safety nets by agreeing to pros statement. all and all this was a pretty poor debate on cons part, as pro stated in the debate that the way society works is " legal until proven illegal," con didnt provide any good reason to outlaw abortion aside from a few contexts. Pro also provided his position clearly in the debate with " I've stated my argument already, my argument is that abortion is moral if the mother became pregnant outside of her control IE rape, the condom broke, or birth control failed, or if it's in the first 5 months before the baby becomes sentient. " Con NEVER clarified his position at all throughout the debate and due to this, his argument was very difficult to understand. On that note Con contradicted his points by stating that " Ok so then if your main value of life is in existence and NOT on sentience nor intelligence, are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?
I said the meaning of life is to be found in existence; not that existence is the meaning of life." Here Con contradicts his statements by stating that existence is to be found in the meaning of life but is not the meaning. Con here also avoids pros underlieing question which is the name the trait question. A question Con claims they answered but never actually answered during the debate, not only is this poor conuduct, but also a very poorly structured argument since it shows that Cons argument is logically inconsistent and pro even points it out by stating that COn would have to be in favor of micro bacteria rights and inanimate object rights.
Argument Point for Con. Reasons below.
Pro's key argument was that abortions before 5 months were acceptable because the fetus would feel no pain and by the definition of Pro's worldview, the fetus would not yet be a life. All argument going forwards stem from this.
Pro also talks about cases of Rape and pregnancies out of the mother's control and justifies them for different reasons. I was disappointed here that Pro did not specify if this applied to abortions after 5 months, but there seemed to be strong implications that his was the case, so I took this as a given because pro left me no choice to by not specifying.
This seemed, to me, to be a tactic to sneak in later term abortions under a weaker condition while using the seemingly stronger 5 month condition to bolster it.
Pro also argued that parents were not responsible not accountable for their sexual behaviors. I feel like pro waved this off rather axiomatically, only using a couple of non analogous examples which were flimsy at best. The false analogies failed to account for the fact that, in the case of abortion. A parent is imposing their will on the human life of the baby, while in Pro's examples, there were simply people risking their own personal safety. This is why I was forced to reject this argument.
Con handles Pros arguments routinely. Taking down the rape argument with Ben Shapiros famous 99% line, which is as convincing as it is true. Con rightly points out that Pros standard does not have proper justification and that there was good reason to believe that fetuses under 5 months are living even if they don't feel pain.
Con correctly states that it is quite possible and practical for one to manage their sexual habits in a responsible way that was also personally beneficial. Even going as far as to give specific pillars by which to make this assessment. The completeness of this particular point made it a strong sell for me and with the arguments I mention. Con successfully sweeps the rug out of all of Pros points categorically and renders his argument useless.
Both sides fought for ground later on. But nothing said impacted my initial assessment of the key points.
I gave Con the conduct point because Pro was being unnecessarily rude even in the opening argument when unprovoked.
Pro repeatedly implies that the negations of his points were logically inferior and would use language to imply this.
Specifically, there was one point where Pro said that making arguments against sexual freedom were and I quote "ignorant." I found the overall tone of this argument to be excessive and a big turn off in the debate.
All other points tied.
existence has self value as con pointed out, so human life has more value to humans than ant life to humans, though con did point out the potential that other life has in upsetting or adding to life and experiences through its own living or death.
I'm going to say this nicely, Cons value in life is existence. I value sentience and partially intelligence. Existence has value, however again by this same logic, there is no difference in the killing of micro bacteria cells, men masturbating which terminates sperm, and women not fertilizing their eggs. Or perhaps people stepping on bugs.
Ok so then if your main value of life is in existence and NOT on sentience nor intelligence, are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?
I apologize. promote was the word i should have used. you may report my vote if you wish. However logically life is more than intelligence and sentience.
That's exactly what I was confused about in his vote as well.
Maybe it was a typographical error? Regardless, reporting his vote would be reasonable because his justification wasn't entirely accurate or properly articulated.
"Con make it clear the potential and value of life whereas pro seemed to dismiss intelligence and sentience in upholding the ideal of life."
When did I ever dismiss intelligence and sentience? I literally framed my entire argument around sentience and partially intelligence. In fact Con was the one who dismissed intelligence and sentience, not me.
that was toward you, i keep forgetting to put receivers in.
I think that its a false assertion that someone of a religious nature would seemingly be biased. Im no more biased on abortion rights than i am anything else concerning God, morality, scripture etc. So if you are worried about that, don't be!
It wasn't meant as an accusation of biased motivation, I just saw on you profile you're a Christian and wanted to be sure you were evaluating the discussion in a fair manner.
Basically, you had a better grasp of what defines life than pink did. Life is not just defined as intelligence and sentience, for example, a rock is seemingly neither, however it is part of life in more general concept and broader definition. Also i can't help if i seem biased in your opinion.
Could you elaborate or reword the justification for me having better arguments?
I just wouldn't like to receive an improper vote, and seeing as you're biased on the subject it's a fair thing to ask.
At casual skimming, it looks like a well researched debate by both sides.
However, due to ethical principles I do not vote on abortion debates (I'm too biased).
"If existence, sentience, and intelligence aren't the meaning of life, then please explain what is the meaning of life. "
i can answer that! serve God. Rocks and trees and what not limited intelligence and as far as we know, rocks have no sentience, thought they do make noise!
You are welcome to debate the actual veracity of the paper itself in the comments. It seems to me a solid analysis regardless of the individual behind it. The video was mainly meant to be a more accessible summation, but perhaps it would've been more prudent of me to stipulate such a thing.
Oh ok then. Thanks.
If you press the quote button it might look more visually appealing. I know the feature surprised me coming from DDO so I just figured I'd mention it before I actually write up my argument.
That's not entirely true. The pregnant woman doesn't know she's pregnant right when it happens. Even if the woman check as soon as possible, It could be the case that it doesn't register as early as it should on the pregnancy test. I think 5 months is probably a fair standard.
I think that 3 months is more than sufficient time to schedule and carry out an abortion. Waiting up to five months is just stupid. If you got raped, you should schedule a pregnancy check. If a condom broke or birth control otherwise failed, you should schedule a pregnancy check.
It goes both ways, anti-abortion advocates aren't anti-choice. I don't know of any 'pro-life' individual advocating for the banning of condoms or preventative measures. In fact, most advocate for them.
I'm not sure it's a matter of cognitive dissonance, women are constantly deceived with simple rhetorical figures such as "her body; her choice." It's only natural they'd see anti-abortion advocates with inarticulable disdain.
I agree with you there. The term pro-life is kind of loaded and implies that the opposition is pro-death. When in reality, Most of them just advocate for separate reasons and most people who support abortion won't actually go through with one themselves because they know deep down that there is death involved. It's a cognitive dissidence thing.
Cool, thanks for the clarification.
When a debate neither in the description (s) or via Minimum-Rating restrictions is stopping you from joining then you are absolutely free to accept. Welcome to DarC. :)
I'm new to this site, but do you mind if I accept?
All abortions? No exceptions?
Guess I can debate you on this, since I agree with you on National Healthcare
Sorry I made a mistake, I meant before sentient. My bad. Well if you disagree with me, I would love for you to accept the debate than. Although if this is your only issue I can address it if you want?
I don't think a broken condom should merit an abortion, that should be an accepted risk beforehand, especially not after sentience
*before
Up until the baby becomes sentient, which normally occurs after 5 months. Or in other certain situations, IE rape, broken condoms, ETC.
I thought abortion was already legalized in the US with Roe V. Wade, up to which trimester are we talking about?