Essay Example on Abortion Debate: Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life

Introduction

The current controversy about induced abortions is overwhelming as it affects the religious, moral, and legal status of a country or community. There are two aspects of these debates which imply 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' (Sawicki, 1). The pro-choice argument gives women the freedom to choose to terminate the pregnancy, whereas the pro-life is central on the right of the developing fetus to grow to full term and be born. The two argumentative aspects raise the issues with abortion rights and anti-abortion rights, which bring out the legal perspective of abortion. The humanity point of view, which brings out the rights of the fetus to live and that of a woman to make decisions of her body, elucidate abortion as a moral issue.

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Nonetheless, more weight treats abortion as a legal-political issue in which anti-abortion activists seek to pass and implement laws against abortion. In contrast, supporters of abortion seek to ensure that the rules are weakened to give access to abortion services (Sawicki, 1). As a result, abortion laws vary from one country to another, with some countries prohibiting abortion and making it punishable. In contrast, others openly support and fund abortion procedures and accessibility. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to derive the arguments against abortion by elucidating the advantages and disadvantages of the act.

Overview

The traditional patriarchal society treated abortion as a form of family planning alongside infanticide. Chauvinists would treat abortion as an act of population control, selection of gender, and as a way of achieving property rights (Lee, 17). Neither the mother nor the unborn child was considered in the decisions. The decision of the mother over her body or the right of the fetus to live were ignored. The entire issue of abortion was to fulfil the desires of men in controlling the population and achieving property ownership rights. The traditional society legalized abortion based on infanticide even though activists would challenge the morality of abortion on several occasions. Over the past years, development in many countries has led to the eradication of infanticide (Lee, 19). Other states continue to support abortion as family planning, even in the present day. Current discussion varies due to the perceptions of humankind, soul existence, and the start of life and the realization of one's personhood. Such aspects narrow the abortion debates to morality and legality. Putative personhood in the United States is dependent on a person's age (Lee, 26). Therefore, a fetus will not be treated as a person since it has not reached the majority age of citizenship, which is sixteen years. A fetus is treated like a minor who cannot stand up in court and sue or be sued. Therefore, the political and legal arguments of abortion are reviewed in the sections that follow.

Legal-Political Arguments

Political processes are limited and defined in a legal perspective that allows decisions that reflect the government's constitution. The procedures are clearly outlined in every country's constitution, which citizens ought to read to gain guidance on staying in line with the law. The structure provides rights and privileges that protect every citizen (Kaposy, 85). There are rights such as that of life in which a citizen cannot be alienated. Therefore, the federal abortion law seeks to dictate the circumstances under which abortion is allowed and the privacy granted during the procedure (Kaposy, 89). Prochoice activist argues that the government should be charged for regulating abortion beyond the levels of regulating other medical practices. Other pro-choice activists feel that the government can only prohibit abortion after the 20th week or the second trimester. Before the third trimester, abortion is possible and safe for the mother to come out of life; hence the argument. Contrarily, after the second trimester, it is risky for the government to allow abortion since it will risk both the life of the mother and the fetus. On the other hand, pro-life activists argue that all abortions from the onset of pregnancy should be prohibited.

Privacy

One of the political debates on abortion is the right to privacy. Many sovereign nations do not include privacy as a constitutional right, even though citizens feel that the right to privacy is the primary step to achieving a democratic world. If a woman is allowed to make decisions on her body without government intrusion, privacy as a democratic right is achieved (Kaposy, 90). The United States operates under the English common law, which recognizes the right to privacy in the constitution. Therefore, the U.S government has included privacy previously in the obscure Bill of reasons, the 14th Amendment, the ninth and fourth amendments. As a result, abortion has been legalized in the United States.

