Abortion - the Controversy

For more than a generation, the controversy over abortion has remained one of the nation's most publicized political debates. There are many reasons why women go through abortions: economic (the woman cannot afford to care for the child), age (a teenager is pregnant and feels that she is too young to handle the responsibility), and religious/social. Since 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that obtaining an abortion during the early stages of pregnancy is a constitutional right, the nation's political, religious, and social landscapes have been split over abortion. After 32 years, however, many of the central issues in the debate have not changed, and a resolution is highly unlikely.

In the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun said that women have a right to abortion during the first trimester (12 weeks) of pregnancy. The right to an abortion, he stated, is part of a right to privacy that is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The court's majority rejected the claim that a fetus is a "person", however; the court ruled that a woman's right to an abortion was not absolute. States may regulate abortions during the second trimester, the court said, to protect the woman's health. The court also stated that after a fetus has developed to the point that it can survive on its own, the state may outlaw abortions except when it is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother.

On one side of the abortion debate are those who call themselves pro-choice. Pro-choice advocates argue that women have a right to terminate their unwanted pregnancies. To them, the debate over abortion is mainly focused around liberty and privacy and that every woman has a right to make decisions that affect her own body without government interference. Just like how the government should stay out of people's bedrooms, they should stay out of individual's personal choices, especially when their well-being is concerned. Restrictions on abortion, they say, would ignore a woman's basic rights to choose her destiny, make decisions affecting her body and control her reproductive life. Why bring a child into the world if the person can't even support themselves? The world has one too may children in the system waiting for a caring home as it is.

On the other side of the debate are those who call themselves pro-life, "defenders" of the Constitution. Their belief is that a fetus is a human being with an absolute right to life like anyone else. That right to be born, they say, takes priority over the mother's right to make decisions about her body since her decision to abort affects the life of another human being, the unborn baby. Abortion, in their view, is murder and should not be approved by society. Even though there have been many abortions performed before 1973, at the time the practice was illegal in the United States and most other nations. These were usually performed by someone with little or no medical background. By making abortion illegal again, underground practices will again increase, and more women will become endangered.

This leads to the debate over deciding whether the fetus is, in fact, a human being. No one denies that the cells making up the fetus are living. Rather, the main question is whether the fetus is a human life, one that is separate from the woman and one that deserves basic human rights, often based around timing. When during a woman's pregnancy does a fetus become human? Many pro-life advocates say the answer is at conception. At that moment, they say, the fetus is formed as a unique person that, if allowed to develop freely, would grow to function independently. Many pro-choice proponents, however, argue that human life begins at the moment when a fetus can survive outside the mother's womb, around the 23rd or 24th week of pregnancy. Then there are organizations such as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, say that a fetus is not a human being and that there is no moral judgment involved because it all comes down to whether a woman wants to, or is physically able to have a child.

Many states have recently enforced fetal homicide laws, which create a separate crime for actions taken against a woman that result in the death of, or harm to, her fetus. These laws treat the fetus as an individual, apart from the woman. Some of these laws do not contain exceptions for the woman or her doctor, which could possibly allow criminal proceedings for measures taken as a course of treatment or for abortion. Fetal homicide laws have been described as supporting and protecting women who decide to carry their babies to term.

Those supporting these acts, most often pro-life advocates, say that both the lives of the pregnant woman and the fetus should be protected. Some pro-lifers hope fetal homicide laws will establish the view that fetuses are human beings, therefore promoting efforts to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Those against fetal homicide laws fear that laws to protect a fetus could interfere on a woman's right to choose an abortion.

On September 28th, 2000, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the abortion pill RU-486, also known as mifepristone, for use in the United States. RU-486 was first developed in France in 1980 by a French