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Abortion should be banned.

Introduction Welcome people of DDO! I thank kingkd for giving me an opportunity to debate this important issue. In the following I will argue that Abortion should not be banned. To do so I will first of all offer a negative case in which I am going to respond to my opponents opening statement, secondly I will offer a positive case in which I am going to present several arguments in favor of abortion by the Australian philosophers John Leslie Mackie and Peter Singer and the American philosopher David Boonin. Negative Case: Responding To My Opponent 1. Personhood and Killing In his first contention Pro argues that even abortion proponents concede that a fetus is a human being, a person even, which seems to imply that we should therefore refrain from aborting pregnancies. I am inclined to agree with the first part, but this is no concession at all. Many liberals argue about some point in time when a fetus becomes a human being, but I think this is arbitrary. As such none of my arguments will revolve around this. However I disagree with the latter part, because my opponent did not define a person at all. John Locke for example defined a person as "a thinking intelligent being that can know itself as the same thinking thing in different times and places"(1). By this definition no fetus would ever be a person. Since I my arguments will have the above outlined focus I want to take a brief moment and clarify what it is I am exactly arguing for: the question to me is not whether a fetus is a human being or not or living or not, but rather the more general question of whether (or when) it is permissible to end the live of something or someone. This question is not to be answered by simply pointing to race, sex, age, intelligence or species. 2. Don Marquis 'FLO' Argument and Singers Totipotent Cell Objection Premise 1: Having a future of value is the basis for the right not to be killed. Premise 2: Fetuses have a future of value. Conclusion: Fetuses have the right not to be killed. (2) This is Don Marquis Future-Like-Ours argument against abortion in premise-conclusion form. Accepting it leads to unacceptable consequences, which I will show with Peter Singers' Totipotent-Cell Objection (3). I put it in premise-conclusion form in a recent debate (4): P1. A fertilized ovum has a FLO. P2. If one single cell that can develop into a person (fertilized ovum) has a FLO, any single cell that can develop into a person has a FLO. P3. Denying such a cell a FLO is immoral. P4. Abortion denies FLO's C1. Abortion is immoral. P5. A fetus consist at some point of totipotent cells (TC). P6. All TC's can develop into persons if separated. C2. All TC's have a FLO. C3. Not separating TC's is denying them a FLO. C4. Not separating TC's is immoral. Accepting Don Marquis argument commits us to the view that not extracting every embryo from its mother womb to split it up and implant all totipotent cells into several surrogate mothers is immoral. This is of course absurd since it is virtually impracticable on a large scale and most importantly even if we could do that the human race would go extinct since we cannot allow any embryo to develop into an adult human being. Positive Case: Arguments In Favor Of Abortion 1. J.L. Mackie: A Universal Approach (5) In his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong Mackie argues that the arguments against abortion generally conclude or presuppose that a fetus (as a human being) is already a legal subject and as such are at their core arguments from continuity: if newborns have a right to life, claiming that children shortly before birth do not is arbitrary, if this point in time is arbitrary so is the point before that and so on until we arrive at conception. Speaking of rights for germ cells is of course ridiculous since nature is way to wasteful for that, hence the continuity ends at conception. However Mackie thinks that this discontinuity is a rather inappropriate line for deciding what is permissible and what is murder, one of the worst crimes someone can commit, just because it is a 'notable' occasion. Other than that there is no big difference between a sperm cell and an egg cell and a sperm cell inside an egg cell. A gradual acquisition seems more reasonable. Therefore Mackie concludes that: 1. a mother's right over her own body outweighs the right to life of the fetus at least for the early part of her pregnancy, 2. if a mother's health is in danger due to the pregnancy, the fetus' right to life is overridden for the full duration of the pregnancy, 3. if a mother does not want the child (because she was raped), the fetus' right to life is overridden, too. 2. P. Singer: A Preference Utilitarian Approach (6) Preference utilitarianism (hereafter PU) is a modern version of the classical hedonistic utilitarianism (hereafter HU) of Bentham and Mill. Whilst the HU decides what is right and what is wrong on the basis of whether it increases or decreases welfare, the PU decides what is right and what is wrong on the basis of whether it satisfies or frustrates desires. Pro points out that the brain development begins rather early in pregnancy and that "By the sixth week, the brain emits measurable brain impulses", but I would like to remind everyone that "measurable brain impulse" is a rather vague account of embryonic neural activity. In the sixth week the entire embryo is smaller than the size of a dime (7). This should give an impression of the mental capabilities of an embryo at this age and concluding that it feels just as we do is erroneous. "It is concluded that the basic neuronal substrate required to transmit somatosensory information develops by mid-gestation (18 to 25 weeks), however, the functional capacity of the neural circuitry is limited by the immaturity of the system."(8) This suggests that a fetus cannot have any preferences up to this point and as such Singer concludes that we have no moral obligations towards fetuses. 3. D. Boonin: A Desire Based Approach (9) Boonin's Organized Cortical Brain Activity argument basically goes as follows: P1) Organized cortical brain activity must be present in order for a being to be capable of conscious experience. P2) Prior to having a conscious experience, a being has no desires. P3) Desires are necessary in order for a being to have a right to life. P4) The fetus acquires organized cortical brain activity between 25 and 32 weeks gestation. C) Therefore, the fetus has no right to life prior to organized cortical brain activity. Boonin's desire based account is fairly similar to Singers' PU with slightly different implications for other issues, so my justification of Singer's account is fitting for this argument, too. Conclusion In this first round I gave a strong account in favor of abortion. Next round I will defend it against objections from my opponent. Sources (1) http://plato.stanford.edu... (2) http://jme.bmj.com... (3) Peter Singer, Practical Ethics P143 (4) http://www.debate.org... (5) J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Chapter 8.9 A Right to Life (6) Peter Singer, Practical Ethics Chapter 6 (7) http://www.hhmi.org... (8) http://informahealthcare.com... (9) David Boonin, A Defence of Abortion