Abortion Essay To draw a line in the sand and say this is when a person becomes a person is arbitrary. The argument in itself is supercilious to me but it still has its moral context, yet there is a bigger picture to abortions.
If we all agree that a fetus is a person or an egg is a person, there is still an ethical decision to be made, and there is still the consequence of your actions to be considered. Abortion affects the future life of someone soon to be, so there is still a consequence to be taken into consideration, but there are certain circumstances that make abortion justified.In this essay, I am using a utilitarian approach to argue that abortions are permissible, under certain circumstances pertaining to the future well-being of the child or mother. The question of whether it is a person should shift to whether or not the child will have a healthy upbringing.
The greater benefit of all is that children should be born in a healthy environment with physical and mental health taken into account. Making abortions illegal does not change the circumstances that contribute to it.Crime is a Significant Circumstance In the mid-1990s, there was a major decrease in crime in America, and there were a lot of speculations as to why this happened. A few suspicions were a stronger police force, harsher jail sentences, and a strong economy. There were many debates as to why crime had fallen when it should have risen.
As stated by Steven D. Levitt “leading experts were predicting an explosion in crime in the early and mid-1990s, precisely the point when crime rates began to plunge.Although experts failed to anticipate the decline, there has been no shortage of hypotheses to explain the drop in crime after the fact” (163). Most of the speculations surrounding the drop in crime do not accurately portray the truth of why it happened.
Levitt suggested there was some evidence of a connection between abortions and a drop in crime: The U. S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 may seem like an unlikely source of the decline in crime in the 1990s, but a growing body of evidence suggests an important role for legalized abortion in explaining falling crime rates two decades later.The underlying theory rests on two premises: 1) unwanted children are at greater risk for crime, and 2) legalized abortion leads to a reduction in the number of unwanted births (182). In the studies conducted by Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber in “Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency”, having a child in a negative home environment with family members who engage in criminal activities can lead to delinquency. These studies show the deteriorating effects of an unwanted child can lead to delinquency.
If the mother does not want the child or is unable to provide the child with the attention he needs then there is an adverse effect of delinquency leading to a life of crime and antisocial behavior. Forcing a woman to have a child she does not want could cause that child to have an unhappy upbringing, which could in turn lead to criminal behavior in adulthood. According Joseph Murray and David P. Farrington, a great deal has been learned from longitudinal surveys about risk factors for CD and delinquency.Offenders differ significantly from nonoffenders in many respects, including impulsiveness, low IQ, low school achievement, poor parental supervision, punitive or erratic parental discipline, cold parental attitude, child physical abuse, parental conflict, disrupted families, antisocial parents, large family size, low family income, antisocial peers, high delinquency rate schools, and high crime neighborhoods (639).
To eliminate this unhappy future for the mother and the child, abortion might just be the answer, and it could help keep crime at a low rate. However, there is more to it than just crime.Indeed, there are also health concerns which make abortions difficult. The child should be given a chance because not all children grow up to be criminals, but forcing a woman to have children does not help us.
There are underlying causes that contribute to abortions such as crime, poverty, and health issues. If we can eliminate some of these factors then abortions could become a thing of the past. However, the complete extermination of abortions would not help anybody. Health is a Significant Circumstance We can all agree that birth is a miracle, something truly beautiful.However, there are many things that can go wrong in the birth process leading to the loss of the baby or the mother. There have been cases reported all across the world in which there is a high possibility that the mother could die from birth, yet abortions were illegal causing the death of the mother.
Take the case in Ireland when Savita Halappanavar was denied abortion because it was illegal, even though she was going to have a miscarriage and lose the baby. No matter how much she pleaded, she was denied to terminate her 17-week long pregnancy causing her to die of blood poisoning in University Hospital Galway.Cases like these are the most tragic due to the fact that laws that are meant to protect us can lead to circumstances of death for the women. Would it not benefit the greater good of all if we could avoid these misfortunes? Even if we make abortions illegal, what is to stop women from getting it illegally? We make marijuana illegal, meth illegal, or cocaine illegal but people always find a way to get around these laws.
