Abortion

Amanda’s mom was forty-two, past her younger, more pubescent years, but certainly not prepared to pass away. Amanda’s family had just lost their farm during the Great Depression; the family was left jobless. The last thing the family could possible desire was a third infant. With Amanda’s mom’s age and economic status, she could not afford to bear a third child. Out of deep desperation, Amanda’s mom made a questionable, but all too common decision and went to a back-alley abortionist, who quickly botched the abortion and marooned her with infections and rampant pain. Amanda’s dad was forced to cook and take care of Amanda, who was six, and her sister, who was eight.

After three months of affliction and anguish for Amanda’s entire family, Amanda’s mom was found sprawled on the floor, with cockroach powder polluting her bloodstream. The brutal pain of the illegal abortion overwhelmed Amanda’s mom, who attempted suicide to end the unbearable pain. An agonizing ten days later, her pain finally consummated and Amanda’s family was left without a matron. Years later, Amanda’s grandmother told her and her sister that Amanda’s mother had been butchered by the inexperienced abortionist. To this day, Amanda is haunted by this memory and wishes her mother could have received a legal abortion (“Amanda”). Unfortunately, deaths like these were all too common before abortion was made legal. If abortion is made illegal, not only will there a myriad of deaths, but rights would be infringed upon and the safety of millions would be at risk. Abortion should remain as an inalienable choice in the United States to all of its female citizens because it is a right granted by the government, it may be necessary to protect the physical health of a woman, and it debars the birth of unwanted babies.

Since the dawn of the United States of America, a woman’s prerogative to abortion has been acknowledged by multifarious court cases. The subject was even brought up in the writing of the Constitution, but was instantly dejected (Abortion and the Law). In the milestone case of Roe vs. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court declared that laws outlawing abortion improperly invade a liberty possessed by a pregnant woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy, protected by the Bill of Rights.

The Court concluded that abortion is considered a birthright to personal, marital, familial, and sexual privacy protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, thereby declaring laws impeding abortion unconstitutional. The key factor in this cognition was the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which states that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The choice of abortion is part of the liberty of a female, and cannot be deprived by the government. Restricting a female’s control of her own body would limit her liberty and infringe on the Constitution (“Roe vs. Wade”). This fact was further brought to light in Planned Parenthood of South Eastern Pennsylvania vs. Casey (1992), in which the Court abolished laws restricting abortion (“Planned Parenthood”). The Supreme Court again used the Due Process Clause in Ayotte vs. Planned Parenthood of New England (2006), again ruling that restrictive abortion laws are unconstitutional.