Abortion - Opposing Viewpoints - Essay Example

Abortion Introduction No right is more essential than the right to live. And the premature death of a young child is among life's most dreadful tragedies. To cause such a death is an immense wrong. And if infanticide is wrong, is the ruin of a fetus at eight months of gestation, or at five, any diverse? Nothing is more demoralizing than a life without freedom. A life in which one can be compelled into parenthood is just such a life. Rape is among the most reflective rejections of liberty, and convincing a woman to accept a rapist's child is a murder or an attack on her humanity. How diverse is it to force her to remain pregnant and become a mother just for the reason that efforts at birth control by chance failed? From her standpoint, the pregnancy is also unwanted. From the point of view of the fetus, how the pregnancy began certainly makes no difference. If compelling a woman to persist a pregnancy that will just about surely kill her is not permitted, how different is it to force her to maintain a pregnancy that will almost certainly shorten her life? Or a pregnancy that will leave her life a shambles? Are there means of approaching issues like abortion that evade pitting these absolutes against one another? Approaches of choosing that uphold respect for the deepest principles on both sides of the equation? Ways that face the authenticity of sex and power that trigger the struggle? Abortion remains one of the most fervently argued societal and ethical issues.  Both sides present prevailing arguments for and against abortion. The pro-life groups give emphasis to the argument of protecting human life since formation at any cost, to the point of giving complete precedence to the life of the unborn fetus over the life of the mother. The pro-choice group put emphasis on the argument that a woman must have a right to manage her body to the point of absolutizing her right over the innate phenomenon of development of a new living being (Cozic, Charles and Stacey Tipp, 1991, pg 97). Basically I believe the majority of the babies that are aborted are unwanted babies. Mother of baby supposes that they would be poorly mistreated and ignored. This is why abortion is okay to them. They believe abortion is putting away the child from maltreatment. Moreover, woman has the right to make her own decisions.  If a woman makes a decision to have an abortion it is her right to do as she pleases with her body. The issue of whether abortion is morally right must be left up the sense of right and wrong of the woman whom is making the decision and not through judging eyes not going through the same circumstances (Richard J. Hardy., 1994, Page 189). For instance, a woman with a family of four who are hardly surviving find out that she is pregnant. She comes to a decision to have an abortion for the reason that she can’t afford the baby.  That might have saved the world of one sadder story of a mother abusing and neglecting her unwanted child. Every woman has the right to make their own decisions. In the Texas law, McCorvey, Weddington, and Coffee became part of a larger historical movement and political struggle. Throughout the turbulent 1960s, the movement to liberalize abortion laws was growing with the so-called sexual revolution and demands for women's rights. Yet the legal reforms pushed by abortion rights advocates were in some respects little more than a return to the legal status of abortions a century earlier. Until the mid-nineteenth century most states permitted abortions until after "quickening," or the first movement of the fetus; even then, abortions were usually considered minor offenses. One of the famous cases in the American history has been the case of Roe V. Wade. It was a case in which the Supreme Court said that except in narrow state of affairs, the Constitution of the United States does not allow the government to interfere with a woman's right to desire abortion. In 1970, a pregnant unmarried woman filed a class action suit in federal district court in Texas, seeking a declaratory judgment that Texas' criminal abortion laws were unconstitutional and an injunction against their enforcement. The Texas criminal abortion laws at that time as they had for more than a century, prohibited abortion except when procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A three-judge district court held that the abortion laws were unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, infringing the fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose whether to have children. Both the defendant and the plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was argued twice before the Court (Friendly Fred, and Martha J. H. Elliott. 