Dontaja Williams

Date:
Class:
Greene Central High School

What Give Us The Right To Say Abortions Is Wrong or Right?

Four in every five Americans begin having intercourse before age 20.
Many of the youngest women in this group (70% of those age 13 or under)
report having had sex forced on them. By the time they turn 20, about 40% of
American women have been pregnant at least once. Many of these young
women have little understanding of their bodies and have begun having sexual
intercourse before knowing about ways to prevent pregnancy. Teenagers with
unplanned pregnancies face difficult choices. If a teen gives birth and keeps the
baby, she will be much more likely than other young women to drop out of
school, receive inadequate prenatal care, rely on public assistance to raise her
child, develop health problems, or have her marriage end in divorce. Children
born to teenage mothers are more likely than children of older mothers to
suffer significant disadvantages: medical, psychological, economic, and
educational. These are the consequences that goes through teens mind before
they have an abortion. They ask do I want to go through all those obstacles
when Im just a child myself.

Many states have enacted, or are considering, laws that restrict

teenagers access to abortion by requiring parental involvement in the abortion
decision. Such laws include the Parental notification laws that require medical
personnel to notify a minors parent(s) of her intention to obtain an abortion.
Parental consent laws that require medical personnel to obtain written
permission from the parent(s) before providing an abortion. Almost all of the
parental notification and consent laws have judicial bypass options that allow a
teen who feels she cannot involve her parent(s) to get a judges permission to
proceed with her abortion. Some states allow a physician to waive parental
involvement, and some allow professional counseling instead of parental
involvement.
Abortion providers encourage teenagers to tell a parent or another
important family member about their plans, and most teens do. Even without
state laws, one or both parents of 61% of minors know about their daughters
abortions. The younger the teen, the higher the likelihood that she has told her
mother about the situation. Those young women who do not or cannot tell their
parents, however, often have important reasons such as a family history of
alcoholism, emotional or physical abuse, or incest. To involve such parents
could invite further abuse of the teenager and other family members. Rather
than tell their parents for whatever reason some teenagers resort to unsafe,
illegal abortions or try to perform the abortion themselves. In doing so, they

risk serious injury and death or, in some cases, criminal charges. The value of
life becomes determined solely by the woman carrying the fetus.
If the woman wants the child, the fetus is a human life and the
termination of the pregnancy is aggravated murder. But, if she does not want
the child, the fetus is no longer considered a human life and the woman can
simply terminate the pregnancy without consequence. Not only does the
woman then have full control over the determination of when her unborn baby
is a human life and when it is not (which can arbitrarily change from one month
to the next without any logic or reason), her decision wholly determines
whether or not the termination of her pregnancy is a crime, and one that can be
punished by death. Whats worse, the life of the fetus becomes subjective,
based only on the womans wants, rather than on if the fetus is, in fact, a
human life.The type of abortion procedure used in elective pregnancy
termination is primarily determined by how far a woman is into pregnancy.
During the first trimester, you will usually have the option of having a medical
abortion procedure or a surgical abortion procedure. Before considering the
options, it is recommended that you obtain a sonogram to determine if the
pregnancy is viable (uterine, non- ectopic pregnancy) and for accurate
pregnancy dating. In most cases, you will have a choice between medical or
surgical abortion procedures during the first trimester. Medical abortions are
only available up through nine weeks gestation.

In the United States and worldwide, abortion (known also as elective

termination of pregnancy) remains common. Abortion is one of the most
common medical procedures performed in the United States each year. More
than 40% of all women will end a pregnancy by abortion at some time in their
reproductive lives. While women of every social class seek terminations, the
typical woman who ends her pregnancy is either young, white, unmarried, poor,
or over the age of 40. In spite of the introduction of newer, more effective, and
more widely available birth control methods, more than half of the 6 million
pregnancies occurring each year in the United States are considered unplanned
by the women who are pregnant. Of these unplanned pregnancies, about half
end in abortion.
Before the 19th century, most US states had no specific abortion laws.
Women were able to end a pregnancy prior to viability with the assistance of
medical personnel. Beginning with a Connecticut statute and followed by an
1829 New York law, the next 20 years saw the enactment of a series of laws
restricting abortion, punishing providers, and, in some cases, punishing the
woman who was seeking the abortion. The first US federal law on the subject
was the Comstock Law of 1873, which permitted a special agent of the postal
services to open mail dealing with abortion or contraception in order to
suppress the circulation of "obscene" materials. From 1900 until the 1960s,
abortions were prohibited by law. However, the Kinsey report noted that

