The United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade has spawned controversy and debate on an issue which every individual – rich, poor, young, or old – has an opinion on. While the spectrum of the prevailing arguments draws upon facts, emotions, morals, necessity, and legality, none of the aforementioned have been adequate to provide mankind with the panacea necessary to eradicate this socially tolerated act of life denial.
No social issue in America since slavery has ever been as diverse as that of.
Abortion: no issue brings out so much passion and hatred from the other side. Any court decisions related to abortion regularly bring protesters from both sides. Polls show…
Americans are split evenly on the issue. The issue has been recharged by the Bush administration.
Administration. In Bush’s first term, Congress passed a bill making third-trimester abortions, or partial-birth abortions,” illegal. Many of President Bush’s judicial nominations have been thwarted by the Democrats, usually for one reason and one reason only: their stance on Roe v. Wade. (Pros and Cons)
To assure that we are on the same page, I would like to offer a working definition of what an abortion is, and the commonly acceptable terms for the groups who fall on either side of this hot issue. Abortion is the premature expulsion of a human fetus, whether naturally or artificially,” according to the National Right to Life.
The most common abortion at this time is artificially induced, which involves surgical and medical abortion. Disagreement about medically induced abortion created two political groups, which have opposite ways of thinking: Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice.”
Choice” is a term used to describe two different groups with opposing views on abortion. Pro-Life is a group of people who are against any kind of abortion, no matter the reason. Pro-Choice is another group that would allow abortions in most situations if the woman decides.
Abortion is a controversial problem, and very few people are neutral about it. This problem has always been serious, and when the United States legalized it, the number of abortions increased. Now, about 1.5 million abortions are done each year” (National Right to Life).
Clearly, everyone has an opinion on the issue, and given the sheer number and level of controversy, there are obvious pros and cons holding up the debate.
In general, a woman aborts her fetus because she does not want that child. Perhaps the unwanted child comes from a rape or an act of incest, but it may just be that the woman does not want a child at that time. The Pro-Life group is against this. They believe that if a woman aborts her pregnancy, she will have stress from the abortion, in addition to the physical stress because of the incident (if there was a rape or incest) (Wisconsin Right to Life). The Pro-Life group believes that abortion would bring a lot of problems and negative effects. However, Pro-Choice people have a different perspective. They believe that abortion is safe and there are no serious after-effects.
Psychological harm” is one of the effects of abortion, according to Pro-Life advocates. They contend that women may experience horrible nightmares about their children after having an abortion, and that they will feel regret and guilt about their decision. (Ramli)
Jan A. Larson, in his article Abortion Pros and Cons,” explains the psychological effects of post-abortion in this manner: “Their lives are forever changed. Two lives (at least) are negatively affected by every abortion” (Larson).
Right to Life materials claim that abortion is usually more painful than most doctors predict. They report that the pain is the same as cancer, but not as bad as amputation. The physical effects from the abortion usually appear in the future, such as tubal pregnancy and sterility (National Right to Life). People from the Pro-Life group have evidence that abortion can cause breast cancer (Ramli). The worst physical effect is death; it’s recorded that 200 women have died from legal abortion since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 (Ramli).
Laws against abortion kill women. Legal abortion protects women’s health. For tens of thousands of women with heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle cell anemia, severe diabetes, and other illnesses that can be life-threatening, the availability of legal abortions has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth. Before legal abortions, such women’s choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth. A woman is more than a fetus.”
Though a woman might be pregnant with a child, she still is her own person and has every right to decide what she wants to do with her body (abortion).
Outlawing abortion is discriminatory. Anti-abortion laws discriminate against low-income women who are forced to have back-alley abortions, where they can become infected.
Rich people can travel anywhere they need to go to find the proper care they need.
If abortion is outlawed, then more children” will be having children. Abortion should not be a form of birth control, but if something does happen, there should be the option of abortion available so that the wrong mother doesn’t have to raise a child at such a young age.
Abortion should be legal for women who are raped. Sometimes, women who are raped cannot bear the thought of bringing a child into their lives, and abortion may be the best option for them.
Economist Steven P. Levitt, in his book Freakonomics,” makes the case that the legalization of abortion beginning in 1973 has a very strong statistical correlation and may explain the dramatic drop in crime rates in the 1990s.
Levitt cites studies that indicate that the women most likely to have abortions post-Roe were the women least likely to be able to provide a secure home environment for a child. It is children who grow up in these environments that are most likely to turn to a life of crime.
Levitt’s analysis, however, concludes that even if one could assign a value of 100 fetuses to equal the value of one newborn, the annual ‘cost’ of legalized abortion is 15,000 lives, far more than the number of homicides ‘saved’ by legalized abortion” (Levitt).
On balance, it would seem that the loss of life and the emotional scars carried by women (and their families) who have abortions outweigh the benefits of reduced crime (if there is a direct cause and effect) and the convenience of ‘cleaning up a mess’ of a poor decision.” (Ramil)
For all the rhetoric and hyperbole on both sides of this issue, there can never be a middle ground to the abortion debate. Those who believe that abortion is murder will never believe otherwise. Those who believe that having an abortion is a woman’s ‘right’ and that a ‘fetus’ is just tissue aren’t likely to change their views either, at least not until it is too late” (Ramil).
Abortion is a significant issue in our lives because it might happen to anybody, even to our relatives or spouse. We see that in just one problem, abortion, there are a lot of conflicts. There is no conclusion because we can see this problem from many perspectives. If you are someone who supports the Pro-Life or Pro-Choice group, you cannot judge objectively if the other group has a different way of thinking. People cannot judge.
Pro-Life people are seen as individuals who have no respect for human feelings because they would not allow a woman who had been raped to have an abortion. On the other hand, people cannot say that Pro-Choice is a better group because they are more aware of human needs. People will never know the feelings of women who have had an abortion unless they are the ones facing the abortion decision. To face this problem, people need to spend their time thinking cautiously and weighing both sides to make the best decision.
It is my feeling that Roe will not be overturned, and if the individual states take it upon themselves to determine the legality of abortions within their province, then they will be compelled to deal with the issue on a case-by-case basis. Each individual case is always packed with a substantial amount of special circumstances, which precludes a blanket decision on the issue of whether abortions should or should not happen. It is an extremely personal matter, and when it comes down to whether or not it is going to happen, it is the individual choice of the woman affected that matters most. As pointed out earlier, there is no panacea, and abortion is not a quick fix; it is a permanent fix of a situation which a woman considers to be non-negotiable. If she even remotely feels that she is willing to cope with the short-term effect and, with proper counseling, she feels she can cope with the long-term impact, then the decision and the consequences are hers.
Works cited.
Abortion, adoption, pros and cons of RU486 were retrieved online on July 19, 2006, from www.abortion-alternatives.adoption.com.
Larson, Jan A. – Pros and Cons of Abortion. Retrieved online on July 19, 2006, from www.tiger.towson.edu.
Levitt, Stephen P. Freakonomics.
National Right to Life, 1999. Retrieved online on July 19, 2006, from www.NRTL.com.
Ramil, Felix, Cause Effect/Research. Retrieved online on July 19, 2006, from:
www.lclark.edu
There are no grammar errors in this text. The readability is appropriate for the context of a website URL.
Wisconsin Right to Life, 1999. Retrieved online on July 19, 2006, from www.wirighttolife.com.
