Abortion: Should it Be Legal or Not?

The same president who sent young men and women off to war to fight for our country is against abortion. He believes it's murder. But is he gullible enough to believe that all the women and men who went to war after the September 11th events would come back safe and sound? No. He knew that some would die, but he sent them anyway. So what's the difference between sending someone to another country to die and someone choosing to preserve their own life and goals instead of having a baby? If President Bush was so concerned about people dying, the United States troops would be at home with their own families. And if the Draft comes back into effect, then it really will be forcing people to die. Again I ask, what's the difference between a war and an abortion? For every abortion, a woman has a war with herself. Labor pains are not meant to be ticklish. And they aren't. Giving up eighteen years of a parent's life to raise another human being isn't fun and games. It's serious. The money involved in raising this small human being can easily wipe out the average person's paycheck. But many governmental leaders as well as church members would like to force women into having a baby whether they like it or not.

Some people's logic is that the woman doesn't necessarily have to raise the baby. She could put it up for adoption. But it is on no uncertain terms that many find out that a noticeable amount of children put in the adoption care end up molested or raped. Which is worse? Making sure that woman prevents her child from the possibility of rape or molestation, or not having it at all?

There are women who have babies because their families pressure them into doing it. Their children grow up spiteful and angry because Mommy or one of the millions of Deadbeat Dads didn't really want them. But if Mom had to give up her goals to go to college, find a dream job, finish high school, and could barely keep food on the table, but was still forced to have a child, how is she supposed to feel? Happy? Ecstatic? Full of joy?

Realistically, that's not going to happen. Many women grow to love their child, but the honest truth is that many more do not. And why should that child feel unwanted when it could've been given the opportunity to not live long enough to go through that amount of stress?

How should a woman react to a child that may grow up to look like his or her father, if she was raped? Some children are conceived as the result of rape, which is one of the key arguments in favor of legal abortion (Adamec and Pierce). In the fiction book One Day I Saw a Black King, a young boy named John grows up with his grandmother who hates him. She won't touch him. She barely wants to look at him. He grew up to look exactly like his father, who was believed to have raped his grandmother's daughter. Even worse, John's mother died during birth. So not only was John's mother raped; the son of her rapist killed her involuntarily. This is a work of fiction, but it's not far from the truth. As most children do, genetics usually makes them look like at least one of their two parents. And what kind of torture is it for a woman to relive her rape everyday that she looks into her son's, daughter's, or in this case, grandson's eyes? Could you imagine President Bush's face if one of his daughters came home with a new boyfriend who looked like Osama Bin Laden? He'd kick that man out of the White House before he got his shoes on the porch. He'd do it because of the violence, confusion, and murders in a historical event. And what's not historical to a woman about being raped? No matter how long ago it may have happened, she will not wake up and forget it.

But realistically, not all women are forced into sex by submission. Some women and even girls are uncomfortable asking their sexual partner to wear a condom (McMahon). Is this justifiable? No. Should women use protection? Yes. But should they be punished for eighteen years and risk punishing the child as well? No.

And how do we account for the women who did use protection and still ended up pregnant? Should they be punished for being careful too? In the study entitled The Truth About Condoms, "100 women whose partners use condoms inconsistently or imperfectly, 15 will become pregnant in the first year of use. A recent study of college students found that condom use errors were very common - 40 percent of the young men surveyed reported that, within the previous three months, they had not left space for ejaculate at the tip of a condom." So for those women who really did intend to be careful with condoms but their mate didn't put them on correctly or they ended up pregnant for some unknown circumstance, what are they supposed to do? Birth control pills are 97-99.9% effective as birth control. But what about the 0.1% to 3% chance that the woman will get pregnant anyway? Should she be punished because of Mother Nature? That's like telling the soldiers who died in this war they deserved to die for not beating the attacker. It doesn't help to blame someone for his or her mistakes or what's out of their hands. But helping a person improve and continue his or her own lives sure does.

Works Cited:
Adamec, Christine and William Pierce, Ph. D. "Rape." 2000. Encyclopedia of Adoption. http://encyclopedia.adoption.com/entry/rape/300/1.html. Retrieved on 2 Dec. 2004.

Mason, J.D. "One Day I Saw a Black King." New York: St. Martin's Press, 1 Sept. 2003.

McMahon, Jessica. "Condoms: Why Teenagers Aren't Using Them." 1 Jul. 2004. Marie Stopes International.
http://www.mariestopes.com.au/news/media_coverage/condoms_why_teenagers_arent_using_them. Retrieved on 2 Dec. 2004.

"The Pill-Oral Contraceptives." 27 Nov. 2004. Feminist Women's Health Center. http://www.fwhc.org/birth-control/thepill.htm. Retrieved on 2 Dec. 2004.

"The Truth about Condoms." Jul. 2004. Planned Parenthood. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/condoms/truth.html. Retrieve on 2 Dec. 2004.