Abortion Dilemma
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Abortion Dilemma
The issue of abortion has troubled Canadian, as well as international, society for a long time. There have been continuous debates over abortion from the perspectives of “individual rights, societal responsibilities, moral norms and the role of women in society” (Dunsmuir, 1995). As abortion presupposes a medical procedure, it is also considered to be a health issue. Legalization of abortions in recent years in a number of countries raised a serious question put in the center of the ongoing debate on abortion, which concerns whether women should be granted the right to decide over making abortion or not. This has led to appearing two opposing ethical approaches: “pro-choice” and “pro-life”. Pro-choicers and pro-lifers have been battling over this issue for decades, but did not manage to come to a mutual agreement. Until now, abortion remains the most common, but the most controversial medical procedure, as it affects people’s lives on physiological, psychological and sociological levels.
Pro-life vs. Pro-choice Issue Spectrum
As rightfully noticed by Negan (1971), these two contradicting views may be interpreted as “the fetus oriented view and the female perspective” (p. 288). The polarity between pro-choice and pro-life approaches to the problem, in his opinion, is manifested in defining the fetus either as self-sufficient human being or merely as a potential human being. Those who oppose abortions insist that a fetus is a person and it is absolutely immoral and under no circumstances should be legally permitted to kill unborn babies. To their mind, it is the government’s direct obligation to ensure that all human lives are preserved, with no exception and with no regard to intent, quality-of-life concerns or whatsoever. Pro-lifers suggest that women being legally granted the right to abortion is equivalent of women being permitted to murder their babies. They put the right to life over women’s right to privacy in all the respects.
For example, a big abortion opponent, Schwarzwalder (n.d.), suggests that abortion is “anti-human, anti-life, and anti-woman” (para. 75) and provides constructive pro-life scientific argumentation. From the biological point of view, Senior Vice President of the Family Research Council supports his ideas with the fact that zygote is composed of human DNA, as well as of other human molecules, what proves that it is undeniably human in nature. Genetic composition of human zygote is absolutely unique and differs from human zygote that has ever existed, including the one of the mother’s. In such a way, Schwarzwalder disproves the pro-choicers’ claim that it is only woman’s body that is involved in abortion. Furthermore, the author makes it clear that even the earliest human embryo is, in fact, biologically alive. Finally, human zygote meets biological definition of a living organism, which is “a complex structure of interdependent elements constituted to carry on the activities of life by separately-functioning but mutually dependent organs” (Schwarzwalder, n.d., para.13). For this reason, from the very moment of conception, the new entity is perceived by pro-lifers as a human, alive, individual organism, and abortion is interpreted as a killing this living organism.
Pro-choice movement adherents, on the other hand, do not perceive fetus as a human being and refer to it only as to a potential human being and potential person that starts look like human only as it develops. Thus, abortion supporters defend women’s right to decide over making abortion or not, claiming that abortion is merely a medical procedure of removing a potential human being, but not a murder. They claim that there is no scientific consensus at the moment as to when exactly the actual human life begins. From the pro-choice perspective, it is rather a matter of religious beliefs and philosophic opinions. Pro-choicers support this idea with the fact that sperm and eggs, taken separately, are also biologically alive and could as well represent potential human beings but no one interprets their waste as a murder. Abortion supporters stick to the point that abortion is not morally wrong. On the contrary, they consider that “bringing an unwanted child into the world is a crime” and “forcing a woman to have a child against her will is morally wrong” (Prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org). They assume that women must be granted legal right to absolute control over their bodies, including reproductive process.
Behind the Pro-choice vs. Pro-life Framework
Abortion dilemma is an extremely complicated issue and goes far beyond these conventional opposing views. As rightfully noticed by Bowers (1994), the abortion choice does not always lie “between the two extremes of a woman’s liberty interest in the abortion decision or fetal life” (p.10). There is a wide range of external factors, which have strong impact on this decision and cannot be overlooked or neglected. Between the two polar viewpoints that abortion should always or under no circumstances be permitted, there are middle positions, which require finding a balance. For this reason, a number of activists insist on the importance of potential consideration of abortions in each case separately. The most ambiguous issues brought up to the public attention are risks for the mother’s physical and psychological health, pregnancies with fetal handicaps, pregnancies caused by rape and incest, as well as threats to quality of life and sanctity of life.
