Abortion

Abortion

Abortion: Reproductive Right, or Murder?
Mark Calkins
PHI 103
Professor Giovanni Colombo
October 17, 2011

    America is full of hot button controversial issues, but few hit a nerve with the same velocity as the abortion issue. Currently, abortion is legal in America, and many people throughout this nation agree that it should remain that way. These people are called pro-choice, and they strongly believe that a woman has the right to chose whether or not to give birth. However, there is a equally strong group of individuals who believe that abortion should be made illegal. These people are referred to as pro-life.
          The pro-choice movement believes that abortion is a choice that should be left up to each person individually, and that to impose laws restricting it would take reproductive freedom away from women. It is the pro-choice belief that abortion is not murder because a fetus cannot be classified as a person. They believe that no matter the reason for the abortion, a woman should have the right to chose it, without restriction, because it is her body.
    While adoption is another option that women can chose, (in the circumstance having a child is not what the woman wants) the pro-choice stance states that many women do not want to undergo the emotional and physical demands that a pregnancy would cost her.
          Abortion is murder, and an abomination, argues the pro-life activist. These people view a fetus as a human, worthy of life and the chance to live. Because these people think abortion is murder, they feel that the law does not protect a woman’s right to chose, no matter the situation the woman finds herself in. They feel laws should be passed that protect the fetus’s rights, making abortion illegal.
    If we keep abortion legal, are we as a nation saying that we do not value human life in it’s smallest and purest form? By, making abortion illegal are we infringing on the rights of a woman, and will we find ourselves...