Abortion Should Be Made Legal or Illegal - Research Paper Example

11 September Abortion Should Be Made Legal or Illegal Abortion should be made illegal because of the following reasons:- Abortion should be illegal because life begins at conception and not birth. Gender is determined at conception. DNA comes from both the sperm and egg at conception and therefore life begins at conception. The term fetus is used to define a developing child. Abortion clinics are allowed to lie. Abortion clinics are the only medical personnel who have a “constitutional right” to suppress information even when directly asked by the patient (Szafran and Arthur 284). This right is apparently allowed so that “conscientious physicians” might ‘protect’ women from being frightened by the risk they face or upset by what the abortion process will do to their unborn children. It is solely up to the pleasure of the abortionist or his representative to decide how much information he chooses to give. Most women need support and not an abortion. According to Frederica Mathewes, no woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg. Pregnant women do want and need support (Wade). While pro-choicers often say that an abortion is a woman’s choice, for numerous women it doesn’t feel like one. Indeed, abortion often seems like the only choice. Most women think that pregnancy will mean loss of vital resources. This is because they lack support. Most women take abortion because they think of it as the only way out. Abortion is not an act of love. Many women say that they want to be good parents and that it is not the right time and that’s why the abort. Women say that they are not prepared for a child but still want the best for the child. This women therefore assume that abortion is better since they are not ready. This is not so because you cannot kill a child out of their own good. Abortion does not guarantee that wanted children will be happy. Every parent want their child to be happy but there is no way to guarantee this (Wade). There are practical ways to make things work for you. Abortion doesn’t have to be the option that you choose because you have no other choice. Facing an unplanned pregnancy can be overpowering especially if you don’t know any means of bringing up the child (Szafran and Arthur 284). Abortion is not a answer because you can always go back to what you were doing before the pregnancy. Pregnancy should not adversely affect your life to the extent of aborting. There are many practical options to make things work such as child care. Being young and pregnant is not the worst thing in the world (Tietze). Abortion may affect your fertility. Women who have had abortions are known to experience problems with getting pregnant and their ability to mother future children. Abortion has both physical and emotional consequences. Abortion carries risks. Death is an occasional but permanent side effect which affects a small number of abortion patients. If the woman is not dilated enough or the pregnancy is misjudged, the abortion instruments may be pushed in too hard or too far causing uterine perforation. In avoiding uterine perforations, it is easy to not go far enough and to leave bits of fetal tissue which may cause infections. Reproductive organs are sensitive to damage and scarring. Damage to this organs could cause infertility and sterility (Lanfranchi, Angela, Joel, Brind). Abortion rises your risk in hemorrhaging because, during pregnancy, the body supports the growing baby by increasing the blood flow to the uterus. Abortion also increases the chance of ectopic pregnancy. This is a life threating condition where the embryo implants in your fallopian tubes instead of the womb. Miscarriage and premature birth results from an “incompetent” cervix. In an abortion the unripe cervix muscles are forced open to permit the procedure. This is unnatural and can permanently stretch the muscles. This sagging has repercussions for future pregnancies. Abortion is not safer than child birth (Tietze). Abortion clinics say that abortion is ten to thirty times safer than childbirth. This is not so because the lifelong effects of abortion may really increase a woman’s risk in yet to come pregnancies. This argument that abortion is safer than childbirth could be because abortion related deaths go unreported as such when further down the line a woman develops difficulties and goes to hospital, she may report the condition but not the abortion due to shame (Tietze). In this case, the abortion death will not be reported. Another reason why abortion should be illegal is that it is not reversible. Once abortion is done, there is no way that you can change your mind. You may regret your abortion for a very long time (Szafran and Arthur 284). The relief you get from the abortion may not last and you may end up regretting the choice and nothing can be done about it. This could affect your mental health. This is so because many women regret their abortion as time goes on. This could haunt you for the rest of your life. What if you mum aborted? Abortion does not pass on the gift of life. If every woman aborted, the human generation could face the risk of extinction. Abortion also contradicts the golden rule of “do to others as you would have them do to you”. This raises the question as to whether you would like to have been aborted (Wade). Reasons why abortion should be made legal include the following:- Legalizing abortion will have the effect of reducing the deaths caused as a result of abortion complications. This is made possible in that, in states where abortion is illegal women seek other means of abortion which generally do not meet the medical care standards and are dangerous to their lives. This is because the laws of the land force the women to behave as if they were criminals therefore forcing them to conduct abortion in ways that are not