Hard News Abortion in the United States - Essay Example

The cause of most abortions has always been unwanted pregnancy. But recently, the numbers are declining all over the world, from 69 for every thousand women in 1995 (age range: 15-44 age) to 55 in 2008. However, the figures for third world countries (57 for every 1000) were much higher than in first world countries (42 per 1000). The share of married women using contraception is estimated to have been increased from 54 per cent in 1990 to 63 per cent in 2003 worldwide. Since 1997, more than twenty countries have altered their laws of abortion and about ninety per cent of these modifications, the transformation were liberalization of the laws. It has been reported that the number of abortions in the United States of America is decreasing but in other countries illegal abortions stay steady. A latest report by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice institute, states that the number of abortions fell from over 45 million in 1995 to fewer than 42 million in 2003. That drop is all the bigger given the 10 per cent growth in the worlds population over that period. Most of the decline is in countries where abortions are legal. Prohibitions on abortion are slowly coming towards moderation, though deprived countries stay much inflexible than prosperous ones. Previously, during the period from 1967 till 1973, one-third of the states in the US eased up on their criminal abortion laws. Nevertheless, the right to have an abortion in all the fifty states became accessible to the American women in 1973 when the Supreme Court overruled the remaining warning state laws with its decision in Roe v. Wade. As a result, the number of trained doctors in the procedure increased and a countrywide system of outpatient abortion treatment centers established that allowed women who would, until that time, have had an illegal abortion or would not have been able to get one by any means, to do so lawfully in a medical service. The 1973 decision disqualified any legislative intervention in the first trimester of pregnancy and put restrictions on what limitations could be approved on abortions in later stages of pregnancy. Opposition to abortions increased turning physical and even violent. Moreover, Roe vs. Wade states that women can abort the baby as long as it hasn’t become viable. Viability is defined by the Court as the potential to live outside the mothers womb, though with artificial aid, adding that viability is normally placed at about seven months or 28 weeks but can happen earlier i.e. even at 24 weeks. Dr. Neville Sender claims, "We know that it’s killing, but the state permits killing under certain circumstances." No woman desires abortion; either she wishes for a baby or she needs to avoid pregnancy. Abortion is an extremely controversial subject in the history of humankind and countless heated discussions have been exchanged since time immemorial. It might come as little surprise to know that abortion was legal before 1800, specifically in the United States. The main reason it was illegalized in the 1803 was the declining birth rate of white women and the risk of the procedure as a whole. It was made as a crime in the United States in 1820s for the first time. Unfortunately, instead of balancing the situation, Roe v. Wade has worsened it in all the 36 years of its prevalence. Every third baby is killed in America and the only way the present generation of the United States has lived, is through legalized liberal abortion. Medically, the debate is about the beginning of life at the exact instance of fertilization. As a matter of fact, abortion completely destroys the developing child. The heart develops during the first month of pregnancy and starts beating. The time for surgical abortions should be before seven weeks while the baby displays assessable brain waves and has developed visible arms and legs. The majority of abortions are performed through the seventh till tenth week of pregnancy till which the baby has developed fingers, genital organs appear and the face is visibly human. Debra Harry says on the procedure of abortion, "Saline abortions have to be done in the hospital because of the complications that can arise. Not that they cant arise during other times, but more so now. The saline, a salt solution, is injected into the womans sac, and the baby starts dying a slow, violent death. The mother feels everything, and many times it is at this point when she realizes that she really has a live baby inside her, because the baby starts fighting violently, for his or her life. Hes just fighting inside because hes burning." The issue is not only a religious issue but also a human rights issue as medical developments have confirmed the humanity of the child in the womb. Corresponding developments have revealed this to be a human rights issue to the people, at large. The fact is that even the strongest proponents of abortion bans; do not consider denying medical care in such cases. It is not only about the unborn child being stripped off of his rights but also about after effects on the mother. The trouble starts when such reckoning gives rise to disagreements about legalizing other contentious issues. The doctors prefer to do abortions in the mid-second and third-trimester rather than first-trimester. The reason is because that’s where the money is. Moreover, delaying women’s abortions just so that they were jumped up into the more costly class is a common technique. According to Dr. J.C. Willke, an average doctor doing abortions one day per week at a clinic does approximately 25-40 abortions. He will make an average of $100,000-$125,000 annually. An average clinic performing about 8000 abortions will make roughly $1 million a year. He elaborates: “As in most cases, there are two reasons why people get involved in the abortion industry. The first is money. The second is because they really feel that it’s helping women. But even those people who get involved because they think it’s helping women – at some point in time convert to the fact that it’s all about money. So you stop looking at women after a certain point in time as being people that you’re helping and you just start looking at them as dollar bills.” The situation of illegal abortions is uncertain and not much encouraging. Even estimating their number is a complicated task; the best sources being unidentified surveys and medicinal data from the instances when illegal abortions led to complications. The report considers that illegal abortions remained at approximately 20 million annually; a majority of them are in developing countries. Moreover, 86 per cent of the women of reproductive age in the third world countries, excluding China and India as of their moderate abortion laws, live in countries that