Decision To Abort A Pregnancy example essay topic

Ethical and legal issues on abortion in the United StatesDebolina Bose BUSI 6303.04 April 19, 2004 Ethical and legal issues on abortion in the United States The purpose of this paper, related to 'Abortion', is to throw light on various legal and ethical issues surrounding this highly debated topic in the United States. The paper includes only my personal views on 'Abortion' and few related famous cases which are like a landmark in the history of abortion. Abortion is not a modern aberration, but a practice common to human communities throughout history. Historically, early abortion was tolerated by the Church, and for centuries it was not punished under English common law. Nations which have passed abortion laws have done so for a variety of reasons, such as concern for women's health, the demands of the medical profession, demographic fears, religious beliefs, etc. Before getting into the issues on abortion, I would like to give a brief history of abortion controversy in the United States.

In the United States, abortion laws began to appear in the 1820's, forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy. Through the efforts, primarily of physicians, the American Medical Association, and legislators, most abortions in the US had been outlawed by 1900. By 1965, all fifty states banned abortion, with some exceptions which varied by state: to save the life of the mother, in cases of rape or incest, or if the fetus was deformed. In 1973, in the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade (Roe vs. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), the United States Supreme Court ruled that the fourteenth amendment to the United States constitution provided a fundamental right for women to obtain abortions. The Supreme Court held that the 'right to privacy,' established by the Court's precedents in the contraception cases of the 1960's and early 70's, assured the freedom of a person to abort unless the state had a 'compelling interest' in preventing the abortion. The Court then held that, though the state had an interest in protecting fetal life, this interest did not become 'compelling' (i.e. adequate to allow banning an abortion) until fetal viability occurred in the third trimester of pregnancy (Planned Parenthood, n. d).

Thus, all the state abortion laws that regulated abortion during the first six months of pregnancy (except for the purpose of protecting maternal health during the second trimester) were invalidated. The Supreme Court in 1973, in the case of Roe vs. Wade (Roe vs. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), declared most existing state abortion laws unconstitutional. The facts of this case are that a pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. A licensed physician (Hallford), who had two state abortion prosecutions pending against him, was permitted to intervene. A childless married couple (the Does), the wife not being pregnant, separately attacked the laws, basing alleged injury on the future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unprepared ness for parenthood, and impairment of the wife's health. A three-judge District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies.

Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and over broadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court ruled the Does' complaint not justiciable. Appellants directly appealed to this Court on the injunctive rulings, and appellee cross-appealed from the District Court's grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford. This decision ruled out any legislative interference in the first trimester of pregnancy and put limits on what restrictions could be passed on abortions in later stages of pregnancy.

While many celebrated the decision, others, especially in the Roman Catholic Church and in theologically conservative Christian groups, opposed the change. With Webster vs. Reproductive Health Service (Webster vs. Reproductive Health Service, 492 U.S. 490, 1989) and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 1992), the Supreme Court expanded the room, allowing the states that want to regulate abortion. Since 1992, elective abortions can be banned after actual viability (20-22 weeks), and pre-viability regulations only have to meet the new 'undue burden's tankard, meaning that a 'compelling's tate interest is not required so long as the law does not present a 'substantial obstacle' to obtaining an abortion. The latest major conflict over abortion laws has been over termination of late pregnancies, termed 'partial birth abortions' by those who oppose them. 'Pro-choice' advocates maintain that such abortions are to save the life or health of the mother or terminate pregnancies where the fetus cannot survive birth or cannot serve much after birth. Pro-life advocates maintain that the fetuses may be saved and that many of these abortions are done in cases that aren't hopeless.

While writing on this paper and thinking about the present issues and laws on abortion, few questions were reeling in my mind, now and then - Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never?

How do we decide? Is the fetus a person? Does the fetus be given the same rights as any other human? Do the pregnant women have the right to decide if she is going to carry the baby or not? In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided.

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held -- especially in the media, that there are only two: 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life. ' In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names -- pro-choice and pro-life -- were picked, keeping in mind, the two extreme sides of this issue.

Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict. For an example, a newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There's good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound -- including music, but especially its mother's voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns.

Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It's hard to maintain that a transformation to full person hood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be 'murder' to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before? Does a woman's 'innate right to control her own body' encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus that is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child? I am sure that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question, just like I am now.

The concept of 'ban on abortion' invokes up the presence of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Frankly, being a woman, the legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion in my mind that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women. And yet, on the other hand, I am also forced to think that it is proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government's business.

