Affirmative Case: September/October 1998

A doctor wanders around the corridors of a hospital. He is drinking coffee and waiting for his shift change. It's 10:00 p.m. and so far it's been an uneventful night. Suddenly, an ambulance screeches into the unloading area. A 16-year-old male has been shot in a drive-by shooting. The doctor immediately rushes the patient to the emergency room and prepares to operate. It doesn't matter how rich, poor, or how great the boy's life is at the moment. All the doctors and nurses care about now is saving the boy's life. It is because of scenarios such as this that I stand Resolved: That the individual ought to value the sanctity of life above the quality of life.

To make sure the resolution is clear, I offer the following definitions taken from Webster's Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, and the American Heritage Dictionary:
*individual- peculiar to a single person or thing.
*value- to hold in respect and admiration.
*sanctity- quality of being sacred, sacred being worthy of respect.
*life- existence, mode of living.
*quality- a characteristic or attribute of something.

The value that I will uphold in today's round will be the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life should be the highest value in today's debate because life is the basis of all other values. Life is sacred not because it is good or bad, but because it is life.

The best criteria for weighing the values in this round is that of consequentialism. Consequentialism states that the ends justify the means. In this case, when you value the sanctity of life you begin to appreciate just being alive. When you appreciate being alive, you begin to appreciate other things and you will end up happier. The means is appreciating being alive and the ends will be greater happiness.

I will uphold today's resolution with three contentions: Life is the basis of everything, Acknowledging the sanctity of life will lead to a higher quality of life, and It is human nature to value life.

Let's first direct our attention to Contention One: Life is the basis of everything.
Life is sacred and it is the basis of all other values. To begin with, life is sacred. It is sacred just simply because it is life, no matter how good or bad because all human life is worthy of respect. William K. Frankena, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and author of Respect for Life in Medicine, Philosophy, and the Law once wrote, "The chief feature is the affirmation that life is sacred. It is believed to be sacred not because it is a manifestation of a transcendent creator (but) because it is life." Part of the reason life is considered sacred is because it is the basis of all other values. Without life you cannot have any other values such as happiness, equality, etc. You cannot progress towards any other values without having life first. To try and have another value before life would be like putting the cart before the horse. Only once we acknowledge how sacred life is can we progress to other values which brings me to

Contention Two: Acknowledging the sanctity of life will lead to a higher quality of life.
The individual must acknowledge that life is the highest value. As Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology once wrote, "It takes life to love life." Once we accept this, we can go on to appreciate the little things about just being alive such as seeing a sunset or feeling a warm wind. All of these experiences are appreciated when life is really seen as sacred. As William Frankena once wrote, "The idea of sacredness is generated by the primordial experience of being alive, of experiencing the elemental sensation of vitality, and the elemental fear of its extinction. Man stands in awe before his own vitality, the vitality of his lineage and of his species. The sense of awe is the attribution and therefore the acknowledgment of sanctity." Once we enjoy just being alive and the sense of awe it brings can we ultimately be happier because we appreciate even the little things of life and we can overcome the pain and tragedies of life with greater success. We not only appreciate life for the little things but because it is human nature which brings me to

Contention Three: It is human nature to value life.
People will show this in many ways. For example, if a serial killer is on the loose, the police will try to apprehend him because he is taking away other peoples' lives. If people just focused on the killer's quality of life, they would have allowed him to kill because it would make him happier and increase his quality of life because killing was of value to him. Next, people value life for self-preservation. If we all lived by whether or not we felt we had a high enough quality of life many people would kill themselves because it is almost impossible to always have that high of a quality of life. The fact that it is human nature to put life first is also shown when somebody gets seriously hurt. For example, if somebody gets shot, the first reaction is to get him to the hospital and save his life, not to kill him and end his misery at the moment. Also, many people give money and support each year to people whose lives are in jeopardy. This is shown through all of the Feed the Children programs. People send their money in to these foundations to save the children's lives no matter how low the quality of their lives are. The main issue is to save them because they are human beings and have the right to live their lives because their lives are just as sacred as anyone else's. All these examples show just how much people value the sacredness of life and when we look at this we find that when the sanctity of life is primary, then the survival of all life is important and ultimately the overall quality of life for people is improved. As Aristotle once said, "Men cling to life at the cost of great misfortune."

In conclusion, the sanctity of life is of higher value than the quality of life. I have shown this through my contentions which were: life is the basis of everything, acknowledging the sanctity of life can lead to a higher quality of life, and it is human nature to value life. The bottom line is that valuing the sanctity of life can lead to greater happiness and ultimately the best consequences.

I am now open for cross examination.