Abortion
Abortion has been a controversial topic for many years, some believing it is a privacy right for women, others believing it is murder. In 1971 Norma McCorvey filed a case under the name Jane Roe against the district attorney Henry Wade who enforced Texas law that prohibited abortion (except to save the life of the woman). She and other plaintiffs stated that the laws making abortion a crime were unconstitutional and violated the privacy rights of the women who sought to have abortions. The fourteenth amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States …” This is the statement that Roe argued the Texas abortion laws violated. Her right to privacy …show more content…
Merely six weeks into a pregnancy the heart of the fetus begins to beat. By that point it can be considered alive. Pro-choice activists will argue that women have the right to choose whether or not to terminate the life of this child because it resides inside the woman’s body. While it is the right of the woman to do what she wants with her own body, that should not make it constitutional for a woman to end someone’s life. Except in cases of rape, the woman has chosen to have sex, whether or not she is ready to have a child. She has already made her choice and becoming pregnant is the consequence of that choice. By eight weeks babies can respond to sound, suck their thumbs, and even recoil from pain. At this point in the first trimester all major organs in the baby are functioning, including the brain. There is a fully developed nervous system. Before the first trimester is complete the baby will have developed its own fingerprint. A majority of abortions will occur after this point of the baby’s …show more content…
Between this period and 1979 the number of legal abortions doubled and hit its peak in 1990. Since the rate of abortions has slowly declined. About half of the pregnancies in the United States are unintentional and forty percent of those pregnancies end in abortion. Eighty-eight percent of all abortions take place at the very end of the first trimester. Non-married women account for about one third of those who have abortions. Only three percent of all abortions occur due to health problems with the baby or the mother and less than one percent accounts for abortions accounted for are due to rape or incest. Meaning that about ninety-six percent of those who have abortions do it out of convenience or fear of responsibility. This is the impact that this Roe v. Wade case has had on our society. The Constitution clearly states that all life - men, women, and children, no matter what race or religion - is equal. Yet, somehow the life of a fetus is not considered equal to the rest of American citizens. After only twenty-one weeks the baby can live outside the womb, yet there are still ten percent that have abortions during the second trimester. The process of abortion is even more horrific than the statistics. The baby is literally vacuumed out of the uterus and in the process is torn to pieces. If a baby survives an abortion they are either killed or transferred to a hospital where often the policy is to
Abortion has been a controversial topic for many years, some believing it is a privacy right for women, others believing it is murder. In 1971 Norma McCorvey filed a case under the name Jane Roe against the district attorney Henry Wade who enforced Texas law that prohibited abortion (except to save the life of the woman). She and other plaintiffs stated that the laws making abortion a crime were unconstitutional and violated the privacy rights of the women who sought to have abortions. The fourteenth amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States …” This is the statement that Roe argued the Texas abortion laws violated. Her right to privacy …show more content…
Merely six weeks into a pregnancy the heart of the fetus begins to beat. By that point it can be considered alive. Pro-choice activists will argue that women have the right to choose whether or not to terminate the life of this child because it resides inside the woman’s body. While it is the right of the woman to do what she wants with her own body, that should not make it constitutional for a woman to end someone’s life. Except in cases of rape, the woman has chosen to have sex, whether or not she is ready to have a child. She has already made her choice and becoming pregnant is the consequence of that choice. By eight weeks babies can respond to sound, suck their thumbs, and even recoil from pain. At this point in the first trimester all major organs in the baby are functioning, including the brain. There is a fully developed nervous system. Before the first trimester is complete the baby will have developed its own fingerprint. A majority of abortions will occur after this point of the baby’s …show more content…
Between this period and 1979 the number of legal abortions doubled and hit its peak in 1990. Since the rate of abortions has slowly declined. About half of the pregnancies in the United States are unintentional and forty percent of those pregnancies end in abortion. Eighty-eight percent of all abortions take place at the very end of the first trimester. Non-married women account for about one third of those who have abortions. Only three percent of all abortions occur due to health problems with the baby or the mother and less than one percent accounts for abortions accounted for are due to rape or incest. Meaning that about ninety-six percent of those who have abortions do it out of convenience or fear of responsibility. This is the impact that this Roe v. Wade case has had on our society. The Constitution clearly states that all life - men, women, and children, no matter what race or religion - is equal. Yet, somehow the life of a fetus is not considered equal to the rest of American citizens. After only twenty-one weeks the baby can live outside the womb, yet there are still ten percent that have abortions during the second trimester. The process of abortion is even more horrific than the statistics. The baby is literally vacuumed out of the uterus and in the process is torn to pieces. If a baby survives an abortion they are either killed or transferred to a hospital where often the policy is to