Should abortion be illegal?

Judge: dpowell3543    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: Johannes
Reasoning:
While I do agree with the_viper, I have to give the points to Johannes. the_viper failed to provide any good points as to why abortion should be illegal, nor did their points make much sense. This made it easier for Johannes to just brush aside and shut down all of their points without even needing to make any points of their own.

Feedback:
Pro: First off, I would advise that you don't use polls from debate.org. You have the right idea, just using the wrong source. DDO is dying, not many people get on anymore, plus the results aren't official. I'd try looking for an official census on the matter. Another thing you could have done, would be to explain how abortion is murder. That could have helped your case a lot since murder itself is already illegal, proving that abortion is murder would mean that it is already illegal by default and therefore should be declared illegal by law makers. A good point to bring up in that argument would be the fact that the United States Congress has declared that all fetuses on American soil have all of their Constitutional rights. Not only does this show that they're considered living people in the eyes of the law, but it would help prove your point and it would make it difficult for someone to rebut your arguments.

Con: Overall good job, but I'd try adding someone of your own points to your arguments rather than just shut down your opponent's points. Making your own points will give not only your rebuttals, but your whole stance more backbone.

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1 user rated this judgement as good
1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: Booka
Win awarded to: the_viper

Judge: Defender
Win awarded to: Johannes
Reasoning:
the_viper have a point that I agree to, however, I must give the points to Johannes. the_viper failed to support us a good and standing evidence while Johannes not only have a better grammar and simply countered nearly all of the_viper's argument without making any evidence of her own.

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1 user rated this judgement as exceptional

Judge: Felix Harris
Win awarded to: the_viper

Judge: nzlockie    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: Johannes
Reasoning:
This debate was actually WAY closer than it first appeared. That’s a kudos to both debaters. I also want to acknowledge the fact that this debate had a very small character limit, and yet the arguments were relatively easy to follow. Not easy to do.
My win goes to CON by a definite but close margin.
Essentially this is because although they insinuated it, PRO never actually addressed the idea of when “life” begins. Since this is a pretty contentious issue, I really needed this to be raised and defended if I were going to buy their arguments that involved rights.
For me, PRO had two strong arguments. I liked both of them. The Coma argument got unfortunately derailed when PRO started linking it with stabbing dead bodies to defend the idea that coma patients were different because they had been alive previously. A better pitch would have been to state that the fetus WAS alive prior to the abortion. Dead bodies are obviously not related because although they were alive previous, they are not alive now, nor will they be in the future. They shouldn’t have been linked with the coma patient argument at all, and I couldn’t see the relevance.
I also liked the Parental responsibility argument. That was a new one for me, and I actually thought PRO won that one in the later rounds, EXCEPT, without life, there is no responsibility. Again, PRO needed to state that life begins before birth for this point to score with me.

CON did a good job defending all the arguments PRO bought up, especially given the limited character space. There wasn’t much in the way of positive arguments from CON, but in this case I don’t think there needed to be.
The straight neg case is risky because the scores are always tight, but I think for me it was a definite win to CON.


Feedback:
GREAT work by both sides.
I really enjoyed this one. I wish you guys would redo this debate with a larger character limit. I think it may be a different story.

PRO: I think that given the character limit, you should have considered arguing ONE case. It would have allowed you to elaborate on it more, which would have made it easier to follow and more compelling for me.
I also think you should reread the Coma patient argument and see where you lost me in the second round. If I’ve misunderstood you somehow, (I don’t think I have) hen chalk that up to the fact that I think you needed more space to make your case clearer.

Finally in the neg column, your actual text was much harder to follow than CON’s. you might to reread your round before you post it, and make sure it’s really easy to follow your train of thought.

On the plus side, everything else. I loved that you stuck to this debate right to the end, and you really pushed it. For this judge, CON had to answer you each round, and that’s about all you can ask for. Great work.

CON: I honestly think this debate was a giant leap forward for you. I know I’ve been banging on at you about your narrative, and in this debate I think you did a great job. Not only that, but to do it in a limited character debate was super impressive.

I especially liked the way you chose to acknowledge but dismiss a couple of PRO’s minor points as not worthy of wasting character space on.
I totally agreed with your assessment that these were not scoring points, and so your attention was better placed elsewhere. This made your train of thought much easier to follow.

I think it would have been a nice touch if you had thrown in a positive argument about why it SHOULD be legal, but I understand why you didn’t.
I’m not sure if it was on purpose or not, but I liked the way you inferred that life begins at birth, but didn’t actually say that.
Had you done so, PRO would have been forced to state their position of life beginning prior to birth, and that might have changed everything.
In any debate on abortion, defending the idea that life begins at birth is one the hardest parts of the pro-abortion camp as it opens lots of avenues for attack by anti-abortionists.
The way this debate was structured, it was PRO’s benefit to bring it up, and you did well to sidestep it.

Great job both of you!

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4 users rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: ibalazs
Win awarded to: Johannes