Miaomiao Zou

Abortion has been debated for decades , and it is still a topic that got discuss often between American. Abortion is defined as ” a procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus.” (Medlineplus).A little throw back when the 45th U.S. President Donald Trump dominates Amy Coney Barrett as the new supreme court, some people are against this choice because they are concerning that she will make abortion illegal, there are also some people glad for her choice, so more life will get saved. (GONZALES) There are couple popular opinion about abortion:” Should abortion remain legal? If yes, to what level? If not, why and when that should be illegal? ” These questions’ answer are not just simply yes and no, it’s an answer that need to be discuss. Not between you and me , not between nations , but between moral and legislation.

The middle ground of Pro-Choice and Pro-life

Pro-life? Who’s life?

There are two main side in the debate about abortion, Pro-life and Pro-choice. “Pro-life” values the right of the fetus to gestate to term and be born. The personhood of Fetal is one of the majority argument that pro-life group is having. On the website, “Pro-life action league”, it describe the starting of the life should be the fetus, even they don’t look like adult, they should still have the right of survive and get taken care of . ” For that matter, neither is an embryo less human, though it looks quite strange to our eyes, even in comparison to a fetus. Still, it is our duty to recognize our common humanity at all stages of development.”(Pro-life action league) Pro-life group thinks fetus has rights to survive. So it shouldn’t be legal. Also, as Pro-life activities points out that abortion hurts women’s physical and mental health. For an example, Study shows, abortion Increases woman’s Risk of Premature Death by 50%. So for the long run, abortion should not be considered, no matter is for the health of the pregnancy women or the human rights of the fetus.

Pro-choice? Who has the control over the choice?

On the other side, Pro-choice group is holding the law. Back to January 22, 1973, Roe vs Wade ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects pregnant woman’s rights to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. Margaret Sanger, as the founder of the planned parenthood wrote: “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” The majority argument that pro-choice is women have a moral right to decide what to do with their bodies. More deeply, they want the chance for women to be able to achieve their full potential in life instead get stuck with children. (BBC news)Pro-life group thinks the right to abortion should be as equal to as the pregnancy rights that women having. They can decided to having the children, or not, or choose to have a non biological family member later in the life.

Legislation VS Moral : who should we listen ?

Overall, both sides are auguring for two points, the future of the mother(wether she has the ability to taken care of the children and the self health concern), and should the fetus be considering as a human or not. The current law for abortion in the United states are, four states (Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee) adopted legislation that would ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, four states enacted bans based on the patient’s reason for seeking an abortion, Nine states are banned abortion based on certain age of the fetus. Specially, Alabama enacted a total ban on abortion, at any point in pregnancy. (guttmacher Institude) Some of these reasons of banning abortion are consider of the violence reason, almost all of the states are agreeing that if women got raped, she has the right to not keep the baby. And that leads to a question, when a women’s human rights got violent, does the fetus still having his human rights to survive? Some people might say no, because the baby will keep reminding the mom what she has been going through. Some people might say yes, the baby did nothing wrong, the only wrong one is the criminal. This reaches to the base of our legislation, that is, what is the law actually based on? Forcing the mother to keep the criminal’s baby is immoral, letting it is not. having a religious belief and willing to share the believe to others is moral, but forcing others to accept and even passing on a law to reinforce it, is not. To have the control over our own body is moral, but if the power impact to other’s life and death, it suddenly it is immoral. The question of should abortion remain legal, it is actually asking, should we based on people’s moral standard to passing a law, or should we based on biological standards and medical reason to passing a law, or even ask a more earlier question, how to stop unplanned parenthood from first place?

Citation page:

Erica Gonzale, “What Is Amy Coney Barrett’s Stance on Abortion Rights and Roe v. Wade?” Bazaar, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a34167818/amy-coney-barrett-roe-v-wade-abortion/
Medline plus, ” the words defination of abortion”, https://medlineplus.gov/abortion.html#:~:text=An%20abortion%20is%20a%20procedure,a%20pregnancy%20is%20very%20personal.
Grace Wyler, ” The New Face of the Anti-Abortion Movement”, vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/exmngz/the-new-face-of-the-anti-abortion-movement
Reardon DC, Thorp JM. Sage Open Medicine. Vol 5:1-17, 2017. Pregnancy associated death in record linkage studies relative to delivery, termination of pregnancy, and natural losses: A systematic review with a narrative synthesis and meta-analysis.
Gutter macher Instutuide. ” State Policy Trends 2019: A Wave of Abortion Bans, But Some States Are Fighting Back”, December 10, 2019https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2019/12/state-policy-trends-2019-wave-abortion-bans-some-states-are-fighting-back