Drew
English 101
December 14 2012
Why Abortion Should be Legal Jogging down the sidewalk a woman suddenly gets snatched by a man hidden in the woods. He rapes her and then lets her go, a week later the woman finds out she is pregnant. Imagine how you would feel if that happened to you, your sister, or your mom. The person would be traumatized and permanently scarred for life. Every two minutes a rape is committed in the United States alone (RAINN). I think that abortion should be an acceptable and legal procedure performed in the United States and in all other countries across the world. There is a plethora of consequences for the women, families, and babies if the child is unwanted. Nearly 50 percent of pregnancies worldwide are unwanted, and 25 percent of those women will terminate their pregnancies (OWC, 2012). One woman every seven minutes dies somewhere in the world due to an unsafe illegal abortion (OWC, 2012). Many of these women are poor and incapable of using any family planning facilities, or receiving contraceptives to help prevent pregnancy. When women are unable to have safe abortions and have unwanted babies, it leads to many problems throughout the child’s life. The parents many times don’t care for the baby properly and the child suffers immensely. With today’s technology we can find out if our babies will have diseases or certain syndromes before they are even born. For some women and families, a child born with mental retardation or down-syndrome could cause severe havoc in the family. Not all women have the time or resources to care for the child properly. Motherhood shouldn’t be a punishment for a woman who makes a mistake. As Barack Obama stated, “I have two daughters... I'm going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.” This is a serious problem because most teenagers or young adults don’t have the proper time, resources, or money to take care of the baby. Nearly 40 percent of women who received abortions last year said a child would of severely interfered with their education and career goals in life (Pro-Co, 2012). Another reason why abortion should be legal is because of the safety issues with “back-alley” abortions. Thousands of women die every year from not being able to receive a proper abortion. Around 83 percent of women who have abortions are unmarried which makes it harder to maintain a steady life style with the addition of a new baby. For a woman who lives under the poverty line, she is four times more likely to receive an abortion than a woman who lives a hundred percent above the poverty line. Access to legal, professionally- performed abortions greatly reduces injury and death caused by illegal abortions. Some Pro-Life supporters would claim that abortion in general, professional or not, is still unsafe. While in reality a woman’s chance of dying from a legal abortion is less than one in one-hundred thousand and using an illegal abortion it raises to 13.3 deaths per one-hundred thousand abortions. People tend to believe that after they receive one or multiple abortions, they’re chance of future fertility is harshly depleted. But, the Royal College of General Practitioners and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists