Instigator / Pro
4
1551
rating
9
debates
66.67%
won
Topic
#1667

Abortion should be legal

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Winner
4
1

After 5 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

SkepticalOne
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two months
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
1
1487
rating
7
debates
35.71%
won
Description

PGA (Peter) and I will take on the abortion debate. Neither of us will be arguing an absolute position and understand there must be room for nuance. Peter allows abortion when the mother's life is threatened by pregnancy. I accept Roe V Wade has laid out reasonable limits on abortion. I anticipate our main point of contention will be, not in the fringe, but, where abortion is most common. Ie. Most abortions occur at or before 13 weeks of pregnancy. I will argue this should be legal, and Peter will argue against it. Each debater will have their own burden to meet.

There will be no new arguments in the final round - only rebuttal and closing.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

Pro Arguments: Womans Health, and Human Rights.
Con Arguments: Human Being, Personhood, Unjust Societies (Nazi), Dehumanizing Unborn,

Pro made a strong case about Womans health. Great details and stats. Showed harm if pregnancies are banned. I believed what was being said. Con focused a bunch on personhood, and Nazi's Implying that having legal abortions is like running an unjust society not better than the Nazis. Con also kept repeating that everyone is treated equal under the law.
Pro did a good job questioning the definition of personhood, giving some std and cancer examples.

The debate is about the law. Pro made better arguments about the impact of having legal abortion. Con did not paint a clear picture on if abortions are illegal.

Pro's arguments were clearer, and more plausible.

Both did great.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

After Protest, I supplement my original vote and apologize to the parties.

Pros position on Womans Health, and Human Rights were far more tangible, especially when taken into consideration with their opening argument being illegality does not necessarily reduce the occurrence. In addition, Pro did a better job of staying focused on the issue at hand and repeatedly tried to bring the conversation back to that point. It is something that I appreciate.

Con attempted to change the definition of the woman to woman and unborn in stats framing. This for me was an area of no return. Con had just argued about the independent personhood of a fetus. Con then argues that a woman and fetus are one, for the pure purposes of trying to misapply CDC statistics on the acquisition of abortion to woman health, at which point it could be argued there was an adoption of the Violinist theory.

Con also miscategorized the rights differences brought yup between a man and a woman and how they use their body, Their application of the term inalienable does not meet legal standards (inalienable does not mean irrevocable as Pro pointed out)

Finally, credibility is substantially eroded when Nazi's are brought in for comparative purposes. It just undermines the entire argument from Con.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

RFD given here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qahk3ymdFQsyUq0pAEeFs8htdvRIv8O92vo_GZlr7io/edit?usp=sharing

Tougher choice this time around, though the tl:dr is that I feel Pro did a better job weighing his points with the given resolution, whereas Con was a little too focused on a single point to place it solidly in the broader context of the debate.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

Women's Health: Pro argues, with citation, “Of all abortions, an estimated 55% are safe (i.e., done using a recommended method and by an appropriately trained provider)..." This is not a convincing percentage to argue that abortion is "safe" since it acknowledges that there are degrees of safeness. Con argues, with citation, ""CDC...confirmed that there were more than 3,400 pregnancy-related deaths over a five-year period in the United States," and that, "The estimated abortion deaths, same time period --> 3,156,876 - 5,335,59" The two citations indicate that there are a thousand-fold more abortions than pregnancy-related deaths, which suggests that "women's health" is, at best, a relative term, along with "safeness" and not a credible leading argument for abortion.

Person: Con is consistent in the definition of what constitutes "person" as being human, whereas Pro vacillates in that definition.

Rights: Con argues that the unborn, being acknowledged as "persons" and humans, have rights afforded to human. Pro, due to the above vacillation, cannot argue from form both sides of the table and maintain credibility. Example: Pro argues, as a definition, that "Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status." It's the "any other status" that hangs all other Pro claims that the right to life belongs only to the woman, and not the fetus, since "Every person has a moral right to control their own body," when Pro also argues, "Freedom, justice, and peace rests on fundamental human rights such as ‘freedom from slavery, freedom from torture, equality, and the right to life." Pro has not successfully argued that a human is not human at conception, even though arguing that a "person" is not established at conception, hanging "person" on a nebulous hook of "consciousness." Pro has not demonstrated by evidence that a fetus has no consciousness, and must do that to deny a fetus the right that freedom and justice demand.

S.L.E.D. depends on a value being "taken" from the pregnant woman by the fetus, that value being nutrients, even if, in the transfer of nutrients, the woman's body is deprived of them to the degree they are "taken" by the fetus. What in the process specifically requires that "give" is not at least an equal to "take" in that the "give" is not a conscious act by the woman any more than "take" is a conscious act of the fetus? After all, Pro argues that consciousness is not a feature endowed to the fetus.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

1. Health
Pro uses sources to prove a clear harm for almost no gain (prevented abortions).
Con uses YouTube videos in an attempt to get voters to ignore the offered evidence. He does also throw numbers around, but I’ll trust in professional analysis from Guttmacher or other sources above his interpretation. Pro of course defends using expert contextual analysis.

2. Human Rights
Pro uses comparative rights to men to show further harm to women, with the slavery analogy.
With his second and sixth contentions, con revisits this to say that the unborn are the real slaves.
Pro defends that rights should not be stripped away from people. And further that sex is not always consensual, thus there’s cases that side step pro’s entire argument.
Pro further uses the people seeds and violinist analogies (on the Violinist one in particular, con claims pro was refuted on it, without bothering to refute it; or better yet show why an audience member would be obligated to be enslaved as a life support system for someone else...).
This area could be well summarized ith “there is no right to use the body of another without consent.” Given that con dropped things like consent and rape until the final round after pro could no longer respond, and then barely touched them, he doesn’t have a case in favor of human rights.

3. SLED
Pro preemptively argues that no one has the right to forcibly take resources from another, even if that is the only means for them to survive.
With his first contention, Con revisits this to try to make some point out of already conceded material.

4. Personhood
Con asserts (and then later under another slightly different name) that the unborn should have full personhood from the moment of conception.
Con further turns this into a Gish Gallop by repeating it under multiple slightly different named contention headings.
Pro used nih.gov to refute pro’s claims about scientific concensious on when personhood begins. He further uses “human cancer” to show that if con’s argument holds, all cancer treatment in humans must be ceased as human cancer would be a person.
Pro further uses human STDs being treatable to bolster this point.

5. Nazis
Con lengthy declares that pro is a nazi.
Pro points out the obvious fallacious, and hilariously shows that Nazis were also against abortions.
With con continuing this in R2, it’s very hard to take his case seriously.

---

Arguments:
See above review of key points. Somewhat of a messy debate, but the outcome doesn’t seem to favor con in any area, and to vote him would call for likewise voting against cancer and STD treatments.