Instigator / Pro
21
1763
rating
29
debates
98.28%
won
Topic
#3226

THBT: Abortion is, on balance, immoral.

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
9
3
Better sources
6
6
Better legibility
3
3
Better conduct
3
3

After 3 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

Bones
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
7,500
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
15
1777
rating
79
debates
76.58%
won
Description

THBT: Abortion is, on balance, immoral.

BoP:
Bones = Abortion is, on balance, immoral.
Contender = Abortion is, on balance, moral.

Definition:
Abortion = a procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus.
Moral = A behaviour, conduct, or topic that is based on valid principles and/or foundations

RULES:
1. No Kritik.
2. No new arguments are to be made in the final round.
3. The Burden of Proof is shared.
4. Rules are agreed upon and are not to be contested.
5. Sources can be hyperlinked or provided in the comment section.
6. Be decent.
7. A breach of the rules should result in a conduct point deduction for the offender.

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@Benjamin
@Bones

PRO: Obviously killing a rapist, in most situations, is moral.

CON: PRO has contradicted his own claim. Apparently, the right to life does not trump the right to desire. PRO admits that even a fully grown, fully conscious person can be justifiably killed if the person in question causes harm and violates the bodily autonomy of another person. This is arguably a concession. Because a fetus does exactly that: it harms and violates the bodily autonomy of women. If killing a rapist is moral, then abortion is undeniably moral as well. Thus, PRO's claim above is nothing short of an indirect concession.

***

The difference between a rapist and the unborn is that the unborn has done nothing wrong, it is INNOCENT. The rapist has inflicted intentional harm on another person, thus doing a moral wrong. The woman, likewise, is doing intentional harm to another human being. While I do not solely agree that killing the rapist is the fitting punishment (an eye for an eye), in the case of a male rapist I do believe they should be castrated if found guilty beyond doubt.

The bodily autonomy argument does not work on those grounds (intentional harm to another human being). I can't use my body to intentionally harm another innocent human being so why should the woman? She does not own the other human being (it is not slavery). Not only this but as pointed out by Pro, a human's environment, size, dependency, or stage of growth should not eliminate them from the right to life. The woman is denying another human being the right to life. If Con wants to use any of those four criteria he should do it consistently to include anyone who is less developed, in a different environment, is bigger or smaller, or is dependent on another human being for life outside the womb. Will he do that? Will the woman decide, based on Cons criterion, that the mother is perfectly justified in killing her one-day-old newborn because it is dependent upon her for survival and she doesn't want the duty and responsibility of looking after it any more? What makes the being any different one day before or one day after birth?

As for personhood (being a person) that is the intrinsic NATURE of all human beings. They are personal beings. Every one of them, allowed to grow will develop more fully into what they are unless they have a natural defect that prevents them from doing so. Should the woman be allowed to kill a human being because it is not showing its full human nature yet? And usually, statistically, the reason to abort is usually a selfish one.

Granted, there are rear circumstances when an abortion is morally permissible. That is when the woman's life is in danger (i.e., tubal pregnancy) and allowing the unborn to continue to grow will kill both the woman and the unborn.

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@Benjamin
@Bones

I could not resist a comment.

Con confuses justified with unjustified:

"Cambridge defines Justified as "not able to be explained in a reasonable way"[htt]."

***

I do not see how one could justify society as the grounds for moral right and wrong. It means the "good" can be bad, even evil, depending on which society one is a part of. Thus, racism and genocide become permissible if society deems them so.

I thought the term "objective" should have been clarified further when speaking of morals.

I thought "intrinsic value" would have been a good point for Pro to expand upon. If human life is not important or worth value, Con would have no means of objection to the senseless killing of human beings. When a person or a country fails to treat all human life as equally valuable any moral wrong can be justified, hence 1.6 billion unborn humans killed since Roe v. Wade. Has there been a greater holocaust? Where else could these many INNOCENT human beings be killed or accepted without extreme moral outrage and recognition?

A further question could have been whether a woman has the right to do with her body whatever she pleases, or whether she has a duty and responsibility, especially when another human being is involved.

Con failed to prove human life does not start at conception, especially when the consensus of scientific opinion backs up conception as the forming or beginning of a new life. If the being growing from conception onwards is not a human life, what kind of life is it? When a human sperm and human egg are fertilized (conception) a new being is formed, distinction from either the sperm or egg DNA. It has its own DNA made up of both.

Con argues he has proven his case within his rebuttals, and i will cover them here:

Abortion is legal and accepted by society. If con had given evidence or argument that this was accepted by society - it would have led to a win. He did not. If he had argued that legality was a moral standard - I would award the sun. He did not.

The closest con came was suggesting that morality is arbitrary - and as a result society can make whatever rules they want.

A fetus cannot have moral value

In his rebuttals con hinges his main points on the idea that a fetus has a different moral value - based on its moral agency, mental capacity and personality. It is indistinguishable in properties from other animals; the chicken killing example was really, really great - we accept that its fine to kill other creatures that don’t have moral agency. This is rounded off by cons argument that abortion is justified to save impacts on the woman. The coup de gras was pointing out that the justification pro uses to kill rapists could arguably used to justify abortion as moral.

