args

Abortion should be legal.

I doubt that my opponent has even read my arguments, as he has gone down the route of arguing: 1) A human foetus is not a person 2) Abortion is not murder This is a straw-man fallacy (1) . Nowhere do I claim that a foetus is a person, and nowhere do I claim that abortion is murder. So arguing against these claims is a misrepresentation of my argument. I have argued that abortion should be illegal based on the two facts that: 1) A human foetus is a human being 2) Abortion is homicide If my opponent is to disprove my arguments, he must either prove that a human foetus is not a human being or that abortion is not homicide. Arguing that a foetus is not a person or that abortion is not murder does not address my arguments, and so they cannot therefore be valid rebuttals. Because of this, because of the fact that the vast majority of my opponent's arguments are dedicated to claiming that abortion is not murder and that a foetus is not a person, I do not need to respond to them as they do not refute my argument in round 1 that abortion should not be legal. One part that deserves response, however, is the part about bodily autonomy. Unlike the rest of the arguments, this can be considered to attack my position; it is not entirely a straw-man fallacy. Pro states that: 'There is a legal excuse - the right to Bodily Autonomy. This is the right which allows us to decide who may use our bodies, what parts they may use, what they may be used for and for how long. This means if I do not consent to the use of my uterus by a fetus I have the right to remove said fetus. Bodily Autonomy is the most basic human right.' Yet there are many flaws in this argument. Firstly, the right to bodily autonomy is not the most basic human right, this title belongs to the right to life(2). This is because without this right, we cannot experience the fruits of all other human rights including the right to bodily autonomy (bodily autonomy is useless if we are not alive). Furthermore, the right to life is the first right listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (3), this would imply that it is the most fundamental human right. Therefore, as the right to life is more fundamental than the right to bodily autonomy, abortion is not permissible in respect to human rights because it is a direct contest of the foetus's right to life against the mother's right to bodily autonomy, and the former supersedes the latter when we consider the magnitude of the rights involved. This is a bit off-point, but note that when we talk of rights, we talk of human rights, not person rights. Nevertheless, bodily autonomy cannot be used to justify the vast majority of abortions because, by willingly engaging in vaginal sexual intercourse, one is tacitly consenting to the possibility of conception. This is because vaginal sexual intercourse (VSI) is intrinsically ordered towards procreation. To illustrate this concept, I will use an analogy. Let us suppose that I want to cycle from A to B. If I am in A, the act of cycling in the direction of B is intrinsically ordered to reaching B. Therefore, even if one does not expressly consent to reaching B by cycling towards B, they are tacitly consenting to the possibility of reaching B by cycling towards it. This applies to VSI. Even if one does not expressly consent to conception by engaging in VSI, they are tacitly consenting to the possibility of conception because VSI is intrinsically ordered towards conception. The only reason VSI exists is to lead to conception. Therefore, when Pro states: 'This means if I do not consent to the use of my uterus by a fetus I have the right to remove said fetus.' This is no justification for the vast majority of abortions, because most abortions are sought even when the VSI was consented to, which entails tacit consent to the use of one's uterus by a foetus. The terms of the condition for abortion (that the foetus's use of one's uterus is unconsensual) are not met. (1) http://www.nizkor.org... (2) http://www.thepersonalistproject.org... (3) http://www.un.org...