Essay on Abortion

The argument over abortion has been a subject for dispute for a long time. The arguments span over many issues. All these have been, and are currently being debated. But the issue that is of most concern is the question: is abortion moral? That is the question I will try to answer.

Even though the Supreme Court found that a State뭩 Criminal Abortion law violates a person뭩 fourteenth amendment right, a woman still has to decide if her decision is right and whether it will affect others than herself. Thus, is it right to have an abortion?

A young woman gets pregnant with her boyfriend, both are too young and immature to raise a child, so she decides to get an abortion. This decision is made out of haste due to her youth and immaturity. She decides that the solution to the problem is an abortion. It뭩 quick, and not many will know. Like many girls of her age, this is viewed as the solution to premature sex pregnancies. But I wonder: if she were ten years older, would her decision be different. Has her life뭩 experiences equipped her to make a decision that will follow her the rest of her life? The problem is that she has made a selfish decision resulting from a selfish choice that she made. Why make the baby suffer? One option would be for her to have the baby, and give it up for adoption. There are thousands of couples that want to have a child but can뭪. Another decision could involve the commitment to not to having sex until she뭩 ready to be a parent; i.e. being married. Others might elect to employ a dependable form of birth control. By deciding in advance, consequences that impact an innocent life can be deterred.

What is abortion? Clinical abortion is the voluntary destruction of the unborn fetus with the use of surgical means or pills. This is not to be confused with spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage.

Some of the arguments towards anti-abortion range from the mother뭩 right to choose, to medical reasons. Pro-choice (for abortion) groups would say that the mother뭩 decision to have an abortion is hers. According to the 1973 United States Supreme Court ruling concerning the Roe vs. Wade case, they decided that a woman and her doctor may freely decide to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester; state governments can restrict abortion access after the first trimester with laws intended to protect the woman's health; abortions after fetal viability must be available if the woman's health or life are at risk; state governments can prohibit other abortions. This landmark case meant that the government couldn뭪 prohibit a woman from having an abortion due to fourteenth Amendment뭩 Due Process Clause. But recently Mr. Justice Rheinquist issued a dissenting opinion. He noted that there was no proof that Roe was in her first trimester when she filed her original suite. He said: "While a party may vindicate his own constitutional rights, he may not seek vindication for the rights of others." Noting that an abortion requires the services of a physician, he felt that such an operation is "not 'private' in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the 'privacy' that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution." He felt that the court was not justified in declaring the entire Texas statute to be unconstitutional. Rather, it should have been declared unconstitutional as applied "to a particular plaintiff, but not unconstitutional as a whole." This means that with the writing and verbal context the court decision, it wasn뭪 made on the current issues presented at that time.

These groups might also argue that the fetus isn뭪 a real human, so it isn뭪 murder. But isn뭪 taking the life of a human murder? Which side of the womb the victim is on should not matter when it comes to the potentiality of life. At conception, all that is needed for a complete human being to form is present.

Some Pro-life group (against abortion) arguments are based mostly on religious principles and their moral beliefs. Some religions believe that life begins at conception, others teach that when the fetus develops a brain life begins while others hold that it starts when the baby is born. This is important so it can be determined when it is OK to destroy a potential life. But most go with the basis that it doesn뭪 matter when life starts; it뭩 taking away the chance for a person to live a full potential life. The Christian beliefs are based on the God of their Christian/Judeo heritage. They believe in what the Bible says. Some of their arguments are based upon verses that are found in the Bible. If you believe in God, there뭩 evidence that we are a human before we are even born. In Jeremiah 1:5 God states, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." This implies that we were loved by God before we were born and thus have a soul. Having a soul means that you are a human being. Another assertion is in Psalms 139:13: "For Thou didst form my inward parts, Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb.� This means that God created us before we were physically born of this world, and that we were meant to fulfill our life by being born. Abortion halts this process. If you don뭪 believe in God, I hope that you would respect that it was important to the writer of these books that the life of the unborn child is valuable.

Pro-choice groups argue that abortion is good for the sake of the mother, the child, and society. It helps with 뱎opulation control� and other things. They argue the point that if a woman was raped, it can eliminate an unwanted birth that has resulted from trauma. But, what about the natural rights of humans? They say that abortion is the right of the mother, that it뭩 her body, that the baby is merely fetal matter and that the mother has the right to the choice of abortion. What about the unborn fetus? Even though it isn뭪 considered fully human yet, does it deserve a chance at life? Equal rights should be given equal time for the unborn child. According to Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, a fetus is not human. But if this ruling were to changed, millions of women would be considered to be committing murder under the law.

Some may ask if abortion isn뭪 a sort of population control. The response to that argument is, the world is not over-populated. So using abortion as a form of population control isn뭪 needed. There aren뭪 any more babies being born now than before. So birth control couldn뭪 be considered as a need for an abortion. The problem lies in the death rate. Everyone will die, of course, but for now this has resulted in increases in population. In recent years