Pro-Choice Position on Abortion the Abortion Debate Essay

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Pro-Choice Position on Abortion

The abortion debate in the United States is a debate that has raged for decades, ever since abortion was legalized in the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. (McBride, 2008) There are some legitimate arguments for both sides of the debate, but those who have sided with one position or the other aggressively pursue their goals with utmost precedence. These supporters often choose candidates and align themselves with politicians who are willing to support their position above all. This is called the value voter, who does not vote on the actual person running for office, but rather on what they said about one specific value or another. The pro-choice supporters in the abortion debate wish to see a more permanent law that sets in stone the ability for abortion to be completely legal in any state, so long as it is conducted by a licensed medical professional. The pro-life vote wishes to remove any chance for abortion in the United States, and has even gone as far as saying that young mothers should raise their children no matter what, even if that child was conceived awful ways. Ultimately, the pro-choice and pro-life debaters are unable to direct policy on their own, and their respective issues are smaller than issues of foreign policy, economic growth, and counterterrorism that have taken priority over the past decade compared to the Roe v. Wade struggle that is raging in many places on the topic of abortion another marginalization for the 2012 Presidential elections. The pro-choice supporters in the Abortion debate find grounds for the support of their side of the argument on five grounds; the health benefits of legalized abortion, the financial benefits to mothers who can continue with their education, the rights of women in general, guaranteed by the United States Constitution, also abortion's effects on society and more specifically crime in that society, and finally the separation of church and state.("Abortion, no," 2008) The separation of Church and State has been a point of contention since the founding of the nation, but was seen as crucial to creating a stable and open society.

The health benefits of having a pro-choice position in the United States are based on the fact that childrearing is often a dangerous, and sometimes an expensive cost to mothers who may not be able to cover all of their medical expenses. The young and feeble mother may not be able to take care of her own hospital fees, which can cost thousands of dollars for something as common as pregnancy. Also, health does not necessarily mean physical health, but also mental. Many girls in the 21st century do not feel that they are capable of being all that they want to be due to the problem of early pregnancies. (Stanek, 2009) This is a problem that is not found in older women who can often be married and settled down before they choose to have a baby. Being psychologically healthy for a baby means being able to be mature enough to teach the baby, but also stable enough to be able to take care of oneself. This is a trait that we do not expect from most college aged girls these days, much less having this aged girl take care of her own baby. Society has changed greatly even in the time since 1973, at the beginning of the feminists movement, and the gains that pro-choice supporters have achieved have caused a cultural shift away from having strong sympathies among the general populace on the issue of abortion to now being more practical about the reasons for abortion in a civil society that seeks to enhance the wealth potential and readiness of new mothers, in order to reduce the health costs that occur in other less stable situations.

Many of those seeking abortions are doing so on the grounds that they are too young to have a child. (Stolberg, 2012) Many of these pregnant mothers are just teenagers, and have yet to finish their college or high school education before becoming pregnant, which will permanently lower the ability of that mother to achieve her higher education requirements on time, and will lessen the ability of the child to receive a happy and healthy home. Babies are very expensive, and having to maintain an appropriate level of hygiene concerning diapers and other baby-related expenses requires tens of thousands of dollars a year, a sum that is nearly impossible for many teenage mothers to receive, especially if the child's father is unable to contribute for whatever reason.

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Allowing pregnant mothers to choose when they wish to carry out a full pregnancy will ensure that they are capable of giving their children the best home that they possible can. This time may take until a woman is 25, 30, or older, but many women are far more able to cope with the massive responsibility of motherhood at these more advanced ages. The financial incentive to have many babies is not present anymore, and mothers require deep pockets in order to receive all of the care that they need as pregnant mothers. There are many people who help pay for money for these abortion clinics as of now, and due to places like Planned Parenthood, entire lifecycle friends can have a low membership based on how active in the public sphere the Abortion debate is at any precise moment.

The rights of women is another important factor for the pro-choice movement, as not every woman wants the state to tell her what she can and cannot do with her own body. (Saad, 2009) These women see a big stepping on of rights in this decision, and find moral and personal objections to having to make a difficult decision like acquiring an abortion for an unwanted child. The Bill of Rights, which is the collection of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, allows for women to retain control over their own bodies, and does not allow them to be forced to do anything by the state. The rights of women were advanced after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. These women fought for workplace rights, sexual harassment laws, and increased access to mutual divorce. If pro-life supporters have their way, then they will outlaw abortion completely, taking away the right of the woman to choose whether she wants to have a baby or not. Ironically, however, this practice does not end abortions but rather relegates them to more illegal means. Women will try anything in desperation to end an abortion if they do not feel that they are capable of having a child, and having illegal and uncivil medical routines for treat abortions harks back to a time when all of the devices were incapable of providing abortions and women had to resort to dangerous methods to force abortions. No matter what the Supreme Court may decide today, there is no way that the United States could have gained this right for women to make a choice, unless this was indeed the way that America was trending towards.

Freakonomics is a book that explored many strange phenomena in America based on statistical analysis that was pioneering in its field. (Levitt & Dubner, 2005) One of the most interesting experiments in the book was the question of the huge drop in crime in the United States beginning in the early 1990s, and that time's correlation with the passing of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Beginning in 1991, the young men, who would be 18 years old at this time if they had been born in the early 1970s, were simply never born in the first place due to the ability of women to get abortions. This meant that young men who would not have had parents that felt capable of raising them were no longer being born, and thus were not neglected or abused, and thus did not become criminals. As the 1990s continued, crime continued to fall, especially drug related crime and violent homicides and rape. This pattern, first discovered in Freakonomics, is now considered to be an important study for justifying the pro-choice position in the Abortion debate. The trend has continued on this path since that time, with violent crime rates in America's biggest city, New York City, reaching record lows that had not been met since the 1960s. If abortion were outlawed once again, and children were being born into environments that are not capable of handling a baby, much less a young man, then it is far more likely that these children will become delinquents and will eventually commit crimes in higher rates than in present day terms.

The separation of church and state in the United States Is guaranteed in the founding documents of the nation yet is still one of the most important differences between the pro-choice position and the pro-life position on the Abortion debate. Pro-life supporters are usually far more religiously oriented on the issue,….....

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