Isn?T Killing Illegal? Essay, Research Paper

A woman works twelve hours a day and her husband is always away on business trips, so she feels the child she is now pregnant with would be neglected and not loved as much as it should be. She and her husband decide to have an abortion, because in the back of their minds killing is better than neglecting or the option of adoption. The woman goes to see a doctor because she still feels the family the child will be brought up into will not completely satisfy its needs. The doctor tells her she is too far long in her pregnancy and chemicals will not work, so a partial birth abortion will have to be performed. After talking the situation over with her husband they decide to go ahead with the abortion, and a week later she returns to the ?doctors? office to have the abortion preformed. The doctor begins by inducing labor and giving the patient sedatives and pain- killers. After part of the living child is out the process is stopped and the doctor purposely and intentionally kills the living being. After the child is dead the mother continues to give birth until the innocent and dead child is ?born.?

Luckily partial-birth abortion, as depicted above, is banned, but all other abortions still being performed are also wrong and inhumane. Supporters of abortion claim, ?life does not begin at conception, it begins at birth.? ?A fetus does not have any feeling or rights? is the claim made to support the immoral outcome of ?a woman?s choice.?

1. A fetus has no feeling. This statement is partially true, but a fetus is only numb for the first seven weeks after conception. By eight weeks a fetus has nerve cells throughout its entire body and has an abundance of brain activity. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who has performed more than 60,000 abortions in his lifetime, is now taking on the role of a pro-life activist. Why? Mainly due to his viewing of an ultrasound of a fetus during an abortion. After viewing the video Dr. Nathanson decided to produce a now highly controversial film called The Silent Scream. The movie, which was viewed by tens of thousands of people, presented the same movie of a ?live action ultrasound of an ongoing abortion.? After watching the movie, countless doctors became pro-life, including the doctor who performed the abortion shown in the movie. After the movie?s d?but, Dr. Nathanson offered his opinion of the movie to the audience. He told them, ?This movie proves a fetus can feel and does feel pain.? He also went on to say:

You can see from the moment the tip of the suction machine starts to move, the fetus knows it and starts to scuttle to the top of the uterus? you can see the heart speeding up, you can see the limbs moving faster, you can see the child moving more rapidly. Even the breathing increases. So there is no question this child feels pain, and actually senses danger.

The fetus can feel and sense pain, but of course after the suction machine tears off the unborn child?s head and crushes it, along with the dismemberment of the rest of the body life can no longer exist.

2. Life does not begin at conception. What is life? Life is existence and exercising functional powers. A fetus exists. A cell exists. Both perform functional powers, and after conception the lone cell begins to split within minutes. Striving to live, the cells continue to split and double until a child is developed and even after that, new cells are created until death.

An acorn (egg) is nothing when it is by itself, but when it is placed in a safe environment like a pot (womb), surrounded by dirt (fluids) and sprinkled with water (sperm) life can then begin. After the water makes its way into the seed roots start to form, and at that very moment we can say, ?It is growing. It is living.? This should also be true for a fetus. Once the cells begin to divide the cells should be considered a fetus or rather, be called a living human being. The combination of our father?s and mother?s genes at conception give us the traits we will possess in the future ? we become individual bodies with souls.

3. It is a woman?s choice. It has already been discussed that a fetus is a living child, and children have the same basic rights as adults, do they not? Of course everyone has the right over his or her own body. When a woman wants an abortion it is usually done for convenience, not to benefit the child. Killing the unborn baby will not help it in any possible way. Something is seriously wrong with our society today. Almost everyone would see it as wrong to torture a seven year-old child and then brutally kill him or her, but a number of people including our government allow and even promote the torture and killing of an innocent unborn baby. How can some people think abortion is respectable?

Secondly, why is it just ?the woman?s choice,? should the father not have some say in the process? She, the mother, certainly does have the right to control her own body, but the fetus is not her body, it is the body of the living soul inside her. Half of the living soul belongs to the father, and if he decides he wants to raise the child, courts should take that into consideration.

4. Abortion is a moral and Constitutional right. But killing is not! What is the legal definition of murder? First, the action has to be premeditated. The abortion procedure is usually planned out. The patient, doctor(s), and nurses know exactly what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. I would consider the process to be well planned. Secondly, the action has to be deliberate. When a woman goes to an abortion clinic, she does not intend on saving the baby?s life. The doctor knowingly, willingly and immorally ends the life of the child. Lastly, the action has to be done with malice. Killing the life of a living being is about as evil and immoral as any other action. A doctor who aborts a child is clearly and unmistakably committing first-degree intentional homicide and should be given a severe punishment.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, ?[At least] one and a half million abortions take place each year around the world.? Four thousand innocent murders each day is excessive. When someone is murdered it hits the media immediately, but when a baby is aborted nobody in the media world seems to care.

The living being inside the womb does have feelings and has proven it can sense the presence of danger. Life does begin at conception. The minute the cell begins to divide proves that the being is striving to come into existence, and is doing whatever it takes to make up a new human being. A woman should not have the choice of what happens to beings inside her. Nobody knows if that child would want to die, nor are the father?s feelings taken into consideration when it comes to a woman wanting an abortion. The law agrees that killing innocent people who have done nothing to harm anyone is wrong, but abortion is still legal and some politicians promote women getting abortions if they feel they cannot raise a child. Politicians and citizens of the world need to realize the effects of abortion and what it does to the living child. Abortion is immoral and wrong and should be stopped.

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