Legalizing Abortion in the US

Firstly - please try and maintain consistent formatting : it makes my job much easier!

For abortion debates - normally the only important argument is the discussion around what rights an unborn child should have, why, and how this can be measured - these are all normally boiled down to arguments concerning “person hood” or “humanhood”.

The remainder of the discussion about the morality and generalized utility of abortion is often just talking over one another’s disagreement of this basic fact. If I agree that an unborn baby does not deserve to be treated as a person - then abortion is moral - or not if it does.

So this is the part I will focus on - and unless this is firmly established one way or another - I won’t deal with other arguments either way.

So let’s begin!

Pro: pro argues that the treatment of a fetus as less than human is due it not being sentient, conscious or being able to feel pain.

Cons states that babies are not fully conscious and are not born with autonomy.

Pros counter here with the following quote was excellent: “This is the same reason why we don't value micro bacteria, as micro bacteria has no intelligence and no sentient, this is why as a society we've come to the conclusion that micro bacteria cells aren't worth saving. “

Cons argues that consciousness and the ability to feel pain change and can change during our lives - (like his grand mother).

Con argues that the “potentiality” of a fetus renders it murder.

Con argues that there is more to humanity than those things - there is an appeal to the universe here - that we’re lucky to be here, and no one should be derived of that right.

Pro argues that just being knocked unconscious doesn’t mean there is not a response to pain.

There’s some talk about the meaning of life, con talks about the relative value of different types of life

For potentiality - pro argues that if the potentiality argument applies then why not masturbation. Pro asks what is it that gives life its value.

Out of all of this, what pro does well, is provide me a good reason why I shouldn’t necessarily treat an unborn child as having all the same rights as a person. The appeal to microbes together with sentience showed to me that there is a key difference that allows us to treat life differently based on how what it is and what it does: if an embryo is functionally equivalent to something we treat differently - why not treat it differently.

The only real argument from con was relating to potentiality - and in my view what con was missing is a clear line between when potential is just potential - and when it makes something equivalent to a full human. Pro pointed this out, after some prompting.

What thus meant, is that con primarily gave reasoning to support his position based on what appeared to be arbitrary and subjective determinations. Where as pro used more specific comparative examples.

Out of this, pro did not show that the unborn had no rights at all - but gave me a baseline of how to view where those rights are.

Reading through the arguments provided - cons primary arguments are all predicated on his position that unborn children are not simply blobs of cells”, and that they deserve protection due to the rights established by the arguments I mentioned, and as I do not feel this was established by con - most of cons objections to the 5 month limit fall away as not established.

Con does raise some practical issues with abortion: specifically related to trauma - specifying that regret is present at a rate of 31%, and 11% being prescribed medication. Together with an increased risk of psychosis. Con would have done MUCH better had he gone into much greater detail here and broke down the sources and the outcome - without this, it’s almost a throwaway accusation without any detail on the harm caused - this meant pros response comparing it to the outcomes of pregnancy sufficiently muddied the water for me to not accept it.

As a result Arguments to pro - all other points tied.

ok so I just read the rules for voting and they seem pretty straightforward. I am kinda on the pro side so i may be a tad bias however regardless here's my vote.

Reliable sources should go to pro since one of Cons youtube sources was bias on the subject due to it being created by a religious person who is a known liar, and his other sources he didnt incorporate into his arguments very much partularly with the abortions causing psychological issues argument.. Although I did like the way he sited them by numbering them. con also didnt provide a source about how the majority of abortions happen after 5 months which is a common fact amoung the medical community. They also didn't provide any statistical data to back up the 1 % argument used during the debate.

