Leanna Sullivan English 111 Christina Forsyth April 4, 2009 “Abortion Is a Social Failure” Abortion is said to be “a woman’s choice. ” Women do have the choice, the choice should be to do what is best for their child whether the pregnancy is planned or not. The resources should be made available for the mother to do that. There should be more funding for public services and health care for extremely low income families. Abortion is wrong and it harms the society that we live in. In 1973, the U. S. Supreme Court made abortion on demand the law of the land. With Roe v.
Wade, the Court forced America to revoke the commitment to “life, liberty and justice for all. ” Abortion advocates guaranteed us that making abortion easy would mean “‘every child a wanted child’,”(Mealey) which would reduce child abuse and it would reduce crime. Those unwanted children who often develop into criminals would never be born. This would decrease murder rates and criminal activity; thus for, those unwanted children would never have the opportunity to act out and disrupt society. “It would protect vulnerable women from being butchered by untrained abortionists cashing in on their desperation.
Widespread abortion could only lead to stronger women, stronger families and a stronger society, they promised. ” (Mealey) With almost 46 million “unwanted” children murdered because of abortion since 1973 ruling, there should have been a decrease in child abuse. That did not happen. In 2003, nearly 1 million children were victims of abuse and neglected, experts calculated approximately that “three times that number was actually abused. Almost 1,500 children died of their injuries that year, according to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, which reports that all types of child abuse have increased since 1980. The plan to reduce crime by getting rid of the possible perpetrators’ just did not work out the way they wanted it to. Children were murdered to decrease murder rates and criminal activity. Also, according to Yale University law professor John Lott and Australian economist John Whitley, states that legalized abortion noticed higher homicide rates almost every year between 1976 and 1998. They found that legalizing abortion increased state murder rates up to 7 percent. The plan to reduce crime by getting rid of possible perpetrators did not work either.
Abortion can be a public health issue. In countries where abortion is not legal, approximately, 20 million women have unsafe abortion each year. (Fisanick) If legal abortion is not available, women will danger their health to end an unplanned pregnancy. Abortion is legal because the rights of the mother surpass the rights of the fetus and the fetus shows no sign of brain activity until well into the second trimester. The United States has tried to defend the rights of the fetus, but no one can determine the boundaries. Every year 45 million pregnancies end in abortion.
Almost half of those abortions are medically unsafe, and end in the deaths of nearly 70,000 women. (Fisanick) When death does not occur from unsafe abortion, women can have long-term disabilities, such as uterine perforation, chronic pelvic pain or pelvic inflammatory disease. Therefore, making abortion legal and available are public health issues. “Criminalizing abortion does not save babies; it kills mothers. ” () However, now it is safe with medical and surgical methods. Many countries have legalized abortion. According to the United Nations Population Fund, Where abortion is safe and legal, rates of abortion tend to be low.
In contrast to the claim that thousands of women died because of illegal abortion before the ruling of Roe v. Wade, the actually figure for the deaths reported was only 263 in 1950. In 1970 that total even dropped to 119 deaths of women due to abortion. Legalizing abortion was supposed to eliminate the chance that a woman would be injured or killed during an abortion. Even though abortion is legal, it is still the fifth leading cause of pregnant women in the United States. (Mealey) In the Miami Herald, there was a story ran about a local abortion clinic.
A woman died because of the conditions of the clinic. Another woman was mutilated. Abortion advocates knew about the clinic’s conditions but did not say anything because of political reasons. Now, how in anyone’s right mind could they allow such horrendous acts to take place is beyond me. Just to keep the peace no one said anything. Abortions are legal to benefit the mother, so if the mother is dead or mutilated how did she receive any help. Needless to say, the most frequent gynecologic emergencies are problems preceding an abortion performed in a self-supporting clinic. (Mealey) Banning abortion as the consequence of denying women right to use a procedure that may be needed for their enjoyment of their right to health, according to the human rights act. Only women can experience the physical and emotional aspects of unwanted pregnancy. Some women suffer maternity-related injuries, such as hemorrhage or obstructed labor. Denying women access to medical services that enable them to regulate their fertility or terminate a dangerous pregnancy amounts to a refusal to provide health care that only women need. Women are consequently exposed to health risks not experienced by men.
Laws that deny the availability to abortion, have the purpose of denying a women’s capacity to make responsible decisions about their bodies and their lives. Indeed, governments may find the potential consequences of allowing women to make such decisions threatening in some circumstances. Recognizing women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy contradicts long-standing social norms that render women lower to men in their families and communities. It is not surprising that unwillingness to allow women to make their own decisions. Many Americans see abortion as “necessary” to avert “the back alley. In this sense, the notion of legal abortion as a “necessary evil” is based on a series of myths widely disseminated since the 1960s. These myths captured the public mind and have yet to be rebutted. One to two million illegal abortions occurred annually before legalization. In fact, the annual total in the few years before abortion on demand was no more than tens of thousands and most likely fewer. Thousands of women died annually from abortions before legalization. As a leader in the legalization movement, Abortion law targeted women rather than abortionists before legalization.
In fact, the nearly uniform policy of the states for nearly a century before 1973 was to treat the woman as the second victim of abortion. Legalized abortion has been good for women. In fact, women still die from legal abortion, and the general impact on health has had many negative consequences, including the physical and psychological toll that many women bear, the epidemic of sexually transmitted disease, the general coarsening of male-female relationships over the past 30 years, the threefold increase in the repeat-abortion rate, and the increase in hospitalizations from ectopic pregnancies.
A generation of Americans educated by these myths sees little alternative to legalized abortion. It is commonly believed that prohibitions on abortion would not reduce abortion and only push thousands of women into “the back alley” where many would be killed or injured. Prohibitions would mean no fewer abortions and more women injured or killed. The better approach would be to make abortion less necessary. The first thing that needs to be done is to reduce the occurrence of unplanned pregnancy. Half of all pregnancies are unplanned and out of that half, half of them get abortions.
If we showed dedication for getting out the information about abstinence and contraception; and public funding for family planning services, I know more women would be willing to keep their babies. Women who are able to avoid unplanned pregnancy do not have to make the decision of whether to have an abortion. Unfortunately, there will always be some unplanned pregnancies. Therefore, once a woman finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy, another way to reduce abortion is to guarantee that she has the resources to have and raise a child.
One of the two most common reasons women choose abortion is because they cannot manage to pay for another child. Providing low-income women with education, career opportunities, Works Cited Brown, Diana. “Abortion Should Not Be Restricted. ” At Issue: Should Abortion Rights Be Restricted?. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Ivy Tech – Terre Haute. 14 Feb. 2009 <http://find. galegroup. com. terrehaute. libproxy. ivytech. edu. allstate. libproxy. ivytech. edu/ovrc/infomark. do? amp;contentSet=GSRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T010&prodId=OVRC&docId=EJ3010287203&source=gale&userGroupName=ivytech16&version=1. 0>. Mealey, Misty. “Abortion Is a Social Failure. ” Current Controversies: The Abortion Controversy. Ed. Emma Bernay. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Ivy Tech – Terre Haute. 11 Feb. 2009 <http://find. galegroup. com. terrehaute. libproxy. ivytech. edu. allstate. libproxy. ivytech. edu/ovrc/infomark. do? &contentSet=GSRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T010&prodId=OVRC&docId=EJ3010034239&