Abortion: Just Call it Murder

The birth of a baby is considered to be one of life's most beautiful and miraculous experiences. From the time of conception, the unborn baby has the characteristics of life and begins development which will continue throughout the span of its life. According to scientists, after conception no event occurs in the development of the fetus that indicates a change in the fetus from not being human to becoming one. Since this is the case, an unborn baby is a meaningful human life that should not be considered expendable. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in every state, for the full nine months of pregnancy, striking down all laws that had protected the lives of developing unborn babies. Abortion is an act that deliberately terminates a pregnancy. Since abortion was legalized, over twenty two million unborn babies have been cut into pieces, vacuumed out, poisoned, burned with saline solutions, or otherwise tortured before being discarded like unwanted trash. An unborn baby, a toddler, and an adult are all in stages of human life. Killing the unborn baby is no more justifiable than killing the other two. Life is valuable in all aspects and an unborn baby's right to life should have priority over a woman's right to choose.

In today's society, many cases of unwanted pregnancies end in abortion. Pro-choice advocates strongly support a woman's right to choose. Many of these advocates believe an unborn baby is no more than a mass of cells and tissues and therefore, they don't think abortion is murder. They believe that making abortion illegal will jeopardize women's rights over their bodies, but they fail to realize that the unborn baby has a right to life. Abortion can't be justified by appealing to a woman's rights over her body because those same rights must be extended to the unborn child. The child's rights are completely taken away when the mother chooses to abort it. Others in favor of abortion believe that a mother should be able to abort a child just because it is unwanted due to the parents own personal choices, or perhaps medical problems with the unborn baby. In the U.S., of the six million women who become pregnant annually, over one million of them have abortions. The most common reasons women choose abortion are contraceptive failure, inability to support or care for the child, or simply because they didn't want it.

While some pregnancies are the result of rape or incest, these cases are extremely rare. According to reports, less than one percent of rape or incest victims become pregnant. An alternative to aborting unwanted babies in these and other cases would be to give them up for adoption. There are many families who want to adopt kids due to infertility problems, or just to extend their family by caring for a child whose biological mother could not or chose not to. Many people don't even consider this option. They accept abortion as being moral just because it's legal. There was a time when slavery was also legal but it clearly was not moral. Taking innocent, human lives is also immoral and it should be illegal. Killing a human completely outside of its mother's womb is considered illegal and would result in one being charged with murder and being imprisoned. Therefore, society needs to realize that killing an unborn baby is also wrong and should be illegal because it is still the act of taking an innocent human life.

Many abortion techniques are not much more than slaughter. In the Dilatation and Curettage (D&C) abortion, a loop shaped steel knife is inserted into the uterus and the baby is cut into pieces before being scraped out. In the Dilatation and Evacuation (D&E) abortion, which is done in the second trimester of pregnancy, doctors use forceps to dismember the baby by twisting and tearing the child apart piece by piece, and finally crushing the skull and pulling it out. Another controversial abortion technique that is used during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy is partial birth abortion. These abortions are performed on babies that are capable of surviving outside of the womb at their current stage of development. In this technique, the child is delivered feet first, leaving only the head inside. With the arms and legs likely flailing, blunt surgical scissors are inserted into the base of the baby's skull, pulling it apart before a suction catheter is inserted and sucks the baby's brains out. Once the skull collapses the baby's head is pulled out. Some doctors argue that fetus' can feel pain as early as eight weeks after fertilization, which is when most surgical abortions take place. These procedures help to clearly illustrate the inhumane and horrific process of abortion, which should be constituted as murder. In the case of abortion and murder, a human is killed.

Hopefully, people will start seeing abortion for what it really is, instead of justifying it as a woman's right to choose. It is fact that ninety three percent of abortions are done for nonmedical, elective reasons. As long as abortions continue to be legal, millions of babies will continue to be murdered. The right to life should be extended to the unborn. With every baby aborted, future dreams and ideas that could have fundamentally changed the world are also aborted. Life is a precious gift which everyone should be given the opportunity to experience and live to the fullest of their capability. We have to stop the process of abortion which infringes upon the rights of our unborn babies.

Sources:

Shettles, Landrum, and Rorvik, David. "Human Life Begins At Conception." Abortion- Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. Szumski, Bonnie. St. Paul: Greenhaven Press, 1986. 16-22

www.plannedparenthood.com

www.abortionfacts.com

www.abortionismurder.org