by Preetvy Ramasamy

Created on: June 15, 2008

A woman, that is, a member of society, an individual, should firstly, be allowed to decide on her own fate whatever the greater percentage of the society she lives in, thinks on how one should lead one's life or the decision one should take in some situation. In a few words, the right to decide what is right or wrong.

Now, why should a woman have the right to choose abortion?

Cases vary and I will try to sum it up with the two examples below:

Case 1: An undesired child
This is the case of the accidental pregnancy. If for whatever reason, a woman gets pregnant accidentally, she may want to choose abortion because she does not have enough resources to undertake such a "project" or she may already have several children or perhaps enough from her point of view. Sometimes it may even be that the woman simply cannot afford to have a child at that moment because of time or work constraints.
In this case, may be considered women victim of a rape. In this category, there are also adolescents who are not prepared at all and may be too immature and not responsible enough - not considering that they may not want to keep the child of the man who raped her.

Case 2: Knowing that the child is severely handicapped or Down Syndrome or severely retarded
In this case, some would say that it is a difficult choice as the situation may be that the pregnancy is planned, however I think the question one should ask oneself is quite simple. Do you choose to proceed, have the baby, give it all the attention and patience required and take the hard responsibility until your last breath? After which he will be probably put in some home waiting for the end too; a home where he won't possibly get all that attention he got used to. The result of which will be years of suffering.
- To be considered here that most people do not have the required patience, nevermind how much they love the child or determined they are; resulting in suffering of the parents and child -
Now the other choice is to abort, knowing that you are saving a poor soul from a life of hardship and misery - because let's face it, the best way to view our society nowadays if from the functionalist perspective: everybody has to fill some position which will make all the system work. Those failing to integrate the system are rejected.

It is to be noted that abortion should however be in special cases, for example: lack of resources. Abortion should not be vulgarized; justification should be good enough, but ultimately, the choice should only be to the one affected.

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