Legal Arguments

The case of Roe v. Wade has been disputed since 1973, which created a ban on abortion in the United States (Borgmann et al., 245). Nonetheless, pro-life activists have somehow gained relevance by achieving the involvement of parents in abortions committed by minors and the restriction of abortion in the third trimester, which is fatal. Eventually, it is agreed that abortion is completely prohibited in some countries based on the pro-life perspective, whereas in others, it is allowed even though under strict regulations. Some of the countries that reject abortion entirely include the Vatican, Malta, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Republic of Dominica. In such cases, abortion means a crime that leads to a jail term. It does not matter whether the pregnancy is carried by a minor, a disabled person, or may compromise the life of the mother, especially for ectopic pregnancies. Also, countries that allow abortion under strict laws include China, which allows abortion only if a person already has one or two children (Kaposy, 91). The reason for free abortion in China is for population control since it is one of the most populated nations in the world. Philippine countries allow abortion to save the woman's life in complicated pregnancies even though it is not constitutionally documented. Argentina does not legalize abortion based on a drop in the 2018 bill except for cases of rape or when the mother's life is at risk.

Critical Advantages of prohibiting Abortion

One of the reasons why countries like the Vatican and Malta prohibit abortion is the risk factors that come with the act. The Vatican, for instance, is a country that is built on moral and religious principles. Therefore. Prohibiting abortion implies respect for life since it is sinful to murder abortion is so presumed (Hassan et al., 27). Minors who are in their adolescence stage have to remain chaste so that they do not get in trouble with pregnancy and abortion. Also, the prohibition of abortion seeks to encourage members of the public to respect women in cases of rape and disabled women who fall victim to unwanted pregnancies. In support of this, if the moral uprightness is upheld, the circumstances of unwanted pregnancies will be unheard of just like the leaders of these nations desire. The whole idea of prohibiting abortion seeks to achieve a morally upright society not only for patriarchal needs but also for the dignity of a woman (Sharma et al., 36) s. Therefore, both males and females will avoid intimacy until they are ready to settle down and sire children. If people can abstain, population control based on wreck fewer pregnancies will be handled

Disadvantages of Prohibiting Abortion

Countries like China will be primarily affected if abortion is made illegal. Despite the development and the decreased joblessness, the state will not provide for its people sufficiently. There is a need for population control. Therefore, households who feel the number of children they already have is enough will be allowed to abort. Prohibiting abortion also causes harm to victims of rape who will carry the evidence of their awful experiences not just in mind but in the family too (Siegel, 1365). The life of a woman who takes an ectopic pregnancy will probably end if she is not allowed to abort. Minors may also be affected since they will be introduced to parenting at a tender age.

Conclusively, in strong opposition to abortion, this paper gives a good view of why abortion is a crime. The traditional laws that allowed absorption were patriarchal and self-centred. However, despite the restrictions provided in contemporary societies, abortions are allowed if the person has a child or two, a victim of rape or life is compromised. Therefore, as an opponent of abortion, any society needs to set moral standards that prohibit fornication, which is a typical case of unwanted pregnancies. Pro-life activists insist on the ethical awareness of the public, which mitigates cases of rape for both minors and adults. If men learn to love, cherish, and respect women, are cases will not exist. Also, couples should conduct reproductive health screening and DNA if they hope to achieve a successful pregnancy. That way, examples of ectopic pregnancies and forced abortions will be mitigated.

Works Cited

Borgmann, Caitlin E. "Roe v. Wade's 40th Anniversary: A Moment of Truth for the anti-Abortion-Rights Movement." Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 24 (2013): 245. https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/stanlp24&section=12

Hasan, Kazi Saidul, and Vincent Ng. "Stance classification of ideological debates: Data, models, features, and constraints." Proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing. 2013. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/I13-1191.pdf

Kaposy, Chris. "Two stalemates in the philosophical debate about abortion and why they cannot be resolved using analogical arguments." Bioethics 26.2 (2012): 84-92. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01815.x

Lee, Ellie. "Constructing abortion as a social problem: "Sex selection" and the British abortion debate." Feminism & psychology 27.1 (2017): 15-33. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353516678010

Sawicki, Nadia N. "The abortion informed consent debate: More light, less heat." Cornell JL & Pub. Pol'y 21 (2011): 1. https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/cjlpp21&section=4

Sharma, Eva, et al. "Analyzing ideological discourse on social media: A case study of the abortion debate." Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference of The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas. 2017. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3145574.3145577

Siegel, Reva B. "Abortion and the Woman Question: Forty Years of Debate." Ind. LJ 89, (2014): 1365. https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/indana89&section=41