Abortion is a public health issue because if legal abortion is unavailable, women will risk injury, infection, and death from medically unsafe abortions to end an undesired pregnancy. Abortion should be legal because the rights of the mother supercede the rights of the fetus, especially because the fetus shows no sign of self-awareness until well into the second trimester. Recently, the United States has made attempts to safeguard the rights of the fetus, but this practice draws arbitrary lines that determine when the fetus is viable. If anti-choice advocates want to eliminate abortion, they should support strategies to reduce unwanted pregnancy, such as sex education and contraception.

Every year some 45 million pregnancies, out of a total of 175 million, end in abortion. Nearly half of those abortions (20 million) are medically unsafe, resulting in the deaths of nearly 80,000 women a year and a much larger number suffering infection, injury, and trauma. Thus the legality of abortion and the availability of medically safe abortion are public health issues. Criminalizing abortion does not save babies; it kills mothers.

Women have always resorted to abortion and probably always will. The difference now is that modern, safe, medical and surgical methods are available. Many countries have legalized abortion. According to the United Nations Population Fund, "Where abortion is safe and widely available, and other reproductive health services are in place, rates of abortion tend to be low. The simple conclusion is: better contraceptive services for all people will reduce abortion."

On public health grounds I am in no doubt that safe abortion should be freely available on request by the pregnant woman, at least up to some agreed time limit. The woman's reasons for wanting an abortion should not be relevant, even though many of us might not approve of them. For example, as a result of pressures caused by the low status of females in her society, a woman may well wish to practice selective abortion of female fetuses. This is not in the interests of the community as a whole, and certainly will do nothing to advance the cause of women in general. Should she nevertheless be permitted to do it, or should society prohibit it? I would come down strongly for the right of the individual woman to decide for herself. If we believe that Western women have a right to choose, then so should all women, even though their choices may be socially inconvenient. More effort should go into removing the causes of abortion than into eradicating the practice.

Because of the constant struggle first to allow and then to preserve legal abortion, attitudes have become polarized: one is either "pro-life" or "pro-choice," and anyone who falls somewhere in the middle can be blamed for comforting the enemy, so I shall no doubt be attacked for my views.

Central to the debate on abortion is the biological, legal, and moral status of the fetus. The "pro-lifers" are in no doubt that a fertilized ovum is a human being and that its destruction is murder. Some "pro-choice" supporters maintain that the fetus, far from being a human being, is merely a part of the mother's body and is entirely hers to dispose of, so that deciding to have an abortion is of no more significance than deciding to get one's hair cut. Since the fetus is, however, genetically distinct from the mother, the latter position is hard to sustain.
Traditional objections to abortion have not seen it as murder. Anglo-Saxon law has not traditionally seen the fetus as a legal person. This position has recently been reinforced in England, where a woman's right to physical autonomy and to refuse treatment (a caesarian section) just before or during birth has been recognized, even after a warning that she is risking the death of her baby. In the United States, however, there appear to be moves toward according legal rights to fetuses in certain circumstances. If these are consolidated, it has obvious implications for abortion and for the status of the pregnant woman.

The development of life is a continuous process. Any line drawn across it for legal purposes is essentially arbitrary. Even if one takes the extreme "pro-life" position, there is no way at present of knowing exactly when or whether conception has taken place. Wherever we draw the line on the abortion scale—at 10 weeks, 18 weeks, 24 weeks, or at any moment up to natural birth—it is an arbitrary decision: you may have a legal abortion, say, at 167 days but not at 169. The law requires definite cutoff points, but the moral position is fuzzier.

If a woman has an absolute right to choose, can she abort a fetus at 39 weeks, when clearly it would be viable? If we put a time limit on abortions, there is no essential moral difference between the status of a fetus one day before the limit and one day after. If we do not put a time limit on abortions, then why choose the moment of birth as a cutoff point? Why not permit infanticide? What happens if an aborted fetus is born alive? Should it be treated as a baby, or as something to be disposed of?

Humanist morality

Rather than just attacking the arguments of religious fanatics, we should debate these issues from a humanist point of view. They are more complex than just accepting "a woman's right to choose," even though honor is due to those who have struggled to establish that principle. A woman who decides whether or not to have an abortion is making a moral decision, and we need to look at the principles involved.

Most people do not believe that abortion is outright murder, but many find it vaguely distasteful. You do not find the same problem with contraception. Why should this be? An obvious difference is that, whereas contraception prevents the initiation of new life, abortion destroys a living process that has already begun.

If we ignore religious ideas of souls and the sacredness of any form of human life, we may note that the early fetus, although human, is neither sentient nor capable of independent existence. It would seem therefore to deserve less consideration than a live mouse, which is both.

Legal time limits are often based on the concept of the viability of the fetus: its ability to survive ex utero. But there is no clear point at which a fetus automatically becomes viable, and it is not always easy to determine the exact stage of the pregnancy. Moreover, as medical advances change the limits, we could conceivably one day be faced with the possibility of total progression in vitro from fertilization to full-term development. This Brave New World scenario would mean that no aborted fetus could of necessity be discarded as nonviable.

Author Bonnie Steinbock suggests that the key concept is "interest": all and only beings who have interests have moral status. She regards sentience as a necessary condition for having interests. We may wish to protect and preserve a building, but it does not matter to the building itself whether it is pulled down or not. It is without interests, although human beings may themselves have interest in its preservation. A dog, on the other hand, does have interest in its own continued health and well-being, so we may consider it for its own sake, and not just for the sake of its owner. Even living things, for example, plants, may lack interest in this sense.

