I greatly respect those who have answered in the No Column. I personally would not have an abortion and I understand why there are those who would oppose it for everyone. But I have a few simple thoughts on abortion as to why it should be left legal as it is.
1) Women who have convenient abortion don’t deserve to be mothers. Frankly, I think they should go a step beyond and have their tubes tied while they are on the table for their abortion.
2) We are never going to get people to stop having sex. This is obvious. Abstinence based, religiously backed programs aren’t going to make a darn dent in teenagers today. Even if teenagers did wait, they won’t wait much longer than college. If we want to get through to people we should have more advertisements like the pyramid one that used to be on in the late 90’s. The one where you saw panties piling up…the idea of sleeping with more than a few people is gross. If you have sex with one person, who has had sex with ten people, and each of those had ten people, and each of those had ten and each of those had ten, you could be sleeping with ten thousand people in a single one night stand. I personally know several people who have slept with over a hundred people and are still going. I know some people who have had abortions and I agree it was probably the right thing to do for their situation. Some women are just not cut out to have children, but we can’t expect them to be celibate now can we? Hence suggestion number one.
If we want to solve the problem with having too many abortions we need to start in the home. When so many of the parents today are single parents, being partner after partner into their home: What kind of example are they setting for their children? Parents aren’t showing their children that sex is to be something had after love is present; they are showing their children that sex is the way to get love. They aren’t setting good examples for their children, because they use the excuse,” Just because I have children doesn’t mean I have to be sexually dead. It’s my body and my right and none of their business.” But children are not stupid. They see the parade of people coming through the bedroom door.
Children also have to be taught personal responsibility, which we can’t expect the schools to do it for us. This is something parents have to teach their children at home starting from a young age. If you don’t want your daughter growing up and having sex irresponsibly, then teach her responsibility. If you don’t want your son to grow up to impregnate girls before they are prepared to take care of a child, then teach him responsibility.
It should not be up to the government to make a medical procedure legal or illegal. That I believe is outside the ruling of the government, much like assisted suicide, abortions should be up to the doctors to perform and the patients to receive.
We can ague morals and ethics till we are blue in the face. But there will still be women who have sex without using birth control or without using it properly who will want to have abortions, no matter what we tell them. Abortions have been a part of humanity long before the government stepped in. Infanticide even happened frequently during the early ages of man. The problem is that we put too much value on human life. Humans are a speck of star dust in the cosmic sense of the universe. We are not significant; we are not the highest level of life forms, because if we were we could live peaceably with each other.
I think it is funny how those who fight for abortion to be legal use the arguments that it is the woman’s right to choose, when they will fight tooth and nail for that fox that is being used for a coat. Isn’t it the coat makers right to choose to end the life of a fox? Or is it because you can see it and feel it, and it looks cuddly that it is wrong. What about death row inmates? They have taken the lives of others and are now awaiting the end of their own life: Why fight for them to be freed?
We all die eventually, that is part of life. Though it is a part of life most people don’t want to think about until it is knocking at their door. Even if the 800,000 babies aborted each year were alive; they are all going to die eventually. If they are spared living a crappy life because their mother doesn’t really want them, isn’t it better to have not lived at all? Don’t we have enough messed up people alive today without adding almost a million more a year. Of course there are plenty of people being born today, the problem is that more are being born into lower class, welfare homes, and the women having abortions are more likely to be career driven women, who don’t have time to have babies yet. Though in the end more and more women are not choosing to have children at all, instead focusing on their careers and their love lives. They aren’t settling down until they are in their mid forties and then it is almost too late to be having children. So where is the solutionthere isn’t one. Give up. Women will continue to have abortions whether we like it or not.
I know I had the option of having an abortion when I got pregnant with my first child at 18, but I didn’t. I couldn’t bare the thought of killing something that shared my DNA. I have two children now, a husband I love, but I don’t want any more children. Thus my husband and I practice safe sex. In six years we have never had a problem with only using the rhythm method and condoms. I know my husband and I are really fertile, so people can’t tell me that condoms don’t work. If people are too inept to use a condom correctly, then maybe they shouldn’t be having children.