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Debate on Abortion
The debate on abortion is not close to coming to an end anytime soon if considerations are not taken on both sides of the story. Each side seems to have justifiable and viable reasons, and the integration of the positive concepts will lead to a step towards the respect of both the mothers and baby’s well-being. I stand with the illegalization of abortion, human life is sacred, and its termination is Immoral. Arguments for the illegalization of abortion only favor the mother’s well-being and not that of the child.
A research study conducted by Bumpass and Westoff revealed that despite the availability of proper fertility control methods, approximately 22% of the children born in the United States are unwanted by at least one parent by the time of conception (Jones, 2007). In the study, the researcher also discovered that approximately 17% of the pregnancies are unwanted by both parents. Bumpass and Westoff claims that the actual percentage of the unwanted birth could be higher as a significant proportion of the research participants were reluctant to declare their children undesirable (Jones, 2007). According to Carter & Fuller (2016), close to 1.06 million abortions were carried out in the United States despite abortion restrictions. This accounted for approximately 21% of all pregnancies. Based on recent studies, teenagers accounted for 18% of the abortions carried out. According to Carter & Fuller (2016), 56% of the abortion cases reported were associated with fear of marital conflicts.
According to Jalanko et (2017), the number of unwanted pregnancies cannot be reduced through contraceptives. As a result, the government should permit abortion as an alternative. Abortion is a painful subject for people who find themselves strapped by this moral dilemma. According to Jalanko et (2017), a significant proportion of women have carried out abortions. However, it is difficult to pinpoint the significant factors contributing to this behavior due to insufficient data. Again, researchers find it challenging to conduct abortion-related studies to the subject’s ethical and moral sensitivity. Jalanko et (2017) believe this to be the main contributor to the scarcity of abortion research data. Again, researchers find it challenging to evaluate the quality of the information collected. The researchers require their study participants to articulate a process that forced them to pursue pregnancy termination. It could be argued that we already know the reasons why women resolve to pregnancy termination; because they don’t want the pregnancy. It is difficult to verify this hypothesis’s validity because not all women with unintended pregnancies resolve to abortion. According to Jalanko et (2017), women’s desire to terminate pregnancy may change with time. Arguments against abortion practices are based on personal conviction as individuals feel that their beliefs should not conflict with the existing social policies and law.
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court affirmed access to save abortion procedures from being one of the women’s reproductive rights. Over recent years, states have enacted numerous administrative and legislative restrictions on abortion (Kilo & Wallance, 2019). According to Sufrin et al. (2017), close to 300 abortions, related restrictions were enacted between 2011 and 2016. These restrictions have women’s access to abortion care completely impossible. According to Starrs (2018), the legalization of abortion helps women avoid unwanted children and gives them a chance to actualize their educational and professional goals. With the current legal framework, the possibility of women achieving such goals is becoming impossible.
Currently, the existing legal restrictions against abortion render the government’s commitment to ensuring gender equality. Since the 1910s, women have always been fighting to be granted equal rights as their male counterparts. It is an undeniable fact that societies have been accused of treating both men and women unequally for a long time. Just like men, women have a moral right to do as they desire with their bodies. The government’s attempt to restrict women from accessing safe abortion care is a limiting factor in attaining gender equality. According to Medoff (2002), conducting an abortion without proper medical expertise is a dangerous exercise and could result in death. From this perspective, it can be argued that by prohibiting abortion, the government will be forcing women to carry out an unsafe abortion, which is much more dangerous than abortion itself.
Based on Functionalists’ point of view, it would be impossible to attain a social order by practicing beliefs and values that bring us together as a society (Turner, 2017). According to Turner (2017), shared believes forms the basic integrating principle within a society. These values are responsible for sharpening people’s understanding and distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong. Social order is required for any society to function. Social order cannot be achieved if the rights and freedoms of gender are being infringed. The current political systems’ efforts to impose restrictions on women’s right to abortion are pure exploitation of power and unnecessary.
Another aspect is based on the issue of the right to life. There have been substantial and complex arguments as to when life begins. Much support the concept that life begins at conception and the fetus in the woman’s womb is a living thing and thus has a right to life just like any other human being, including that of the mother. Terminating a pregnancy would mean denial of the baby’s right to live and have a future. All countries of the world have acts governing human conduct by clearly defining various human rights and freedoms. A right to life is one of the rights included in the constitutional Acts of human rights in their respective countries stemmed from the Universal Declaration of Human rights.
The psychological and health effects of abortion on women are the most sensitive aspect in modern society that strengthens the debate for non-legalization. Women who undergo abortion are likely to experience psychological traumas, especially the first-timers, as that act is considered inhuman and termination of life. It may lead to depression in life as the moments are likely to haunt them in later days in their lives .health wise, future pregnancies may experience complications such as miscarriages leading to further frustrations and regrets in life as the situation can never be reversed. According to studies, 2.6 million American women in 2002 were waiting to adopt children, but only 1% of them managed to do so.
Also, women as human beings have bodily rights, and denying a woman the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy is depriving them of the right to control their body as they deem fit. In Roe vs. Wade’s case, the supreme court of America supported a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy based on the freedom of personal choice relating to family matters as amended in the constitution.
According to facts presented by forces supporting the move, the Legalisation of safe abortion is unlikely to increase the rate of abortion in society. On the contrary, a drastic reduction is experienced; countries where abortion is legalized, such as Germany and Switzerland, experience the lowest rates of abortion in the world. This because these countries have policies that restrict access to contraceptives and made sex education available to young adults. Illegalizing abortion forces women to seek unlawful methods of abortion that are a danger to their life.
The campaign to legalize abortion has spread all over the world. It has since generated a lot of debate on major human rights platforms and caught various governmental bodies’ attention. In some countries, the campaigns have been successful and lead to legalization, while in other countries, these efforts have been futile.
The drastic effects of the aftermath of abortion and the basic denial of the baby’s life to live clearly show why abortion should be illegalized. The respect for human life supersedes all other factors.
Recommendations
The government’s attempt to regulating abortion through imposing legal restrictions has resulted in being an ineffective approach. Based on the above discussion, unwanted pregnancies have been proved to be the main contributing factor to the current increase of abortion among women. As a result, the first approach to remedying this problem is identifying ways of preventing such pregnancies, especially among youths, as they account for a substantial proportion of the abortions committed. One way of reducing such pregnancies is through the provision of comprehensive sexuality education. Through a sexual education program, youth can be educated on the dangers of unprotected sexual engagements, the importance of abstinence, and the use of contraceptives. The second approach ensures easy accessibility of emergency contraceptives in both public and private health care facilities. Previously conducted research indicates that an increase in domestic violence and sexual abuse is part of abortion’s leading causes of abortion. This raises the need for society to identify strategies that can be used to reduce such acts. According to Kilo & Wallance (2019), unwanted pregnancies will always occur despite the availability of fertility control methods. As a result, the last positive alternative of discouraging women from resolve to abortion in case the available pregnancy control mechanisms fail is to ensure that they have the financial ability to support their new children. Based on the research conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, one of the main reasons why women abort is because they cannot afford to raise a child.