Compared with a live, sentient dog, a pre-sentient fetus, lacking any enjoyment or awareness of its "life," has not yet developed interests and can therefore be considered not to be a moral object. By about 22 weeks' gestation, when it may be capable of rudimentary pleasure or pain and possibly a kind of consciousness, it may be said to have interests and to be owed moral consideration.

This does not necessarily mean that it should be accorded the same consideration as an already-born human being, any more than we would accord the same consideration to a dog. People who talk of the rights of a fetus often seem to forget that those rights can only exist with the acquiescence of the mother. She is not just a container for a fetus; she is an undoubted full human being with rights of her own to bodily self-determination. She herself is, however, morally bound to consider the interest of her fetus as it approaches birth. While I believe that the choice should be that of only the woman, I also believe (to borrow words from the traditional Anglican marriage service) that abortion "is not by any to be enterprised ... unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly."

Fighting "pro-life" hypocrisy

We should attack the anti-choice advocates for their lack of consistency and outright hypocrisy. In fact, they can be shown up as being not so much against abortion, or "pro-life" (whatever that means), but against sex. Unwanted pregnancy is seen as a punishment for illicit sex and abortion as a means of escaping the consequences. Anyone who can remember how single mothers and illegitimate children were treated by religious fanatics in the days before legal abortion will know that the punishment was enthusiastically prolonged by the righteous. There wasn't much of a "pro-life" stance then.

If anti-choice advocates are really against abortion, they should be in favor of measures that are known to reduce the incidence of abortion. Most of the same people who are now against legal abortion oppose full and frank sex education in schools—and yet it has been shown that good sex education can delay the start of teenage sexual experience. They also tend to oppose free access to a full range of contraceptive services and believe that religious indoctrination alone will guard against unwanted pregnancies. Humanists can point to the enlightened practices of the Netherlands, where safe, legal abortion is easily available, but everyone receives good sex education and information about contraception, and there are very good contraceptive services. The Netherlands has one of the lowest rates of abortion in the world.

Grounds for abortion

Many countries that permit legal abortion restrict the grounds on which abortion can be allowed. Some allow it when the fetus is known to be handicapped or when the health of the mother is threatened. Other countries permit abortion in cases of rape or incest but not otherwise. But surely the moral position of an unwanted fetus resulting from a crime is no different from that of any other. Either fetuses at that state of development merit legal protection or they don't.

FURTHER READINGS
Books
· Randy Alcorn. Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000.
· Linda J. Beckman and S. Marie Harvey, eds. The New Civil War: The Psychology, Culture, and Politics of Abortion. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998.
· Mary Boyle. Rethinking Abortion: Psychology, Gender, Power, and the Law. New York: Routledge, 1997.
· Kimberly J. Cook. Divided Passions: Public Opinions on Abortion and the Death Penalty. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001.
· David J. Garrow. Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
· Faye D. Ginsburg. Contest Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
· Cynthia Gorney. Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
· Mark A. Graber. Rethinking Abortion: Equal Choice, the Constitution, and Reproductive Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
· Mary Guiden. Partial Birth Abortion. Denver: National Conference of State Legislatures, 1998.
· Kerry N. Jacoby. Souls, Bodies, Spirits: The Drive to Abolish Abortion Since 1973. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.
· Ellie Lee, ed. Abortion Law and Politics Today. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.
· Eileen L. McDonagh. Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
· Roy M. Mersky and Jill Duffy, eds. A Documentary History of the Legal Aspects of Abortion in the United States. Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman, 2000.
· Lynn Marie Morgan and Meredith W. Michaels, eds. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
· Rachel Roth. Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Periodicals
· J. Budziszewski. "The Future End of Democracy," First Things, March 1999.
· Christopher Caldwell. "Why Abortion Is Here to Stay," New Republic, April 5, 1999.
· Tish Durkin. "Just a Few Questions About Pro-Choice Dogma," National Journal, April 7, 2001.
· David van Gend. "RU-486: Poisoning the Springs," Human Life Review, Spring 2001.
· Yvette R. Harris. "Adolescent Abortion," Society, July/August 1997.
· Barbara Hewson. "Reproductive Autonomy and the Ethics of Abortion," Journal of Medical Ethics, October 2001.
· Bryan Howard. "Abortion Consent Presents Hazards," Arizona Republic, April 23, 1998.
· James Kitzpatrick. "A Pro-Life Loss of Nerve?" First Things, December 2000.
· Judith Levine. "The Dumb-Luck Club," Index on Censorship, February 2000.
· Judy Mann. "Reduce Abortion and Disarm the Far Right," Washington Post, December 1, 2000.
· Danielle Ofri. "Common Ground," Tikkun, January/February 2002.
· Leah Platt. "Making Choice Real," American Prospect, September 24, 2001.
· Lucia Rayas. "Criminalizing Abortion: A Crime Against Women," NACLA Report on the Americas, January/February 1998.
· Bob Schaffer. "27 Years of Roe v. Wade," Vital Speeches of the Day, February 15, 2000.
· Elizabeth Schulte. "The New Assault on a Woman's Right to Choose," International Socialist Review, June/July 2000.
· Annette Tomal. "Parental Involvement Laws, Religion, and Abortion Rates," Gender Issues, Fall 2000.
· Wendy Wright. "Federal Government Should Not Be in the Business of Funding Abortions," Insight on the News, October 29, 2001.
Source Citation:
Brown, Diana. "Abortion Should Not Be Restricted." Should Abortion Rights Be Restricted?. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Singapore Polytechnic. 19 Oct. 2006 .
·

After reading the controversial essay on the topic you are going to do, write

Part A : What's the writer's stand and how he/she supports his/her stand,
Part B : Your response to the Article and What I think about the issue.

And i am just barely written half of my part A and it is supposed to due today at 1700hr. LALALALA~