March 19, 2020
By: H. Elizabeth Williams
Note: This was just an assignment for my debate class, but I haven't posted in a while so I thought i'd use this in the meantime. Enjoy!
We’re in the endgame now. But, this isn’t a game anymore and to women it never was. We want the GOP to stop playing with our bodily rights most know nothing about, claiming they are “pro-life,” when they’re hurting the only living beings in this equation: women. It’s time for women, men, everyone to go on defense here and realize that the choice is ours and not religious figures and men in the political field that still think a clitorious is a town in India. They don’t know anything about our bodies and experiences. It’s time to take action.
Clearly, we’re here to talk about abortion.
I know, I know. A young woman speaking about abortion? She has no idea what she’s talking about unlike the grown men opposing a medical procedure they can’t even have.
In the next seven minutes I have with you I’d like to reveal that being pro-choice should be an important view to take into consideration once you face the reality of the danger women’s lives and reproductive rights are in, give a more clear understanding instead of the bias information recieved in the media and that there’s something that should, and can, be done about it.
You know that saying ‘We learn history so it doesn’t repeat itself’? You’d think America would take that seriously, but not in this case. According to Oxford Dictionary, an abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks. Roe V. Wade is where the Supreme Court decided in 1973 that the unborn fetus had no constitutional rights until the third trimester (24-28 weeks), as it is incapable of functioning independently from the mother until that time. (Luhrmann, Tanya, The Harvard Crimson, 1979). Before that, however, criminalization of abortion in the 1860s did not reduce the numbers of women who sought abortions. In the years before Roe V. Wade, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year (Henshaw, Tietze,The Guttmacher Institute, 1986). Although accurate records could not be kept, it is known that between the 1880s and 1973, many thousands of women were harmed as a result of illegal abortion. Even though it’s legal and safer today, attacks on women’s reproductive rights strike again with these State Heartbeat bills causing the two opposing sides to rise once again: pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-lifer’s believe that abortion should be banned because it’s “murder” and pro-choicer’s, the one I align with, believes abortion should be kept legal and accessible. However, America seems pretty divided on this issue, with 47% of US adults describing their views as “pro-choice” and 46% as “pro-life,” continuing a pattern seen since 2010(Saad, Lydia, Galluo’s Annual Values and Beliefs Survey, 2019). Social analysis argues forcibly for the need for safe, legal and affordable abortions. 4 in every 5 Americans begin having intercourse before age 20. Many of the youngest women in this group (70% of those age 13 or under) report having had sex forced on them. By the time they turn 20, about 40% of American women have been pregnant at least once. About 13,000 women each year have abortions because they have become pregnant as a result of rape or incest. (Jones RK, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 2002,NAF). This is only one reason of the many on why abortion needs to remain safe and legal.
As a pro-choice woman looking at the pro-life argument, I honestly think that to be against abortion AND comprehensive sex education AND affordable access to birth control is like being against fire and fire extinguishers, but we can agree to an extent. The most shared goal would be reducing the amount of abortions. Most can agree with us that rape is a case were abortion should be legal/an exception. A surprising number partake in the belief that such a procedure should be safe, and rare. Some members of the anti-abortion movement have actually acknowledged that a difference exists between a fetus and a fully-formed human being and that science alone can’t tell us whether a human life is worth more or less than a rock. And my personal favorite, anonymously quoted from Campaign Life Coalition, “We’re all for choice too… so long as you don’t kill anybody.” It’s great to see this as an agreement because we aren’t killing anyone but a non-living zygote at the proper pregnancy period, which brings me to the disagreements.
There needs to be an understanding that this is a biological and rights issue not a religious ethics issue. Our disagreements could go on forever but most of them all boil down to the question: Is a fetus alive? It becomes very heated when all their focus is on an unborn fetus and never realizing the affects of their actions on the women they’re directing it at. They say the unborn fetus conceived in rape doesn’t deserve to be aborted, calling it cruel and unusual punishment, when they aren’t thinking of how the woman has been through enough cruel and unusual punishment and doesn’t need anymore add-ons.
Now, let’s get down to business. The real core issues. First, is a fetus alive or not? According to John Burgess’ “Could a Zygote Be a Human Being?, 2010,” one of the defining characteristics of life (keep in mind something is not considered alive unless they have ALL of the characteristics of life) is the ability to independently process energy, meaning cellular respiration, photosynthesis or fermentation. Fetuses in the earliest weeks are known to be only tiny clumps of cells, therefore, they have no need to go through any energy processing at all. Later on in the pregnancy, they are able to “breathe” through the umbilical cord. Without it, they die. They are completely dependent on their mother. If the mother dies, the fetus dies. If the umbilical cord is broken, the fetus dies. It is not able to independently process energy through cellular respiration. It lacks a characteristic of life. It is scientifically not alive.
Anti-abortionists plead for science from the other side. Well, here it is. Simple biology. Scientifically speaking, the fetus is not alive until it takes its first independent breath. Adding onto that, the heartbeat exists because the heart needs to form first in order for blood to pump, so cells can begin forming other organs. Remember, we can legally pull the plug on people who are brain dead even when they have heartbeats because they are legally dead. Without a brain you have no cognitive function or awareness of anything.
