For details on the rules of a Breidablik based Field of Honor challenge, click here.

New comers to the Breidablik Field of Honor, Tsuri and Wizard, will face off. The subject will be: Abortion. Is having an abortion, morally, unsound? Tsuri states an indefinite yes, while Wizard disagrees.

Standard honor will apply to both combatants.

The panel of judges will be as follows.

• Miss Sarah
• MissyK
• Tweety
• hearmyrawr
• Krysbaby, and if she doesn't bother to show... L Lawliet
• Njord
• Forseti
• Callmaury
• Sir. Lucian Adonis
• thesailorcallednick

Tsuri has offered to make the opening statement...

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Baldr's own "Poetic Edda":
• Breidablik's Field of Honor: Rules of Engagement
• How to Build an Aura.
• Baldr is better than you. Accept it.
• Why most women are morons.
• Baldr takes requests. Send him a visitor message if you want Baldr to write something in particular.

If you need to contact Baldr, please consider using the Visitor Message system before private messaging him.

I believe the debate is intended to be more to the point of legality than morality, but we'll just go with that, I guess.

Tsuri mentioned in the original thread that he would like to make the opening statement this afternoon, so I defer to him.

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You know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.

Sorry for the slightly late post but here is my opening statement regardless.

Let me ask all of you a question. At what point would you consider a fetus/embryo alive?
Many argue that a fetus can and should not be considered alive until it is conceived. Some even prefer to say that a fetus still is technically a part of the mother until conception. However simple biology would tell us that the embryo is significantly different from the mother. This is due to the embryo having traits from both parents thus making it a unique individual. Therefore if the mother chose to cause this fetus to die in any intentional way, it should be considered homicide.

From a completely legal standpoint the government should not allow any crime, especially homicide to be overlooked, nonetheless legalized. By sheer concept abortion violates basic human rights. Even those who can't speak for themselves are protected by basic human rights. We even have an adoption system set in most countries, so even if the parents were incapable of supporting a child, they could simply give them to an adoption center and still be able to have contact with him/her.

As of yet, the Supreme Court has not been able to determine an exact date at which an embryo can be considered alive therefore we should assume that it is alive from it's creation.

Although Baldr mentioned the moral objections I will stick with our original plan to talk on a mainly legal basis.

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Over 9000 hours in MS Paint.

I must say your argument is very respectable in that you did not bring up any religious issues to try to support the legality of abortion, and rather put it purely medical terms. I believe you've already received a due amount of honor just for that.

According to the general medical consensus, the fertilized egg is not considered a fetus until 8-10 weeks into the pregnancy (see Pregnancy.org --> Preconception, Pregnancy and Early Childhood. It's what we do best, American Heritage Dictionary), meaning the embryo really has minimal distinguishable human characteristics until that stage.

I'm pretty sure you have your terms mixed up here. Conception is the moment when the egg becomes fertilized by the sperm, forming a zygote, not the moment at which the fetus exits the vagina and becomes a newborn.

On this point, I somewhat agree with you. I do agree that it is not the mother, however I do not fully agree on your point about traits.

While the zygote is just an embryo, traits, even the most obvious such as gender and skin color, are indistinguishable. The traits of this embryo have not 'bloomed' yet, and can therefore be considered negligible.

The act of homicide is legally the killing of one human by another human. A good portion of Americans, mostly for religious reasons, believe that the fetus is already a person. No matter what their emotional attachment to a specific fetus may be, it is not medically a human, and ending its 'life,' if you want to call it that, is therefore not murder.

I believe I mostly covered this statement in my last point, but just to reiterate, because the fetus is not medically human, it can not be called homicide to abort the fetus.

Judging by recent acts, such as the Patriot Act (though recently overturned, I believe), the handling of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, and the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the United States government does not seem to be so interested in human rights, unfortunately.

However, the name 'Human Rights' clearly states that the rights are for humans, and as I showed before, a fetus is not a human. Inherently, they do not command the same rights as a baby just minutes old.

