Imagine a woman being forced to give birth to a baby that she doesn’t want. There are a variety of reasons that someone may not want to bring a child into this world, and that reason or decision belongs to that person. Abortion is when a woman becomes pregnant but decides that she does not want to keep it, so, she gets an abortion to kill it before the fetus grows too much. People that believe abortion procedures should remain legal and that women should have the choice to make that decision, are pro-choice. Those that believe that women should be forced to have their child and that abortion should be illegal, are pro-life. The Economist best describes this controversial debate as “for Americans, abortion can never be just about health. It has to be a clash of absolutes: the right to choose versus the right to life. Add to that the openness of the American political system, which makes it impossible to hand controversial questions over to technocratic elites, and you have the making of an endless argument about fundamentals” (https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/01/16/the-war-that-never-ends).Even though many people are pro-life, women should be allowed to decide if they want children as it’s their bodies.
To begin with pro-choice, fetuses reportedly do not usually feel pain while undergoing an abortion procedure. Scientists believe that the cortex is needed to feel pain. However, the cortex does not develop until at least the twenty sixth week of the child’s development, whereas abortions are often done long before then. ProCon.org then goes on to recognize that there is “no legitimate scientific information that supports the statement that a fetus experiences pain” (https://abortion.procon.org/). It is very unlikely that the fetus will feel any pain as in many places it is often illegal to get an abortion that late.
Many also argue that access to legal abortion procedures reduces the amount of deaths and injuries that would normally be the outcome of an illegal abortion. When abortion was illegal, “women would frequently try to induce abortions by using coat hangers, knitting needles, radiator flush, or by going to unsafe ‘back alley’ abortionists” (https://abortion.procon.org/). To highlight some statistics, it is estimated that perilous abortions cause 68,000 deaths each year. It is more likely that women will die giving birth at 8.8 in 100,000, rather than having a safe abortion at 0.6 in 100,000.
Contrary to popular belief, there are actually religious groups that support abortions. These groups include the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, United Church of Christ, Reform / Conservative Judaism, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Many pro life supporters claim that the Bible states that abortion is bad, but, the Bible actually “contains no explicit condemnation of abortion, and does not portray the killing of a fetus as equivalent to the killing of a human being” (https://abortion.procon.org/). Even though some churches publically do not support abortion, many of the members do not always agree. It is estimated that “roughly half of all U.S. Catholics (48%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, in spite of the Catholic Church’s strong opposition” (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/21/where-major-religious-groups-stand-on-abortion/).
To switch over to the pro-life viewpoint, they believe that abortion is murder even if the fetus is not fully grown. Going against those that are pro-choice, their reason for this is “by the time a baby is conceived, he or she is recognized by God, as demonstrated in Jeremiah 1:5: ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee’” (https://abortion.procon.org/). Another reason they give is the decreased amount of adoptable babies. They believe that women should give birth to their babies and put them up for adoption rather than getting an abortion. They noted that “the number of US infant adoptions dropped from about 90,000 in 1971 to 18,329 in 2014. Around 2.6 million Americans are seeking to adopt children” (https://abortion.procon.org/). To argue this, if people were desperate to adopt, they could look in other countries other than just America. A final point they have that goes against the pro-choice evidence is that abortion can lead to medical problems for the mother. While this may be true, it is a small chance and can also happen with childbirth. They expressed that a study “estimated that about 15% of first-trimester miscarriages are attributed to a prior history of induced abortion” (https://abortion.procon.org/). They then go on to mention that it can connect to an increased risk of cancer. Cancer, however, has been connected to a variety of different things so it’s hard to know if this is a large cause of it.
Although some people still choose to be pro-life, it should ultimately be the mother’s decision to undergo an abortion. The argument still stands for whether or not fetuses feel pain, if it’s morally right to kill an unborn baby, and if the procedure should remain legal. If women were not given a choice of abortion, then the government would be limiting their options. Pro-life and pro-choice people will most likely always have their differences on the topic of abortion, but after looking over the evidence, we should all come to the agreement that women should be allowed a choice.