standardized and that do not observe medical standards because they are committing a crime in their state. Legal abortion also protects women’s health by providing them with a platform to conduct the abortion in hospitals and health centers or facilities without fear of being against the laws of the country or charged in a court of law. If abortion is illegal, the women would have sought illegal abortions. Legal abortion helps women save their health whereby it helps avert many of the health complications brought about by carrying out abortion in life threatening ways just to evade the arm of the laws of the land. For instance in states where abortion has been legalized, this has had the effects of reducing the number of deaths caused by the procedure being carried out in ways that are risky and most likely to cause complications to the woman leading to complications in future births or even leading to the woman being unable to bear children in future. Abortion should be made legal because being a mother is a choice and also an option for women. By making abortion legal, women will be able to make choices whether to give birth or to conduct an abortion safely, for they will have an option to perform a legal abortion (Cates, David and Kenneth 26). This will help save the women who are caught in incidents of rape or an accident leading to pregnancy, for they have an option to end the pregnancy. Legalizing abortion will also ensure that all women are made equal in that, women with low income who are driven into dangerously self-induced abortions or back-alley abortions because they cannot afford to travel to countries or regions where abortion is legal. However the rich women are able to travel to those regions where abortion is legal. Therefore by making abortion legal, all women have equal rights whereby the high income women and the low earning women all have access to abortion services. By outlawing or making abortion illegal, this means that any pregnancy is obligatory. This means that, a woman is required to carry the child, wanted or unwanted. This means that the woman with an unwanted child will have to carry it. This invades the personal decisions of the women who do not want to bear the children they are carrying. But by making abortion legal will mean that pregnancy is optional hence not compulsory. This shall not invade the personal choices of the women who have the idea of not carrying the pregnancy (Szafran and Arthur 284). In states where abortion is illegal, this has the effect of increasing the unwanted children in the society. This is because the state did not provide the right to abortion hence compelled the woman to bear the child which was unwanted. This leads to tragic cases in the society such as children being uncared for, unloved children, brutalized children and or children being abandoned. When the children grow up they are often disadvantaged and sometimes they incline towards brutal behavior to others (Szafran and Arthur 284). By legalizing abortion, this has an impact to the society and to families. For instance in America, after the legalization of abortion there has been a decrease in birthrates among women (Cates, David and Kenneth 26). It leads to decline in the birthrates of women of whom the social and the health consequences hinder childbearing. These groups of women include teenagers, women over 35 years (old women) and also unmarried women are saved from bearing children which they are not willing to bear (Cates, David and Kenneth 26). Legalized abortion usually helps majorly in pregnancy complications during deliveries. This is usually the case where the woman delivering develops complications prompting the medical staff to conduct abortion in order to save the mother of the child especially where the chances of the mother surviving after the delivery are minimal or where both the child and the mother’s life are in danger. The doctors therefore, opt to save the mother by conducting an abortion because at the basic level is not about abortion but the values of the woman in the society cannot be compared to that of the child (Cates, David and Kenneth 26). Legalized abortion can also be a choice for good families whereby an unintended pregnancy happens in a family and there is a possibility of it causing tension in the family or the society (Szafran and Arthur 284). This can also be the case where a certain pregnancy in a family has the probability of pushing the family below the line of economic survival and or disrupting the stability of the family. In states where abortion is not legalized, the unplanned pregnancy will have the effect of increasing the number of families living below the economic line of survival (Szafran and Arthur 284). Works cited Cates, Willard, David A. Grimes, and Kenneth F. Schulz. "The public health impact of legal abortion: 30 years later." Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health 35.1 (2003): 25-28. Friedan, Betty. "The Feminine Mystique. 1963." Reprint. NewYork: DeU (1983) .Hartnagel, Timothy F., JAMES J. CREECHAN, and Robert A. Silverman. "Public opinion and the legalization of abortion." Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 22.3 (1985): 411-430 Mileti, Dennis S., and Larry D. Barnett. "Nine demographic factors and their relationship to attitudes toward abortion legalization." Biodemography and Social Biology 19.1 (1972): 43-50. Scott, Jacqueline, and Howard Schuman. "Attitude strength and social action in the abortion dispute." American Sociological Review (1988) Szafran, Robert F., and Arthur F. Clagett. "Variable predictors of attitudes toward the legalization of abortion." Social Indicators Research 20.3 (1988): 271-290. Tietze, Christopher. "The effect of legalization of abortion on population growth and public health." Family Planning Perspectives (1975) Wade, Before Roe. "Legalization of abortion" Read More