However, the difference between drugs and abortions is that the law protects us from drugs and the overuse of such, yet the same cannot be said for abortions.According to the National Abortion Federation (NAF) “Criminalization of abortion 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.
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” (www. prochoice. org). Some women even died after trying to self-induce their own abortions. Should we not consider the health concerns of making abortions illegal?Every moral decision in this world is not so black and white, because sometimes helping the most people is the best option. Take into consideration the endangerment of the mother and the child’s health, should abortion not be regarded as an important option? The Prevention of Abortions can be a Circumstance There are many who would oppose abortion on the simple fact that religious influence and moral responsibility of murder are wrong, yet there is an opportunity to put a band-aid over the problem of abortions for a short time.
Informing the masses on safe sex, particularly the young adolescents, can help prevent future abortions; this can give women a chance to not have to worry about the consequences of getting pregnant, and the future consequences of what happens to the fetus inside her. However, movements such as Purity has Power would argue If there was an activity we didn’t want our children to engage in would we tell them how to do it safely? Don’t use drugs. But if you do, only do it with people you’ve been in committed relationships with and always use clean crack pipes.Don’t view pornography online but if you do, make sure that you delete your cookies and don’t stay up too late because you have school in the morning. Safe sex is basically saying, don’t have sex, but if you do use protection (poplarartproductions. wix. com) This is just one of the reasons why sexual education is not being taught. Safe sex is not just about having sex and knowing you can get away with it.
It is more about stopping the ignorance of sex. Take for instance, you are a teenager and you just had sex with some random girl or guy at a party.Later on that day you felt a burning sensation in your groin.
Now you know sex is a sin because your parents always rant on and on about it, but you did it anyway because you were not thinking with all those crazy hormones in your body. To top it all off, you are unable to either talk to your parents about it or to go to the hospital. What can you do but to suffer in pain until you finally tell them or they find out? At this point of discovery, it could be too late and the condition could be irreversible. There is a mass of confusion about sex and the loss of virginity.A very popular one is that you can catch an STD from a toilet seat.
Another popular one is that the morning after pills cause abortions. By trying to avoid educating their children about sex, parents unwittingly cause them harm. Knowledge is extremely powerful in protecting teenagers from the confusing world of sex. The Conflict in Society is a Circumstance Arguing solely on whether or not the fetus or the egg is a person negates the moral consequences we face because we all understand that nothing is black and white, and sometimes the decisions we face in life can be insurmountable.When we considered denying something to ourselves, how often do we cause more strife then peace? When we deny something to the masses how often does this not solve the problem? If I were to say I’m hungry and I feed myself stuffing my face until I become obese then we learn that my hunger is not physical conditions but it is an internal confliction in myself. The great root of my hunger is caused by something more, and there is an underlying cause that creates this struggle.Abortions are a hunger within society to fulfill itself of an internal struggle of poverty, crime, health, and social confusion from TV and media. Every action that we as a society ordain has a consequence to be considered and each decision has a multitude of advantages and disadvantages.
The way I see it is if we make abortions illegal or legal, there will still be a ton of advantages or disadvantage to this decision. All we can really focus on is the most beneficial action that helps the most people.Works CitedLevitt, Steven D. “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18.1 (2004): 163-90. EBSCO.
Web. 23 Jan. 2013.
Loeber, Rolf, and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber. “Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency.” Crime and Justice 7 (1986): 29. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2013.
Murray, Joseph, and David P. Farrington.”Risk Factors for Conduct Disorder and Delinquency: Key Findings From Longitudinal Studies.” The Canadian Journal Of Psychiatry / La Revue Canadienne De Psychiatrie 55.633-642 (2010): 639. EBSCO. Web.
22 Jan. 2013. “National Abortion Federation: History of Abortion.” National Abortion Federation: History of Abortion. N.p., n.
d. Web. 27 Jan. 2013. <http://www.prochoice.
org/about_abortion/history_abortion.html>. “Purity Is Power.” Purity Is Power. N.p., n.
d. Web. 27 Jan. 2013.
<http://poplarartproductions.wix.com/purityispower>.