1984, 103. On January 22, 1973, the Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, affirming by an overwhelming 7-2 vote the district court's judgment on the merits and introducing the broad doctrine of abortion privacy into American constitutional law (Adamany David., 1980., pg 45). Justice Harry Blackmun attempted to prove that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of Texas today are of relatively recent vintage. He also reviewed recent "privacy" decisions and declared that the fundamental right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." Therefore, laws restricting abortion could only be upheld if necessary to effectuate a compelling state interest. He opined that prohibiting abortion is not necessary to protect maternal health until late in pregnancy because the risk of maternal morbidity from early abortions appeared to be lower than the risks of morbidity from childbirth. The state's interest in protecting the right to life of persons did not justify abortion restrictions because the term "person" was used in several provisions of the Constitution to refer to already-born individuals. The state's interest in protecting potential life was an insufficient justification for abortion restrictions because there is a "wide divergence of thinking" among theologians, philosophers, and physicians about when life begins. In the end, the Court invented a mandatory "trimester" rule, within which it defined the limits of constitutionally permissible abortion regulation: during the first trimester of pregnancy, no state restriction of the woman's abortion decision and its effectuation by her doctor is permissible; during the second trimester only regulations "reasonably related to maternal health" are permissible; during the third trimester, after viability, the state could prohibit abortion "except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." (Banks, Bill, and Sue Banks., 1992, pg 76) Inaccurate to blame the practice of abortion to cover up extramarital sexual misbehavior entirely on Roe, that practice was firmly imbedded in American culture before the Texas abortion laws were invalidated. However, it is obvious that Roe has done nothing to remedy the problem; rather, the practice of using abortion to cover up extramarital sexual conduct has increased dramatically in overall numbers and substantially in percentage of total abortions (Gates John B., and Charles A. Johnson, 1991, pg 83). Roe v. Wade is various things. It is a legal verdict by the Supreme Court; a rallying cries for both sides in the abortion debate. But it is in addition, and was in the beginning, a completely human story, one that has become by now common to numerous as a story similar to other stories repeated all over the United States daily. It seems telling that in Roe v. Wade both the woman on one side of the "versus" ("Roe") and the fetus on the other (stand for by Wade) are anonymous. In much of the debate over abortion in our society, one side or the other is condensed to ghostly secrecy. Many who can willingly imagine the concrete humanity of a fetus, who hold its picture high as well as weep, hardly see the woman who carries it and her human dilemma. To them she becomes an all but invisible abstraction. Numerous others, who can willingly imagine the woman and her body, who cry out for her right to control her fate, hardly imagine the fetus within that woman and do not envisage as real the life it might have been permitted to lead. For them, the life of the fetus becomes a similarly invisible concept (Tribe & Norton, 1992). According to a survey, almost sixty five percent of Houston Texas population agree that it a mother right to decide that she wants to give birth to the baby or not. The majority populations are pro-choicer. I believe that the law should be soon changing to facilitate mothers. However, the disparities among the two opposing sides on abortion are noticeable, since one’s explanation of the cause for an abortion is the accurate conflicting of the other. A pro-choicer would think that the decision to abort a pregnancy is that of the mothers and the state has no right to get in the way. A pro-lifer would hold that from the instant of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive. This life obliges on us a moral compulsion to care for it and that abortion is the same as to murder. America is at a junction. In the year 1989, the sixteen-year era of judicial defense of legal abortion rights that started with the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade ended with that Court's five to four decision maintenance certain state regulations of abortion in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. A right that, ever since the time of Watergate and Vietnam, had been kept by judges from the horseplay of local politics—the woman's right to make a decision for herself whether to finish a pregnancy—is now focused to regulation, and perhaps even prohibition, by our chosen legislature. A right that numerous Americans took for granted is now in a real sense up for grabs. Anyone who doubts that this is the meaning of Webster needs look no further than the morning newspaper. As the 1990s dawn, the nature of politics in America is altering daily, and the gloom of the question of abortion rights grows, with extensive worth for our society. Even as the public program is prolonged to deal with such new questions as the right to die, no matter intimidates to split us politically in quite as influential a way as the abortion issue does. Abortion is one of the most controversial issues argued in present