The Choice between A Pro-Life and A Pro-Choice Essays

The Choice between A Pro-Life and A Pro-Choice Essays The Choice between A Pro-Life and A Pro-Choice Paper The Choice between A Pro-Life and A Pro-Choice Paper Abortion has long been a controversial topic. Many Americans feel strongly about this subject because it involves such important issues as life and death, ones religious beliefs, the health of women and who controls women’s bodies. Can anything new be said about abortion? After more than a quarter of a century of an insane consideration one might think not. But there is at least one point of view that is hardly ever heard the screams of â€Å"Murder! † and â€Å"keep your prayers off my ovaries! † It deserves a full and reasoned explanation, but it might even give off some light on the controversies about the truth of Dr.  Henry Foster as Surgeon General and about disturbances of abortion clinics. It is that abortion is excusable only in extreme cases, however the state must respect the right to get and perform abortions. In other words, it is possible to be both a pro-life and a pro-choice. PRO-LIFE AND PRO-CHOICE: As many people of both sexes instinctively recognize, abortion has to be looked at as a question not of law, but of right and moral conduct. Begin then with the position, common to most religions and many naturalistic systems of morality, of respect for life-all life, but especially human. It seems impossible to deny that the developing fetus is a possible human being. The fetus from the very beginning is provided with all the genetic information that will enable its development into a full human person. Which is to say never. An abortion is not exactly a murder and in most legal codes and systems of morality there is such a thing as excusable homicide. It might be helpful to look at the case from a perspective other than the Orthodox Christian one. Any act that increases the total of human suffering is immoral, and any act that reduces suffering is moral. Some births that result from rape or threaten the mother’s life could increase suffering, and the abortions that prevent them are sadly excusable. But those are the easy cases. What of the pregnant 16-year-old, seduced and abandoned by an older man who refuses to take responsibility, disowned by her parents, with no prospects for anything but a life of poverty and welfare dependency? Does the suffering she and the child would undergo if it was born outweigh the horror of sniffing out a possible human personality? It is a close call and exactly the kind of tortured moral judgment that the government has no business making. A non-totalitarian state must leave such judgments to its citizens to make for themselves, according to their individual ideas of religion and justice. Murders meet both conditions; it is sentenced by nearly every known system of morality, and civilized life would be impossible in a community that allowed citizens to kill one another without punishment. Prohibition might perhaps be excused on public safety grounds, given the fights, violence and fatal accidents resulting largely from alcohol abuse. But it fails unmistakably because too many citizens refuse to regard the drinking of alcohol as immoral to make its prohibition excusable or enforceable. Sometimes an unwanted pregnancy can interrupt a woman’s life. Having children can interrupt women’s life. Having children can effect the women mentally and emotionally because raising children is not so easy to do. A mother has to be there every time, every second of her life for her baby to take care and to help get through his/her lifetime experience. That is why some women think that their pregnancy can interfere with their education. employment and their health. The Pro-life believer’s believe that an unwanted child is more than likely to live a bad life and to have nobody to depend on when they are growing up and going through a bad time in their life. They also believe that an unwanted child can become a major criminal and might also suffer abuse. But some Pro-choice believers believe that women who want to abort her baby should instead give her baby up for an adoption. They feel that some women who cannot have children can have a child from another women who was about to abort her child. When does a fetus become a baby? What happens when the choice is between the life of a mother and the life of the unborn? Is an embryo or a fetus the same as a person? Does it enjoy full moral rights, the same to those of a seven-year-old of a seventeen-year-old pregnant woman? You either believe that is so or you don’t. But women who carry their fetus do no keep it hidden, like keeping something in trunk of the car for nine months and then remembering it. So, in order to complete the picture, the Pro-choice believers described the women as cold, selfish, silly baby-haters, who are the enemies. Calling women murderers does the job easy because it is the most common abuse that is used against women outside the abortion clinics. Partial abortion is the final point of an abortion division because it involves the killing of the child during birth. There are a number of different methods for performing partial-birth abortions. Ohio described one method in detail abortionist Dr. Martin Hasdell. He said that this method would involve the controlment of a living baby in the womb with an instrument. Delivering all of the baby feet-first except for the head, making a small hole in the baby’s skull and then putting a suction tube into the babies skull in order for the brain and the skull to collapse. Then finishing the delivery of a dead baby. The described method is commonly used at or on the twentieth week of pregnancy. MYTH AND FACTS ABOUT ABORTION At the time the Constitution was accepted, abortion was commonly performed. Abortion was something the founding fathers would have been aware of, and by reasoning