The Pro-humanity Debate
Put aside for concerns for a fetus’s right to life; women who have already been born are having their right to life violated by abortion methods that are killing them.
Whether legal or not, women are getting abortions. Women will find ways to get abortions regardless of laws, and making abortions illegal just increases the likelihood that women will die as a result of them. The only difference between countries where abortion is legalized and countries where it is not is the level of safety. Having laws in favor of abortions allows them to be performed in sterilized environments by doctors trained on how to perform an abortion. However, laws against abortions force women to seek them from people who do not have access to sterile equipment or even remotely safe abortion methods. As a result, women die. Something must be done to solve this health crisis. This pro-humanity debate must not be ignored as a result of pro-life and pro-choice banter. Put aside for concerns for a fetus’s right to life; women who have already been born are having their right to life violated by abortion methods that are killing them.
The first step to reducing the number of deaths from abortions is to provide the women of the world with effective and reliable contraceptived. The reality of the world today is that most teenagers and adults are sexually active, and sex, of course, leads to pregnancy. Without using contraceptives, the chance of unplanned pregnancy is mich higher, whereas with contraceptives, the chance of an unplanned pregnancy is much lower. The death rate from abortions would drastically decline if women in countries where abortion is unsafe had access to contraceptives. A recent study showed that using contraceptives reduces the chance a woman will have an abortion by approximately 85%. Unfortunately, many women in countries where abortion is illegal do not have much of a disposable income and would therefore be unable to afford birth control. However, contraceptives could be made available to all women of the world through private funding and corporate donations. Concerned individuals could volunteer their time and distribute birth control to all women that desire it. Centers could be built to distribute the birth control for free or at a very low cost that even the poorest of women could afford. By preventing unwanted pregnancies, contraceptived greatly reduce the demand for abortions, and with less women needing abortions, there will be far fewer deaths as a result of them.
Of course, birth control isn’t effective 100% of the time, and even with the reduced cost or free birth control available, not all women will be able to prevent unwanted pregnancies, such as in cases of rape. Additionally, the woman’s husband or boyfriend may pressure her not to use contraceptives, which may be enough to persuade her not to do so. No matter how available birth control is, there will still be unwanted pregnancies. For this reason, women should be able to access safe and affordable abortions, if they so desire. Clinis need to be built for abortions to be performed in, and doctors need to be trained on how to perform them correctly. Abortion needs to be legal and available worldwide so that women do not have to decide between bearing a child and beaing alive. Currently, more than 67,000 women die every year as a result of abortion-related complications. Abortion was made legal in South Africa in 1996: a year later, the mortality rate among women who had abortions had decresed by over 90%. Gauranteeing the safety of abortions greatly decreased the number of maternal deaths in South Africa; how many more lives can be saved by gauranteeing access to safe abortions for ever woman in the world? Perhaps killing a fetus is murder. But murder in self-defense is not the same as murder out of cold blood. These women will continue to die as a result of misjudging doses of misoprostol and having their intestines pulled out by an untrained abortionist if they do not have access to safe abortions. This argument is not about whether women have the right to control their body. This argument is not about whether a fetus has a right to life. This is not an argument of morals, nor is it an argument of religion. It is an argument about whether the world can continue to stand by and watch 67,000 women die every year form unsafe abortions. Will the world be pro-humanity? Or will the world continue to bicker about pro-life and pro-choice, all the while groing more and more anti-compassion?
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