would someone like to edit my final paper for civics? it's on abortion
tell me if i'm making a good argument or not even if you're prolife. much appreciated
The world population is increasing everyday, as technology in the medical fields advances people are able to live longer and healthier. The world population recently passed the 6 billion mark, demographers are looking at the trends of birth rate and death rate, while people around the world are looking at the availability of food and resources. Studies are being done on what causes death; mainly the negative effects human inventions have on humans. Thousands of papers are being published about how smoking kills or how drunk driving causes accidents that claim lives. A factor that is not as commonly looked at, but is also effecting the population, is the number of woman getting abortions. Not many people would know that over 54 countries around the world allows abortion, and in 1995, 44483 abortions were performed in Ontario alone. (
AbortionFacts.com – Information on Abortion You Can Use) It is no surprise that abortion is not often debated publicly. It is highly controversial simply because of the fact that religions are based up creation. It is established that we as humans should not interfere with the creation of a life. Yet after removing religion from the abortion issue, I do not see why there is such a big disagreement against the thought of a mother giving up a fetus that could potentially become her child. There are so many issues with abortion, everyone will have a different opinion yet not many of them will have an unbiased attitude towards it. When someone look at abortion, not only should they look from their perspective, but also the mother’s point of view, how an unwanted child will be effected by the people around them and from a world viewpoint; how the child could effect the world.
Being pro-choice does not mean that mothers must get an abortion if they’re too poor or not ready to take care of a baby, just simply giving a woman the option to. There may be a number of reason why a woman would choose to have an abortion. Three most commonly heard of are because of teen pregnancy, rape/incest and birth endangering the mother’s life. Personally, abortion because of teen pregnancy is still a conflicting issue. I believe everything has a price, that actions will have repercussions and that if you do the crime, you should pay the price. Despite that, I think babies should not be a punishment for a naïve teenage mother, nor should the child come to harm because of the mother‘s lack of experience. All other issues aside the baby will develop emotions as it gets older and in that case the mother is not only hurting herself but also another. Looking at it selfishly on the mother’s perspective, going through pregnancy could potentially ruin her life. Having a baby in high school could not only endanger a girl’s academic achievements but also her social success and I don’t believe that something like sex should wreck someone’s life. In another case someone who gets pregnant from rape/incest should definitely have the option to get an abortion. There is no reason why a woman should be forced to go through 9 month of pregnancy, give birth and live with a reminder to a painful, not to mention emotionally wounding, experience for the rest of her life. Birth that potentially put harm to a mother’s life should also have an option to be terminated. Despite the fact that people say a mother loves her baby even before it is born; it should not be a duty for her to die so that her baby can live. Complication happens during birth or even at conception could greatly effect the mother’s life along with her baby’s. Finally another commonly heard of reason why a woman would get an abortion is because her family can’t support another child. A family can have 1 or 2 children but with only 1 working parent who works at a minimum wage. It would be illogical to give birth to another child. I think that many people view abortion as an easy way out for teenage girls who had sex but doesn’t want to pay for what they did. That the girl will go to some clinic in a back alleyway to get ride of her problem, while that is not necessarily true and very biased. They don’t think of the other women who are in the same situation. A woman can be 35 with 2 kids and a successful job and still want to get an abortion. It could be that she doesn’t want another child that could jeopardize her career. Alone, career and educational reasons make up 10.8% of abortions. (
http://www.womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm) It is very stressful to have a baby, especially when you’re the one giving birth so the woman have every right to say what happens to her body.
For a baby that is born but is not wanted it could not only be emotionally damaging but it can also cause a bad childhood. Every child should be a wanted child. Babies are more emotionally vulnerable because they do not know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong. Those who grow up with a lack of love and support from the parents are more likely to do drugs or drink alcohol. They will feel that the world doesn’t care about them, that it wouldn’t make a difference if they didn’t exist in the first place. A chain of continuous negative thoughts could potentially lead to suicide which defeats the whole purpose of opposing abortion in the first place. In some cases babies are put up for adoption after birth. In Ontario, most of the time they are stuck in a foster home with 1 or 3 other children (
http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca) who could or could not ever known proper love and care. As the child gets older it gets harder for them to be adopted because everyone just wants a cute cuddly baby to raise and love and be loved back without knowing that they were adopted. Some children are being shifted from foster home to foster home never seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It has been showed that children who are adopted could be more emotionally unstable. Yet it is not because of adoption that they became at risk psychologically, but because of their environment (foster homes) prior to adoption. (
AbortionFacts.com – Information on Abortion You Can Use) Emotional instability can again lead to the drug/alcohol/suicide cycle. In addition, they may feel that causing themselves pain is not enough and they would want to hurt others. This would leave to murder, drive by shooting, rape and etc. With all the possible negative effects from an unwanted child it seems so much better for everyone if the person didn’t know life at all.
To the world, a new person means another mouth to feed. To a society a new person who can’t support themselves means money from their tax dollars are going to feed this person. A new child to the foster system means one more child for the world to adopt. Foster homes are being filled up quickly and not enough children are being adopted. When a child is 18 they are let go from the system and there is no telling what they can do. I think it would be a lot better if the baby was never born in the first place. Some may argue that what if the unborn baby can do some major good when they grow up like Einstein. My rebuttal is that what if the unborn baby turned out to be the next Hitler. What good would that do for the world? After all, Hitler killed more people than anyone in History and Einstein created the atomic bomb, which killed even more. Some may even argue that some couple who are unable to have children would want to adopt, but in reality how many couple are there who are willing to adopt? Even so there are people who are unable to get an abortion, especially those who are religious. All in all, it is unhealthy for the world population to get bigger. There are constant reports about how many children in Africa are dying of hunger. Shouldn’t we be trying to save them first? Instead of adding more pressure to the weight we should help those who really need the aid. Those who would like to adopt can bring a complete turnaround to a starving child’s life. Finally even if abortion is banned, who is going to stop the illegal practice of it? There are already 20 million abortions performed per year in countries where abortion is illegal. President George Bush of the U.S. recently signed a law against all 3rd trimester abortions, including those which are putting the mother’s life at risk. The law is being taken to court and hopefully over thrown, because who is going to be there to stop a woman to go to a dark back-alley and use some unlicensed doctor to get rid of her unborn fetus? Banning abortion would only cause more trouble like the prohibition law of the 1920s in the U.S.
Approximately 46 million abortions are performed each year, 78% of which are performed in developing countries and 22% in developed countries. (
http://womesissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/ It shows that abortion is more common in places where birth controls are not as accessible and abortion should still be allowed in places like that. I think that ultimately, it should be up to the woman to decide what happens to her baby, not the church or the State. I think that because religion should not be a part of a life changing decision. After all, “God” is never a woman so how will “he” ever feel how a pregnant woman feel? It should be up to the government either because how many woman have been the Prime Minister? Or the President? No body should have a say unless they’ve had personal experience, especially men. If a person look at abortion from the mother’s point of vie, the effects that lack of love would effect a child and a world perspective they would see that allowing abortion would definitely be a better choice than not allowing abortion.
--Mandy