Friday, September 9, 2005

Abortion is Not Moral
Disclaimer: I know this is a bit cliche, deal. We were discussing arguments in philosophy and my teacher put up an argument to show that abortion is immoral. There were some complications with the premises so he changed it to capital punishment. This sparked my interest to create an argument to prove that abortion is immoral. If you find a discrepancy in my premises let me know and I'll correct it so that the conclusion follows.

P1 "Moral," in this argument, is synonomous with "just"
Similarly "immoral" is synonomous with "unjust"
P2 Stealing is the taking of someone else's property without permission of that
person.
P3 According to United States law, stealing is unjust.
P4 Each person's life belongs only to himself.
a) while one may be responsible for another's life he does not own that other person's life, e.g., if a mother decides to slay her new born baby she is charged with infantcide, or, in layman's terms, murder. Murder, of course, is the stealing of life from another.
P5 Abortion is the taking of one human being's life by another without the
former's consent.
a) what constitutes life: the devision, multiplication, and growth of cells, thus life at the moment of conception.
b) what could constitute to being a human being:
i) chromosomes - at conception all chromosomes that creat a Homo sapian sapian are present, thus a human being comes into existance at the moment of conception.
ii) physical make-up, i.e. presence of two hands, two eyes, nose, etc. - saying that the fetus is not a human being because it doesn't physically resemble a full grown human being is the same thing as saying malformed person is not a human being. However, a man will be tried for murder, a.k.a. stealing another's life, if he slays a malformed man the same as he would for one who had the figure of Adonis. Thus we have a contradiction and cannot accept this as a requirement to being human.
iii) ability to care for self - some adults cannot care for themselves, infants and toddlers definately cannot care for themselves. Killing (stealing life) an invalid, child, or any person who falls under the classification "cannot care for self" is a homicide victim, thus another contradiction and we cannot accept this as a requirement for being human.
iv) ability to practice reason well - again, infants, children, and some adults (i.e. crack addicts) do not have the ability to practice reason well. Yet, if one was to steal the lives of any of the above it would be considered illegal and thus another contradiction and thus we must throw out this definition as well.
c) if any claims to being human are denied for person already on the planet and out of the womb there is hypocracy and contradiction within the system for deaths of them by another are considered murder, stealing of life, and an unjust action.
C Abortion is an unjust act according the precepts of stealing set up by the United States laws for it involves the stealing of life from another without the other's consent and as it is unjust it is also immoral.
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