Abortion Report

I have chosen for my topic Abortion.  I think that it is a topic that is very important in today's society however it is often dodged or avoided.  Different Presidents say different things and have different stances about it, and often it is had to know what to think about it.  Basically there are two different ways of looking at it:  Pro-Choice, which takes the stance of saying that it is the woman's choice if she wants to have an abortion and that it is only her business.  So basically they want it to remain legal.  Then there is the other stance of Pro-Life which says that it should not remain legal and that it is just about as bad as cold-blooded murder.  I happen to agree with this.  This is what I will be focusing on for the rest of my report.

I will first talk about Pro-Choice.  Through the years this has obviously been the thinking of our nation because abortion remains legal (Bill Clinton is Pro-Choice).  This is also the thinking of many woman's rights movements and organizations.  From reading a paper on Pro-Choice it states as its heading that abortion should be a woman's right to choose what she does with her body, and it should not be altered or influenced by anyone else.  This right is guaranteed by the ninth amendment, which contains the right to privacy.  This brings up a very interesting point, which is that the ninth amendment is a strong argument in the fight for Pro-Choice.  It states that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  This right guarantees the right to women, if they so choose, to have an abortion, up to the end of the first trimester.  Several cases have been fought for the right to choose.  Many of these have been hard cases but they stuck with it, and many people believe that that is why we have some of the rights we do today.  Here are some important cases:

1.  1965 - Griswold vs. Connecticut.  Upheld the right to privacy and ended the ban on birth control.  Eight years later, the Supreme Court ruled the right to privacy included abortions.

2.  1973 - Roe vs. Wade.  The state of Texas had outlawed abortions.  The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional, bur refused to order an injunction against the state.  On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court voted the right to privacy included abortions.

3.  1976 - Planned Parenthood vs. Danforth.  Ruled that requiring consent by the husband and the consent from a parent if a person was under 18 was unconstitutional.  This case supported a woman's control over her own body and reproductive system.

To conclude about Pro-Choice I will state what Dana Pentoney has said:  Abortion deals with one's private life and should have nothing to do with the government.  However, abortion should not be used as a means of birth control, but if a fetus will be unwanted, it is better to be aborted than to be abused or neglected.

Now onto Pro-Life.  This is what Presidential hopeful Bob Dole believed in, and to start it off I will give some interesting facts on how our views on Abortion have changed throughout the years.

Asking the simple question What is Abortion?  Here are the answers that you would have gotten:

1859 - The slaughter of countless children; no mere misdemeanor or no mere attempt upon the life of the mother, but the wanton and murderous destruction of her child; such unwarrantable destruction of human life.

1871 - The work of destruction; The wholesale destruction of unborn infants.

1967 - The interruption of an unwanted pregnancy.

1970 - A medical procedure.

There are many different methods of abortion each one more horrible than the last.  Some of them include:

-Suction Abortion

-Dilation and Curettage (D&C)

-Dilation and Evacuation (D&E)

-Salt Poisoning (Saline Injection)

-Hysterotomy

-Prostaglandin Abortion

There are also many risks and complications caused by having an abortion. 

Some of the more widely known one's are:

1.  Breast Cancer

2.  Complications in future pregnancies, including excessive bleeding, premature delivery, cervical damage, and sterility.

3.  Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID).

4.  Uterine perforations.

5.  Tubal pregnancy.

6.  Placenta previa, which is extremely severe, life threatening bleeding in future pregnancies.

7.  Retention of placenta

As you can see there are many different factors that contribute to abortion, and many different risks that you take in having one.  I think that abortion will remain a huge topic that's not going to go away easily.  I believe that they should be illegal however through doing this report I have been shown the other side of the story, the Pro-Choice side, and I have began to see there standpoint-even though I might not agree with it.