Rape Is Not A Moral Justification Of Abortion

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As Margaret Sanger once said, No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body. Women’s right to their bodies are being taken away by pro-life supporters. Abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy. The beginning of abortion started early in the 1820’s when Connecticut passed the first law in the United States to allow “quickening” which was performed on women after their fourth week of pregnancy by giving them poison. The debate on whether or not to make abortion illegal or legal; however, fully blossomed as a highly debatable topic since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade in 1973. To force a woman to undergo a pregnancy after the action …show more content…
Women who are raped however, should not be forced to carry out a pregnancy. Each year, 132,000 women reported to be victims of rape or attempted rape according to statistics from the National Organization for Women (Preface to ‘What). This number is shocking, and the amount of women who got pregnant from that is more than likely high as well. Women who are forced to have intercourse unwillingly should not have to suffer the consequences of having a baby because a man decided to rape her. In Arizona a fourteen-year-old girl was opposed for requesting an abortion because she was raped. In Arizona, despite being homeless and without family a fourteen-year-old girl was turned down for her request of an abortion because she was raped. Being dragged through the courts and talked viciously about in newspapers, the young girl had people constantly telling her not to go through with the abortion (Sykes). What a scary thought it is that a girl who has not fully developed yet, nor has a place to stay or people to support her is forced to undergo the consequences of an action that she did not choose upon herself. Men do not have to suffer through the consequences of having unprotected intercourse that they forced upon a girl. Women should not have to either. As if having newspapers written about the girl and having court dates shoved in her face wasn’t enough, the fourteen-year-old rape victim was pressured by Dr. Laura to just give the baby up for adoption (Sykes). The girl was in fact homeless herself, and clearly would not wish to put a child into this world just to go down the same road. In a sense people should be proud of this fourteen-year-old girl for not trying to bring a child into this world where she cannot love it and give it what it needs. Overall women should be given enough rights to be able to give the judgment in whether or not they can provide for their child, and

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