society. This issue has caused a huge pact of confusion in the world. A number of protestors have even killed other human beings over the issue. People’s religion has had some contribution on this issue, however this should not be the merely aspect when looking at this severe controversial argue. There are several questions that one should ask him/her self when making a decision, either abortion be right or wrong. As a woman unwillingly moves toward all the abortion information, she is likely to come across the pros and cons of abortion. She will read on the subject of the right to have an abortion in opposition to the wrong in having an abortion. Though, no matter what her political point of view, it always comes down to a very close, personal decision that no woman builds without some level of emotional trauma. All of the options abortion, or raising the baby, or permitting another family to adopt the baby bears pain, sacrifice, and an emotion of being trapped in an unwilling decision (Jacobson, J.L., 1990). However what you by and large don't find in any abortion information, either pro or con, is an understandable statement of what God presents this woman. He has something to say to her in the midst of her pain and confusion. The pros and cons over the abortion struggle are severe. Sensible people are resentfully divided on both sides of the issue. The heart of the fight is on the subject of when life starts and where government authority ends. The major points are whether the government is supposed to pay for abortions for the poor, how many months pregnant should a woman are before going ahead with it and what sort of parental permission for minors (Richard J. Hardy, 1994). Abortion is wrong in lots of instances. It unfairly takes the life of a human being. The huge concern has been shown for the blameless victims of high jacking but what is abortion but this, the high jacking with no amnesty, of an innocent passenger out of his mother's womb. Abortion is the damage, tearing apart and killing of a human life an unborn baby. A fetus is not just a splotch of tissue; to a certain extent a fetus is Latin for offspring or young one. Human life begins at fertilization; as a result it is wrong to murder the blameless child in the womb. Abortion destroys the life of a baby after it has begun. Not only has science confirmed that a fetus is in fact a human, the plain facts also confer abortion kills the life of a human being. If a doctor killed a baby one minute after it was born, they would be accused with murder. Although if they were to kill a baby one minute before it was born, and a minute before that and so on, they would not be measured a murderer. Abortion not merely kills the baby but can kill the mother as well. During an abortion, in spite of the use of local anesthesia, 97% of the women report severe pain, and if an extra powerful drug is used she could undergo dangerous side effects. Lots of complications are common after an abortion, similar to inflammation of the reproductive organs. In addition, there is strong proof that abortion increases the danger of breast cancer (Royston, E. and Armstrong S., 1989). Our national institutions are braced for an apparently never-ending clash of absolutes. The political stage is already conquered by the well-rehearsed and intensely felt arguments, on either side of the abortion issue that we have come to know so well. The debate is endless. None of its members ever seems even gently convinced by the influence of the other side. As the apparently tempting force of the pro-life movement bears down on the apparently fixed object of abortion rights, local politics may at times be weighed down by the kind of single-issue confrontation that has already distorted the face of national elections. If this happens, the losers will be the self-governing process and the American people (Tribe & Norton, 1992). For most Americans the years after Roe and the legalization of abortion in the United States were not a time to face cautiously or to talk about unemotionally the many subtle as well as complex legal and moral questions that abortion as a public issue offers. For those who were certain that abortion should never have been announced a "right" at all, those years were a time for quiet mourn or energetic protest. For those who understood that abortion would indefinitely remain a sensibly declared legal right, and to whom this was inoffensive, there was no need to believe the question of the proper government treatment of abortion (Dionne, 1989). With the legal status of abortion snatched from the political contesting ground by the Court's 1973 Roe decision, the public stage was left mainly to those who alleged most strongly that abortion was wrong totally, that it was morally wrong to let each woman choose for herself, and that as a result the law should be changed to make it doable for abortion to be criminalized again. The debate was therefore controlled by those prepared to wage the only political movement that our legitimate structure made available—a political movement to change the federal judiciary—and by those who goes up against them. Since it was judges who had