Abortion Is a Woman's Right

Abortion is a Woman's Right

How can one person be in control of someone else's body and what they want to do with it? After years of fighting for individual rights and freedom, it would be a step in the wrong direction to not allow women that choice to choose. No woman should have to carry the child of their rapist, or a child that was unplanned in which she knows she would be unable to care for properly. Abortion is a very controversial issue, although many individuals may have their own opinion, abortion is the woman's choice. Abortion terminates a pregnancy and the type of abortion depends on the length of the pregnancy. In 1973 the United States Supreme Court made it possible for women to get safe abortions. With this ruling, abortion clinics made it possible for thousands of women to get abortions, if these facilities were closed, it would be impossible for women to receive abortions safely. Even though pro-lifers say abortion is murder, abortion is a woman's choice and abortion a complicated and private matter.

What if you were a single, successful, independent woman walking two blocks to your home after a causal dinner with friends and were abducted by a serial rapist. After a fierce fight, you were able to escape but had been raped. The rapist was never captured and you are pregnant. How would you feel if law prohibited you to abort your unwanted child? For the rest of your life you would have to look in the face of a child that constantly reminded you of that horrific night. Some may suggest adoption. Even then, for nine months and costly doctor visits you would have to carry a child of your rapist and be constantly reminded of that night. Although this may be an extreme scenario, the point is still clear, it is a woman's body and she has the right to choose what she thinks is best for her life and body.

Abortion was legalized in the United States in January of 1973 by the U.S Supreme Court. Abortion was made legal because many women sought after abortions in many fashions that were dangerous, expensive, and humiliating. By legalizing abortions women were no longer putting their lives at risk to prevent unwanted pregnancies. When abortions were illegal women would go to any extent to terminate a pregnancy. They would allow men or women with no medical training to perform the operation, or even in some cases, they would perform it themselves.

Abortions are used for a number of reasons, some include to prevent the birth of a child with severe medical problems or physical defects, mental retardation, or to alleviate physical or mental condition that would endanger the mother's life if the pregnancy were to continued to full term, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and to end a pregnancy that results from rape or incest which occurs about 13,000 times in the United States each year according to Eve Visconti of the Medical Center. Although there are a number of reasons listed, there really does not have to be a reason given. If a woman has the right to decide what she wants to do with her without offering an explanation to anyone.

The chart below suggests that majority of abortions take place in developing countries. A developing county's income is significantly less than many industrious counties. There are limited exports and farming is done in methods that are not time efficient, the methods used are primitive. Developing countries have such high rates of abortions because it is more expensive to raise children in third world countries. Also there are less resources available to prevent pregnancies in third world countries.

Legal abortion not only protects women's lives, but also their health for tens of thousands of women with heart, and kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia and serve diabetes, and other illnesses that can be life threatening. The availability of legal abortion has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth. Before legal abortion women's choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth.

Pro-life advocates argue that con of abortion being legal is that so many women use it as a form of birth control. Although people suggest that abortions are used as a form of birth control, it can easily be argued that in the state of our current economy, a woman does not have the resources to waste hundreds of dollars to use abortions as a form of birth control. Abortions are used to prevent unwanted pregnancies and any woman given the choice of paying ten dollars or less a month for birth control would choose that over a risky hundred dollar procedure. To suggest that women put their life at risk by having abortions because they are too lazy to use birth control is suggesting that women do not value their lives. It can be inferred that certain activist groups will feed the public anything to make their message more intriguing, it is the job of the public to decipher between fact and opinion. Women should have the right to decide what is best for them. No court system or government structure can understand or know what happens in each individual's life, therefore to give them power that would significantly alter their lives is unfair and unreal. In the same respects men do not have to have their privacy violated in ways similar to what pro-life advocates expect of women. The United States Constitution says that all men, including women, should be treated equally.

Banning abortions is unconstitutional. It is written in the constitution that every citizen has the right to privacy and what an American does with his or her body is their private decision. Roe vs. Wade is a notable Supreme Court decision that upheld the right to a woman to maintain her privacy and the right to choose. This case disallowed states to uphold federal restrictions on abortions. There are many battles at all levels of government pertaining to the issue of abortion.