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 4 votes and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Twelve hours
- Max argument characters
- 4,000
- Voting period
- One week
- 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.
To clarify, the first person to forfeit or break the character rule loses immediately, after that the rules no longer apply.
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.
Is abortion murder from the point of conception? I'm not sure this debate got us any closer to an answer.
Pro seemed to hold that the killing of an innocent human is unquestionably murder... in a moral sense (whatever that means). I would have liked to of seen some definitions provided by Pro since he is using murder in an irregular way. Pro should also understand ways in which an innocent human can be killed without 'murder' being an appropriate label (war for instance). Precision can strengthen Pro's arguments, imo.
On the other hand, Con suggested that intelligence is required for an entity to be a moral agent. This standard leaves a lot to be desired. I understand Con is trying to distill morality down to fundamental components, but Con should probably reconsider. A standard which would hold Koko the gorilla with more moral value than an infant is problematic to say the least. I would have like to see Con playing a bit more offense rather than defending positions he didn't need to take.
Tie on arguments.
I think there is a question regarding the use of ChatGPT. Conduct to Pro.
I thought con was doing ok, until he argued that when talking about AI he wasn't talking about AI. Pro took a bad hit there in not explaining why killing robot people and animals would not be murder (he recovered at the end of that round with pointing out that as a first step we should assign protections to those which most clearly resemble us and are therefore easy to assign protections to) but con could not follow through with even understanding the hint of what he himself was talking about.
Honestly, I want to just assign a legability point to pro due to con not formatting his case at all (not even line breaks after the quotes); but as is, I have to give full victory to pro for the blunders.
I'm also very concerned with the mention of ChatGPT, leading to the strong suspicion that con's argument is plagiarized.
Honestly, neither of you seemed very interested in addressing the topic throughout - you both seemed more interested in the tangents. The topic is:
“Is abortion murder from the point of conception?”
That’s a fact topic, and early on, there’s some debate over it. What is being aborted? Can it be called murder to abort that stage of a human life? Those are relevant questions, as is the question of what murder is in the “moral sense,” though I think those questions answer it for the purposes of this debate.
Everything else is window dressing. Pro argues multiple times that he’s going to prove why it’s bad to abort, which is as irrelevant to this topic as Con’s argument that murder of certain forms of life isn’t bad. Abortion can be murder without making any judgement calls on whether said murder is justified. And much as Pro’s argument uses this as a portion of his overall argument, Con relies on it almost entirely, as though the main purpose of his argument is to challenge the supposition that murder is bad instead of engaging with the central question of the debate. There is most definitely some interesting discussion to be had on these tangents, but as they’re not related to the debate, I go with what I have.
Con effectively conceded the debate in R3 by saying that he wouldn’t engage in the semantic debate any further and then in R4 by bringing up the legal definition for murder as justification for his position on the topic, the latter of which doesn’t work because of the specification made as regards the definition of murder in the description. Pro, meanwhile, largely rests his hat on the argument that the scientific community has already effectively defined when a human being starts, so it must be murder. I’ve got problems with that point, mainly because they don’t engage with the “why” of it from a biological perspective, but there are more logical justifications and they aren’t really challenged, so they stand. That’s enough to win.
Neither side was very impressive.
Both Pro and Con have a huge misunderstanding of what the conversation is about. This is not a discussion on morality, this is a discussion of semantics.
The subject isn’t whether murdering babies is wrong or not, the subject is whether abortion constitutes murder or whether it doesn’t.
Pro is mostly responsible for going off-track here because he sources that a fetus is the development of a human and implies that science has proven life begins at conception. But this doesn’t actually prove the resolution.
Con tries to object by comparing the intelligence levels of other organisms in order to claim a fetus is not living. Both Pro and Con talk about the ethics of euthanizing coma patients and Con had a huge opportunity to turn this argument in his favor but he conceded.
Pro is the only one to provide sources, so while arguments are a tie, this one actually gives the point to Pro.
Pro wins.
Either way, that’s respectable.
I lack the fortitude to do that.
First it was one, then a clone of it with an extra round… it just kinda spiraled with being able to hold pro’s arguments in my head and see the different ways people tried to refute them. I will not be making a habit of this.
You must have a lot of patience to read all these same debates and vote.
I plan on voting before time has run out.
Saw your vote. Will be interested to see what arguments you use.
Only 4 days left to vote!
Push
Sounds good
Can't promise it, but I should be able to get a vote up before the end of the voting period.
Push, only 5 days left
Plz vote! Deadline is quick.
This isn’t a Rated debate, so I wouldn’t worry anyway.
But fear not, I’ll vote before the deadline. Even if I slack off till the last minute.
Plz vote! Voting period is only one week.
You have a lot of confidence for a reply guy who can't defend his arguments.
Bwahaahaaahaaa!!!
Your delusions of grandeur are hilarious.
And your obnoxious pomposity is duly noted.
LoL 😂
False. I am less intelligent for having read your arguments. Perhaps you can present your opinions in a formal debate, where I can correct them.
No, you did NOt tell me anything that I didn’t already know.
I know everything about the issues of abortion. Everything. You and your ilk do not.
Just a moment ago you defended your position with a legal statute. So does the reply you linked to. So it appears I did tell you something you didn't know.
I invite you to read my recent reply to another clown arguing against abortion here: #8
https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/9047/posts/378916
No shit sherlock. Tell me something that I do not already know. FFS! *facepalm*
Abortion was around long before the US legal system. Besides, immoral things are legal all the time.
Abortion and the law are not mutually exclusive; they are tightly wound with one another. You cannot argue one without the other.
This debate isn't over legality, so I'm not sure why you're citing a legal statute. But I'd be happy to debate you on the same topic once this one is over.
"To argue that abortion is not killing an innocent human being, also known as murder, my opponent must establish that an unborn child is not human..."
~ There is only one mammalian species on this planet that possesses the level of sentience that human beings do, and that species is homo sapiens. As such, homo sapiens - i.e., human beings - are the only ones having debates/discussions about "abortion" rights of female human beings. Not any other species. To levy such a demand demonstrates that the one making said demand knows less than they think they know about the topic at hand.
You're also conflating a pregnancy with being [a] human being, which it is not; not for the legal purposes of establishing the legal felonious crime of murder. A pregnancy has NO legal rights under law. The personal liberty rights of the girl/female take precedence over any internal matter. What is in and of her body is under the auspices of her control and none other.
Murder requires an already born human being taking the life of another already born human being for it to be, "murder."
"...that an unborn child is not innocent..."
~ "innocence" is completely and utterly irrelevant in this debate/discussion. It has absolutely nothing to do with guilt, innocence, spirts, souls, or religion.
"... or that abortion does not involve killing an unborn child."
~ Using the term "child" is a flagrant misnomer. A pregnancy =/= [a] child. Potentiality =/= Actuality. Never has. Never will.
A pregnancy has ZERO rights. 1 USC 8: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8
As this statute makes perfectly clear (predicated on the 14th Amendment), one must be born before they are bestowed all the rights, privileges and equal protection of the laws.
Pretty sure an abortion is not a flock of crows. 🙃