Is abortion murder from the point of conception?
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with the same amount of points on both sides...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Two days
- Max argument characters
- 4,000
- Voting period
- Two months
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
This debate will cover all stages of pregnancy but will not cover cases of rape, the removal of ectopic pregnancies, or abortions performed to save the life of the mother. It will also not cover legality. Murder will be defined here in the moral sense. The burden of proof is shared.
All arguments given MUST be at least 3,500 characters to prove that both participants are committed to the debate. Failure to adhere to this will result in a loss.
Forfeiting a round will result in a loss.
Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception). Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.
The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.
The more common late-term abortion methods are the classic D&E and induction. [Induction] usually involves injecting digoxin or another substance into the fetal heart to kill it, then dilating the cervix and inducing labor...Classic D&E is accomplished by dismembering the fetus inside the uterus with instruments and removing the pieces through an adequately dilated cervix.
Topic: "Is abortion murder from the point of conception?"
Pro starts arguing that human life begins at conception, and that abortion starts being murder from that point.
Con counters this by explaining that abortion doesnt start being murder from that point, because human life doesnt start at conception. It starts before conception, so abortion starts being murder before conception.
Pro tries to counter this by saying sperm isnt human because dismembered limb isnt human.
Con counters by saying "We run into a paradoxical problem when arguing that it shouldn't be called murder before the stage of conception.
Due to this paradoxical problem, we have to draw the line where there's no conflict.
This is why we have this controversy over abortion and pro life. On the one hand , the argument is not to perform an abortion on what's called a cluster of cells. On the other side, perform one on a cluster of cells as the stage hasn't been reached to look at the cells any different."
Con continues:
"That's why the weight , the WEIGHT of murder still weighs the same. If I have a house, the house is valuable put together just as the individual parts used to put it together were as separated."
Pro does not counter this in any way, and offers no response.
Con concludes in the final round that we dont survive if contraception is used.
The topic is proved in Con's favor. It is not true that abortion is murder from the point of conception, since abortion is murder before the point of conception.
I loved the whole "Life pertains to the holistic spectrum of life" argument.
Every sperm is sacred!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
That said, con committed the not even wrong fallacy. If not storing your sperm in the refrigerator is murder, does not nullify if it's also murder when more advanced in development.
Pro would do well to not argue for the sake of argument when it doesn't support his case. Any attempts to refute con were distractions from his R1 victory.
"He wrote a lot of stupid shit that made me laugh."
~ Indeed.
I wish Viper were still around.
He wrote a lot of stupid shit that made me laugh.
"In this debate, I will attempt to emphasize one central point: that killing a baby is a bad thing."
Had I seen this before voting was done, I would have voted against you.
Using the term baby in this context is both a misnomer and an appeal to emotion fallacy.
There is NO "baby" involved in an abortion, only zygotes, blastocysts, embryos and fetuses. That's it.
By legal, social, psychological, and cultural dictate...a pregnancy doesn't become 'a person' (ie. - a baby) until birth.
Vote for the truth. Do you believe there was life that caused conception?
Yeah ik
The voting period is over 50 days on this one. There’s no rush.
Push for votes
Anyone interested in voting?
Push for votes
Okay, thanks =)
I'll vote on this right after I finish my vote for AleutianTexan and Sir.Lancelot's debate.
Push
all rounds characters have been counted both sides used more than 3500 consistently.
I'll vote later on, I have a few things to finish up but other than that i'll vote afterwards.
Viper sounds good here. Used a point of conception at the two male and female cells joining. At that point, a child has started it's journey in the womb. Mall seemed to go on about "outside the box" theories about self care and such things which weren't relevant to the debate. Viper said it right that a conscious decision to terminate a pregnancy without any physical challenges to the mother and child is purely murder. We allow capital punishment (death penalty) for people that are a danger to society, but we will abhor a person for killing/hurting another for the sake of convenience (I.E. muggings, road rage, child molester, etc). Stopping a pregnancy just for convenience is just like the mugger, road rager, and pedophile.
Ah ok, sounds good!
I can't do rated because my account is new. Once I can I'll debate you under those conditions.
Would you be willing to recreate this debate with a 2-3 days' response time and making it Rated instead of Standard?
I'll vote, regardless of the answer.
Please vote!
Please vote!
which neither side did.
in a debate, confrontation against an idea you oppose will happen, but its not the main focus of a debate. This was an arguement, not a debate. a focus that is pointedly decided on proving the opposition is incorrect that few to no facts or truths are made. That being said, it should be noted that this is not a truism debate because morality and law were not appropriately defined or agreed upon.
here is the thing. murder is a legal term. it goes all the way back to being established as a word to describe unlawful killing.
the semantics and morality of this debate are therefore confused in the approach of both viper and mall.
you cannot seperate legality and morality from the precept of murder, you have to define both legality and morality before doing that. and thats another debate in its self.
one stresses the concept of murder via morality of societal law, while the other stresses the morality and semantics of murder via conscience/godly law.
however, because this website allots points based on logic pertaining to societal and supposedly unbiased reasoning. viper will end up winning this one.
the only thing worth observing in this debate is mall and viper's view of morality. otherwise this is a waste of space unless one or both reconcile the application and source of morality/law as i showed above.
It’s not about defining [a] human being when it comes to this debate. The ONLY issue of any relevance is fetal viability.
I am willing to debate you next if you are interested.
I'm using wordcounter.net to count characters, totals may be a bit off if you're using a different software (spaces, enter, etc.)
Defining a human being is quite complex. We just can't reduce it to a bunch of cells growing and multiplying. Hope you both come up with all the dimensions involved in human nature that really make us human beings.
Stupid debate. Get a damn law and layman’s dictionary. Abortion isn’t murder. Never has been. Never will be.
Okay.
Plz vote when this debate is finished!
I might do this debate if you can increase the characters?
Good luck!