Abortion is generally wrong

Firstly, you argue the following:

"Value: Human dignity:

Human dignity is the recognition that human beings possess a special value intrinsic to their humanity and as such are worthy of respect simply because they are human beings. (cbhd.org)

Criterion: The Principle of Inherent Worth

This criterion argues that human dignity is not something earned through actions, intelligence, or development; rather, it is intrinsic to being human."

Despite making this claim, you never stated why human dignity is true or why humans are intrinsically valuable.

However, given that repeated questions will quickly consume the rounds, I can only gesture at what your answer may be in hopes of guessing correctly.

If you have no reason as to why, or in other words, if you think it is necessary as a starting premise or a presupposition that humans are valuable, then I must say that the rest of the argument cannot necessarily follow. That would be because you would have not shown that humans being valuable is more true than them not being valuable because you would rely on a seemingly circular or unjustified premise. In other words, saying humans are human is insufficient reason to grant them intrinsic value.

If your argument reduces to something like rational autonomy or cognitive complexity, then you would need to show why those are themselves valuable. This will likely be a pattern. Whatever you claim is valuable needs to be shown to identify with value directly without mere assertion.

You lay out your first contention:

"Contention 1: The Biological Reality of the Fetus as a Human Organism

A human fetus is a distinct, living human organism from the moment of fertilization.

Biology demonstrates that a fetus is not merely a cluster of maternal cells or a potential life, but an actual living entity following a human-specific developmental path. Its genetic identity is entirely separate from both the mother and the father.

“A human fetus is biologically human. It carries a complete set of human DNA, distinct from its mother’s, from the moment of fertilization. Its cells are living, growing, and developing along a species-specific trajectory that no other organism follows” (scienceinsights.org)

And because the fetus is biologically a member of the human species, it cannot be categorized as property or a non-living entity."

I do not reject this.

Next:

"Contention 2: The Principle of Universal Human Rights

All human beings possess inherent, fundamental human rights that cannot be stripped based on arbitrary traits.

If fundamental rights like the right to life are contingent upon external characteristics—such as intelligence, age, cognitive ability, or physical capability—then human rights cease to be inherent. Instead, they become privileges granted by the powerful, opening the door to inequality and discrimination against vulnerable groups.

To maintain a just and equal society, rights must be universal, applying equally to every member of the human species simply because they are human."

Why do they possess such rights? How do you know?

Next:

"Contention 3: The Irrelevance of Developmental and Situational Differences, aka SLED

The physical and environmental differences between an unborn fetus and a newborn baby do not justify a difference in their moral worth or right to life.

The differences between a fetus and a newborn can be entirely summarized by four non-essential traits, none of which dictate human value: Size: A fetus is smaller than a newborn, just as a toddler is smaller than an adult. Physical size does not determine a person's worth. Level of Development: A fetus is less developed than a newborn, just as a newborn is less cognitively and physically developed than a teenager. Worth does not increase with developmental milestones.

Environment: A fetus is located inside the womb rather than outside. Changing a person's geographical location or physical environment does not change their essential nature or humanity.

Degree of Dependency: A fetus relies entirely on the mother for survival. However, newborns, the elderly, and individuals on life support are also completely dependent on others, yet they retain their fundamental rights.

This matters because the unborn differ from born humans only in these four arbitrary ways, they are human beings who deserve the same protections as newborns."

This does not exhaust all intelligible differences. For instance, how a fetus socially relates to its parents, particularly who it is in, and how a newborn does can demonstrably differ. There are also differences in how it is viewed by society in general. You mentioned degrees of dependence, but you failed to mentioned different forms of it. While people are often employed to take care of elderly or the ill, they are generally not intrinsically forced to sacrifice their direct bodily autonomy for them at every moment, unlike caring for a fetus. For instance, a doctor or a nurse can quit, and people are not typically legally forced to donate parts of their body even assuming your supposed rights that people who need the parts to live may possess. Regardless, you called these traits non-essential, but they are essential. A fetus with no size, development, within no environment, and with no degree of dependency is not a particular fetus, it is no thing at all. The same applies to a newborn. But, I suppose you mean that these traits are not essential to human rights. However, these traits precisely differentiate a human from a non-human. Humans, including fetus', do not merely develop, they develop in specific, determinate ways. Humans also develop in different ways even relative to each other. You mentioned that a newborn is less cognitively and physically developed than a teenager, and I can't deny that, yet one could say that an ant is less cognitively and physically developed than a human. You could say it is an ant, therefore it has no inherent rights like a human, but have you ruled out the inherent right to life ants may have? Are you careful about where you step? Of course, you may appeal to an inherent distinction between humans and ants that allows only humans rights, but, if such a distinction is inseparable from stages of cognitive and physical development, and even the essence of how they develop and have developed, then it undermines your contention number 3 because clearly, how humans develop would be essential to human rights. If it is, then it may mean that the inclusion of all stages of human development, despite their variety, as uniform in terms of rights is not necessarily correct.

Finally:

"Contention 4: The Fallacy of the "Potential Person" and the Continuity of Identity

A fetus is not a "potential" human being, but rather a human being with immense "potential."

Philosophically and biologically, there is a strict continuity of identity from conception to adulthood. You did not become a human being at birth; you were the same individual organism when you were a fetus, a newborn, and a toddler. Abortion does not prevent a person from coming into existence; it terminates a person who already exists. Here is the impact of this: terminating a pregnancy does not merely stop a potential life from starting; it deprives an existing individual of their entire future life and experiences. Therefore, the unborn possess the same right to their future as any born person."

