Abortion Essay Research Paper Amber Lee Smith — страница 2

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people spoken out so prominently on the issue and never before have the sides been so divided and so out of control. There are two sides that make up the abortion controversy, pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-life supporters are totally against abortion. They feel that abortion is murder and that it completely goes against basic principals and morals. Opposing the pro-life group is the pro-choice group. Their stance on the issue is that it is a woman?s right to choose whether or not she wants to have an abortion. Pro-choicers also argue that legal abortion is safer than illegal abortion, and attempts of the public to interfere with the decision of abortion are denying women their constitutional right to privacy. Many people feel, however, that if somebody is pro-choice, that they are

pro-abortion, and that is not always the case. The pro-choice group simply feels that the choice should be available to the woman. ?A woman may do whatever she pleases in and to her own body? (qtd. in Baird and Rosenbaum; English 83). There are several major issues which revolve around the abortion controversy. At what point is a fetus considered a life? Pro-life supporters argue that a fetus becomes life at the moment of conception. Pro-choice retorts that a fetus does not become a life until it can survive on its own. One issue that abortion revolves around is whether or not abortion is in the best interest of the child. This is their main point of dispute, even though the child cannot begin to think on its own until it is born. Pro-life supporters feel that terminating the

child?s life is not in his/her best interests because it is not yet born. Second, that Roe v. Wade was overturned and Smith 4 women have no choice but to carry the child to term? What then happens to the unwanted child? Is it in that child?s best interests to be neglected, or possibly even abused? I do not think so. When Dr. Henry Morgentaler was interviewed he stated, ?Unfortunately, most of the people who are against abortion do not seem able to make the distinction between potential life and a real live baby. When you go on the assumption that a fertilized egg is already a baby, which is completely crazy and nonscientific, then you have to be blinded by dogma not to understand that a microscopic cell is not a baby ?Claire 58). Another controversy exists around what will happen

should the Roe decision ever be overturned. Those that favor the reversal think that it will make everything better, that overturning Roe v. Wade will put an end to abortion and then there will be no more controversy. That was what was thought when Roe v. Wade was introduced. Yet, overturning the decision will just spark more controversy. Legal or illegal, women who want/need them bad enough will find ways to get abortions. If the Roe decision were to be overturned, there would be a sense of protest and violence surrounding this issue that never existed before. There would be even more killings, more bombings, and more violence. One final issue surrounding abortion is morality, and whether or not abortion is moral. Morality relates to the principles of right and wrong. The moral

issues involved in abortion are among the most difficult to settle. Pro-life advocates feel that abortion is wrong, that it is murder. There are some that admit abortion maybe acceptable if the pregnancy would be fatal to the mother, or perhaps in the cases of rape or incest. The justification in that, however, is unclear. If they feel that abortion is murder, then how can it be justified in some circumstances? Murder is murder; it doesn?t matter under which circumstances it occurs. As writer JoAnne Smith 5 Guernsey states, ?Why should the right to life depend on the circumstances of conception? And if exceptions are extended to one fetus, why should they be withheld from other fetuses?? (Guernsey 54). Pro-choice supporters also talk about morality. How moral is it to bring an

unwanted child into the world? How moral is it to deny the option of choice to a young girl, pregnant as a result of rape or incest? It?s not. The scene is all too familiar: two sides shouting across to one another; one with pictures of bloody fetuses, one with pictures of bloody coat hangers on the other. Pro-life supporters want to take the constitutional right of choice and privacy away from women to save the ?lives? of the unborn. They, however, can go into abortion clinics and kill completely innocent people. They also want to kill millions of women by reversing the Roe decision and exchanging it for increased suicide and death resulting from illegal abortions. The pro-choice supporters are the rational and the logical. These people are just after what they deserve, their