True, and it is certainly an option. However, there are many cases where a pregnancy would put the mother at risk, and when this is the case, adoption is not a clear solution. The risk of undergoing a nine-month pregnancy term can never be exactly determined, so because we do not want to have to draw a fine line of when an abortion is OK and when it is not, we must legalize it for everyone. We can't let potential mothers die for fetuses.

We all know what happens when you assume. However, the zygote, which starts to develop a brain at week 4, does not have any actualy mental capacity until week 10. Without the ability to react, even instinctually (the ability to reason comes much, much later), the fetus can hardly be considered alive.

Sorry about this taking so long; I lost internet as I was writing this.

A quick question for Baldr: do all the judges get pm'd so they know that they are judging?

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You know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.

Baldr was hoping they'd check it out. But if they don't check it after awhile, Baldr will contact them.

__________________
Baldr's own "Poetic Edda":
• Breidablik's Field of Honor: Rules of Engagement
• How to Build an Aura.
• Baldr is better than you. Accept it.
• Why most women are morons.
• Baldr takes requests. Send him a visitor message if you want Baldr to write something in particular.

If you need to contact Baldr, please consider using the Visitor Message system before private messaging him.

Baldr, can I judge for the next one?

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Before I begin my retort, I would like to say that I am now aware that I misused some terminology. That was a fault on my part and I will try to watch out for those type of errors. However I must commend you on anticipating what I meant to say and basing your response based on that.

However the zygote is still genetically different from the mother. Distinguishing something as unique by their physical traits is very inefficient since many people can have extremely similar appearances. You could easily say that since two twins look alike, that they are one in the same. However you and me both know that is false. The only accurate way of proving similarity (or lack of) would be through genetics.

What more is a fetus than a developing human? At an extremely early developmental stage, on medical terms we could not call a zygote a human since it lacks the traits that we would consider human. However by week 4 the zygote does develop certain human characteristics such as a brain. By week 3 of development the zygote is now considered an embryo and in most cases takes on a human shape and starts to begin organ development. It's neural system also begins to development shortly thereafter. It would be pretty rash to say that with all these characteristics that embryo is still not human. Maybe not a fully functioning human but still human in a medical sense. Also during week 4-5 the embryo does have most if not all organs developed.

Refer to my last post. If it has the majority of traits that make it human than it should still be considered homicide even if the human itself is still developing.

However that is a fault on the government's behalf. We can't do much except hope for our government to do what's right. However that is not the case all the time.

As for human rights once again please refer to my previous post. If the fetus/developing human carries the traits that make it medically a human than why not consider a human? You did say previously that the fetus does not have the ability to act instinctively. However by the same token a person in a coma or medical "vegetable" also lacks the ability to act on instinct. Does that also make them inhuman?

This is a very good point that you have brought up. Yes there are cases where a pregnancy could endanger the mother's life. However this an extreme grey area that would have to be disputed by the legal system. On this area I do slightly agree that the mother should choose to save her own life. This is a simple case of a life for a life. Legally we can't say which life is more valuable.

I'm am going to add supplemental information in this section. They're random thoughts on all of the above quotes. I might have to dispute your statement about the baby lacking basic instincts. As early as week 10 (still in the range at which an abortion can be legally performed) the baby can develop enough muscle tissue to begin to kick. although very minor would you or would you not consider this an act based on instinct? Abortions can be performed from 5 weeks of development to 16 weeks of development. If were to be really picky about our classification of humans we could say that the embryo is not a human at 5 weeks. However an abortion can also be performed at 16 weeks. By 16 weeks most babies begin to move and kick on their own accord. Does that not show basic instinct or intelligent thought?

I'm not sure if I'm going into ethical territory but I would like you to take a look at this picture:


If you were to take a glance at that picture at any given moment you would say that was a baby? Most likely yes. From a physical standpoint the fetus does hold most if not all characteristics of a human.

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Over 9000 hours in MS Paint.

Completely fine. The intent of the message you were trying to convey was clear, so I don't consider that to be an issue at all.

This is an excellent point. However, it would be ridiculous for me to argue that this was a very good reason to abort. It's just one minor thing that makes the fetus less human in my eyes. There are many other, more important reasons why abortion should be legal, really.

