Give Us Our Rights: A Talk About Abortion

Imagine your child, not even thirteen years old, getting raped and falling pregnant. Imagine her fear. Her innocence. Imagine her as that baby you still think she is. You know she isn't ready to carry a child, she's still a child herself!

But in tomorrow's America, she has no choice.

Blunt, I know, but this is what our future looks like. With the supposed leak of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, abortion rights have never been at greater risk than they are now. 26 states will definitely or probably ban abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned. That’s more than half of the union. In the majority of the United States, women will not be able to get abortions. Rape, life threatening conditions, unstable finances, or just not wanting a child aren’t good enough reasons to get an abortion in these states’ minds.

The entire situation is a laughable hypocrisy. The men that want to ban women’s abortions are the same men that refuse to ban guns because “people will still buy guns even if it’s illegal.” Abortions are still going to happen. All that banning abortions does is make them unsafe and harder to get, further risking mothers' lives. (How very pro-life of them).

According to the World Health Organization, about 8 women die every second as a result from an unsafe abortion. Around the world, nearly 20 million unsafe abortions are performed every year. It is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality (13%). The lawmakers don’t care that more women in America are going to die because of this. They aren’t really pro-life, because if they were, abortions would still be legal.

In Venezuela, a woman and her family survived on one meal a day. When the woman found out that she was pregnant again, her doctor told her that carrying the baby to term posed great risk to her life. In order to live, the woman would either have to get a medical abortion, or try more dangerous alternatives. Luckily, Medecins Sans Frontiers Doctors Without Borders (MSF) supplied her with abortion pills, thus saving her life. Like the woman says, “I already have children. I want to see them grow big.”

Stories like this make me wonder why anyone could possibly be against the choice to have an abortion when it saves the mother. But to many, the fetus’s life is equally as important as the mother's, so a life threatening situation isn’t good enough reason to abort.

Many women choose to have an abortion because they are not financially, mentally, or physically capable of caring for a child. The environment a child grows up in directly affects their health and what their lives will be like. You wouldn’t want a child to grow up with a drug addict parent, surrounded by addicts and drugs. You wouldn’t want a child growing up with a parent that resents them and therefore takes that anger out on them. You wouldn’t want a child to grow up on the brink of starvation.

No, you want a child to grow up happy and loved.

Many pro-lifers argue that adoption is a great way to give birth but not raise the child. Although this is true, it isn’t a great option. About 70% of children in the juvenile justice system have been involved in child welfare. 50% of foster children will not graduate high school on time. 48% of girls in foster care fall pregnant by 19 years old. 33% of homeless young adults were in foster care.

Kids in foster care are 4x more likely than other children to attempt suicide.

Abortions aren’t ideal. No one purposely gets pregnant just so they can get an abortion. People also don’t decide to get an abortion on a whim. Most physicians at Planned Parenthood ask many times if the patient is 100% confident that they want to move forward. It is not usually a decision made in haste. But even if it was, it is the woman’s right to choose what she wants to do. Who are we to make any decisions for her?

In the medical world, we make choices pertaining to our own bodies every single day. Adults can choose to donate their organs to others in order to save many lives. If they choose to opt out of organ donation, are they guilty of murder? Why is life only considered sacred when talking about a fetus? Why would I be required to save the fetus inside of me but not the lives of others, even as my own life ends?

There have also been many pro-lifers saying that by choosing to get an abortion, you are taking away the child’s right to choose whether or not to live. Yes, they don’t have a choice in the matter, but they also aren’t given a say in how they grow up.

Stories from Quora of what people would change in their childhood:

All being said, this is an argument of proCHOICE vs pro-life. Despite what many people think, ProCHOICE means to support a woman’s choice to choose whether or not they get an abortion. It does not mean we want all women to get an abortion. Abortions should stay legal so women who want an abortion, can get one responsibly. Keep abortions legal.

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Works Cited

Bove, Tristan. “26 States Could Ban Abortion of Roe Is Overturned. Here's What Business Are Doing about It.” Fortune, Fortune, 3 May 2022, https://fortune.com/2022/05/03/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights-overturned-states-affected/.

Haddad, Lisa B, and Nawal M Nour. “Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality.” Reviews in Obstetrics & Gynecology, MedReviews, LLC, 2009, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/.

Hammers-Crowell, Jackie. “Children of Addicts: Personality Traits.” Safe Harbor Recovery Center, 23 Mar. 2020, https://safeharborrecovery.com/15-personality-traits-children-of-addicts/.

“My Abortion Story.” Doctors Without Borders - USA, https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/my-abortion-story.

“The Problem.” Foster America, https://www.foster-america.org/the-problem.

“The Second Trimester.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, 8 Aug. 2021, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-second-trimester#:~:text=Fetal%20development%20during%20the%20second,fetus%20can%20hear%20your%20voice.