Conduct goes to Pro since Con avoided the questions pro asked. for example, pro asked " So you would rather see a young girl be raped and be forced to give birth to a fetus which may or may not damage her physically and mentally than to see an organism that most likely isn't sentient yet to be terminated?" And than all con said was pull a red herring and start talking about how the baby shouldn't be punished. pro very obviously put con inside of a trap so con pulled a red herring. Cons over abundence of red herrings on the name the trait argument and the safety net argument by talking about completely unrelated stuff to pros questions and using the red herrings to dodge questions during the debate is very poor conduct on cons part. Not only this but Pro established very clearly in his opening argument that all religious arguments will not be allowed, however than at one point con stated that " The purpose of life is to be found in existence itself. Depriving someone of such a pursuit is equivalent to a universal sin." Here Con is using an appeal to religious morality argument which is poor conduct since pros rules strictly prohibeted these types of arguments.
In short, Pro caught con in several different corners and con resorted to pulling red herrings to dodge the questions, and broke the rules which very obviously bad conduct.

Arguments easily goes to pro. Pro kept debunked cons argument on existence by talking about how " are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?," con never answered this question. what was even funnier was seeing con in the comment section trying to squirm away from the question lol. con also conceeded on safety nets by agreeing to pros statement. all and all this was a pretty poor debate on cons part, as pro stated in the debate that the way society works is " legal until proven illegal," con didnt provide any good reason to outlaw abortion aside from a few contexts. Pro also provided his position clearly in the debate with " I've stated my argument already, my argument is that abortion is moral if the mother became pregnant outside of her control IE rape, the condom broke, or birth control failed, or if it's in the first 5 months before the baby becomes sentient. " Con NEVER clarified his position at all throughout the debate and due to this, his argument was very difficult to understand. On that note Con contradicted his points by stating that " Ok so then if your main value of life is in existence and NOT on sentience nor intelligence, are you against people unintentionally killing micro bacteria cells daily, mothers not fertilizing eggs, or men masturbating and their sperms cease to exist as a result?
I said the meaning of life is to be found in existence; not that existence is the meaning of life." Here Con contradicts his statements by stating that existence is to be found in the meaning of life but is not the meaning. Con here also avoids pros underlieing question which is the name the trait question. A question Con claims they answered but never actually answered during the debate, not only is this poor conuduct, but also a very poorly structured argument since it shows that Cons argument is logically inconsistent and pro even points it out by stating that COn would have to be in favor of micro bacteria rights and inanimate object rights.

Argument Point for Con. Reasons below.

Pro's key argument was that abortions before 5 months were acceptable because the fetus would feel no pain and by the definition of Pro's worldview, the fetus would not yet be a life. All argument going forwards stem from this.

Pro also talks about cases of Rape and pregnancies out of the mother's control and justifies them for different reasons. I was disappointed here that Pro did not specify if this applied to abortions after 5 months, but there seemed to be strong implications that his was the case, so I took this as a given because pro left me no choice to by not specifying.

This seemed, to me, to be a tactic to sneak in later term abortions under a weaker condition while using the seemingly stronger 5 month condition to bolster it.

Pro also argued that parents were not responsible not accountable for their sexual behaviors. I feel like pro waved this off rather axiomatically, only using a couple of non analogous examples which were flimsy at best. The false analogies failed to account for the fact that, in the case of abortion. A parent is imposing their will on the human life of the baby, while in Pro's examples, there were simply people risking their own personal safety. This is why I was forced to reject this argument.

Con handles Pros arguments routinely. Taking down the rape argument with Ben Shapiros famous 99% line, which is as convincing as it is true. Con rightly points out that Pros standard does not have proper justification and that there was good reason to believe that fetuses under 5 months are living even if they don't feel pain.

Con correctly states that it is quite possible and practical for one to manage their sexual habits in a responsible way that was also personally beneficial. Even going as far as to give specific pillars by which to make this assessment. The completeness of this particular point made it a strong sell for me and with the arguments I mention. Con successfully sweeps the rug out of all of Pros points categorically and renders his argument useless.

Both sides fought for ground later on. But nothing said impacted my initial assessment of the key points.

I gave Con the conduct point because Pro was being unnecessarily rude even in the opening argument when unprovoked.

Pro repeatedly implies that the negations of his points were logically inferior and would use language to imply this.

Specifically, there was one point where Pro said that making arguments against sexual freedom were and I quote "ignorant." I found the overall tone of this argument to be excessive and a big turn off in the debate.

All other points tied.