Why Abortion Must Be Legel Essay Example

to the days of back-alley abortions; to the revolting specter of a government forcing women to bear children against their will. Still, amid such attacks, it is worthwhile to repeat a few of the reasons why our society trusts each woman to make the abortion decision herself.

Here are some reasons why legal abortion is necessary1. Laws against abortion kill women. To prohibit abortions does not stop them. When women feel it is absolutely necessary, they will choose to have abortions, even in secret, without medical care, in dangerous circumstances. In the two decades before abortion was legal in the U.S., it's been estimated that nearly a million women per year sought out illegal abortions. Thousands died. Tens of thousands were mutilated. All were forced to behave as if they were criminals. Making abortion illegal has little effect on the number of abortions, as history and present-day evidence from all over the world show. But illegal abortion is much more dangerous.

According to the American Medical Association in the 1930s there was "an epidemic of criminal abortion" in the United States. The number of births dropped by about half, as women who refused to bring children into a depressed economy resorted to illegal abortion to end their pregnancies.

As a result, about 2500 women died each year from abortioncomplications, accounting for nearly one in four maternalFrom 1950 to 1965 in the US, the National Center for Health Statistics stated that there were 200 to 250 abortion-related deaths reported each year, a number that isacknowledged to be lower than the true death count.2 But even using these statistics, and assuming that illegal abortion was two or three times as

dangerous as legal abortion at that time, a simple calculation shows that there were at least 500,000 illegal abortions each year. It's not worth the death of one woman if that's what it would take to cut the number of abortions by 60%, let alone fifty or a hundred women.

Thanks to changes in the law, today the mortality rate from legal abortion is almost zero, and abortion accounts for only 3% of maternal deaths. The publication Lancet said that "It is impossible to achieve a low maternal mortality without access to safe abortion."

Legal abortions protect women's health. Legal abortion not only protects women's lives, it also protects their 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.

In a case-controlled study women whose own health is are more likely to miscarry and to deliver babies who are sick. Their babies are also more likely to die after birth. Women's Health, Am Journal of Public Health, and Demography, all stated that women whose pregnancies are unwanted are less likely to get prenatal care, more likely to use cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs during their pregnancies, more likely to be abused by their partners, and more likely to give birth to low-birth weight,sick babies, as well as not to breast-feed. The Demography believed that This is not simply a correlation with ethnic or socioeconomic status rather than pregnancy wantedness, because

women who abort one pregnancy are more likely to have a healthy baby in the next pregnancy, and some of the poor outcomes persist even when correcting for race and income level.

A woman is more than a fetus. There's an argument these days that a fetus is a "person" that is "indistinguishable from the rest of us" and that it deserves rights equal to women's. On this question there is a tremendous spectrum of religious, philosophical, scientific, and medical opinion. It's been argued for centuries. Fortunately, our society has recognized that each woman must be able to make this decision, based on her own conscience. To impose a law defining a fetus as a "person," granting it rights equal to or superior to a woman's - a thinking, feeling, conscious human being - is arrogant and absurd. It only serves to diminish women.

What they ignore is that allowing an embryo to use a woman's body against her will would give it more rights than she has, since women (including pregnant ones) are not entitled to demand the use of other people's bodies to save their own lives. In fact, children cannot gain access to the bodily resources of their parents, even when their lives are at stake. Abortion opponents also ignore thousands of years of cultural, religious, social, and legal history which has never held an embryo to be a person. Only abortion opponents have ever defined embryos as persons-and then only for the purpose of opposing abortion, as they are quite willing to regard embryos as non-persons when it suits them. (For instance, by allowing abortion in circumstances that would never justify killing an

innocent person.)

Calling for laws that define an embryo as "a person," with rights equal to or greater than those of women, is arrogant and absurd. Subjugating women-living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, suffering human beings-to the needs of a tablespoon of insentient, unaware tissue is perverse. Equating a person with a hollow ball of cells trivializes everything we value about humanity. The time to worry about equal rights and human dignity is when a society singles out one group of people and strips them of rights that other people in that society take for granted. It's when a society decides that one group is going to bear burdens and provide services that are expected from no one else. It's the societies which ban abortion, now and in the past, where human rights are not respected, and lives are in danger, for people besides pregnant women.

