Abortion - Should Abortion Be Legal with Extreme Constraints?

Abortion

Should abortion be legal with extreme constraints? The highly acclaimed politician John S. McCain said it best during a debate: “I have come to the conclusion that the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother are legitimate exceptions” to an outright ban on abortions. “I don’t claim to be a theologian, but I have my moral beliefs.” There are different methods of carrying out an abortion; however all methods lead to the same result: the termination of a pregnancy and expulsion of an embryo or a fetus. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade set the stage to legalize abortion, and much debate has stemmed from the landmark decision. In the Roe v. Wade case, a woman from Texas sought to terminate her pregnancy by abortion, and at the time, the current Texas state law prohibited abortions. The issue posed was that it was a woman’s constitutional right of privacy (Fourteenth Amendment) to terminate her pregnancy. The final decision favored the right of abortion to the woman in the first trimester and left the second and third trimesters to the legislation of individual states. Abortion is morally wrong and there must be legal constraints implemented to prevent its casual occurrence. Abortion should only be an option in the rare cases of rape, incest, and potential bodily harm to the mother.

“Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life.” (Potter Stewart) It is vital for the unacquainted to comprehend the procedures involved with the common surgical abortion methods in order to become more familiar with the brutality that is involved with the killing of an unborn child. The Suction Aspiration method is the most common surgical method performed during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy (within the first trimester):

A suction curette (hollow tube with a knife-edged tip is inserted into the womb. This instrument is then connected to a vacuum machine by a transparent tube. The vacuum suction, twenty-nine times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner, tears the fetus and placenta into small pieces which are sucked through the tube into a bottle and discarded. (Life site)

At twelve weeks the baby’s brain is fully formed and he/she is fully capable of feeling pain. The Suction Aspiration method is horrible; however abortion procedures get even more brutal as the development of the baby progresses, luckily most states are moral enough to outlaw late term abortions. After being exposed to the gory details of the surgical methods for abortion; how could anybody deny that killing an unborn child for inane reasons is immoral?

In the similar cases of rape or incest a mother should be able to choose to have an abortion not only because it is a traumatic experience, but it is an unnatural way to conceive. Obviously there is no consent from the victim when a violent act of rape is committed. Why should the victim carry the burden of bearing a child they never wanted? The answer is they should not be required to bear the child; however there are many other concerns that may contribute to the woman’s final decision. Some of these concerns may deal with the baby’s future well being if it were to be brought into this world. For instance, perhaps the rape offender was a carrier of a terrible disease that could be spread to the baby; therefore compromising the baby’s chances for a healthy life. Even if the baby were to be born healthy, then how could the mother ever go about telling the truth to her child? Even if the mother were able to tell her child the truth; what kind of effects would the truth have on the child’s psyche? The same exception should be made for cases of incest. For example, say a twelve year old girl was molested by her father or brother. In this case abortion should be an option because it was most likely coerced incest. The baby will most likely be born with severe birth defects due to the integration of identical genes. Even if the mother did not choose to abort the baby, then she would have an extremely difficult and traumatic experience raising her baby in the same family in which her father or brother molested her.

Pregnancy complications