premarital pregnancies were electively aborted, and public and physician

opinion began to be shaped by the alarming reports of increased numbers of
unsafe illegal abortions. In 1965, 265 deaths occurred due to illegal abortions.
Of all pregnancy-related complications in New York and California, 20% were
due to abortions. A series of US Supreme Court decisions granted increased
rights to women and ensured their right to choice in this process. No decision
was more important than Griswold v Connecticut, which, in 1965, recognized a
constitutional right to privacy and ruled that a married couple had a
constitutional right to obtain birth control from their health care professional.
The adverse effect of legal abortion on women we see more and more
coming to the forefront as a particularly important human rights issue. Issues
such as the abortion-breast cancer link, the abortion-depression link, the
abortion-suicide links are now receiving widespread coverage. The immediate
consequence of abortion is the risk of damage to a womans reproductive
organs and her future ability to have children. The hurtful consequences PostAbortion Syndrome (PAS), may be emotional, physical, psychological, social,
moral, or medical. The psychological damage, today known as Post-Abortion
Syndrome, is all too real for many women. The consequences are long lasting
and destructive. When an individual undergoes an abortion she has a high
stress reaction to the experience. Yet all too often her emotional pain is denied
at the abortion clinic, minimized by partners and families, miss-diagnosed or

trivialized by helping professions and ignored by society in general. She can

experience shock or horror, she can experience a sense of loss and grief, and
she can be filled with remorse, grief and guilt. These emotions are often
repressed and denied. In the short term emotions are numbed. But at this stage
she will begin to develop post-abortion syndrome or PAS, and her behavior can
begin to change profoundly.
Experts insist therefore that abortion is not the appropriate treatment of
depression or rape. However unprepared a woman may feel she is to have her
child, however tragic she feels the circumstances of her pregnancy are, abortion
is a short-term escape. It may bring her immediate relief but it leads to longterm agony, not to mention the death of an unborn baby. Abortion does not
heal the woman or undo the rape. Abortion is nothing else than a further
violation of a violated woman and an attack on another human being. Punish
the rapist not the innocent unborn baby. The reason most people reach the
wrong conclusion about abortion in cases of rape and incest is that the actual
experiences of sexual assault victims who became pregnant are routinely left
out of the debate. Most people, including sexual assault victims who have never
been pregnant, are therefore forming opinions based on prejudices and fears
which are disconnected from reality.

So when is abortions wrong? Nobody can give a justified accurate answer

because our answer will be based off our opinions. So therefore no one has the
right to judge but we do and always will have the right to voice our opinion on
what we believe is right or wrong. No one can answer the question is abortion
wrong without stating religious beliefs. Abortion is an extremely controversial
topic, and I believe that women should be able to choose what happens to their
own bodies. If abortion was illegal, the maternal death toll due to unsafe
abortions would rise dramatically, and overpopulation would become an even
more prominent issue. A woman should be able to have a say in a situation
involving her body, and those who oppose abortion shouldn't care about a
personal decision that doesn't affect them. I can understand that some people
look at it as a form of murder. Why people continue to pick and choose what is
"justifiable" murder, and what is bad murder. Murder is murder. We can send
people to war, we can legalize the death penalty, but abortion is STILL wrong? I
think that people with different religious and cultural backgrounds have
different unique perspectives. So the common question thats been ask and
which will conclude this paper is Is Abortion wrong if you were raped. Being
raped and assaulted is a whole different story than someone just not wanted
the baby at all. I do not think that God intended for any rape victims to suffer a
constant reminder of one of the worst part of their life. What if this victim is in
college a baby would take time away from their education and tie them to a
wretched man for 18 years. To suggest that anyone should be forced to carry a

child that youve never consented to is a violation of their rights as a fully

functional, intelligent human being. A woman who was violated in the most
horrible way possible, has to live with that moment in her mind for the rest of
her life. She has every right to choose to or not carry the rapist child to full
term. This child wasn't created between two consenting adults. The rapist
doesn't have to be pregnant for 9 months and give birth, so why should we
expect the victim. That's what we are talking about. Victims, not just abortion.

REFERENCES

1.http://prochoice.org/education-and-advocacy/about-abortion/abortionfacts/
2.http://studentsforlife.org/prolifefacts/abortion-facts/

3.http://www.emedicinehealth.com/abortion/article_em.htm
4.http://www.emedicinehealth.com/abortion/article_em.htm