For No one

In today’s society, people have a tendency to feel like they are playing the role of god, or so they think. Abortion has had a big impact in the way we think and live in this day and age. People will do anything to get out of the responsibility of the actions that they have caused, even if it is killing human life. Statistics show that 95% of women have abortions for personal reasons and not medical. Some of these reasons are the mother does not feel she has the financial resources to support the child, she has a plan for her life that does not allow a child at the present time and another is she may be a rape or incest survivor and does not want to bear a child that was conceived in violence. On the other hand a small portion of abortions are sought for medical reasons such as the fetus might have been hurt due to exposure to high levels of toxic chemicals, medications that may be dangerous to the fetus, alcohol, drugs etc. They may cause the fetus to be genetically damaged. Now with that said, the question on most American minds is, Should abortion be legal?

There are two groups that make an impact on the abortion issue, the pro-lifers and the pro-choicers. Both have similar names, but yet very different views on the issue. The pro-lifers feel that the human personhood begins at the instant of conception. The pro-choicers believe that human personhood begins later in gestation, or in the development stages. So, the key question is, when does human personhood begin? An ovum, spermatozoa, embryo and fetus are all forms of life yet they are not a human person. Only a newborn baby is a human person. Somewhere during the nine month’s between the ovum-spermatozoa stage and the new born baby, human personhood begins. But no one knows when during the pregnancy that starts.

Another issue when it comes to abortion is religion. Statistics show that 75% of people in the United States consider themselves to be Christian. Neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Christian Scriptures address abortion directly. However, writings in the early Christian movement by the end of the 1st century do condemn abortion. For example Psalm 139 teaches even in his mothers womb, David was David, a unique person being shaped by God for a special role in God’s plan. Abortion violates the laws of God, namely ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder.’ God’s laws cannot be changed by a human court or legislature.

Legally, the US Supreme Court ruled in its famous 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that a woman and her doctor can freely decide to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester, state governments can restrict abortion access after the first trimester with laws intended to protect the woman’s health, abortions after fetal viability must be available if the woman’s health or life are at risk; state governments can prohibit other abortions. There have been many attempts since then to reduce