These are asked in order. Nothing about the order changes what the instrument concludes — the rules below watch the whole set of claims, not your position in a script.
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Question 1
Is the unborn, from conception, a distinct and living member of the human species?
This is a question about biology, not about rights — those come later.
- Yes — records: The unborn is a living human being
- No — records: The unborn is not yet a human being
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 2
Does every human being have equal inherent worth — regardless of age, size, level of development, dependency, or location?
- Yes — records: Human worth is equal and unconditional
- No — records: Human worth varies by condition
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 3
Is intentionally killing an innocent human being murder?
- Yes — records: Killing the innocent is murder
- No — records: Killing the innocent can be permissible
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 4
Does abortion intentionally end the life of that human being?
- Yes — records: Abortion ends a human life
- No — records: Abortion ends something other than a human life
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 5
Must just law protect every person equally, with no class of persons excluded from its protection?
- Yes — records: Law must protect everyone equally
- No — records: Law may protect some classes and not others
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 6
May the state license, permit, or regulate what it acknowledges to be murder?
Answering “No” affirms that it may not.
- No, it may not — records: The state may not license murder
- Yes, it may — records: The state may license what it calls murder
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 7
Does a woman who procures an abortion, knowing what it is, bear moral responsibility for it?
Moral responsibility, not legal penalty. What the law should do is the next question.
- Yes — records: She bears moral responsibility
- No — records: Responsibility for it lies elsewhere
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 8
Should she nevertheless be exempt from prosecution by statute — categorically, in every case?
Categorically means written into the law as a class exemption, rather than left to defenses and prosecutorial judgment case by case.
- Yes — records: She should be exempt by statute
- No — records: She should face liability like anyone else
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 9
Should abortion be permitted when the pregnancy results from rape or incest?
- Yes — records: Rape and incest are exceptions
- No — records: No exception for rape or incest
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 10
Are laws that restrict abortion while permitting it before a threshold a legitimate step?
Heartbeat bills, twelve-week bills, pain-capable bills — laws that prohibit past a line and permit before it.
- Yes — records: Incremental bills are legitimate
- No — records: Incremental bills are illegitimate
- Not sure — records: left open
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Question 11
May we do what is evil so that good may come of it?
Answering “No” affirms that we may not.
- No, we may not — records: We may not do evil for good ends
- Yes, we may — records: We may do evil for good ends
- Not sure — records: left open
A tension is raised only when every claim it names is one you have affirmed. None of the resolutions is recommended, and every tension can be left unresolved.
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Tension 1
These can't all be true at once.
You have affirmed that the unborn is a human being of equal worth, that intentionally killing such a human is murder, that abortion does this, that law must protect every person equally, and that a woman who procures one bears moral responsibility. You have also affirmed that she should be categorically exempt from prosecution. A legal system cannot both protect equally and exempt a responsible party as a class.
Raised only if you affirm all of: Human worth is equal and unconditional · Killing the innocent is murder · Abortion ends a human life · Law must protect everyone equally · She bears moral responsibility · She should be exempt by statute.
Equal protection is not a claim about how often the law is enforced. It is a claim about who the law reaches. A statute that names a class of actors and places them beyond the reach of homicide law in advance, in every case, has not exercised mercy — it has drawn a line around a category of person and declared the law inapplicable to them. That is the same operation, run in the opposite direction, as declaring a category of victim outside the law's protection.
The distinction that matters here is between a categorical statutory bar and the ordinary machinery of criminal law. Duress, coercion, deception, diminished capacity, and prosecutorial discretion all exist precisely to answer the question of whether a particular person, in a particular case, is culpable. They operate case by case, on evidence. A statutory immunity does not ask the question at all.
This is not an argument that women should be prosecuted. It is an argument that the law cannot answer that question in advance, for everyone, without abandoning the equality it claims to be enforcing. Someone who holds that abortion is homicide and that she is responsible for it has to locate the exemption somewhere other than in equal protection.
Ways to resolve it, in no particular order:
- Abortion isn't the intentional killing of a human being
Follow-up: Then what does abortion end?