Very true, but the brain does not have significant mental capacity until the fetus reaches 10-12 weeks, and even then, it is not, as far as we know, capable of active thought. One thing that we humans believe separates us from the rest of the animals is our ability to reason. The fetus does not have the ability to reason at this point, and, by society's standards, can hardly be considered human.

Takes human shape in week 3? Here is a picture of a four week old embryo:



Is that what you looked like when you were born? And, true, the organs have begun development at this stage, but are nowhere near functionality. I don't know where you got your information from, but my multiple research sources agree that most of the organs begin to function normally between weeks 10 and 16, and not to the capacity that they do in a human.

I guess scientists are pretty rash, then. It is generally agreed upon, at least in the world of science (since I have to consider all the religious folk), that an embryo or fetus is not human until it is self-sustaining, meaning it is out of the womb, not relying entirely on its mother for nourishment. I know the newborn relies on the mother for milk, but the baby actively nourishes itself by drinking the milk, unlike when it receives it through the cord.

I respect what you're saying here, but you keep referring to the fetus as medically human. The fact is, medically, it is not human, therefore calling abortion homicide can only be based on personal belief, not medical or scientific fact.

I concede this point completely, but that moral dilemma is under the exact same debate as abortion, which shows me that the two are certainly linked. However, there is one big difference between the two issues. With vegetables, we are actively sustaining them, and the debate is over whether we should be allowed to let them die, as nature would have them do. Abortion is really a different issue to me, as it is about actively aborting the baby. To use a terrible cliche, it's apples and oranges. In non-cliche terms, the two issues are different and it's very challenging to compare the two effectively.

This is true. We can't say which is more valuable. Because the issue of whether a mother was in enough danger to abort a baby would become a ridiculously popular legal issue, I think we have to either allow all women to abort or allow no women to abort. To me, because of the chance of danger for the woman, abortion must be legal.

I admit that this shows instinct, but it gives no proof of intelligent thought, especially considering the brain is barely developed at all at this point. As I said before, we believe intelligent thought separates us from the animals, and the fetus does not have any traces of intelligent thought until well after the abortion period.

As for the picture, I go back to something you said:

Just because this looks somewhat like a baby doesn't mean it is a baby. I'm assuming this is a picture of an extremely premature baby or something. However, this is technically a human, because it is out of the womb and therefore, because it must nourish itself, has all the characteristics of a living thing.

One more thought. It is generally accepted in science that there are certain rules that pertain to all living things. If something doesn't follow one of these rules, it is considered to be not living. One of these things is respiration. The fetus does not begin to inhale and exhale until week 13 or 14, and is not considered to be actually breathing until week 16, the final week of legal abortion. Because it is not actively respirating, it can not, scientifically, be called a living being until this point.

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You know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.

Just a quick update. Sorry that I haven't been able to post earlier. I've been swamped with work and other obligations. I will most likely edit this post into my reply this afternoon.

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Over 9000 hours in MS Paint.

Sorry for the extremely delayed update. I've been surprisingly busy the past couple of days.

I'm not quite understanding what you are saying? Since it is genetically different, it is less human? It's still a unique individual regardless. There are more important reason to abort in your opinion. Some may disagree.

All animals have the ability to reason. Maybe not on the same level as humans but they still have a certain amount of reasoning ability. Once again I'd have to bring up the subject of not just medical vegetables but severally mentally challenged people. They also lack the ability to reason. Should they be considered inhuman? I must also note that 10-12 weeks is still in the legal range for abortion. If the baby does have the ability to thoughts on any level, then it should be considered human.

I will have to retract my previous statement. The image that I had found before looked much more human. However, since I can't seem to find it again I'll have to retract my statement for now. However if I do find it again I'll bring it up.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to refute the statements without bringing up ethical/religious reasons. On a completely legal basis there are too many arguments for abortion, Roe v Wade being a great example. Since our terms were to state our arguments solely on a legal basis, I will have to honorably drop from this debate. Baldr, feel free to grant wizard his honor. Good job.

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Over 9000 hours in MS Paint.