Abortion

"Abortion stops a beating heart..."

The controversy of abortion in the United States is quite unique because there seems to be no grounds of compromise between two completely polar sides. That is mostly because either a living human is or isn't being killed. This is a case between life and liberty, but the ambivalence of the complexities of abortion makes it hard to settle the two sides. There is much debate whether this is an action of life or death, and the difference is rather large. Yet both sides to the abortion dispute share a common goal: that abortions should become safer, and the number of abortions should decrease. "Abortion stops a beating heart" as the pro-life activist says is why I believe abortion is wrong and immoral.

Few issues have fostered such controversy as the topic of abortion. The participants in the abortion debate not only have firmly-fixed beliefs, but each group has a self-designated appellation that clearly reflects what they believe to be the essential issues. On one side, the pro-choice supporters see individual choice as central to the debate: If a woman cannot choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, a condition which affects her body and possibly her entire life, then she has lost one of her most basic human rights. These proponents of abortion believe that while a fetus is a potential life, its life cannot be placed on the same level with that of a woman. On the other side, the pro-life opponents of abortion argue that the fetus is human and therefore given the same human rights as the mother. Stated simply, they believe that when a society legalizes abortion, it is sanctioning murder.

Pro-life activists would argue that the taking of a human life is wrong no matter what the circumstances or in which trimester it is done. The controversy over abortion has avoided the real issue facing today's woman-her need to grow beyond stereotypes. Much emphasis is placed on pregnancy as a result of rape, even thought the statistics show only about 0.1% of all rapes actually result in conception. That means that a large majority of pregnancies that resulted in abortion were the result of free choice. The assumption is that a woman does not have control over her own body until after a male partner is finished with it. Only then does she here talk of "rights." The term "pro-choice" evokes their sense of fairness, but what is really being considered is the killing of an innocent human life. Women are abandoning the abortion mentality because it weakens their greatest strength-creation. They are looking at responsibilities as well as rights, choosing instead of reacting.

Pro-choice supporters argue that abortion should be viewed as a sometimes necessary choice a woman must make in order to be in charge of her life. Considering pregnancy from a woman's point of view, it can be very dangerous to carry a baby for nine months with accompanying symptoms such as nausea, skin discoloration, extreme bloating and swelling, insomnia, narcolepsy, hair loss, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, indigestion, and irreversible weight gain. Equal rights are an issue the women's movement has fought for many years. Denying women the right to free choice would demolish everything we have fought for and all the respect we have gained as equals to men.

There are, indeed, several situations in which abortion would seem necessary. Birth defects, although rare, sometimes occur and must be dealt with in a personal manner. If a woman knows she is going to give birth to a mentally retarded baby, she is faced with the option of aborting it. If she is not prepared to give the retarded baby the attention and love it needs or if she cannot afford to treat the baby's problems, abortion would be the logical answer. Pro-lifers rebut this argument by stating that "it is only when we love the handicapped that we can truly value every human life." The anti-abortion movement believes that the fetus, even in its embryonic stage of development, is human life and that any deliberate termination of embryonic or fetal life constitutes an "unjustified" termination of human life. Conversely, proponents of abortion deny that the fetus is human life, particularly during its embryonic stage of development, and therefore believe that the termination of fetal life does not constitute homicide. Further, proponents of abortion justify the termination of fetal life by asserting that the woman has the ultimate right to control her own body and especially if a child cannot be cared for properly, then it should not be brought into this world. This however is not justification for these unplanned or unwanted pregnancies that are terminated in excess of 1.4 million per year in the United States.

On the question of abortion being moral, the answer is clear that terminating a fetus's life under certain circumstances is not only moral, but it is also our responsibility to terminate it if the quality of life for the future of the child. A second major reason is that to declare abortion immoral would mean that we would have to consider the factor of how the conception came about. This cannot and should not be done. If conception occurred as a result of rape or incest, I am not saying that having the babies of rapists or in cases of incest is okay. Still, for the argument that abortion is immoral, you must argue that the action is immoral, not the child. The child cannot be either at this point. If we are then talking about the act of abortion