Abortion Should Be Legal
Abortion. Ed. Stephen Currie. Opposing Viewpoints Digests®. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000
Should abortion be legal? The answer to that question depends on the values and goals of a society. If a society is in favor of unhealthy and unwanted children, governmental interference in private decisions, and putting women's lives at risk for ideology, then that society should ban abortion. But if a society believes in open dialogue, freedom to make personal decisions, and outstanding health care for every woman and child, then abortion must remain legal. As one pro-choice official puts it, Roe v. Wade "has obviously saved enormous numbers of lives, improved women's health, [and] made for stronger families."1
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No Way to Stop It
Abortion is a fact. It has always been a fact since the earliest times women have known of methods to terminate a pregnancy. Even in societies in which abortion is illegal, women wh
o know that bearing a child is not an option have sought out ways to abort. Before Roe v. Wade extended abortion rights to all American women during the first trimester of pregnancy, literally thousands of illegal abortions were performed every year across the nation. "It is a great mistake," writes commentator Anna Quindlen, "to believe that if abortion is illegal, it will be non-existent."2
Unfortunately, illegal abortion was an extremely dangerous procedure. Too often illegal "clinics" were run by people with no medical training and little or no concern for the health of the women they treated. Horror stories abounded: abortions performed on kitchen tables or in cars, women infected by unsterile tools, women killed by bungling, uncaring abortionists. The fate of a Brooklyn woman in 1963 was all too common. As a reporter described the ca, "Someone attempting an amateur abortion had killed her by injecting a caustic solution into her womb."3
The stories and figures indicate that making 响晴是什么意思abortion illegal does not keep women from aborting; it simply makes 简单的小故事abortion more hazardous. To criminalize abortion will not
save babies, even if we wished to argue that two-month-old fetus can be considered babies. A Catholic priest sums up the problem succinctly: "If Roe v. Wade is undone," he says, "there will still be the same number of women who get abortions. The difference will be that women again will be dying."4 Given such realities, criminalizing 佛图关公园abortion simply means nding women back to the unregulated butchers. It is surely better to legalize and to regulate.
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Wanted Children
Few people suggest that abortion ought to be chon without so much as a cond thought. And indeed, few women do get an abortion simply becau they "feel like it." No woman gets an abortion ven months into pregnancy becau she is unable to dance, realizes that her due date will conflict with a concert she would like to attend, or dislikes the way she looks in maternity clothes. Nor do American women typically u abortion in place of other forms of birth control. As obstetrician Don Sloan puts it, "In our almost quarter-century of legalized abortion there are no signs that [substituting abortion for bir
th control] is a factor."5 Rather, women have good, thoughtful reasons for choosing abortions, reasons that derve the protection of the law rather than its disapproval.
Consider one woman's respon when asked if she 怎么去除蟑螂aborted for "mere convenience." "Absolutely ridiculous!" she exploded. "I was already supporting five kids! You're out of your bloody mind! I was working full time and going I slept four hours a night, sometimes three."宝贝白天照图片6 Reasons to terminate pregnancy vary from woman to woman. Always, however, they are significant reasons—important and legitimate. "That we cannot cope with another child," writes Kathleen McDonnell, "that we are not ready for parenthood, that we cannot face raising a child without a partner, that we cannot afford a child, that our method of birth control failed ... the are the reasons why we ek 如何选羽毛球拍abortion in the vast majority of cas."7
The truth is, not every pregnant woman is able to adequately care for her child. Some women are in poor health and in no shape to manage an active baby. Others suffer from psychological problems that make caring for children unrealistic. Still others lack the emot
ional or financial resources to do right by the new arrival. If society forces the women to give birth, their lives may be irretrievably ruined.
So, too, may the child's. Pro-life legislators would force women to bear children, but often the very same people are constantly trying to cut funding from social programs, thus providing no rvices for the children. And unwanted children need rvices more than most others. According to one study, 41 percent of women denied abortions were sorry that they had given birth, and fully a third of tho surveyed "harbored anger and rentment against the unwanted children."8 Other studies suggest that unwanted children are more likely to be emotionally unstable, in trouble with the law, and involved in drug abu. Indeed, the conquences of forcing women to give birth will be unpleasant for everyone involved: mother, child, and all of society. Safe, legal abortion can ensure that every child born is a wanted child.