One of the most widespread problematic cases of considering abortion, which reaches beyond pro-life and pro-choice conventional thinking, involves pregnancy or giving birth to a child being a threat to the mother’s health. The mother’s health, in this context, does not necessarily refer merely to the mother’s physical well-being, but can also include “her psychological, social, and economic situation” (Grisanti, 2000, p.189). Still, the most persuasive argument, of course remains the mother’s physical health. All accredited hospitals in most developed countries have special review committees that focus on conducting this particular medical procedure, which is very often “besieged by legal and moral questions” (Ryan, 1965, p.424), as there are no universally acceptable guidelines for it. Even though pro-life movement adherents reject the whole idea of abortion on demand, in the light of the latest events they reconsider the possibility of interruption of pregnancy in case the fetus putting the mother’s life in danger. When one suspects a potential loss of the mother’s life, her life, as a life of an actual physical person, is viewed by many proponents of abortions as of more value than the life of a potential human being, namely the fetus.
Even more questionable and complex issue is the issue of terminating pregnancy in case of detected fetus handicaps. Due to significant medical achievements one can nowadays easily diagnose physical and mental handicaps of an unborn entity (Brody, 1975, p.36) and this raises a lot of concerns around the problem. Pro-choicers argue that women should have a choice of legal interruption of pregnancy if they either do not want to dedicate their lives to taking care of a handicapped child or they do not want watching their child suffering because of its physical condition. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, stick to the point that every single life is sanctity and disability definitely cannot be viewed as a justified reason to abortion. Killing an unborn disabled baby, to their mind, is equal to killing a disabled toddler, a disabled 10-year-old child or any other human being at later developmental stages. Medical procedure of removal of disabled fetuses is considered to be just another form of discrimination. In the context of broadening spectrum of identity studies and distinguishing of disabled identity, abortion opponents draw the public attention to the fact that physically and mentally challenged people are not less valuable and not of less importance than all the others. Furthermore, there are a lot of disagreements on what exact types and extents of disability can be considered justifiable for abortion and what cannot. For example, sometime earlier Down’s syndrome was viewed as a solid reason for ending a pregnancy, but nowadays this is no longer an excuse. The main question here remains whether a handicapped human life has to be equally protected as healthy human life, regardless of whether a handicapped individual is unborn or born.
A separate niche of abortion dilemma is dedicated to the problem of rape-related pregnancies. Pregnancies caused by rape or incest, in general, are perceived as a reminder of terrible crime experience and have a strong negative impact on a mother’s psychological well-being. An unborn child in such cases always reminds the mother about a traumatic abusive act, high injustice and terrible humiliation. This may lead to serious psychological damages and illnesses in women. Some of them make a decision in favor of abortion. But such a choice is perceived by many abortion opponents as even greater injustice towards an unborn life. Furthermore, a number of psychological researches suggest that the choice of abortion in case of rape-related pregnancies is most often obtruded by the society: “Abortion advocates perpetuate the myth that pregnant rape victims generally desire abortion, and this makes it difficult for women to choose a life-giving alternative for their child” (Groth, 2013, p.1342). A current American research, conducted on 37 pregnant rape victims, has shown that all of the women experienced fear and strong negative feelings about getting pregnant in such a way, but 28 of them continued their pregnancy, 5 decided to make an abortion and 4 did not know what to do. According to the results, 80 percent of those women who decided to give birth to their children eventually developed more positive feelings towards their unborn children during the pregnancy (Groth, 2013, p.1342). In such a way, socials stereotypes about high risk for women, whose pregnancy was caused by rape, to end with a number of severe and long-lasting psychological problems very often should be casted away, as majority of women actually can cope with such a situation. In fact, more psychological complications are reported in raped women who underwent and abortion than in those who did not.
Another wide-spread reason for abortion is low quality of life. Abortion supporters tend to advocate women’s choice for abortion when they cannot afford to raise a child. Abortion opponents, on the other hand, stick to the point that financial help can always be found, especially in developed countries, where governments put a lot of efforts to assist pregnant women in help and provide financial support to them and their children. For this reason, financial strain that comes upon the mother or upon the both parents can hardly be viewed as justifiable excuse for terminating pregnancy. In most cases, those who try to justify abortion with potential financial hardship chose the simplest way and do not even seek for other possible solutions to their problem. In fact, this seldom refers to the actual poverty. More often the reasons to abortions in the context of quality of life are connected to women’s strong desire to attain certain goals, to finish school or university, to get a promotion at work, to limit the size of the family and so on and so forth.