statement, they would not have remained silent about it if they had intended for the government to involve itself in the private lives of its citizens. During this time in history, all surgical procedures, including abortion, were extremely risky. Hospitals were not common; antiseptics were unknown, and even the most respected doctors had only natural medical education’s. Without the technology that we take for granted today, maternal and infant death rates during childbirth were extremely high. The dangers from abortion were similar to the dangers from other surgeries that were not outlawed. Today, their understanding of the consequences of unsafe abortion influences pro-choice advocates who fight for continued access to safe, legal abortion for all women often. We know from history that whenever abortion has been illegal, women have still attempted and succeeded in ending unwanted pregnancies. Unfortunately, they have often suffered serious health problems or died in the process. While the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was an important turning point in protecting women from unsafe abortion, an understanding of pre-Roe v. Wade years is important for making intelligent public policy decisions regarding reproduction health care in the future. In 1973, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal for the first time in American history. In the 1800’s, abortion was outlawed because it was so dangerous. Abortion was outlawed because it is immoral. During the period when abortion was illegal, abortion was effectively outlawed and the safety of pregnant women was ensured. Partial-birth abortions are only done in extreme cases involving serious baby deformities or threat to the life of the mother. The pro-choice believers argued partial-birth abortions are not common and are only done at or after the twentieth week of pregnancy. A fetus is not capable of feeling the pain due to the need of development. Pro-Life believers showed that a fetus was not enough developed to experience pain from the procedure. MEDICAL ARGUMENT AGAINST ABORTION The medical arguments against abortion are compelling. For example, at the beginning of the pregnancy the embryo is genetically separated from the mother. To say that the developing baby is no different from the mother’s appendix is scientifically inaccurate. A developing embryo is genetically different from the sperm and the egg that created it. Another set of medical arguments against abortion surround the definition of life and death. If one say of decision may have been used to define death, could they also be used to define life? Death used to be defined by the final heartbeat. A stopped heart was a clear sign of death. If the final heartbeat could define death, could the onset of a heartbeat define life? The heart is formed by the 18th day in the womb. If heartbeat were used to define life, then nearly all abortions would be illegal. A conflict to an abortion also can raise the controversial issue of a fetus pain. Does the fetus feel pain during abortion? The evidence seems fairly clear and agreeable. Consider this statement made in a British medical journal: â€Å"Try sticking an infant with a pin and you know hat happens. She opens her mouth to cry and also pulls away. Try sticking an 8-week-old human fetus in the palm of his hand. He opens his mouth and pulls his hand away. A more technical description would add that changes in heart rate and in fetus movement also suggest that intrauterine manipulations are painful to the fetus. † Obviously, other medical decisions may be used. For example, the developing fetus has a special set of fingerprints as well as genetic patterns that make it special. The development of ultrasound has provided us with a â€Å"window to the womb† showing us that a person is growing and developing in the mother’s womb. We can recognize clearly the eyes, the ears, the fingers, the nose and the mouth. Our visual senses tell us this is a baby growing and maturing inside the womb. The point is simple. Medical science leads to a pro-life point of view rather than a pro-choice point of view. Medical arguments provide a strong case against abortion and for life. LEGAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ABORTION A second set of arguments would be legal arguments against abortion. The best legal argument against abortion can be seen in the case of Roe v. Wade. It violated standard reasoning. The Supreme Court decided when life begins and then turned around and turned over the laws of 50 different states. The duty of a proof should lie with the life-taker, and the benefit of the doubt should be with the lifesaver. Put in another way: A hunter who hears rustling in the bushes shouldn’t fire until he knows what it is in the bushes. In addition, a Court which doesn’t know when life begins shouldn’t declare-open season on the unborn. The duty of a proof in a law is on the prosecution. The advantage of uncertainty is with the defense. This is also known as taking something for granted of the harmless. The Supreme Court clearly stated that it does not know when life begins and then it braked a promise of the very spirit of this legal principle by acting as if just proved that no life existed in the womb. Just as there are solid medical arguments against abortion, so also there are legal arguments against abortion. Roe vs. Wade was a bad decision that needs to be overturned. PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ABORTION A third set of arguments against abortion would be philosophical arguments. A key philosophical question is where do you draw the line? Put another way, when does a human being become a person? The Roe case arose out of a Texas law that prohibited legal abortion except to save a woman’s life. At that time, many other states had laws similar to the one in Texas. The effect of those laws was that women turned to