“You are in a fertility clinic when the fire alarm goes off. Before you escape you have the option to save… a five-year old child who is pleading for help, or… 1000 viable human embryos… Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos?” (Young). This question, asked by journalist Patrick T. Tomlinson for over a decade, is part of a larger controversy on the justification of abortion. One face of the debate, which mistakenly believes that abortion is unjustifiable, highlights the huge scale of false information that has spread about controversial topics and the innate difficulty humans have in putting themselves in the perspective of others.
There are many misconceptions circulating regarding legalized abortion, primarily stemming from misinformed dogmatics. The theory that abortion will lead to depression in the mother, dubbed post-abortion syndrome, has
...been disproven by “[a] study of 365,550...women [which] found absolutely zero elevated risk of suicide….echoing the results of numerous other schematic reviews over decades” (Grimes) and has been explicitly rejected by well-known organizations, such as the American Psychological Association. If anything, depending on the situation of the woman, they would most likely feel a sense of relief, especially if they are not emotionally, financially, or mentally ready for the child. It has also spread that “criminalizing abortion will stop abortion.” The only thing criminalizing abortion will do is stop SAFE abortions. Women will look for ways around the law and get an abortion regardless, just in a less sanitary and safe manner, which may lead to health risks (“Common Myths about Abortion”). How ironic is it that health risks are claimed to be caused by abortions, but in
reality, it is the criminalization of abortion that leads to them!
Women are entitled to making decisions about their own bodies. The fetus is inside the woman, almost part of the woman. Every human has a right to control their body and what they do with it (“Methods of Abortion”). Only women know the intensity of their scenarios. Consider an impoverished, single, seventeen-year-old Indian girl who has been raped and is now suffering from trauma. Keeping the child will not only deprive her of her little remaining sanity, but also drain her financially, physically, and socially. The child, if born, would be looked down upon by society and constantly ridiculed as society would make assumptions about the mother (who may or may not choose to open up about how the child came to be) and psychologically damage the child, leading to potential low-self esteem, depression, and an underlying negative feeling towards the mother. The mother will not be able to provide the child with the best resources for his or her growth, whether it be in terms of food, education, or emotional support. In many communities, especially the Indian community, gossip spreads faster than wildfire. People tend to spread the negatives, even if that is not the truth. With an abortion, the mother can live relatively undisturbed by outsiders. Only a woman in this situation can fully grasp what it is like to endure this, and they must be able to have control of her circumstances. Giving a woman no option to abort her child is the equivalent of giving a soldier with an infected leg no opportunity to amputate his leg because “he will miss
his leg.” The leg gets infected and ends up harming the person, doing no good to anyone. Pro-lifers attest that an abortion is cruel and unusual punishment and that an unborn child does not deserve that as a result of the father’s actions (“Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments”). What is worse: forcing a child to be born, yet not even be able to reach their full potential, or removing the child before it knows of pain, protecting it from a potentially miserable life?
To the objection that mothers’ lives could be ruined by a child that they are not ready for, pro-lifers state that “It is false to suggest that their future educational and career goals must end because one becomes pregnant. With the choice of adoption and the many support programs which exist today, young women or teens can postpone their educational plans but still achieve them” (“Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments”). People have goals in life, some higher than those of others, that they would like to achieve by a certain time in their lives. If an individual wants to become a psychiatrist, but is raped while they are in college, they have to take time off and care for themselves and their child while under huge amounts of stress academically, financially, and socially. More often than not, the female may want to take a year off, postponing their studies. In families where studies are emphasized, the female may be kicked out of their home, adding to the vast list of things on their mind. That much stress is definitely not good for a pregnant woman or their child. Plus, if the woman had
her life planned out, now she has to push everything at least a year back. Even when the woman is back on her studying, she still has to care for the child, which may cause her to not do as well as she used to, which might result in an inability to attain the degree and in the long run, an inability to find a job. If psychiatry is her passion, she will feel miserable towards herself and a potential underlying anger towards the child because not only did she waste many years of studies and money, but she also now is not happy with her profession nor her child.
Though controversies on a scale like this have a habit of continuously rising to the surface and never having a definitive answer, it is not only vital to the health of women, but also their moral well being, that abortion is legalized and not frowned upon. Much like there will always be people who are optimists and pessimists, there will always be women who are placed in the unfortunate scenario of making the decision regarding the abortion of their child. Without support, these women cannot find peace in their lives, and it is our job help them by keeping abortion legal.
