Abortion

When people hear the word “abortion” today, most United States citizens take sides in the presently controversial matter. An abortion means ending a pregnancy before the fetus (the unborn child) can live independently outside the mother. Some Americans choose to be pro-choice while others choose to be pro-life. An individual who is pro-choice believes a woman who is pregnant should freely be able to have an abortion if she chooses to. On the other hand, a person who is pro-life does not believe in abortions under any conditions. According to the National Abortion Federation: “There are currently about 1.3 million abortions that take place after an unplanned pregnancy every year in the United States” (Dudley 1). Abortion has always been a controversial issue in the United States, but the debates that take place on the topic today are as heated as ever.

In the past, jurisdiction over abortion rested with the states rather than with the federal government. Until the second half of the 19th century, most states chose not to restrict abortion. However, by the end of the 19th century, the majority of states adopted laws that made it a crime to either perform or obtain an abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. Then, in a court case of 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. This famous case became known as Roe v. Wade (after the people involved in it). Since the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion has become one of the most divisive political issues in the United States today. While citizens who are Pro-choice argue that

abortion is a freedom a woman should have because of her rights to privacy and the right to make her own decisions, citizens who are pro-life argue that abortion is an action that should be illegal in all cases because it kills a living fetus. In the United States today, the controversial topic is publicized by both sides by “[m]arches as large as tens of thousands of people, media articles, personal stories, and even in some doctor’s offices you can find the topic as a central discussion” (Ross 8). After analyzing both point of views, I conclude that my belief in the topic of abortion is pro-choice.

The pro-choice outlook on abortion takes a lot of consideration into the constitution, natural rights, and the Amendments. In the constitution, citizens are given the right to privacy. “What is more private then a person’s body?” (Dudley 3) An unborn child occupies a woman’s body. What happens to her body should be her choice and her choice only. A pro-life response to this argument can be that “[c]rimes on private property are still crimes and once a crime, such as murder, takes place it is no longer a private matter” (Ross 5). This is true; however, it is not realistic to prosecute even real crimes when it is not in the ability of the state to prove them. The rights to privacy deny the government to such capability to prosecute in many cases. It is therefore listed between-the-lines in the constitution that a woman has the natural right of privacy and option over her body.