Abortion (Essay Sample)

Abortion
Name
Institution
Date
Abortion
The justification of abortion remains one of the most controversial topics among humans in the contemporary world. With the evolving moral standards of the society, abortion is becoming more and more justified. Abortion, the practice of removing a fertilized egg from the mother, has become a controversial issue in the American society, but should be generally supported. Considering American ethics and values, death is morally wrong. Therefore, the killing of unborn fetuses is morally wrong as well. Abortion, this unethical practice of terminating unborn fetuses, should be outlawed because it is a very controversial topic in the United States right now. The legality of abortion remains contentious, with both the protagonists and antagonists having diverse reasons for their approval and disapproval of the act. In as much as the act may attract few supporters, there are instances in which abortion is inevitable.
The antagonists of abortion have reasons for the justification of their position on the issue. They claim that an abortion is wrong, and should never take place at any time. For instance, there are persons who maintain that the onset of life is at conception, and terminating the life of a fetus is equivalent to murder. They also argue that permitting abortion exposes the lives of the unborn humans to unnecessary sufferings, which is an injustice to them. The individuals who are fortunate to hold the pregnancies, but are not willing to keep the children are at liberty to give birth to the babies and give them to the persons who are not blessed to conceive. The people who are barren are willing to adopt the children and make them live comfortable lives (ProCon, 2014).
The antagonists also maintain that abortion is against religious teachings, which is also a defiance of God’s laws. They claim that there is no separation of babies from fetuses in the religious books. This means that the two have equal rights at any time, and they should all have an opportunity to live. For instance, Christians quote the book of Jeremiah chapter one, verses five, which declares to be holy any life that emanates from the womb. Hindus, through Kaushitaki Upanishad, classifies the people who conduct abortion together with the persons who murder their parents. Buddhists, on the other hand, claim that abortion is the deliberate destruction of life and must be avoided (Religious views on abortion, n.d). In other words, the major world religions are in opposition of abortion.
The protagonists of abortion contend that a fetus is not viable, and there is nothing wrong with its termination. They also claim that the calculation of an individual’s age begins after birth, not after conception (Smith, 2004). This implies that there is no life before birth, which suggests that aborting a fetus is not killing a baby because the population data does not give fetuses recognition. They also maintain that the definition of a person excludes the unborn. Their suggestion is that life begins after the completion of the gestation period, and any life that exists between the time of conception and immediately before birth can be terminated at any time.
There also exist pro-abortion individuals who claim that abortion allows women to end the lives of fetuses with abnormalities. They say that there are health conditions that can never allow the fetuses to live even when they are born because they will die within a few hours or days. They cite anencephaly, which involves the lack of a brain in the fetus and the development of body organs outside the cavities of the fetus’ body, as an example of the abnormalities (ProCon, 2014). Despite their argument on the health issue that may truly need abortion, the protagonists are silent on the possibility of misuse of abortion by women with no interest in keeping their pregnancies.
The United States of America considers abortion as a basic right for the Americans. This came after the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in the year 1973 that declared abortion a constitutional right of the Americans, and should be done safely (U.S. Supreme Court, 1973). Supreme Court, in Roe v Wade case, acknowledged that women have the right to either keep the fetus or not because it is not a complete baby. Another example of laws that legalize abortion is in the state of Colorado, which permits the premature termination of pregnancies when there are urgencies as rape or complications on the pregnant woman’s body.
In my view, I am in a partial support of abortion. I oppose the deliberate termination of pregnancies, but I am in total backing of abortion, in cases where the lives of the pregnant women are in danger, or when the pregnancies are products of rape incidences. The case of a woman who gets pregnant due to rape is different from her counterpart who conceives intentionally. The former has no psychological or physical preparations for a baby and conceives without her wish, but the latter is aware that her actions may lead to pregnancies, and she should not involve herself in the acts when she is unprepared to bring up a child. It is unfair to engage in procreation activities willingly and then terminate the life of the fetus. For instance, there is no justification for a woman who plays unsafe sex to abort. It is better to use contraceptives and prevent conception than ignore the contraceptives, get pregnant, and destroy the soul of an innocent creature.
I am also of the view that abortion can only be an option when the mother of the child has health complications that expose her life and that of the fetus to danger. For instance, cases of ectopic pregnancies are real. The abnormality in pregnancy occurs when the implantation of the ovum takes place outside the uterus. The fetus, then grows in the uterus while the uterus fails to expand and may burst, which might culminate in the death of a woman carrying the pregnancy (Sepilian, Rivlin, Wood, & Casey, 2014). This is a justified scenario because the fetus will result in the loss of a woman's life while the fetus will also not grow up. It is logical to lose one life, which is that of the fetus, and not two lives; the woman's and the fetus' lives. In as much as the cost of maintaining pregnancies may be high, which includes the health discomforts that women experience as tiredness, nausea, swollen legs, and the financial expenses that they incur in their medical checkups, abortion should not take place anyhow at the wish of a woman (The Liz Library, n.d).
A person may come up with a view that is contrary to my opinion. For instance, an individual may claim that abortion must not take place even in the case of the pregnancy being a product of rape. Although aborting the fetus that is conceived due to rape is still a deliberate murder, it is better to terminate the life of the fetus and avoid mental torture for both the woman and the child. T...