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Abortion should be banned.

Introduction This round I will again present a negative case for Marquis' FLO argument and Kaczor's constitutive property argument. After that a positive case in favor of my arguments will follow. Clarification 1. Humanhood In the first round, section 1. Personhood and Killing I stated that I agree with Pro when he says that a fetus is a human being, but I explicitly made clear that this is no concession, since my arguments do not revolve around the starting point of human life, yet he pretends that it is. This completely misses the point of my arguments. Moreover he insists that being dependent on someone else (fetus on the mother) does not someone nonhuman, however I never claimed that it does. 2. Personhood In my opening statement I pointed out that my opponent did not define what he means by "person". Hence I presented one possible definition by John Locke which my opponent rejects on the basis that Google uses a different one. It is completely fine to stipulate one particular definition of a word as long as it is clarified at the beginning. However he then says that I admitted that a fetus is a person, which is simply not true, I quote: "Pro argues that [...] a fetus is [...] a person. [...] However I disagree" I can easily agree that a fetus is a "a human being regarded as an individual", but then deny that killing such an individual on the basis of some label like "person" is wrong. This is again no concession. Negative Case: My Opponents Arguments 1. Chris Kaczor's Constitutive Property Argument (1) Premise 1: You are the same being as you were when you were a fetus Premise 2 You are a person (hopefully:) ) Conclusion: The fetus is a person I suppose that by "person" my opponent is referring to "a human being regarded as an individual", since this is apparently the definition established for this debate. One might wonder what is meant by "constitutive property", because it was not explained by my opponent. In his book The Ethics of Abortion, Kaczor argues that only a property that you have at every point in your existence is a constitutive property: p is a constitutive property iff an individual has p at every point in its existence With that out of the way, Pro implicitly made clear by using this argument that personhood is constitutive, i.e., humans are individuals constitutively. "Person" usually has strong descriptive connotations of moral status, however this is merely a linguistic label and Singer's and Boonin's accounts can safely accept this without loosing any force. (This is no concession, in case it will be alleged that it is) 2. Don Marquis' 'FLO' Argument My opponent points out that an abortion is the intentional killing of a being, whilst not splitting totipotent cells is letting nature take its natural course. He believes that this makes a difference in moral evaluation, so what I will argue for is that murder and omitted aid do not make an evaluative difference that would justify calling the first a horrible crime and the latter a permissible course of action. A reconstruction of Pro's argument: 1) Intentionally killing someone is morally reprehensible. 2) Omitting aid to someone is morally permissible. 3) Abortion intentionally ends the life of a fetus. 3.1) Abortion is morally reprehensible. 4) Not splitting totipotent cells is merely omitted aid. 4.1) Not splitting totipotent cells is morally permissible. But this is an ad hoc justification. Imagine an adult human being, John, clinging to a ledge: 5) Kicking John of the ledge is intentionally ending his life. 5.1) Kicking John of the ledge is morally reprehensible. 6) Not pulling up John and letting him fall to his death is merely omitted aid. 6.1) Letting John fall to his death is morally permissible. I'm sure nobody would agree to this, therefore we should reject not only my opponents defence, but also Marquis' argument in general. Positive Case: Defending My Arguments 1. Mackie's Universal Approach This argument was not covered in Pro's rebuttal, because of that I extend all points made by Mackie. 2. PU and the Desire Approach I replaced section 2. and 3. to maintain the flow of this rebuttal. The thing that my opponents whole argument hinges on is that he "proved" that a human embryo has brain waves. First all I would not call citing a pro-life website a medical "proof" that "measurable brain waves" constitute what gives an embryo the moral status of an adult. I searched the cited website and found that the passage Pro refers to is in turn relying on the following quote from the BBC documentary Biology of Prenatal Development: "By six weeks, the cerebral hemispheres are growing disproportionately faster than other sections of the brain. The embryo begins to make spontaneous and reflexive movements. Such movement is necessary to promote normal neuromuscular development. A touch to the mouth area causes the embryo to reflexively withdraw its head." (2) A reflex action is a "involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus" (3) They are not conscious actions and the fetus is not in any way shape or form sentient at this point, it cannot feel pain, has no personality, cannot see itself as a distinct individual over time and it has no preferences and no desires which would be required for PU and the desire view. As such my arguments stand. To settle this issue I will quote The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine again: "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. Thus, 18 to 25 weeks is considered the earliest stage at which the lower boundary of sentience could be placed. At this stage of development, however, there is little evidence for the central processing of somatosensory information. Before 30 weeks gestational age, EEG activity is extremely limited and somatosensory evoked potentials are immature, lacking components which correlate with information processing within the cerebral cortex. Thus, 30 weeks is considered a more plausible stage of fetal development at which the lower boundary for sentience could be placed."(4) 3. General Objections Suicidal people Suicide prevention ethics is not an easy topic and it is beyond the scope of this debate to give a definitive answer but none the less I will present possible responses from a preference utilitarian and someone who holds to Boonin's desire view. Preference Utilitarianism: As with every consequentialist theory there is no general rule that could be issued to every case, hence I will list some factors that need to be taken into consideration. Usually before anyone wants to seriously end her life, she will have a long way of suffering leading up to this final decision. A preference utilitarian would answer that it is morally reprehensible to make someone endure the suffering and that it is obligatory to help the person way before she actually looses all interest in living. As for someone with an actual interest in dying (assuming this it is possible), physician assisted euthanasia would spare her unnecessary suffering and is therefore a permissible course of action. Desire View: Boonin differentiates between multiple kinds of desires, the important ones for this objection are actual and ideal desires: "Imagine that a hiker is at a fork in the road and must choose to go right or left. In this situation, the hiker ends up choosing to go left because the left path is more scenic. But little does the hiker know there is a landmine on the left trail which will kill the hiker if he takes that path. The hiker's "actual" desire was to go left, but his "ideal" desire was to go right and not hit the landmine. If this particular hiker knew about the landmine, he would certainly have gone right. Likewise, the suicidal person might have an "actual" desire to not go on living, but if this person was in a situation with better circumstances, his "ideal" desire would be to live."(5) Brainwashed people This objection is fairly similar to the last one and therefore my responses will be fairly similar as well. Preference Utilitarianism: It might very well be that it is possible to brainwash someone to a degree that she would not care to live on. However if we think of brainwashing, we think of torture, pain and suffering, none of which would be permissible to a preference utilitarian. It is therefore morally reprehensible to brainwash people in this fashion. Desire View: Boonin's differentiation between actual and ideal desires fits here as well. It might be that a brainwashed person does not have an actual desire to live on, but she was better informed about her situation she would not want to die. Conclusion My opponent presents a new argument and raises a number of interesting objections, but ultimately they miss their mark. He keeps mentioning that a fetus is a human, however I pointed out on multiple occasions that this is not what I am arguing against. Sources (1) Chris Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion (2) http://www.abort73.com... (3) http://en.wikipedia.org... (4) http://informahealthcare.com... (5) David Boonin, A Defence of Abortion