If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong. In my view, if we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, there is a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect and that may lead to sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism. On practical ground, less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation. But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. I think it is very difficult to get an absolutely right answer to this question that whether abortion is justified.

If the fetus is considered to be a human being and has the right of an individual i.e. to live, then the question that arises in my mind is that now we are dealing with two individuals and their rights - one is the mother and second is the fetus. Presumably, then, both the woman and the fetus would each maintain a separate and equal right to the sovereignty and integrity of their own bodies. The embryo / fetus would have the right not to have its body invaded or infringed, and so would the woman! Thus, one must consider where the infringement occurs. If the woman is the owner of her own body (as the embryo / fetus is of its tiny, embryonic body), then her rights to control that body and protect its integrity would certainly not be less than that of the embryo / fetus. Similarly, even if the embryo is human, it still would not have the right to force the mother to use her body to keep it alive against her will.

If the decision to give birth is what she wants, then 'life' is a 'beautiful choice. ' But it is her choice; she cannot legally be forced into it. Likewise, if a person with a rare genetic type needs a blood transfusion or bone marrow transplant and finally finds that rare, perfect match, but the owner of the organs doesn't want to donate, no reasonable person would say that the one who wants the organ has the right to demand that a specific person donate his / her organ, even to save the life of an 'ACTUAL' human. I personally would like to take a mid-path on this controversial issue instead of defending or going in for any extreme measures like 'Pro-life' or 'Pro-choice'. In my view, restrictive abortion legislation that is favored by the Pro-Life groups does not lead to a low abortion rate. The data from Romania when it prohibited abortion, from Italy before its liberalized abortion law, and from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and other developing countries show that the abortion rate is high in countries in which abortion is illegal.

Whether legal or not, every year millions of individual women around the world of all cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds, seek out abortion when they cannot carry a pregnancy to term. History has proved that laws do not stop abortion. It is the number of maternal injuries and deaths, not abortions, that is most affected by restrictive legal codes. Abortions performed outside the law have a higher rate of complications and deaths, the majority of which are entirely preventable. Lot of women around the world dies from illegal and unsafe abortions. The anti-abortion laws and legal decisions of the second half of the nineteenth drove the practice of abortion underground, where it was performed illegally, and in unskilled ways.

Many women died from the awful infections and intense bleeding. In some cases, it also caused a permanent inability to have children. Legal abortion protects women's health. For tens of thousands of women with heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia and severe diabetes, and other illnesses that can be life-threatening, the availability of legal abortion has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth.

Before legal abortion, such women's choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth. I firmly believe that abortion in the last stage of pregnancy is equivalent to 'murder' and should be restricted by law. The reasons for my mid-path decision are that I personally, being a woman, want to have my equal freedom of choice and rights of self-determination as a human being. Moreover, pregnancy occurs due to various reasons and under various circumstances in the individual's life. A woman may get pregnant due to consensual sex or rape.

Consensual sex does not mean that the woman is ready to have a baby. Consent to sexual intercourse is not same as consent to pregnancy. Pregnancy due to rape can obviously inflict trauma and emotional scar on the woman and the unwanted born child just as a rape itself. Other reasons of unwanted pregnancy can be due to failed birth control or lack of contraceptives or social taboos and discrimination (for example, in many underdeveloped countries, women have very less rights or say in the society, which is mainly dominated by the males) etc. Sometimes, the fetus is deformed with major abnormalities. In such cases, if it has been detected in the first trimester of pregnancy then it must be the choice of the mother to go for abortion if she wants.

The bottom-line that I feel that abortion should be given as a choice to today's women in their first or second trimester i.e. the early stage of pregnancy but during the last stages of pregnancy, abortion seems to me as not only as murder because at that time the fetus has become a full grown baby who can sense, feel and hear its mother's voice and other movements, instead of being a bundle of tissue which was in the initial stage of pregnancy. I believe that a woman who will be bearing the fetus for nine whole months do have a right to decide whether to bear a child or not but on the other hand, the fetus who is going to be another addition to the human population in the future, also needs the support and right to survive and come to the world. Thus, it is a very controversial and sensitive issue before the people and the government to decide a better path so that neither the female sex nor the unborn lives are abused in any way.

Bibliography

Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
Retrieved April 15, 2004, from web Parenthood Federation of America (n.
d). Fact Sheet: Roe vs. Wade: Its history and impact. Retrieved April 15, 2004, from web vs.
Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973, January 22).
Retrieved April 15, 2004, from Cornell School of Law (Category: Federal case) on the world wide web: web headings / words = 4/page items = {body}? Webster vs.
Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989).
Retrieved April 15, 2004, from web.