restrict it firmly. Essentially, there are two main sides regarding the morality of abortion; pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-lifers are the ones completely against abortion on the whole and pro-choice believe that it is a women’s right to choose whether to have an abortion or not. The legality of abortion in cases of sexual abuse or rape is on unstable grounds because the person is much too emotional it is difficult to deal with the argument. Pro-lifers claim that abortion does not necessarily fulfill the needs of the victim. Hence, the argument for abortion for an assault rape pregnancy remains and is accepted by two-thirds of the United States citizens. Such hard cases make a universal ban impossible to achieve. The line of reasoning here is education, as there are only 200 to 300 such pregnancies per year in all of the US and only half of these women seek abortion and the key point is how others treat her concerning the decision. Yet, politicians continue to put this exception as law. Pro-choicers believe that the women must have her baby in any case. Recently, the lobby is to step forward with its argument going beyond abortion privileges to include the rights of marginalized women to have children and keep them, a leading US campaigner has said. Moreover, the movement of pro-choicers emphasize that a woman’s rights go beyond those of a fetus, as the fetus is not yet a human being and thus doesn’t have equal rights as a woman. During pregnancy, they support that a fertilized ovum grows and develops and eventually becomes a separate, autonomous human being once born. Though, prior to birth the fetus does not have the characters of personhood such as sentience, social knowledge and an independent existence. Partial-birth abortion is all about pulling a baby apart to get it out after 16 weeks of pregnancy. About 40 per cent of Americans are of the view that abortion must remain legal and the other 40 per cent believe it ought to be banned with the exception of when the pregnancy jeopardizes the life of the mother or is the result of sexual abuse, deformed fetus or rape. The remaining 15 per cent believe it should be unlawful in all cases. Even though the decision of abortion is viewed as a womans right, an interviewee said that it should be banned with exceptions as it is considered as murder having many psychological side effects. Whereas, teenagers are of the view that whenever they see a baby, it jogs the memory of their own that they might have had. A 15 year old woman was raped by her father and got pregnant but she was opposed to the idea of having. She was forced into it by anesthetizing her while her parents watched and now she says that she feels like a murderer for life. A study reported the following figures: within the first few weeks of the abortion, 40 to 60 percent of women answered in the negative effects. Within 8 weeks of abortions, 55% conveyed feeling guilty, 44% protested of nervous disorders, 36% of sleep disorders, 31% regretted their decision and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their doctor. The suffering of the rape and incest get increases by the abortion; the guilt of being aware that the baby is deceased is rather to bear for life especially for pro-lifers. How the mass media views abortion as is not as liberal as the abortion laws itself. The advertisements express disapproval in cases of pregnancy outside marriage. Moreover, the ones that mention married women generally put pregnancy as a threat to the career, economic situation and social values. The portrayal is such that young nervous women are being criticized morally and due to irresponsible behavior. Socially, it seems that a vast majority of women fear pregnancy, not because of the change their body undergoes but, because of their conscience. It seems that anyone having a child out of marriage can never be accepted as well as married women. Even the usage of I-pill represents taking pregnancy lightly and indifferently; just a small hitch. Dealing with an unanticipated pregnancy is not only a womens problem and its prevention is in the hands of the women. Consequently, the fact is that unwanted pregnancies has little to do with the liberation of women but it is taken more as a way of upholding the status quo. At the governmental level, it is a hardheaded way to keep population under control. The question remains that how much abortion rights has to do with honoring womens sexualities rather than it being just an effective method of population control and meeting national goals of development. On the other hand, with only one or two exceptions, Western birth rates are well below replacement level. The problem in the West is not too many people but rather not enough babies are born and far too many elder people to take care of. Underdeveloped nations are also moving rapidly in this similar direction, thus this dispute is no longer applicable, in the west in any case. Pro-lifers have about 4000 centers for helping women where almost 98 % of the staff is women. Pro-lifers believe that human life is created at the instant of fertilization. When the egg and sperm combines completely, they are fertilized and recognized as the ‘zygote’ which consists a complete set of 46 chromosomes needed to create a human life. Scientists showed that at the minute of fertilization the ovum undertake an entirely different providence. About 15,000 genes from the sperm and ovum form a distinctive combination. This is nothing less than a new human life at its earlier stage of life. In the United States, many children will not make it to either their youth or old age. Just because of their shortened life, it doesnt mean that it never existed. Feminists disagree that an unwanted pregnancy can often seriously delay a woman’s capability to finish school, continue working, or support herself financially. They stress that education and job rights are strongly sheltered by the Constitution and in order to gain benefit of this chance, women must be able to control their reproduction ability. The more abortion becomes unshakable, the more hard it has turned out to be for women to refuse to give in to the demands to benefit themselves from it. The current objective of America is to make the dangers of insecure abortion more universally understood. Nobody is keen on abortion. The way to reduce it may be becoming clearer. An abortionist speaks, "Even now I feel a little peculiar about it, because as a physician I was trained to conserve life, and here I am destroying it." Reference Winnipeg Free Press, 2009. Abortion bans may be self-defeating. [Online] (Updated on 20 Oct 2009) Available at: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/abortion-bans-may-be-self-defeating-64901182.html [Accessed on 20 Oct 2009] Read More