read abortion rights into the Constitution, abortion opponents supposed, we required judges who would read abortion drop out of it. For a time some supported a constitutional amendment that would efficiently have forbidden abortion or would at least have come back the question to each state's legislature, but the substantial political agreement and effort necessitate for performance of any such amendment proved indefinable. The argument was polarized; its terms became static. For all its other meaning, the Webster decision offers an opportunity for all of us to inspect the bitter and disruptive public question of abortion "policy” (Tribe & Norton, 1992). Views on Abortion A woman's feelings about abortion depend largely on her reason for choosing to end the pregnancy, the conditions during the procedure, and her response to the experience. There are many reasons for choosing to have an abortion. Perhaps underlying them all is a deeply maternal, instinctive feeling that the time is not right to give birth and that to do so would be detrimental to all concerned. If there is any doubt about the decision or any moral conflict, the emotional effect may be devastating. For some women, an abortion is one of the most profound events they will experience in life (Claire, 1995). Mira Dana, a psychotherapist at the Women's Therapy Centre in London, has conducted postabortion counseling sessions for almost 20 years. In her view, There are three general reactions women display after an abortion and on coming home from hospital. (1) Euphoria ... an expression of the feeling of relief and freedom at having solved a problem, having got rid of a burden and having executed a decisive action. They will feel strong and powerful and in control of their lives. They will feel the need to laugh and have a good time ... [and] keep excessively busy ... feelings of loss, anger [and] guilt are of no relevance for them at this period ... these emotions are bound to come later, sometimes even months or years later, sometimes in a disguised form, apparently with no connection to having had an abortion.... Detachment— Some women will experience a sense of "shock" ... numbness inside. They will go on doing ordinary activities they are used to doing, but with a sense of detachment, distance ... unreality. This detachment is an attempt to avoid experiencing the painful feelings connected to the termination.... She may feel an inner emptiness ... Depression—Some women get into a state of depression which could be described as a general sense of hopelessness and diffused (unfocussed) feeling of blackness... feeling bad about yourself and your life and your environment, but without actually knowing what it is—a state of no specific emotion but this "darkness" ... feelings of worthlessness ... and that nothing is of much importance ... [Other reactions may be] Fear of Sexuality ... Many women need time after an abortion before they feel relaxed and able to have sexual relationships again because they fear another abortion.... Ambivalence—not only about having a baby. There are many issues in a woman's life about which she may be equally confused but which get "hooked" on the one issue of having a baby.... Envy—Often women feel envious of other women who have babies after the termination.... Some women will refrain from visiting their friends who have newborn babies as they feel it is too painful to be with them (Claire, 1995). Not all women feel loss, anger, guilt, and depression after an abortion, as Mira Dana suggests, but some do, and most women certainly experience at least one of those feelings. Mira Dana has a deep perception and understanding of women's reactions to abortion and the problems created by having to keep the experience a secret (Claire, 1995). The majority of us are torn by the abortion question. There is something intensely misleading with reference to discussing the abortion debate exclusively in terms of a clash between pro-life "groups" as well as pro-choice "groups," as though each of us could correctly be labeled as belonging to one camp or the other. For almost everyone, the genuine truth is that the clash is an interior one. Few people who actually authorize themselves to feel all of what is at venture in the abortion issue can avoid a thoughtful sense of internal division. Whatever someone's "bottom line"—whether it is that the choice must belong to the woman or that she must be disallowed from killing the fetus—it is hard not to feel profoundly the tug of the opposing view (Mason-Dixon 1989). Something similar to horror must be felt by everybody involved in the question of abortion that has not become knocked out to the reality of what is at stake. This feeling may be less strong with abortions carried out in the very start stages of pregnancy, when the embryo is a tiny, visually undifferentiated, multicelled growth without audibly human features. But surely by some point in pregnancy, as soon as abortion involves a fetus that is noticeably human in form, or when it involves a fetus that one might envisage feeling pain, few of us can shun the sense of terrible choice that each abortion necessitates. The "absolutes" described here are the fetus's right to life and the woman's right to freedom. We have seen, nonetheless, that neither "absolute" is actually that. We have seen that whatsoever right a woman might have to prefer abortion would be damaged if the fetus could be saved exclusive of sacrificing the woman's freedom to end her pregnancy. Most would instinctively sense the force of any such fetus's claim to life (Tribe & Norton, 1992). But that claim to life, as we have also seen, must sequentially be compensated by the possible evils, real, even if ill distinct, of state-run fetus factories. Examining intimately the basis of our apprehension at such government participation in the extraction as well as incubation of fertilized embryos suggests that the fundamental clash would not pit life against freedom, the unborn against their mothers, so much as it would pit life against the avoidance of government interruption into life's mysteries, life against the avoidance of potentially hideous state intervention into processes we instinctively feel should be past government's reach. Not astonishingly, the question of when life ends, like the one of when it starts, has found its way to the nation's highest court. On the day it determined Webster, the Supreme Court proclaimed that it would start the case of Nancy Cruzan, a woman whom a car accident reduced to what doctors call a relentless vegetative state, a state of unconsciousness as well as unresponsiveness from which she will never recuperate. Nancy Cruzan's parents are fighting the state of Missouri to institute the right to withdraw Nancy's feeding tube so that she may die (Mason-Dixon 1989). By the time the Cruzan case was disputed in the Supreme Court in December 1989, Court watchers had already associated the fate of Nancy Cruzan with that of "Jane Roe." The oral argument was cautiously observed for clues not only concerning where the Court was leaning on the right to die issue itself, but also concerning where the Court was leaning on the broader subjects of personal liberty and privacy that surface most radically in the abortion context. Conclusion The logic of the right-to-die argument will not of necessity have any close encounter with the sense of the abortion debate. Yet many like arguments over abortion, right-to-die quarrels may, eventually, pit the value of protecting life in opposition to the value of evading gross technical intrusions. At bottom there is a resemblance between the state's verdict to lay hands on the intimate and subtle matter of life's reproduction and the state's decision to have the last utterance on the personal and subtle matter of life's termination. A woman's right to make a decision if and how to give birth therefore shares a common root with the right to keep away from the humiliating tangle of state-mandated technology that has become death's least human face. As a result, it may be that the right-to-life desire and the pro-choice impulse may yet find widespread cause—in the wish to avoid government treatment of technologies to save or protect life, but only at the cost of giving up what we sense to be most natural. Yet we must give in that reverence for what seems natural and repugnance to what seems to change nature's plan can all too effortlessly become a mask for the wish to protect the power that some of us exercise over others, that men especially wield over women. For some pro-life believers, although not for all, facing that mask directly may be a source of great distress, a first step toward deciding to take away the mask and recognize the world anew. Reference: Adamany David. "The Supreme Court's Role in Critical Elections." In Realignment in American Politics , edited by Bruce Campbell and Richard Trilling . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980., pg 45 Banks, Bill, and Sue Banks. Ministering to Abortion's Aftermath. Kirkwood, Mo.: Impact Books, Inc., 1992., pg 76 Cozic, Charles and Stacey Tipp, ed. Abortion: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1991, pg 97 Dionne, 1989. "Poll on Abortion Finds the Nation Is Sharply Divided," New York Times, A1. Friendly Fred, and Martha J. H. Elliott. The Constitution: That Delicate Balance . New York: Random House, 1984., 103 Gates John B., and Charles A. Johnson, eds. The American Courts: A Critical Assessment. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1991., pg 83 Jacobson, J.L. The global politics of abortion. World watch Paper 97, 1990. Laurence H. Tribe; W. W. Norton, 1992. Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes. W.W. Norton & Company. New York London Mason-Dixon 1989. Opinion Research for WCIX, WTSP, Miami Herald, Tampa Tribune, et al., reprinted in Polling Report, 4. Miriam Claire, 1995. The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue. Insight Books. Plenum Press, New York and London. Richard J. Hardy., Government in America. Copyright 1994, Page 189. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 ( 1973). See Mark Tushnet, "The Name of the Rose," Constitutional Commentary ( 1989), 215, 216. Royston, E. and Armstrong S. Preventing maternal deaths. Geneva, World Health Organization, 1989. Read More