blog for choice

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It's one of those court cases that you learn about in school, like Brown v. Board of Education. A monumental case that is still a very hot topic today, 34 years later. For those that don't remember the meat of it, it set the standard that abortions cannot be declared legal (freedom of choice) until the fetus is old enough to live on its own, outside the womb. So a woman can abort her pregnancy up until about 6 or 7 months along. There are still many sides and views to this. I'm not going to debate when human life begins. I am going to support this decision, and here are my reasons why:

Abortion should be a choice. It should not be a method of birth control. There are women out there who choose to have unprotected sex and not use some sort of contraception. Then when they find out they are pregnant, they head off to their local clinic. Not only does this wreak havoc on your body (think dairy cows that are fed hormones for a perpetual state of pregnancy), but it shows a lack of moral guidance and irresponsibility. Much like the "morning after pill," which often goes by the trade name of "plan B," abortions are instead used as "plan A." These are not the people I think should be allowed abortions. However, lucky for the pro-choice club, these women make up only a small minority of the population, and they deserve the same freedom of choice that everyone gets.

More common are the women that do use some sort of protection, and become pregnant against their will. Many of these women know that they are not ready, either emotionally, financially, or whatever, to bring a child into this world. They feel that the child's life would be awful if they were allowed to come to full term.

There are the health issues. Sometimes, having a baby is physically damaging, even fatal, to the mother. The mother then has to make a choice; her life or her unborn child's? And that's assuming the child would live after the mother died. Many times, nobody would come out of the birth alive and well.

Some parents have a bigger moral issue: What if their child has an uncurable genetic disease that would render the baby handicapped, brain damaged, mentally incapable for the rest of their life? The mother (and the father) have to make a decision whether or not to keep the baby, knowing it would not live a full life and the rest of their own lives would be spent taking care of the child.

Recently there was a news story about a woman in The Bronx that suffocated her newborn child on the bus home from the hospital and left the body in a dumpster. She explained her deplorable action with the fact that the child was the result of a rape. She did not want to be reminded of this horrible time, yet she did not get an abortion because she was ashamed. Instead, she carried the baby almost full term (the baby was a bit premature) and then committed infanticide. There are some people that say abortion is a form of infanticide, but to me there is a big difference between terminating the life of a fetus that has not fully developed and has never seen the light of day, and seeing your fully-formed child, living on its own, and purposefully smothering it with a blanket. How is that different than the mother who drowns her toddler in the bathtub? The difference in my mind is that once outside of the womb, the child is a living, breathing person. While still in the mother's womb, the fetus is not capable of surviving on its own. This, of course, is where most of the debate about abortion comes from.

My point is that all of these cases have one thing in common. Choice. It is by no means an easy choice, but the fact that the option exists at all says something. In many other countries, women in these situations do not have a choice. Often, they do what the rape victim has done and manually kill their newborn baby. Infanticide is frowned on in all cultures, but these women did not have a choice. They did not want to risk their own life, or their child's life, or be reminded of a traumatic event.

As I mentioned before, abortion clinics, like anything, can and will be abused. But the fact remains that there needs to be an option for women. There should not be such a stigma against terminating a pregnancy so that the mother, like the rape victim, feels shame to do what she knows she must do. There are even safe haven laws for those that do not wish to terminate, yet infanticide still occurs.

Getting an abortion is not an easy choice for a woman. There is regret for the possibility of what could have been. There are physical reminders. But no matter which choice is made, the woman will always remember making and having the choice. In the case of a handicapped child, the mother may look back with regret; she is still a loving parent, but her life is no longer her own because of her increased duties. She may think of how her life may have been - and regretting the choice not to abort. Of course, if she does decide to terminate, she may look back and wonder what her child may have been like as her own child. The fact remains that a woman needs to be able to make this kind of decision, instead of being forced into something with no options.



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