Many women suffered from serious and, often, long term, consequences, including internal damage, permanent sterility, and infections. There are a great number of women who did not survive long after having these procedures. To prevent these kinds of unsafe procedures abortions have been made more readily available to women. Unfortunately, this only led to a greater gap between those who fought on both sides of the issue. Those who support a woman’s right to choose abortion, often called “Pro-Choice,” as an option feel that it is a woman’s right and she cannot be forced to use her body to produce a new life unless she wishes to.
The “Pro-Life” representatives, those who do not support abortion of any kind, actively believe that every abortion is essentially a murder of an innocent life (Giubilini, and Minerva 1). There are, also, moderates, those who have concluded that the only way to find resolution on this heated issue is through compromise. They do not believe abortions should be completely legal and available, but based on circumstance. For example, underage girls who have suffered sexual abuse or incest, a woman whose pregnancy put her health in danger and anyone whose pregnancy resulted from an act of rape.
These victims should have the option. In the end, because there are so many unanswered questions and uncertainties regarding abortion it is best to err on the side of caution and make abortion procedures illegal until such knowledge is gained. There are two very strong reasons to support the “Pro-Life” perspective. The first, involves the question, “when does life begin?” At what point in the development of a fetus does it become aware and when does it qualify for the rights belonging to all individuals?
Is it the moment of conception or when the brain develops? We do not know. When does it have an innate right to its life and anything interfering with that becomes an act of violence or murder? Many religious individuals press the topic of the fetus’s “soul.” Unfortunately, neither religion nor science can answer either of these questions with an absolute certainty. So we do not know if the fetus’s aborted possessed self-awareness, ethically have a right to its life, or is its existence until birth technically not its own being.
Not knowing these answers, whether you are a religious person or simply a logical one, you cannot be certain then how can anyone flippantly determine that it is nothing more than a gathering of “cellular material.” Until these answers are found abortion must remain an issue of debate and not put into practice. The second main issue that supports a “Pro-Life” perspective is the worry that having legal abortions would lead to more and more abortion procedures being performed. If may make the sexually active public less dependent on contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancy and allowing abortions to act as their birth control.
The idea being that some woman would be having multiple abortions on a regular basis. Between legalization and the unanswered questions involving the rights of fetuses it makes for an unsettling and ethically questionable future. Legalization would only increases the numbers of unwanted pregnancies not reduce them (University California Santa Barbara). Creating new life should not be perceived the same way that an infectious disease is perceived. Discovery that you are pregnant should not be sending you to the clinic to have it treated like an illness.
This sets the precedent that there are degrees to the value of
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