Abortion - a gift or curse to society? (Abortion)

Member Name: veryhairymonkey

Product:	Abortion
Date:	01/02/01 (414 review reads)
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Abortion: ‘premature expulsion of the foetus from the womb, operation to cause this.’
Throughout history it has been considered a crime to cause the death of a baby while it was still in the mother’s womb. In more recent years abortion has become more common and in some countries it has been made legal for a woman to have an abortion. In the British government the issue of abortion has been discussed many times over the last 20 or 30 years. In 1990 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was passed in parliament. The law on abortion now gives the following conditions for the abortions to be allowed to be carried out:
 That the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of the family; or
 That the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or
 That the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or
That there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

In general society is divided into three camps of opinion over abortion. Those who believe abortion is right and should be freely available for all, those who think abortion is wrong and immoral and should be illegal, and those who have a neutral train of thought – they believe both sides of the argument are correct in some aspects, but have no preference for either side.

Arguments for:

 It is never an easy decision to have an abortion, but the person best suited to make that decision is the woman, it’s her body the baby is growing in.
 Everybod
y has the right to control their own fertility, so until there is a 100% safe and certain method of contraception abortion should still be an available option.
 Opinion in society is divided as to when exactly life begins, and because of this no minority has the right to impose its views on others.
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 The doctors who make the decision are not more morally correct than the woman so why should they be able to make the decision over the woman?
 Every child that is born has the right to be wanted and brought up in a loving family. Abortion means that thousands of babies which would not have been wanted do not have to come into the world loved by no one.
 Some people argue that giving up a child for adoption is ore traumatic for the mother than having an abortion.
 If abortion was made illegal then thousands of women would still risk their lives and health in back-street abortion clinics. Is it not better that they can go to a proper clinic where the abortion will be carried out safely and professionally?
 When a woman is raped there is a chance of her becoming pregnant. Abortion offers her a way to get rid of a child she would not want to bring up.

Arguments against:

 Science has proved that the unborn child is never just a part of the mother’s body; it is a separate human from the moment of conception.
 By allowing abortion to be legal, society is taking the easy way out. It should concentrate on improving education on sex and contraception.
 Even if it is still in the womb, killing the unborn child is still murder, which is considered one of the greatest crimes all over the world. Murder is murder, whether done in back streets or in a surgery.
 People with even the most awful handicaps can still lead happy and fulfilled lives.
 In today’s day and age there is a lot of uproar about discrimination again
st certain groups. Abortion is discrimination against the weak and should be viewed as wrong as well.
 Abortion is also about the denial of human rights - the right to live freely. The UN declaration of the rights of the child states that children need protection before, as well as after birth.
 Unborn babies are unique, different from everyone else, the have potential personalities. Every aborted foetus was a potential human being, perhaps the next Beethoven or Curie. By allowing them to be killed we are losing some of the next generation of people.

The neutral view:
Most moderates believe that abortion should not just be available to anyone for any reason, just because they were irresponsible in sex. But they mostly believe that when a woman is raped she should be allowed to have the abortion so she does not have to raise the child she does not want.

When does life begin?

A key issue of abortion is deciding when life begins exactly. No one can be sure when exactly but people have lots of different views. Does it begin at conception? At birth? During pregnancy?
Here is the development of the baby during the pregnancy:

3 weeks – the heart starts to beat.
4 weeks – the brain starts to grow, legs and arms begin to form.
6 weeks – bones appear, embryo is 2cm long, brain functions recorded.
7 weeks – fingers and thumbs start to form.
8 weeks – all body parts are present, skeleton formed, kidneys start to function.
10 weeks – the baby can jump and move of its own accord in the womb.
12 weeks - vocal chords and sexual organs form, fingernails and fingerprints are formed, baby can suck its thumb, curve its fingers, swallow, urinate and make hand motions.
16 weeks – mother can feel baby moving, half its birth length.
17 weeks – the baby can now feel pain.
20 weeks – eyebrows and eyelashes form, the baby begins to rese
mble its family’s characteristics.
24 weeks – baby can recognise sounds like its mother’s voice, at this stage half of all babies born prematurely will survive.


While I have been researching and writing this opinion I have been presented with both the arguments for and against abortion and have had time to reflect and decide for myself what my stance on the subject is.
I believe that abortion is socially and morally wrong and should not be available to anyone. No one can be absolutely correct about when exactly life begins and every person will have his or her own view. I believe that life begins with the very first heartbeat and so the baby in the womb is a human being, an individual person. So to kill a baby in the womb is murder, and since murder of a person who has been born is very much illegal in today’s society, then to abort a baby in the womb is murder also and should be illegal also.
Abortion can have very serious effects on a woman. Aside from physical dangers with the actual operation there are also serious psychological effects. Most women feel initial relief immediately after the abortion but later on they feel guilt, regret, anger, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and some are even driven to suicidal feelings.
Many women who have abortions have them because they would not be able to cope with the baby after the birth. But these women have no right to kill the baby just because they were irresponsible with sex and were not careful with contraception. The woman does not own the baby. She may be its mother but that does not give her the right to decide whether or not it lives or dies. Who gives us the right to play at being God, choosing who lives and who dies?

A lot of babies are aborted because if they were born they would be handicapped. But why should we kill them just because they will not be as physically or mentally able as others. Are handicapped babies less worthy of life? No. Th
ey have just as much right to live as the rest of us. Many handicapped people have happy productive lives anyway. People with disabilities such as cystic fibrosis can still lead very happy, active lives. Do sufferers of handicaps such as Down’s syndrome lead a lower quality of life than others? These people have just as much right to life as anyone else, no matter what disability affects them. The parents of the child who will be born handicapped should be prepared to bring it up no matter if it is handicapped or not, or else they should not have brought it into the world in the first place.

Many people who are anti-abortion believe that a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant should be able to get an abortion. I believe that just because the woman may not want to raise the child does not mean that it should die. There are thousands of people in the world who cannot have children and try to adopt children. If the woman does not want the child then she cannot kill it. She should give it up for adoption if she does not want it, and it can be brought up in a loving environment by people who will want and love it very much.

In conclusion I think it is wrong under any circumstance to abort a baby in the womb. Babies in the womb are living, growing human beings and should have as much right to life as anyone else.

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