Matt Riley
English I Advanced
Mrs. Romine
3/13/09
Abortion Have you ever heard anybody say they were going to “terminate their pregnancy?” Well I know I have, and at first I really didn’t think much of it. But to terminate a pregnancy is to kill your unborn child through abortion. Sounds a lot worse now, right? That baby is a person too, just like you and me, and not only is abortion a terrible thing for your body, but there are many other options that are better for the mother and the child. These reasons and others lead me to believe that abortion is inhumane and should be illegal. A baby is a person too, and it should have rights just like we do. Every other human being has the right to be alive, why should an unborn child be any exception? It is living, breathing, and can feel pain just like any person can. In fact, at only ten weeks gestation, the child already has the looks of a baby, making the killing of a human being even harder to bear. Most abortions occur between 9 and 10 weeks. By this time, the baby resembles a human being, has tooth buds, and has a sense of touch, which means he or she can feel pain. Some argue that since he or she can’t survive outside the mother’s womb it isn’t a “baby.” This mindset makes me think of bird eggs in a nest. They can’t survive without their mother’s warmth. But if you were to throw the egg out of the nest you still killed the bird, it just wasn’t fully developed yet. Like that bird, a baby is a person no matter what stage of development, and should have the same rights that any other human being has.
Though abortions are fatal to infants, they can also be extremely harmful to the mother as well. The damage done to a person’s body during an abortion, can lead to miscarriage and breast cancer later on in life. As one study shows, women who have had one abortion are six times more likely to miscarry than a woman that has not had an abortion. If a person has had two abortions, they are sixteen times more likely to miscarry. Breast cancer is also a bodily consequence of abortion. Taking the life of an unborn child changes hormone production and throws off many bodily functions. There are also mental and emotional effects of abortion that you don’t always hear about. Mothers that choose to abort their child often feel guilt and remorse. Post abortion depression is also very common in mothers after an abortion. It is alarming and scary, and sometimes lasts for the rest of their lives.
Think about all of the other options there are besides abortion: keeping the baby, gibing it up for adoption, or even taking advantage of a law we have in Illinois called the Safe Haven Law. If you chose to abort your child when you could’ve kept it, there are so many things you would miss out on.