Something is only potential insofar as the conditions that make it necessary are actual. However, once all of a thing's necessary conditions are completely actual, it is also already actual. In other words, the termination of a pregnancy and the potential of the life of the fetus are not incompatible facts, but rather are two descriptions of the same underlying process. However, I would agree with your main point here that human life is not about any single moment, such as during the phase of a fetus, but about its entire process from its beginning to its end.

Given these, you have not proven that "For these reasons I believe that abortion is generally a wrong concept and is not morally or ethically right." would follow.

All I did was bold your words and italicize one word. It does not take AI to come up with that one, and both tools are very straightforwardly available when creating an argument.

Next, you say, "Human dignity is a necessary presupposition for any ethical system or legal framework to exist."

This is far from true. Your definition of human dignity as a necessary starting point would belong specifically to moral realism, seemingly non-naturalistic moral realism.

Many metaethical positions reject this starting point, and I will be doing so, even though some of those positions, and even myself, would converge on something approximately like human dignity but through a derivation rather than brute assertion.

Next, you say, "If we do not start with the premise that humans have intrinsic value, then human rights become completely subjective and meaningless."

This is also far from true. Even if humans are not intrinsically valuable through just being human, rights, insofar as they are upheld, can still be objective and meaningful. For instance, the utilitarian tradition would typically treat human rights as objectively (though instrumentally) valuable heuristics that often maximize or increase good. But, you would be right if you mean that this would undermine the concept of inherent rights that persist in all humans and context. But, that is not the only notion of human rights.

Next, you say, "On top of that, if human value isn't intrinsic, then it must be earned or granted. Ask them who gets to decide who has value the government? The powerful?"

This is not true. The value of humans may be intrinsic to some other condition about them (such as consciousness) rather than to their humanity specifically. In other words, humanity can be an insufficient condition of the intrinsic value of humans. Also, to jump to "then it must be earned or granted" presupposes it still has to exist in some manner when I'm specifically asking you to show that.

The larger issue is that even if I agreed with what you've said here in R1, it only hurts your own case. If humanity turns out to be subjective and meaningless, then so would abortion, meaning that it being generally wrong is also subjective and meaningless.

Next, you say, "Fundamental rights (like the right not to be randomly killed) are objective moral truths that we recognize through reason and intuition, much like we recognize logical truths. This is simple. The international community universally recognized inherent human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights precisely to prevent the horrors that happen when governments decide rights are not inherent."

Then, show me the reasoning for how you know the rights are real. Intuition of something is not necessarily evidence of that thing. If the international community universally said they recognized the total flatness of the Earth, would it make it true? Regardless of such a recognition, it doesn't serve as evidence of the actual ontological existence of human rights.

Next, you say, "You argue the type of development, first off, even if you win this, it's not worth killing the baby just based off of their development. Second, you claim society doesn't force people to donate body parts. However, pregnancy is not a forced donation to a stranger; it is the natural biological result of an action that brought a vulnerable, entirely dependent family member into existence. The parental duty to not actively harm one's offspring precedes the desire to withdraw support."

My argument was far from something like "it's worth killing babies based on their development", so I'm not sure why you say this. I'm only noting that development is not a non-essential trait like you claimed, so the categorical invalidation of rebuttals using it does not follow. Not all pregnancy is consensual or wanted. Rape victims sometimes get pregnant, and people sometimes get pregnant despite using protection. However, excluding those, I do acknowledge a worthy difference between being forced to donate body parts and, say, changing your mind about having children during pregnancy. However, I will extend the hypothetical. If someone instead offers body parts, but changes their mind before the process is complete, we do not typically force them to complete the process, despite the rights the patient may have. You mention "the parental duty to not actively harm one's offspring precedes the desire to withdraw support", but, how do you know such a duty exists? Can you prove it does?

Next, you say, "You cannot agree that life is a continuous process from conception to adulthood while simultaneously arguing that cutting that process short doesn't take anything away. By ending the pregnancy, you are actively depriving an already existing individual of their entire future life, experiences, and development."

Yes I can, because those are not contradictory statements, as it is only a process from conception to adulthood if it isn't cut short. There is a difference between actual potential and what would be actual if things were different. So, for abortion to be the taking away of a full life is fallacious, as the conditions of its potentiality were already never met, so in other words, you can't take away something that exists in no particular way. But, the point you were trying to make is whether human life should be allowed to complete its typical process, and you have not supplied a complete reason.

Finally, you state, "The fact that the future requires certain conditions to be met (like nutrients and time) does not mean the individual experiencing that future doesn't exist right now."

A fine conclusion! Likewise, the fact that the individual exists right now does not mean that the conditions of its future are met.

You still have not proven that abortion is generally wrong because you have failed to establish almost all of your points.

Of course, as being a human has not been shown to necessarily be valuable, then abortion cannot generally be wrong simply because it kills humans.

Though, I'll note that even if humans were necessarily valuable, you have still failed to prove that abortion is generally wrong since you have not sufficiently contextualized general abortion within reality. In other words, you did mention an exception in the description, but you failed to argue for why it would be an exception and how nothing else counts as an exception.

Also, even if I conceded that humans were intrinsically valuable just by being human, you didn't make any claims regarding whether human dignity is exhaustive of all value or whether it has no relation to any other value. Without those, abortion isn't shown to be generally wrong.