About 3,700 people get abortions every day in the United
States. Whether we are pro-life or pro-choice, I think we can all agree that
this number is too high. Some of us believe that this number shouldn’t exist;
that the choice for abortions should be illegal. Those pro-life argue that
abortion is unethical and murderous. However, these 3,700 abortions are not
murders if done safe. In the first few weeks of pregnancy, there is no brain in
the fetus. A person needs a brain to be a person. Our brains are the
headquarters of our entire beings. Without a brain, we are not people.
Therefore, a fetus, in the period where abortion is an option, is not a person
yet. It’s the truth. Scientifically speaking, early abortion is not murder.
We should not argue on whether or not abortion should be
legal. It is a right. We should all have the freedom to do whatever we want
with our bodies. With the fact that a pregnant woman does not harbor a home for
a person but rather a not-quite-human embryo during her first seven weeks of
pregnancy, we can safely say that what we do to our bodies, within the first
seven weeks of pregnancy, is our right.
Still, we could do without it. We could do without the
statistic that approximately one-third of women will have at least one abortion
before age 45. It’s unsettling that so many people choose abortion. That 18
percent of all abortions are from teenage pregnancies and that 42 percent of
abortions are accounted for by women who have incomes below the national
poverty level.
We can’t get rid of abortion. That would be taking away a
huge freedom for women. What we can do is lessen the number of abortions people
get. Women who get abortions do not do it coldheartedly. It is a big decision
that impacts their life. Most women who get abortions do so because they feel
that they cannot care for their child and are unaware, untrusting, or absent of
childcare resources. This can be changed through an increase in government funding of child care
services, child support, and easier adoption processes.
Whatever we choose in the end, women will still do what they
think is right. Making abortion illegal will not stop women from making the
choice—they will still get abortions, and those abortions will be less sanitary
and more unsafe. We will see an increase in the numbers of self-executed
abortions and back-alley abortion clinics. We’ll see the death toll rise from
illegal abortions, bringing us back to the 1980s, when the number of deaths due
to abortion was at its highest. If we make abortion illegal, we will find that
the progress we’ve made will be erased and history will repeat itself.
The numbers are too high. But what kind of America would we
be if there were no numbers at all? We would be deprived of a right that we are
entitled to. The most we can do is lower the numbers by making resources seem
more available. Rates wouldn’t be so high if women didn’t feel like abortion
was their only option.
Guttmacher.org
Abortoinno.org
In Monica Tan's post about abortion she makes a good point that abortion is a woman's right that we cannot take away. I agree that abortion is a woman's personal right to control rather than something a government has to decide. She stresses the need to keep abortions legal for the health of women, another valid argument she backs up with examples such as "back-alley abortions" and "self-executed abortions". A woman shouldn't have to go to such extreme measures to achieve something which is her right to obtain.
ReplyDeleteMonica takes an approach that I would agree with, although I feel less of a need for stress on alternative options such as parenting aid and adoption. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could have more options available but I don't think it's lack of alternative options. I think it's more of a social issue when it comes to a woman choosing abortion, some women just don't want to be face other people with the fact that they accidentally got pregnant. I feel education on prevention of pregnancy in the first place needs to be stressed before how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Women already have access to birth control and even the morning after pill, these would prevent the need to even consider other options. Those preventatives also take out the controversy over murder because a baby is being prevented from even beginning to form. It is our job to go out and inform women on options they have to prevent pregnancy and avoid abortion, not to take their rights from them so that they act how others think they should.