Compulsory pregnancy laws are incompatible with a free society. It is impossible to regulate the private consensual behavior of people, as the examples of Prohibition and the failed War on (Some) Drugs show. Outlawing abortion is discriminatory. Anti-abortion laws discriminate against low-income women, who are driven to dangerous self-induced or back-alley abortions. That is all they can afford. But the rich can travel wherever necessary to obtain a safe abortion. Like drinking, drug use, prostitution, and unorthodox sexual behavior, abortion is a "victimless" (no complainant) crime. In 1965, sociologist and lawyer Edwin Schur looked at existing laws against homosexuality, drug use, and abortion, and concluded that the laws were futile, writing: Shur stated, "Unsatisfactory experience with the laws against abortion points up some of the major consequences of attempting to legislate against

the crimes without victims. As an English legal authority writes, unsuccessful laws against abortion illustrate 'the inherent unenforceability of a statute that attempts to prohibit a private practice where all parties concerned seek to avoid the restriction.' "

Unenforceable laws do little to regulate people's behavior, but do lead to crime and corruption. To suppress women's use of abortion would require dedicated and persistent government vigilance of a kind that no society has ever seen. The Romanian dictator Ceaucescu failed to restrict abortion even with all the existing resources of a totalitarian police state at his disposal-the birth rate went up briefly, then plunged again as women sought out illegal abortions. But Romania's draconian fertility law, which went so far as to give pregnancy tests to all working women monthly and require them to explain their miscarriages, did result in the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe.

In a country like the United States, where individual freedom and liberty are paramount, it is inconceivable to imagine a successful campaign to outlaw abortion and prevent womenfrom obtaining it illegally. The loss of civil liberties would never be tolerated. If there is any matter which is personal and private, thenpregnancy is it. There can be no more extreme invasion of privacy than requiring a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. If government is permitted to compel a woman to bear a child, where will government stop?

Choice is good for families. Outlaw abortion, and more children will bear children. Forty percent of 14-year-old girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. This could happen to your daughter or someone else close to you. Here are the critical questions: Should

the penalty for lack of knowledge or even for a moment's carelessness is enforced pregnancy and childrearing? Or dangerous illegal abortion? Should we consign a teenager to a life sentence of joblessness, hopelessness, and dependency?

"Every child a wanted child." If women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the result is unwanted children. Everyone knows they are among society's most tragic cases, often uncared-for, unloved, brutalized, and abandoned. When they grow up, these children are often seriously disadvantaged, and sometimes inclined toward brutal behavior to others. This is not good for children, for families, or for the country. Children need love and families who want and will care for them.

Choice is good for families. Even when precautions are taken, accidents can and do happen. For some families, this is not a problem. But for others, such an event can be catastrophic. An unintended pregnancy can increase tensions, disrupt stability, and push people below the line of economic survival. Family planning isthe answer. All options must be open. At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. It is about the value of women in society. Should women make their own decisions about family, career, and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children? Or is that a government decision?

The anti-abortion leaders really have a larger purpose. They oppose most ideas and programs which can help women achieve equality and freedom. They also oppose programs which protect the health and well-being of women and their children. Anti-abortion leaders claim to act "in defense of life."

If so, why have they worked to destroy programs, which serve life, including prenatal care and nutrition programs for dependent pregnant women? Is this respect for life?

Anti-abortion leaders also say they are trying to save children, but they have fought against health and nutrition programs for children once they are born. The anti-abortion groups seem to believe life begins at conception, but it ends at birth. Is this respect for life? Then there are programs, which diminish the number of unwanted pregnancies before they occur: family planning counseling, sex education, and contraception for those who wish it. Anti-abortion leaders oppose those too. And clinics providing such services have been bombed. Is this respect for life?

Such stances reveal the ultimate cynicism of the compulsory pregnancy movement. "Life" is not what they're fighting for. What they want is a return to the days when a woman had few choices in controlling her future. They think that the abortion option gives too much freedom. That even contraception is too liberating. That women cannot be trusted to make their own decisions. Americans today don't accept that. Women can now select their own paths in society, including when and whether to have children. Family planning, contraception, and, if need be, legal abortion are critical to sustaining women's freedom. There is no going back.

Bibliography

1. Journal of the American Medical Association, July 29, 1939, per Osmo Ronkanen. National Center for Health Statistics, quoted in "Induced termination of pregnancy before and after Roe v. Wade: Trends in the morbidity and mortality of women," JAMA December 9, 1992, vol. 268, no. 22, p. 3233.
2. "Abortion and fertility regulation," Lancet June 15, 1996, vol. 347,
   

no. 9016, p. 1663.