In fact, women’s choice in favor of giving birth or terminating pregnancy is always a combination of a wide range of factors. Those factors may be as following: women’s age, their social status, personal values, ability to cope with difficulties in their lives, etc. Anyway, influences strongly women’s lives, welfare, social status, as well as their emotional and psychological well-being.
Abortion-related Issues
As it was mentioned before, women’s choice for abortion in influenced by a great number of factors and reflects a variety of social problems. First and foremost, as indicated in some recent researches, life expectancy of women who had one or several abortions is much lower than life expectancy of women who had no abortions. The higher the number of abortions a woman undergoes, the lower her life expectancy is predicted to be. Furthermore, it was recently acknowledged that abortions contribute to the rate of maternal death. Already in 1997, Finland government funded a study, which showed that “women who abort are approximately four times more likely to die in the following year than women who carry their pregnancies to term” (Afterabortion.org, 1999, para.2). Finland researchers stated that women who terminated their pregnancies for different reasons, in comparison to those who carried to term, were more likely to resort to risk-taking behaviors and suicides. It turned out that each additional abortion or some other sort of pregnancy loss contributed strongly to even higher rates of maternal deaths in Finland. Similar tendencies were observed in other developed countries.
As well, it is proved that abortions lead to different physical health complications in women. As it is indicated in 1999 year research, “Approximately 10% of women undergoing induced abortion suffer from immediate complications, of which one-fifth (2%) were considered major” (Afterabortion.org, 1999, para.2). A lot of physical health complications take time to develop and can be diagnosed in the long run after the medical procedure of removal of fetus and were earlier often not connected to abortion itself. However, nowadays it is clear that complications after abortions may not be apparent for months or even for year. Once those calculations were performed, the researchers claimed even higher health risks in women who underwent one or numerous abortions.
On the other hand, from the ethical point of view, a number of social studies had shown direct link between morality rate and a number of abortions and miscarriages in women. Furthermore, in the ethical perspective on the issue of abortion, sociologists tend to bring up the problem of trade of fetal tissue. As fetal tissue appear to be an extremely valuable tool for various scientific researches, it has become an object of legal and illegal trade on the world market. An interesting tendency observed is that major companies, which obtain fetal tissue from clinics, are, in general, big pro-choice movement supporters and spend a lot of money on promotion abortions and financial assistance of any sort of pro-choice movements.
Conclusion
Thus, in the context of ongoing debate the issue of abortion is proved to affect women’s life on physiological, psychological and sociological levels. For this reason, this problem remains in the center of attention of medical and sociological researches. Pro-choice and pro-life approaches to this particular issue cannot manage to address the issue from all the perspectives, as there are a wide range of additional factors and related issues that have to be taken into account from different perspectives. As abortion rates are reported to reflect numerous sociological problems, it is hard to overestimate the importance of studying this particular issue and proposing new solutions to it.
References
Afterabortion.org. (1999). Abortion Risks: A list of major physical complications related to abortion | After Abortion. Retrieved 29 November 2015, from http://afterabortion.org/1999/abortion-risks-a-list-of-major-physical-complications-related-to-abortion/
Bowers, J. R. (1994). Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion: Constitutional Theory and Public Policy. ABC-CLIO.
Brody, B. A. (1975). Abortion and the sanctity of human life: a philosophical view. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, pp. 36-37.
Dunsmuir, M. (1995). Abortion: Constitutional and Legal Developments. Library of Parliament, Research Branch. Retrieved from: http://www.publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/8910-e.htm
Grisanti, M. A. (2000). The abortion dilemma. The Master's Seminary Journal 11.2: 169-190.
Groth, A. (2013). Pregnancy from Rape. Life Matters, 134(11), Retrieved from http://res-ec.org/Portals/0/Downloads/Life%20Matters%20-%20Pregnancy%20from%20Rape.pdf
Nagan, W. P. (1971). Social Perspectives: Abortion and Female Behavior. Val. UL Rev., 6, 286.
Prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org, (2015). THE PRO-CHOICE ACTION NETWORK. Retrieved 26 November 2015, from http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/abortioninfo/misconce.shtml
Ryan, K. J. (1965). Humane abortion laws and the health needs of society. W. Res. L. Rev., 17, 424.
Schwarzwalder, R. (n.d.). The Best Pro-Life Arguments for Secular Audiences. Family Research Council. Retrieved from http://frc.org/arguments
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