Imagine you have a balance beam. On one side you have the physical life of an infant and on the other you have the mental and emotional life of a mother and her unwanted child. Which side can we, as civil humans, claim as more valuable? Up to this current day, abortion has become an exigent issue that faces everyone nationwide. As a moral and ethical issue, abortion is a dilemma for society. Abortion is criticized by religious sects in America and some of the public, and when asked “To what Extent should the Government involve themselves in the lives of women regarding abortion?”, it is obvious the practice of abortion should remain legal in the U.S. because it allows a woman to choose her destiny and prevents unwanted children.
In Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973, stated that a woman and her doctor may freely decide to abort 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, and abortion after fetal viability must be available if the woman's health or life are at risk. Before Row v. Wade, it has been estimated that about one million women per year underwent illegal abortions. In the process, thousands of American women died and thousands more were maimed. According to abortion statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, about 15,000 women have had abortions each year because they become pregnant as a result of rape or incest.
The first amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise”. Pro-life activist, Dr. Jack Willke (Reich 9), President of the National Right to Life Committee, considers the embryo to be a human being from the moment of conception, he defined what he beilves to be a human being as "Contained within the single cell who I once was, was the totality of everything I am today." According to Randall Terry, leader of the militant pro-life group Operation Rescue (Podell 276), says "science confirms" abortion is murder because "at conception, each of us is unique. Six in seven large-scale abortion clinics (where 88% of all abortions take place) are the targets of antiabortion harassment and since 1977, 110 abortion clinics have been bombed or burned in this country.
According the embryologist Charles Gardner (Podell 64), "the Ôbiological' argument that a human being is created at fertilization contradicts all that we have learned in the past few decades." Another embryologist, C. R., Austin notes (Kamm 212), "fertilization does not confer genetic uniqueness -- this is achieved as a consequence of the first meiotic division, which takes place just before ovulation." , "fertilization does not confer genetic uniqueness -- this is achieved as a consequence of the first meiotic division, which takes place just before ovulation." C. R. Austin informs us that (Kamm 231), "the information required to make an eye or finger does not exist in the fertilized egg. It exists in the positions and interactions of cells and molecules that will be formed only at a later time."
Abortion is eleven times safer than giving birth up to the 18th week of pregnancy. Fewer than five out of 1000 women having an early abortion will suffer serious complications. Until the late 1980's, the only available methods for performing abortion were surgical, requiring instruments to remove the products of conception from the uterus. This product works 95.5% of the time when taken within the first seven weeks of pregnancy. According to abortion statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 33% of obstetricians/gynecologists who do not perform surgical abortions say they would prescribe RU-486.
Women who do not choose to terminate an unwanted child have a greater possibility of depression and of being physically abused because she is less likely to seek early prenatal care and is more likely to use such harmful substances as tobacco and