The area that is holding me back - is that it’s hard for me to disentangle cons justification for why killing a child is not moral, but killing a fetus is. It’s touched upon throughout, but never concisely explained until the final round. Pro does himself no favours here either; the argument boils down to the choice being arbitrary (which it appears to be the case with his position too). Con does cover some aspects in his final defence.

If I were to compare how many things the different systems seem to explain, cons explains animals vs humans; self defence, etc; pros doesn’t fully explain either satisfactorily. So cons seems like the better standard to determine the morality of killing. I keep coming back to the self defence issue, using killing a rapist to justify abortion. Pointing that out, IMO was so devastating that it makes up for the poorer elaborating in other areas.

With that all being said; cons affirmative case is too sparse, and too limited for me to award the win; while I came within a hairs breadth of doing so - there’s just not enough argument affirming the position for me to justify cons BoP is met. Most of cons burden is murky - albeit less so than for pro - meaning that I would be awarding this based on a single paragraph of the entire debate that pro wasn’t able to defend.

As neither side met their BoP - I think this one is a tie.

Arguments tied.

Conduct: con spent a lot of the debate calling pro a liar, or a hypocrite - that’s not cool at all; this is a debate. I’m not going to award conduct here, but wanted to point it out. Treat the other person with respect, and as if they’re arguing in good faith.

Scientific testimony.

Pro offers a syllogism. That abortion is murder; while he doesn’t explicitly justify why murder is immoral (again no standard), I think its reasonable. Pro goes on to clarify (after contest by con) that murder is the concept of unjustified killing. As before, pro goes from something that seems reasonable, to something that seems specifically ad hoc. Without pro making an attempt to explain what the standard to use to determine whether a murder is “justified” or not - I find it hard to accept this argument.

Con provides a great definition as to why it can be considered justified - by arguing that pregnancy is harmful - pro doesn’t really respond to this other than to say that desire is trumped by kids. In the final round, con points out the beautiful contradiction between killing in self defence being okay, and also claim for that desire does not trump life. This was particularly well spotted and well presented.

This effectively builds up a strong case that pros moral statements - which started our sounding definitive appear arbitrary and ad hoc when examined - are invalid.

Uncertainty.

This argument is odd. It argues that if one is uncertain about whether the fetus is not a person, abortion is unjustified. I think that’s perfectly logical - but fits outside the resolution. If I accept it without reservation - it doesn’t add to pros burden. If con argues that the fetus is not a person, for him to meet his burden; he must meet his burden of proof to show it, if he does - then it would kinda affirm the resolution and this forth argument. That is to say that I feel this argument is largely redundant.

As a result of these; I don’t think pro has met his burden, but the question remains whether con has met theirs, as is clearly stipulated by the rules.

Con implies that if something is not on balance immoral (his opponents burden), it’s on balance modal (his burden), as it is no amoral.

I don’t buy this for a second, as the default position in this appears to be that abortion is on balance neither moral or immoral - a grey area.

Moral framework

Neither side presents a framework to allow me to judge whether things are moral or immoral. Both rely appealing to my (as a voter) moral intuition - that’s really, really bad for both sides, as it makes me have to decide what is moral at some level, rather than having you as debaters show me.

Inconsequential difference.

Pro argues that killing a toddler is immoral, and as there is no consequential difference between the two, it’s immoral to kill fetuses too.

Without a moral framework this is hard to assess; and this is made harder when pro also suggests the two are not completely morally equivalent in R2. Con nails pro to the wall with this. suggesting that if these things are inconsequential why is there a moral difference: con ha also pointed out that chimpanzee zygotes would be considered morally different even due to their similarity. Both of these critical rebuttals were ignored by pro.

Accepting as true Pros argument that life begins at conception and is the only point at which a consequential difference exists - cons unchallenged rebuttals does enough to undermine pros conclusion - if they don’t have the same moral value in other ways: why this one?

While this doesn’t prove cons position - it does make pros argument appear arbitrary; and in the absence of a moral framework by which to judge things - I have to reject this one.

Note1: this wound was entirely self inflicted by pro - he could have stood his ground and argued they are both morally equivalent with little issue IMO, and I would have probably accepted it.

Note2: pro didn’t establish a moral standard, nor a standard for discussing what is “consequential” was or not. It was all implied, and while con picked up on the first, he didn’t explicitly pick up on the second.

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@gugigor

Thank you for voting. I will learn from your feedback.

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@David
@Nyxified
@949havoc

Pinging more people. Feel free to vote.

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@fauxlaw
@Intelligence_06
@Sum1hugme
@Undefeatable

Care to vote?

Vote bump

Vote bump

Vote bump

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@Bones

Thanks you too.

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@Benjamin

Thanks for a good debate, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sorry if I sounded blunt, that's just my syntax.

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@Bones

The uncertainty principle eh? I thought someone would have debunked that by now, its really not all that hard, I hope your using it purely to construct contentions and not because you actually don't see the flaws in it logically.

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@Bones

I now understand both sides, and have given up my one sided stance that abortion is definately immoral. Even if I am wrong, I have grown more rationall and see things more nuanced.

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@Benjamin

You've changed your stance?