Instigator / Pro
4
1485
rating
11
debates
63.64%
won
Topic
#4266

Is abortion murder from the point of conception?

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Winner
4
0

After 4 votes and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...

the_viper
Parameters
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
Contender / Con
0
1522
rating
14
debates
28.57%
won
Description

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.