With how scary pregnancy can be, abortion is looking pretty well on the safe side here. The earlier the abortion the safer it is. Medical abortions have an excellent safety profile. Of women who have abortions, 97% report no complications, 2.5% have minor complications that can be handled at the medical office and 0.5% have more serious complications that require some additional surgical procedure (Grimes, DA. 2005). Death occurs in 0.0006% of all legal surgical abortions (1 in 160,000 cases).
Ask yourself, can you really stand by and just watch? Be a bystander to a doctor getting arrested for performing an abortion on a rape victim and getting more jail time than the rapist? It’s 99 years in Georgia for a doctor and the rape victim, but a slap on the wrist for the rapist.
If abortion is made illegal again, then what is my option? Inspired by Coryn Catazaro’s project, i researched the more recent dangerous methods that many women resorted to before Roe V Wade was passed. These are the barbaric “tools” that have been recorded as being used to reduce abortion. I want you guys to know what’s at stake if abortion should be made illegal again. Let’t not allow congress to make this a reality for women in the US again.
Unlike the evidence I just revealed to you, the pro-life argument usually revolves around hypocrisy and what if statements.
Pro-life is supposed to mean you care about ALL life, not just unborn zygotes. It’s hard not to see the hypocrisy of it all. If they care about children why do school teachers have to buy their own school supplies? Why are children detained in cages? Why do they favor gun lobbies over victims? There’s so much that can be put into question. But, it’s time to debunk the myth that women have abortions for selfish reasons. Many feel the most responsible course of action is to wait until their situation is more suited to child rearing: 66% plan to have children when they’re older, financially able to provide necessities for them. Of teenage women who become pregnant, about 35% choose to have an abortion rather than bear a child (Jones RK, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 2002,NAF). Remember, if they choose to have a child she will more likely than other women have to drop out of school, receive inadequate prenatal care, rely on public assistance to raise her child and develop health problems. Children of younger mothers also often suffer significant disadvantages: medical, psychological, economic, and educational. (Jones RK, 2002,NAF)
Saying abortion is only okay in instances of rape is saying a woman needs to be violated in order to have control over her own body. In reality, we don’t need more kids in this world, especially born out of rape. We have an overflowing foster care system. On July 1, 2018 there were 16,154 children in foster care in Ohio alone. That number is projected to hit 20,000 by 2020. And it has. (Cass, Andrew, Herald News, 2020).
You demanded the government be out of your lives, out of your business and out of your bedroom. Why not out of our bodies/wombs too? Women, including myself, are tired of people seeing us as nothing but hosts. We are grown human beings who are more than capable of making decisions about our own lives and have control over our own bodies. Women need to support women, especially in our time of need, and we need more men allies. Step out of you're comfort zone, see yourself in our shoes, and realize that forcing people to have children while opposing policies that ensure access to healthcare, education, housing and nutrition has nothing to do with the sanctity of life and everything to do with stripping individuals of bodily autonomy as part of maintaining an oppressed underclass.
Work Cited
Burgess, John. “Could a Zygote Be a Human Being?” Bioethics, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19076123.
Cass, Andrew. “Report: More than 20,000 Ohio Children Projected in Foster Care by 2020.” Herald, The News-Herald, 2 Oct. 2018, www.news-herald.com/news/ohio/report-more-than-ohio-children-projected-in-foster-care-by/article_93531344-1e31-58eb-94ca-5b575ec8ce7b.html.
Coalition, Campaign Life. “Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments.” Https://Www.campaignlifecoalition.com, www.campaignlifecoalition.com/pro-life-answers.
DeSanctis, Alexandra. "How Democrats Purged 'Safe, Legal, Rare' From the Party", November, 15, 2019
“Ethics - Abortion: Arguments in Favour of Abortion.” BBC, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/mother/for_1.shtml.
Finer, Lawrence B. "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives." Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann M. Moore, Volume 37, Issue 3, Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2005.
Green, Emma. “Science Is Giving the Pro-Life Movement a Boost.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 19 Jan. 2018, amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/549308/.
Grimes DA. Medical abortion in early pregnancy: A review of the evidence. Obstet Gynecol1997;89:790-6.
Guttmacher Institute. State Facts About Abortion. 2003. www.agi-usa.org/pubs/sfaa.html
Head, Tom. “A Look at What Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Supporters Believe.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 16 Nov. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/pro-life-vs-pro-choice-721108.
Henshaw SK, Kost K. Abortion patients in 1994-1995: Characteristics and contraceptive use. Family Planning Perspectives 1996; 28(4): 140-147 &158.
Henshaw SK. Unintended pregnancy and abortion: A public health perspective. In Paul M, Lichtenberg ES, Borgatta L, Grimes DA, Stubblefield PG. A Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1999, pp. 11-22.
Luhrmann, Tanya. “The Pro-Choice Argument: Opinion: The Harvard Crimson.” Opinion | The Harvard Crimson, www.thecrimson.com/article/1979/10/25/the-pro-choice-argument-pthere-are-those/.
Miklavcic, John Janez, and Paul Flaman. “Personhood Status of the Human Zygote, Embryo, Fetus.” The Linacre Quarterly, Taylor & Francis, May 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5499222/.
Saad, Lydia. “U.S. Still Split on Abortion: 47% Pro-Choice, 46% Pro-Life.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 25 July 2019, news.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-pro-life.aspx.
"State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy." State Laws and Policies, Guttmacher Institute, April 1, 2019.
Tietze C, Henshaw SK. Induced abortion: A worldwide review, 1986. Third edition. New York: Guttmacher Institute, 1996.