The Wrong of Abortion - Essay Example

11 Dec The Wrong of Abortion Introduction This paper is about the wrong of abortion. In other words, this paper will show that Patrick Lee and Robert P. George are not wrong in their assessment that abortion is an aberration. I shall argue in this paper that the killing of the fetus, by means of abortion should be looked upon like murder and treated in the same way. Patrick Lee and Robert P. George look upon abortion as an absolute wrong and that the aborted fetus is actually a separate entity than the mother. Women’s Rights Many people say that women have the ultimate right to choose what goes on in their own bodies. That is true to a certain extent. When it comes to the fact that an unborn child is growing inside the mother, that does not mean she has the right to abort the pregnancy. It may be a fact that involuntary childbirth has caused deaths (Lee and George 2005). However, some people do not look at the fetus as a person. People forget, when it comes to abortion, that the unborn child and the mother are two separate entities. Thus, in all actuality, the child is only hitching a ride with mother for only a few months until it is ready to make its way into this world (Kidd 1999). The mother may have rights to be happy. But even our own government, which is full of hypocrites, wrote into our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are endowed rights by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Kidd 1999). This proves that even the fetus that is being carried by the mother has the right to live since it was created by God. Furthermore, if a woman pregnant with child is killed by someone, that person is going to be charged with two murders, not one. The law even takes in account the unborn child and prosecutes for the untimely death of the child inside the mother’s womb as well as the mother herself (ChristiaNet). Is a Fetus a Person? Some people would lead us to believe that the fetus is not a person until it has the ability to be sentient and think for itself. The problem I see in that statement refers to young newborn children. If you say yes that a fetus is not a person since it cannot think for itself, then you must think that a newborn is not a person either. Newborns do not have the ability to think for themselves either. However, we still consider them people. Biologically, how can a fetus not be considered a person? At six weeks of gestation the fetus begins to develop a heartbeat. Thus, to me this essentially shows us that the fetus is a person. Also, it has been proven that a fetus can feel pain which is why the mother feels a baby, fetus, kicking inside her womb. As Alexander Pruss puts it, I was once an embryo, then a fetus, then a neonate, then an infant, then a toddler, then a child, then an adolescent, and now an adult. If I wasn’t a fetus how did I come to be? Biologically, an embryo already has all the information that will lead to the development of the child inside the womb of the mother and thus the fetus who will be inside the mother until ready to join the harsh cruel world. So, that makes the embryo the earliest stage of human life. However, some people will argue that if an embryo is human life, so are egg and sperm cells. Well in the case of egg and sperm cells that’s kind of a yes-no question. Egg and sperm cells combine to form the embryo. An embryo has all the genetic makeup and coding needed to create the distinctions of the conceived human from its parents. The embryo is, in a sense, human and therefore should have the respect that all humans have, the right to life. We cannot decide whose time it is to die, that is for God to decide. Although, we have laws that we have to abide by that doesn’t mean that we can go mercilessly killing God’s creations without any remorse for the consequences. What if the Mother’s Raped? Sorry, no. That is quite ridiculous too. A baby is too precious to kill no matter what the age or whether or not they have been born. Rapes rarely cause conception for the simple fact that the woman being raped is fighting off her attacker and thus, the ability to conceive, at the point, is going to be highly limited at best. Medical Technology vs. Abortion The absurdity of it all is that we have the medical technology to keep a premature baby who was only inside the mother for two months alive long enough for the baby to mature while across town in a clinic another baby of the same age is being ripped out of the mother and being crushed to death. With medical technology as advanced as it is, the abortion clinics should be shut down and the doctors should have their licenses revoked or even they should be found guilty of multiple atrocities of murder and sent to prison with all the other murders and criminals. Some states in the United States are proposing measures that would make the potential mothers at the abortion clinics, possibly, think twice. They are proposing that abortion clinics give their female patients ultrasounds that would show them the fetus in their womb. This measure would hopefully save some lives from unnecessarily being ended by selfish mothers. My Response I see the viewpoint of Lee and George. Intrinsically, all human life is precious, whether or not that human life has born yet should not matter. From the moment of conception, when life begins to form within the mother, abortion should be left on the backburner and how the mother and/ or father is going to take care of the child should be top priority. Not whether or not the child is going to cramp the style of life that you have. That is selfish thinking. Not only does an abortion harm the fetus, a good portion of the time abortions wind up hurting the mother as well. Abortion doctors are not trying to be careful about how they remove the fetus. They are just trying to destroy one of the most precious things that God could ever put in a person’s hands, a child. Just because a fetus is not born, does not mean it is not alive. Sonograms and ultrasounds have shown fetuses to kick, cross their legs, suck their thumbs, lay as though they were relaxed and stretched out etc. They, also have heartbeats, brains, lungs, etc. forming in their tiny bodies getting ready for their entrance into the real world. These precious commodities, children, should not be thrown aside like yesterday’s garbage. A fetus has life. If a person’s life is killed, the potential that was left in their life is gone. However, if the fetus’ life is ended it is even more harmful. This has come to be the biggest regret of some of the women who have gone through abortions in the past. Some of them have even had to go into therapy for years on end to get over the struggles of what they had previously done, even after they had more children. Conclusion In conclusion, abortion is an aberration to the sanctity of human life. The women who go through this process sometimes have scars that will never heal in their lifetime no matter how hard they try. Furthermore, those that have regrets have come to realize, too late, that a fetus really is a person that is just starting its long journey. For what I have seen and read, the Supreme Court back in the 1970s with the controversial decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, only proves that the government of today does not even uphold the laws and values of the people who created our government. Written in our own historical document, The Declaration of Independence, it states that all men shall be created equal and given unalienable rights to life, liberty, and happiness from their Creator. The creator that is referred to in the Declaration of Independence is God, the creator of all things on Earth. God’s creations are not for us to destroy without his approval. Thus, it is not for us to decide if the fetus should live or die. The decision for life and death lies in the hands of God. Lee and George are right in their assessment that the fetus is alive form the moment of conception and that an abortion is the killing of another human being. Thus, if a fetus is killed, it should be judged just like the death of an adult. Works Cited ChristiaNet. n.d. “Abortion is wrong.” http://www.christianet.com/abortionfacts/abortioniswrong.htm Kidd, Travis. 1999. “Abortion- Reasons wrong.” http://dutyisours.com/abortion.htm Lee, Patrick and Robert P. George. 2005. “The Wrong of Abortion.” In Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics edited by Andrew Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman, 13-26. Wiley-Blackwell. http://www.wiley.com/Wiley/CDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405115483,descCd-google_preview.html Marquis, Donald. 2011. “Why Abortion is Seriously Wrong: Two Views.” In Bioethics with Liberty and Justice: Themes in the Works of Joseph M. Boyle edited by Christopher Tollefsen, 3- 22. Columbia, SC: Springer. http://books.google.com/books?isbn=9048197902 Pruss, Alexander R. 2003. “I Once Was a Fetus: That is Why Abortion is Wrong.” In Life and Learning XII edited by Joseph W. Koterski, 169- 182. Ann Arbor: University Faculty for Life (Originally University of Michigan). http://www.uffl.org/vol12/pruss12.pdf Read More