Half of all pregnancies are unintentional, according to the World Health Organization, resulting in abortions being arranged by millions every year to make sure that their wanted babies will have a better life than their unwanted babies. Abortions are a controversial topic right now, but the answer is clear: abortion is correct.
Every woman has the right to have full control of her body. If the pregnancy interferes with work, study or other part of life that the pregnant woman considers more important than having the baby, it is her prerogative to keep the baby or not. If the family is not well prepared for the unborn baby, the quality of the baby’s life is questionable, which is even worse than aborting the baby in the first place. Many studies have shown that more than 15% of children (often unintentionally conceived) born into a poor environment will grow up to break the law and be arrested at least once, showing that those who didn’t have abortions often raised children who were much more likely to become criminals.
Abortion is a woman’s reproductive choice, and gives her control over her own body. She will know if she is not suitable for a parent, and many of those cases, abortion is the best choice. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissenting opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) that undue restrictions on abortion infringe upon “a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.”
Many pregnancies are unpreventable. Abortion gives those women who have been raped and conceived a baby unexpectedly or whose health is threatened by the fetus a chance to survive and protect themselves for the next intentional baby, so abortion could not be completely banned. In this situation, the baby either does not have a father, or loses his/her mother after she gives birth to the baby because of difficulty delivery or faces other health issues. Children raised in a single-parent family tend to have more problems both physically and mentally. Statistically, 63% of suicides nationwide are individuals from single-parent families.
Some may argue that adoption could solve the problem of unwanted pregnancy instead of abortion, but they are forgetting basic facts. The Earth that human beings are living and depending on is overpopulated already, and abortion could surely help release the pressure of overload, which adoption has nothing to do with. According to the US Statistics Bureau, 250,000 new children enter the US Foster System every year, and in the highest adoption figure in the past few decades, 150,000 children were adopted (in fiscal year 2000). That leaves 100,000 new children every year in the foster system, which now doesn’t sound so open a choice to anti-abortionists. What’s more, based on statistical data, there are more than 200 million orphans in the world, and many of them were abandoned just a few days after they first met this world because their family could not afford a newborn baby. Adoption counts little compared to the huge number of orphans. Giving women an opportunity to end the pregnancy prevents the child from being abandoned and having an unequal life.
Modern abortions are safe, and do not have a high rate of mortality or bring on any future medical defects. According to a study published in January 2015 by Obstetrics & Gynecology, less than .25% of legal US abortions lead to medical defects. Additionally, the mortality rate for childbirth (8.8 deaths for every 100,000) was indeed higher than the mortality rate for abortions (0.6 deaths for every 100,000), by 14 times. Additionally, both the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute have refuted claims that abortions lead to breast cancer, and this all proves that abortions do not pose a risk to the women’s health.
Many people against abortion are Christians, and they believe life begins at conception; abortion is the same as killing a person and depriving one’s human rights, and calling it a “biogenic Tower of Babel” and that abortions “offend God”, according to an anti-abortion article written by the TPFS Student Faction. The problem with that? The United States of America, among with the greater number of the countries around the world, is not run on religion. Additionally, many of the points that the anti-abortionists bring up rotate around the fetuses’ short-term wellbeing, and not the fetuses’ long-term wellbeing if they are not aborted. Children raised in single-parent family or poor environment are having a blind future, ending up as suicides or becoming criminals as mentioned above, with the same fate often in store for the mother who didn’t undergo an abortion. What is more important? Short-term wellbeing, or long-term wellbeing?
Abortion is right, when used properly. It can stop a fetus from possibly being born into a damaging and destitute life; women who have abortions are less likely to have mental health problems then those who continued on with the pregnancy, and modern abortions have a much lower rate of mortality for the mother then if they induced childbirth, and it is the WOMEN’S choice to do what SHE wants with HER body, and she should have reproductive choices. The question we are asking here is, what is more important? A fetuses’ short-term wellbeing (being born into the world), or its long-term wellbeing (environment, parents, any health defects, etc.)? A baby should not come into the world unwanted, and abortions help make sure that only the babies that are wanted by their parents and will have a happier life will be born.