Abortion Essay, Research Paper

Recently, in court, a nurse, Brenda Shafer, recalled her experience with abortion, in 1993. Her account went as follows :

The doctor delivered the baby s legs and arms, everything

but his little head. The baby s body was moving, his little

fingers were clasped together. He was kicking his feet.

The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into

the back of the baby s head and the baby s arms jerked out

in a flinch, a startled reaction, like a baby does when he thinks

that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up.

Then he stuck a high-powered suction tube into the hole and

sucked the baby s brains out. I still have nightmares about

what I saw. (Leo 1)

This, although a harsh example of what goes on in America today, is all to common among citizens of the United States today. There is a question that goes hand in hand with the abortion issue we have in our country today. Is a fetus a human life at conception? Or is a child a human life at birth? This question is ridiculous : a child is a living soul at the moment of conception, and the recollection given by Brenda Shafer, to most people, is infanticide. The most shocking part of this story is that partial-birth abortion is legal in some states of the United States. Abortion is not only killing a life, in its

simplest form.

It is nearly impossible to find someone who doesn t have an opinion

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about abortion and probably a strong opinion at that. Debates on this topic usually go nowhere, leaving the opponents even more committed to their positions than before. Last month marked the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade. Prior to the case filed by Jane Roe, the state of Texas made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a mother s life was at stake. Jane Roe was an unmarried woman who wanted to safely and legally end her pregnancy (Spurgeon 1). The reason this issue is so hard to come to a conclusion is that people arguing for each side of pro-choice and pro-life are arguing for separate issues in the topic. The pro-abortionist focuses on the woman s rights, and the anti-abortionist focuses on the fetus rights. This is part of the reason people become so confused and easily angered when discussing or debating the topic of abortion (2). Arguments about abortion often go nowhere, and usually leave the people more enraged and frustrated than they were before they even started arguing.

A new drug has been put out on the market, coming from Great Britain. The drug, mifepristone (RU-486), also called the abortion pill, has been used in many clinical trials in America over the past few years. This drug was

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once used in the 1950s to treat cancer, arthritis, and some other conditions. Used in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, it was found that mifepristone triggers abortions by disrupting the implantation of the fetus in the womb (Nichols 2). This new drug will only give expectant mothers of unwanted pregnancies another reason to kill their innocent offspring. Making it so easy to do this will only increase the abortion rate in America, whether the drug be legal or not. There will surely be an increase in the abortion rate in the United States if RU-486 continues to be available as a way to end their pregnancies.

A step from using drugs to force an abortion, there is the most common way of surgically removing the fetus. Greater than ninety percent of abortions take place in the first three months of a pregnancy. This happens because, after fifteen weeks, the procedure becomes more complicated since the fetus is about six inches long– too large to be removed through a suction tube (Savage 1). And there is an even harsher and colder way that abortions are performed. These are known as D&E, for dilation and evacuation. During this procedure, the doctor uses instruments to reach into a woman s uterus and remove the fetus in separate parts. Essentially, the fetus dies from bleeding. So, as an alternative, and to cover their backs in legal 4

cases, the doctors have recently been cutting the umbilical cord and removing the fetus intact, known as Intact Dilation and Evacuation. Doctors claim that this is a safer procedure because it reduces bleeding and avoids injury to the uterus (2). Apparently, these doctors are more worried about finding

an excuse for their inhumane actions, instead of admitting to aiding the death of a child. They seem to give the impression that they are more concerned about finding an easier way to provide abortions, such as finding ways to reduce bleeding of the fetus and making it cleaner .

But what if a child is fully delivered? The distinction between partial birth abortion and infanticide is, after all, a question of millimeters, and the Court always goes back to whether it is in the best interest of the mother. Supporters of this form of abortion never remember that the child in fact has a chance of survival, and want to save the mother s life before thinking about the child s. Many political figures, such as George W. Bush, are strictly opposed to these types of abortions. But for some reason, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a partially delivered child can have his or her brain sucked out and her skull crushed, giving-in to this butchery and giving it the status of a constitutional right. But, of course, most of these political figures, like George W. Bush, agree that they are very disappointed in the findings of 5

the courts (Uhlmann 2). The term partial-birth is not even a medical term, but rather a term used by opponents of abortion ( U.S. Supreme Court Rules 1). The medical term for this procedure is referred to as D&X, dilation and extraction. The state in which most of these heinous acts are being committed are in Nebraska, also where most of the controversy is being brought up, the reason being that Nebraska is the first state in the United States to have this form of abortion legalized. Partial-birth abortions were outlawed in this state, only to be declared constitutional by the United States Supreme Court (Charatan 1).

The campaign, thankfully, has become more and more of an issue in

today s society, dating back the 26 years when the Roe vs. Wade case took place and made abortion legal in America. Americans have become more aware of these situations because of the media often portraying it as the awful thing it is. Movies such as If These Walls Could Talk, in which the topic was solely abortion, have seemed to have opened people s eyes and make them discover that abortion is just plain killing of innocent children. There are constantly movements and protests occurring today in the United States who s purpose is to keep this issue on the front headlines of most newspapers, often trying to open people s eyes to the cruelty of abortion. 6

Many activists, politicians, writers, and judges have seen watched a baby, partially out of the womb, have her skull punctured and her brains sucked out, and have looked at it and said, yes, if something like this can be legalized in America, then what next? The entire logic of abortion is merciless.

Opponents to abortion, who call themselves Pro-choice activists, claim that an unborn person is not a human until he or she is actually born. They claim that the person receives a birth certificate when they are born, not when conceived. Therefore he or she is not officially a human being until they receive the birth certificate. So, technically, to these opponents, a fetus can be terminated before they have had the chance to make it in this world, because they do not have that certificate stating that they have been declared a human being. And then there are people like Sarah Weddington, who not only overturned the anti-abortion statutes in Texas, but essentially made abortion legal throughout the United States. Weddington claims that people that take violent action against doctors who perform abortions are wrong, but an abortion in itself is a safe an effective procedure in America (Godwin 1).

Weddington herself had had an abortion in the seventies, and was partially speaking from her own experience. It is people like Weddington, who keep

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abortion, awful as it is, legalized in America today. Pro-choice activists also say that when considering abortion, cases such as rape, incest, and health must also be thought about. For example, if a young girl is raped by a total stranger, she may not know what kind of diseases and hereditary illnesses are in the father s family, and what kind of future her unborn child must have. Also, incest victims also have to think about what kind of life their child might have if they are born mentally or physically impaired.

Abortion in the United States should not continue to be legal. Too many innocent children are killed each year, all because of selfishness on the part of the mother. The Supreme Court should reconsider its decisions to keep letting this happen. Citizens of the United States need to realize the importance of this issue, and open their eyes to the reality that abortion is murder, plain and simple. Partial birth abortions and early abortions are just murders that are pushed off as ways to get out of a tough situation, when in reality, the public needs to shudder at the horror of the act.