Is Abortion Necessary Essay

I am pro-abortion due to my belief that abortions are necessary in many different situations. To understand my opinion on the abortion topic, I believe it is crucial to understand what form of abortion I will be discussing in this essay. I will be using the definition stated in the Oxford Dictionary which states that abortion is “The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.” (Oxford Dictionaries) I personally believe that an abortion should be performed during the first 28 weeks of gestation unless a medical problem presents itself that would put the mother at risk for her life. There are many reasons I believe that abortions should be legal and I will be going over a few reasons

in this essay.

The first reason I believe abortion should be legal is due to the fact that even if we were to make abortions illegal it would not stop a woman who did not want a pregnancy from having an abortion. Instead, it would make it more costly and unsafe for a woman to go through with the procedure. Women with unwanted pregnancies would be forced to try to self-abort using unsafe methods such as coat hangers, buying abortion pills off the internet with no guarantees on effectiveness and/or unknown side effects, drinking harmful concoctions that they heard through the grapevine, etc. Another very costly and dangerous way some women would be having abortions is by traveling to other countries or by paying someone to do a back alley abortion. This is unsafe in many different ways. One being that these procedures would be performed in less than sanitary conditions which can lead to serious infection and death if not treated immediately. In the US, we have very strict guidelines for the sterilization of hospital rooms and equipment. In third world countries, these types of guidelines are not as methodical and when you are trying to go around the law you have few means of protecting your health and safety. Another reason this is unsafe is because the person or persons who would be aborting the baby may not be an expert in terms of the procedure or may just be scamming desperate women. You also have the risk of having an incomplete abortion, which can lead to death or not being able to have future pregnancies due to damages done by an unsuccessful abortion. All in all, I believe abortions will happen one way or another. If abortions were made illegal, it would just force women to go around the law risking their health and safety. Additionally, the cost of one of these underground abortions could be quite substantial without the ability to utilize medical insurance. I believe it is basic human rights to allow a pregnant woman this choice and to provide a sterile, safe environment where she could have the procedure done as well as counselling before and after.

Another reason I believe abortion should be legal is because it is just wrong to force someone to deal with that sort of torment in the case of rape or incest.

In these instances, women have no choice in the matter. If the act of sex was not consensual, making her carry a child for nine months is just cruel. Just image yourself in this type of predicament. Imagine the emotional pain of being raped, imagine waking up every day for the next nine months with a child inside your womb that was forcedly put there against your will. By forcing that woman to carry full term and deliver, you are forcing that woman through a great deal of emotional pain as well as physical pain. You are punishing her for having the ability to carry a child and potentially scarring her for the rest of her life. The woman now has to take care of this baby on her own, a baby that is a constant reminder of the horrible crime of which she was a victim. This child will be at many disadvantages before it is even born such as the resentment from its own mother, having no father around, the possibility of mental and physical deformities from being a product of incest, etc. How is this fair to either the mother or the child? It’s not. If you believe a woman should be forced to give birth no matter what, you are saying that a woman’s life is only important until she is pregnant. You are now classifying her as a vessel, not a human life with rights and

dreams.

The final situation I will be discussing in this essay is when the birth of a child would kill the mother. I believe it should be up to the mother whether she believes her life is more or less important than the unborn fetus. In some instances, this woman could already be a mother. If said mother was forced to sacrifice herself in place of the unborn fetus, her children would be forced to live the rest of their lives without a mother to raise them. It would not only be cruel to basically give the pregnant woman a death sentence but it is also cruel to take away someone’s mother, sister, daughter, wife, etc. The woman should have the right to decide if she would rather live instead of giving birth. The tricky subject here is whose life matters most. No one should be able to make that decision besides the mother herself.

These examples are only three of many reasons as to why I believe women should have the right to choose. By taking away a woman’s right to abort we would only be hurting women in society as well as the babies born under these conditions. We would be treating a woman as only as a vessel rather than an individual with the same right to live and prosper as everyone else. By taking away this basic right, we are also taking away her right for self-defense, the ability to control her own body, and the ability to form a future for herself. I strongly believe an unformed fetus should not have more of a right to life than the one carrying it. In conclusion, it is unfair to women to say “that men and fetuses have a fundamental right to life, but pregnant women do not.” (Swomley)