Many argue is it the women's or the foetus' rights and values that are being trampled on? "Pro-choice movements sometimes fall back on an abortion rhetoric that seems to dehumanize and trivialize the death of a foetus as a way to humanize and make important the reproductive rights of women." (Wolf p54) "Women can treat an unwanted foetus as a violation of her civil rights and is therefor justified tin using force to expel it" (McMillan pA12) The decision is not up to the mother because she is not God. Only God, the ultimate creator has the right to choose who may live and who shall die. Humans do not have the right or the power to control the quality of life and to avoid suffering. "The issue of abortion is not just life, but how life is created and the extent to which human intention and control the process, both before and after birth. All humans inventions and interventions may give us a world to regret." (Clark p3) With abortion, we humans give ourselves dominion over a large part of God's plans and our destiny.
Abortion becomes especially evil when the bond between mother and child is broken and it is being used as an alternative birth control when humans cannot control their irresponsible sexual hungers. If beings are responsible enough to be sexually active, they should also be responsible enough to accept consequences, and if that means becoming pregnant and creating a life, then that life should have the opportunity to live. There should be a bond or relationship between a mother and child, whether born or unborn. Mothers and her children form a bond unlike any other felling of love; when a child is aborted, before given the right to grow in the bond, does the mother feel the connection with her child or is it just uterine material. Abortion is never about just abortion. It is about questions like whether the society at large, or individual pieces of it, regards the fact of women's fertility as burden or gift, and how they treat it, and what are the incentives ad disincentives they provide? How the rearing of children is regarded - benefit or burden, or sometimes a balance of those, and who is responsible for that? And then one of the deepest things, at the core of what abortion is about, is what is our understanding of freedom? Is freedom something like will: the ability to choose something in anyway you choose, freedom without regard to truth, to what some would call natural law? Freedom without regard to the common good?" -Alvare p54
Many women do feel this bond and also feel a great loss and emptiness in their lives. Several women have confided in one author, Naomi Wolf. They have come to her in grief. One woman shared that each year she lights a candle for the foetus that she aborted, and that she feels like there is no room within the organized reproductive rights institutions or within mainstream feminism to articulate that grief and make it meaningful. "All humans have the same right to live compared to other humans; whether rich, poor, majority or minority this being deserves the same chance we were all given." (Clark p3) The Vatican teaches that all humans have a right to life, from the moment of conception until the natural ordained moment of death. According to the Catholic church, a person is living when as young as an embryo, which refers to an organism at its early stage of development, through the foetus stage, which is from the end of the eighth week until birth and when considered a baby, until the last second of life before death. It is also selfish to abort an unborn child. This aborted child could have been destined to create world peace, make the invention of the century, find a cure foe AIDS or other diseases or maybe have children of his or her own and continue our human race.
Pro-choice defenders feel that the Roman Catholic Church's opinion leaves no room for human reason as it instead tries to unrealistically legislate an uncompromising pro-life policy. There is no excuse for having an abortion. Pro-choice followers recommend abortion if the child is a result of rape, a painful reminder, may be born defected or the female is too young and not ready to raise a child of her own and be a parent. If these are the cases, adoption agencies are found nationwide and willingly accept unwanted children giving them the opportunity to live with another family.
There are many different viewpoints on abortion in the United States of America. Where most Americans do not feel that abortion is necessarily 'good,' they do believe it is a 'right.' Others have similar opinions. They embrace contradictory opinions and consider abortion a form of murder and yet still feel it should be legal for the truly desperate. However, most Americans think abortions are morally troubling. A recent study by George Hunt shows that neither age nor gender appears to have any effect on people's current views on abortions.
Today, teenagers are getting mixed messages from parents, peers, and media. This is the reason for the increased birth rate. Abortion is being used as a method of birth control in this case which shows in a study in The Lancet magazine that 24.1% of teenagers aged seventeen through nineteen have undergone induced abortion.
As the world grows with the new times we must look at these such important issues that will dramatically effect us soon enough in the future. Sixty million abortions are done yearly, and that number only increases as more and more countries legalize this brutal destroying of innocent children who could be successful world leaders.
"What does it mean to choose life? Who chooses life? Where should the focus be on choosing life?" (Wilson p54) To choose life not only means to speak out against unnecessary death of humans but also to take care of one's self, support the good mannerisms of all and to see good in all. The only being who has a say of life is God Almighty himself. However, we all have the opportunity and power to choose to live. The focus on choosing life should be on being happy. A complete life is a fulfilling and very satisfying life. It is up to us only to decide and teach others of these brutal acts done daily out of the laziness, irresponsibility, and ignorance of humans in attempt to escape from real life. Human life can not run forever and eventually, they will learn that destroying the innocent is wrong. "Pro- life movement will win, because when you hold up a picture of a six month old foetus being stabbed in the neck and all you say is 'choice, choice, choice' you are going to loose." (Wolf p54)
WORKS CITED
Alvare, Helen, Wilson, Marle, Wolf, Naomi. "Abortion: Whose Values? Whose Rights?" Tikkun January-February 1997: pp54-60
Clark, Thomas. "Thou Shalt Not Play God" The Humanist July-August 1995: p3
Hunt, George W.. "Of Many Things" America 31 January 1998: p2
Lavelle, Marianne. "When Abortion Comes Late In Pregnancy, Though Rare, Most Aren't For Medical Reasons" U.S. News and World Reports 19 January 1998: p31-32
Lefevere, Patricia. "Ex-abortion Providers; Conversation Tales" National Catholic Reporter 16 January 1998: p6
Merril, Ted. "Abortion; Extreme Views Ignore Reality" Medical Economics 15 July 1996: p33
McMillan, Jeff. "Focusing On a Woman's Right To Self Defense" The Chronicle of Higher Education. 6 December 1996: pA12
"No Easy Quick Fix Solutions To Abortion Issues" National Catholic Reporter 8 November 1996: p20
"Reproductive Tract Infections and Abortion Among Adolescent Girls In Rural Nigeria" The Lancet 4 February 1995: p300
Thomas, Judy. "Pro-life Turns Deadly" Newsweek 26 January 1998: p64
Wallace, Bruce. "When One Fetus Lives and One Dies" Maclean's 19 August 1996: pp20-21
