Issue Paper

"St. Petersburg police officers remove a trash can on 56th Lane N where a 2-hour-old infant girl was found abandoned...The mother of a baby boy found dead in a mall dumpster last week has been charged in connection with the newborn's death...She wrapped her baby boy in a crib bed sheet with a cuddly baseball motif. He wore an angel necklace and a felt diaper. Carefully she laid him where someone was sure to find him, near a parked car, about 200 feet from the entrance to Indianapolis Community Hospital..."

How many time have you switched on the news and there was, yet again, another story about a small child in some form or fashion being helpless and abandoned. Growing up I guess I always envisioned the abandoned children with some Mother Teresa nun walking to the front door of a church and picking up a little bundle of blankets, after the doorbell was conveniently rung, with a small helpless little child in it and then raising it to be a holy child. Someone that would, in turn, do God's work for the world; but reality is far worse than my little child thoughts. Just visualizing a child in a smelly dumpster, or a freezing alley makes my skin crawl. So why, after knowing there are so many unwanted children in the world, would you frown upon abortion? The vast majority of all abortions performed today are done for social reasons and because a woman doesn't feel ready for a baby. In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions legalizing abortion in all 50 states during all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason, medical, social, or otherwise. Legally we are allowed to have an abortion in any time we want, which I highly condone, because the parents get an abortion for a reason. The main being they can't afford to have the baby, which if forced to have it anyways the baby wouldn't have the life it was really meant to have. The baby would grow up in poverty and with parents that would always, in the back of their mind, still agree that they can't afford to make this baby happy and half not wanting it at all. Another reason abortion may be an option is that the adult knows what type of person she is and knows deep in her heart that she just isn't cut out to be a mom. If forced to have that baby she will maybe try her best, maybe not, and this child will grow up with a mother that wants nothing to do with it and having a parent that wants you or not have a lot of effect on a child psychologically at such a young age. In the year 2001 there was an estimate of about 1.5 million reported fetuses aborted, would u look at it through blind eyes and say those are 1.5 million kids that never got a shot at life because someone decided their future for them; or would you look at through a more open minded eye saying that the 1.5 million children aborted wont have to go through parents that don't want them, cannot

afford them, or just will out right abandon them.

Though if I am going to say I agree with abortion, I must then talk about which method I condone and which ones I disagree fully. Even though I agree with abortion, doesn't mean I agree with every technique that is out in this world; because there are some horribly inhuman procedures done that shocks even me. Though it would be nice to be able to just turn away the stork that brings your baby, this is not to be so. First of all, there are three different types of abortions: Below, Above, and Drug. Though in each type there are many practiced methods. The most used method in the first trimester, about 98% of women choose this, is a method called Suction Aspiration which is usually referred to as 'the vacuum.' This method falls under 'Below' as the abortionist first paralyzes the cervix and then inserts a hollow plastic tube with a knife-like tip into the uterus. The tube is connected to a powerful pump that tears the baby's body into pieces. The placenta is then cut from the inner wall of the uterus and removed. Another method that is used, though not so often because it usually results in live births, is called Dilatation and Evacuation. This