someone for help in large numbers to illegal abortions that were dangerous because of poorly trained unsanitary conditions. Jane Roe, a 21-yea-old pregnant woman, represented all women who wanted abortions but could not get them legally and safely because of these laws. Henry Wade was the Texas Attorney General defended the law that made abortions illegal. After hearing the case, the Supreme Court ruled that American’s right to privacy included the right of a woman to decide whether to have children, and the right of a woman and her doctor to make that decision without state interference, at least in the first trimester of pregnancy. The Supreme Courts decision of Roe vs. Wade separated personhood from humanity. In other words, the judges argued that a developing fetus was a human but not a person. Since only persons are given the 14th Amendment protection under the Constitution, the Court argued that abortion could be legal at certain times. This left to doctors; parents of even other judges the responsibility of ones judgment of deciding when personhood should be awarded to human beings. Ethicist Paul Ramsey often warned that any arguments for abortion could logically be also used as an argument for the murder of a baby. As if to explain this, Dr. Francis Crick, of DNA specialist, proved that he was less concerned about the ethics of such correct reasoning extensions and offered a more acceptable definition of personhood. He suggested in the British journal Nature that if â€Å"a child were considered to be legally born when two days old, it could be examined to see whether it was an acceptable member of human society. † Obviously this is not only an argument for abortion but it’s an argument for the murder of a baby. Other line-drawers have suggested a cultural decision for personhood. Ashley Montagu, for example, stated, â€Å"a newborn baby is not truly a human until he or she is molded by cultural influences later. † Again, this is more than just an argument for abortion. It is also an argument for the murder of a baby. In conclusion, we can see that there are many good arguments against abortion. Obviously there are a number of medical, legal, and philosophical arguments against abortion. The bible and logic are on the side of the Christian who want’s to stand for the holiness of human life. Despite this lack of difference, we’re always surprised by the murder of a baby. We don’t blink an eye when we’re told that a million and half children were killed by abortion last year; yet whenever we hear of a born baby that was hit killed, drowned or choked, we stare at the newspaper in disbelief, our head swimming with questions. We wonder, â€Å"Why did that woman kill her baby? Was there something in the harsh cries of her child that drove her insane? † In search of answers, we reassured ourselves that although mothers may get tired and irritated with their children, maternal instinct usually kicks in and helps protect the life of the child. Yet some women just seem unable or unwilling to meet with the commonplace responsibilities of motherhood. There are people every year that get an abortion. I do no believe in this kind of thing, but no one has the right to blow up an abortion clinic. In search of my own answers, I’ve come up with a theory. I believe the current atmosphere of acceptance of legalized child murder leads women to conclude that it’s okay to kill their children. By ignoring the death crimes of million’s of innocent children, society tells women who kill that â€Å"No one will care and that one more child’s premature death is meaningless. I also believe that abortion should be illegal because I believe abortion kills a person who should have legal rights. Many people feel very strongly about not letting people get away with having an abortion and some people are either completely for it or just don’t care. Still, if you bomb a clinic someone who might not have anything to do with the clinic could get killed and what did he or she do to you? Nothing, they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were two abortion clinic bombings recently where people were killed because they either work at an abortion clinic or they have made a decision to get an abortion. People who blow these buildings up are more than likely a member of a religious group, connected with them in some way is, and they themselves think abortion is wrong. These are very hypocritical people. They act innocent and then they go and blow a building up and hurt innocent people while the are at it. In conclusion, no one needs to be doing something so wrong, so illegal, as killing people. Abortions are now legal and what some anti-abortion people are doing is not legal. So, seeing how they are doing the not so legal thing, violent protesting abortion should be stopped. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Issues in law and medicine Bopp. Gr. , James; Cook, Curtisr Partial-Birth Abortion: the final frontier of abortion jurisprudence Dilatation and extraction abortion-Law and legislation-United States Summer 1998 Vol. 14 Issue 1, 3 2. Frost-Knappman, Elizabeth Womens Right On Trial: 101 Historic American trials from Anne Huchinson to the Virginial Military Institute Cadets. 1997 New England Publishing Associates, INC. 164-165, 167-169 3. The New Internationalist Hadley, Janet A Moral Question Abortion-Social Aspects July 1, 1998 Issue 303, 20 4. Herda, D. J. Raw vs. Wade: the abortion question 1994, Enslow Publishing, Inc. 36-42, 47-49, 78-80. 5. Noonan G. R. , John T. The Morality of Abortion: legal and historical perspectives 1970, Harvard University Press 134-135, 185-186, 236-237 6. Terkel, Susan Neiburn Abortion: Facing the Issues Raw vs. Wade-Moral and Ethics of Abortion 1998 13-16, 29-32, 38, 121-125, 127-129 7. Tride, Laurence, H. Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes Pro-choice and Pro-life movement 1990 52,115, 228