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| Yes | 71% | 3968 votes | Total: 5612 votes | |
| No | 29% | 1644 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesThe abortion question is not a question of whether women should have the right to choose abortion. It's whether or not any government has the right to keep a woman from exercising her right to abortion.
Women have the right to abortion simply because women are women. Their creator, whether it is God or a god or whatever originated the species Human Being, gave women and only women the ability to conceive and, inherently, the right to abortion.
I'm not a woman. I cannot presume to know the thoughts and feelings a woman experiences when she contemplates abortion. She may be concerned only for her future. She may be concerned for the consequences of giving birth, believing her child may suffer for myriad possible reasons. She may be worried about the inconvenience or discomfort of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth. She may be worried the child will have physical or mental handicaps if born. I can only imagine.
My experience is that people who would deny a woman her right to abort, so-called Pro-Lifers, have seldom if ever regretted their birth. Their lives and those of their friends have been, for the most part, lives they've enjoyed. They know little or nothing of the reasons a woman would abort, the reasons a woman would go against the natural maternal instinct to bear children, an instinct that can be incredibly strong.
Pro-Lifers believe their god is the only god of importance, so important that governments should subordinate themselves to her or his will; I fairly certain a staunch Pro-Lifer would say, "his will." Laws enforcing their god's will must be made and enforced.
Pro-Lifers profess to be advocates of children un-born. This sounds good and, I'm sure, makes them feel good and righteous when they try to deny women their right to abort.
In truth, it is women who contemplate abortion and abort that are child advocates. Ask a person raised by parents who didn't want her or him about abortion. Ask a person born addicted to crack about abortion. Ask kids standing on street corners selling drugs who expect to die before they're 18 about abortion. Ask kids who follow gang leaders because their parents have figuratively or literally abandoned them about abortion. Ask any death row inmate about abortion. The answers may surprise you. They may not.
We in the U.S. are supposed to be governed according to the principals upon which the U.S. was founded, clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and according to the U.S. Constitution. Law prohibiting abortion not only denies a woman her unalienable right to abort, it denies her right to liberty and her right to pursue happiness. Law favoring any religious believe over another is contrary to the First Amendment of the Constitution.
No government has the right to prohibit a woman from choosing abortion.
Learn more about this author, Stoneheart.
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No
We have abundant opportunity to choose in this country. Walk into any grocery store and you are overwhelmed with the many choices. You could spend hours reading labels, comparing prices and brands, and that's just the mustard. We are so used to being able to do choose just about anything that we want, that sometimes we forget that every choice brings about it's own consequence, be it great or small. Consequences are sometimes easy to forget in a society that likes to minimize consequences to the utmost and put responsibility squarely on someone else's shoulders.
I believe wholeheartedly in a woman's right to choose. I believe she has the right to choose what she wants to do with her life, to choose what she wants for dinner, to choose how to spend her time and money. I especially believe in a woman's right to choose if, when and with whom to have sex. At the point at which abortion is possible, she has already made her choice. She has then entered the realm of responsibility and must now accept not just the blessing, but also the burden of choice.
Abortion is a procedure which takes the responsibility of a woman's choice and places it squarely on the shoulders of an innocent victim. Yes, it is her body. And she made distinct, irreversibly choices with that body. At the time she chose to have sex, she had a myriad of choices available. She could have chosen to say no, to wait until she was ready to have children, to use one of the many forms of birth control available (if she's willing to live with the amount of risk of pregnancy associated with her choice of protection). Allowing her to transfer the consequences of that choice to the suffering of her child is offensive on many levels, but at a minimum, it degrades her as a woman and is disrespectful of the agency women have worked so hard to earn in this society. Saying we want choice without consequence is demonstrating that we aren't mature enough to accept the responsibilities of choice. To accept the blessing of choice, we must also accept the burden of the consequences of choice. Not to do so undermines our own rights and minimizes the sacrifice of the women who fought so hard to earn those rights.
So no, abortion should not be legal. Society has a responsibility to limit one's choice at the point where that choice intersects the rights of others, including the unborn. We can choose to steal or to murder, but society has in place laws to attempt to protect the victims of such crimes. The only time an abortion should be legally allowed is in cases where there was no choice, as in cases of rape. Even then, a woman must carefully consider whether she feels that the consequence of the choice of her attacker should be borne by an innocent child.
The only responsible way to deal with a woman's choice that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy is to bear the child and give it up for adoption to a couple who wants the infant and can provide the safe and stable home the child deserves. Perhaps when we, as a society begin to hold each other responsible for our choices, we will begin to respect ourselves and our agency enough to make more responsible choices.
Learn more about this author, Jennifer Hoisington.
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