Ethical Argument (Should Roe Vs. Wade be overturned) Should Abortion be outlawed - Essay Example

Should Roe v Wade be overturned? In the early 1970s, Norma L. McCorvey, using the alias Jane Roe, went to court to clarify Texan laws on abortion, and inadvertently became an American champion of reproductive rights. Although McCorvey later turned against abortion, she pioneered a law which has given women the right to bodily autonomy since 1973. Recently the abortion debate has been gripping the United States more furiously than ever, with many new arguments and even laws being made against it.

Should Roe v Wade be overturned? Absolutely not: this essay will look at the ethical dubiousness of the pro-life position, before highlighting the fundamental difference between the pro-life and pro-choice positions, to show that criminalizing abortion in modern America would subvert our self-image as the land of the free. In the twenty-first century, it is entirely invalid to use religious justifications to deny bodily autonomy to fully half the population – most pro-life arguments boil down to a Biblical belief that life begins at conception, which is a personal matter and not one that should affect people who do not necessarily hold the same belief.

It is also an ineffective argument, as according to the Guttmacher Institute, Catholic women have abortions at about the same rate as non-Catholic women. Furthermore, the pro-life movement has undermined itself through conscious lies and hypocritical violence: House Bill 1210 in Indiana demands that a doctor tells a woman seeking an abortion of “the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion” (HB 1210), even though the American Cancer Society has found no “cause-and-effect relationship between abortion and breast cancer”.

We can further take it as read that the pro-life position is not entirely pro-life, because abortion opponents are more concerned with the existence of life than the quality of life – although of course, in the case of Dr Tiller, and the other 204,603 acts of anti-abortion violence recorded by the National Abortion Federation from 1977 to 2009, it is clear that it is only the existence of infant life that concerns the pro-life movement. The pro-life position is fundamentally alienated from the pro-choice position – the two 'sides' of the abortion debate are not, by any stretch of the imagination, opposites.

Whereas pro-choice advocates that each woman should have access to abortion if she chooses to, pro-life insists that no woman should ever be able to legally abort a zygote, embryo or fetus. The opposing moral equivalent of this would be to enforce abortion on every zygote, embryo or fetus, which tells us a lot about the extremism of the pro-life position. Pro-choice allows every woman to make her own decision regarding parenthood, bearing in mind her financial, mental, physical, and emotional capability to take care of a(nother) child; pro-life demands that every woman who has the misfortune to fall unexpectedly pregnant must give birth to it, regardless of whether the quality of life for that woman – and for that child – would be worryingly low, as a direct (or even indirect) result of the enforced pregnancy.

The overlap between the pro-life movement and the Republican party is not coincidental, and it is hypocritical that the party who claims to value life is simultaneously cutting funding to “public safety, administration, and environment and housing” (“Freedom in the 50 States”). Finally, it cannot be ignored that over the past year or so, the pro-life movement have been subverting Roe v Wade at state level by making abortions increasingly difficult to access, particularly for poor women – the women who need abortion the most (Guttmacher Institute).

All the while our Democratic president has stood by in silence. What would be the point in overturning Roe v Wade if obtaining an abortion is already all but impossible? We need our leader to not only protect Roe v Wade, but to defend reproductive rights beyond the court case. It is no comfort that Roe v Wade stands, when a woman must forfeit pay by taking time off from work to travel inordinate distances to an abortion provider (which are surprisingly few in number), often multiple times due to mandatory waiting periods, pay out of her own pocket for a procedure to which she is perfectly entitled and yet which many insurance companies are now forbidden to cover, and is forced to view images of the fetus and even hear lies of how an abortion will adversely affect her body.

Abortion should be a woman's right, and the only arguments against it are, at best, confused. Works Cited “House Bill No. 1210.” Indiana House of Representatives. February 18 2011. Web. June 17 2011. http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2011/HB/HB1210.1.html “Is Abortion Linked to Breast Cancer?” American Cancer Society. September 23 2010. Web. June 17 2011. http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer “NAF Violence and Disruption Statistics: Incidents of Violence Against Abortion Providers in the US and Canada.

” National Abortion Federation. Web. June 17 2011. http://www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/about_abortion/stats_table2009.pdf Ruger, William, and Jason Sorens. “Freedom in the 50 States: Oregon.” Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Web. June 18 2011. http://mercatus.org/freedom-50-states-2011/OR “Video: Abortion in the United States.” Guttmacher Institute. Web. June 17 2011. http://www.guttmacher.org/media/video/index.html Annotated Bibliography “House Bill No. 1210.” This bill in Indiana is concerned with greater regulation of abortion, and includes the astounding demand that physicians inform women seeking an abortion of the increased risk of breast cancer as a direct result of the abortion.

What is astounding is that this is a lie. I use this as an example of the pro-life movement undermining itself. “Is Abortion Linked to Breast Cancer?” I use this informative article to directly contradict one of the proposals in HB 1210 (see above), that there is a causal relationship between abortion and breast cancer. “NAF Violence and Disruption Statistics: Incidents of Violence Against Abortion Providers in the US and Canada.” This is yet another document which proves the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement.

The sheer number of hate crimes against abortion providers is staggering, and worthy of mention in any essay on Roe v Wade. “Freedom in the 50 States: Oregon.” This article ranks the fifty states in terms of freedom, where freedom appears to mean freedom from taxation and government regulation – a definition which tallies with Republican goals. I use this article to highlight the hypocrisy of a supposedly pro-life movement cutting funding to institutions which are absolutely necessary to maintain any quality of life.

Sadly this article is only one of many examples I could have used of the Republican party promoting the existence of life but opposing quality of life. “Video: Abortion in the United States.” This video, compiled by the Guttmacher Institute (which advances “sexual and reproductive health worldwide through … public education”), seeks to provide people with unbiased facts regarding abortion. This is useful because it provides key statistics in context, for example that most abortion-seekers are older women who already have children, not irresponsible teenagers using abortion as a form of birth control as the pro-life movement often argues.