- The unborn doesn't have equal worth
Follow-up: Which criterion tiers worth — and does it tier the worth of born humans too?
- Equal protection doesn't require equal criminal liability
Follow-up: Name one other class the law exempts from homicide liability categorically, rather than case by case.
- She isn't culpable — she's a second victim
- She is never culpable, in principle
- She is sometimes not culpable — coerced, deceived, pressured
- Accept that she should face liability Duress, coercion, and diminished capacity remain available as defenses. This resolution is about what the statute says, not about what any particular prosecution would conclude.
I hold a distinction that isn't listed here — always offered, alongside “Leave this unresolved and continue”.
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Tension 2
These can't all be true at once.
Equal and unconditional worth, and permitting the killing on the grounds of how the child was conceived, cannot both stand. One of them is conditional on the other.
Raised only if you affirm all of: Human worth is equal and unconditional · Rape and incest are exceptions.
The exception is not a claim about the child. Nothing about the child differs — not their species, not their stage of development, not their dependency, not their capacity to suffer. What differs is a fact about another person's act, committed before the child existed, for which the child is not responsible.
So the exception has to be grounded somewhere. Either the child's worth is in fact conditional — it depends on how they came to exist — or the worth is unconditional and the exception is being held for some reason other than the child's status: as a political concession, as compassion toward the mother, as a judgment that the pregnancy itself is a continuing injury.
Those are all real positions and some of them are defensible. But they are not the same position, and only the first of them is compatible with the claim that worth is unconditional in the sense already affirmed. The point of this panel is to make the respondent say which one they hold, because the three lead to different conclusions everywhere else.
Ways to resolve it, in no particular order:
I hold a distinction that isn't listed here — always offered, alongside “Leave this unresolved and continue”.
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Tension 3
These can't all be true at once.
A bill that permits abortion before a threshold does not merely fail to prohibit it — it codifies the state's authority to permit it up to that point.
Raised only if you affirm all of: The state may not license murder · Incremental bills are legitimate.
There is a real difference between a law that fails to reach an evil and a law that authorizes it. A prosecutor who declines to charge has not legalized anything. A legislature that writes “it shall not be unlawful … during the first twelve weeks” has.
The claim that the state may not license what it acknowledges to be murder is a claim about the second kind of law. It is not a claim that every partial measure is forbidden, and it is not a claim that a legislator must vote against anything short of total abolition. It is a claim about what a statute's operative text does.
Which means the disagreement here is unusually tractable: it turns on what the bills actually say. That is a question with an answer, and the answer is in the statute books. The follow-up puts two of them side by side.
Ways to resolve it, in no particular order:
I hold a distinction that isn't listed here — always offered, alongside “Leave this unresolved and continue”.
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Tension 4
These can't all be true at once.
Supporting a law that authorizes some killings, in order to reduce the total, is a means-and-ends claim of the kind you just rejected.
Raised only if you affirm all of: We may not do evil for good ends · Exceptions are a concession only.
A concession is a means. The argument for it is that accepting a law which permits some abortions will, in practice, result in fewer of them than holding out for a law that permits none. That is a claim about consequences, and it is offered as the justification for the concession.
The principle already affirmed says that a good consequence does not justify an evil means. So the question is whether voting for such a bill is an evil means or something else — whether the legislator who votes for it is doing the authorizing, or tolerating an authorization they could not prevent.
This is the distinction between formal and material cooperation, and it is old, serious, and genuinely contested. Both answers have defenders who have thought about it more carefully than most. This panel does not resolve it. It records which answer you give, because the rest of your position depends on it.
Ways to resolve it, in no particular order:
- Good ends can justify this means
Follow-up: Where is the limit?
- Withdraw the concession Both the concession and the exception it was held on come off the record together.
- Permitting is not the same as doing
Follow-up: Does voting for a bill that authorizes an act constitute doing it, or tolerating it?
I hold a distinction that isn't listed here — always offered, alongside “Leave this unresolved and continue”.