by Matthew Blackmon

Created on: October 21, 2009

The abortion debate brings up many of the different realities of life. The two sides of this debate rally behind two slogans: Pro Life and Pro-Choice. Upon close examination, these two titles represent what each side truly values. Both titles reflect back to our founding fathers' significant ideals: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While both sides of this debate bring up different sides of this issue, they are nonetheless in conflict on a very fundamental level. While both sides cite the founding fathers in their choice of titles, I am convinced only one side is fundamentally closer.

Being pro-choice in today's society means that we support a woman's right to choose. However, what does this truly mean? This half-statement leaves out two important realities: first, the reason for needing a choice, and the list of choices. The choice list of our current society features prominently the choice of abortion in addition to other alternatives that are available. However, we must ask ourselves what is abortion and why is it radically different from the other choices.

It is from my experience that abortion is generally treated as a last option when nothing else can help. Abortion is defined differently by different groups. The reason for this is that definition influences legislation. If we say simply that abortion is killing a child before it is allowed to be born, then legislation to support this can never be passed; the reason is that no one supports killing children, or killing in general. However if we can claim that abortion is not the death of a child, but rather a choice for the life of the mother, then we shift emphasis from liberty to choice. After all, killing is against our right to life; however, that same right to life is cited in the choice for abortion.

The question to ask then is whether or not the choice for life is substantiated by either side. The pro-choice camp prominently cite abortion as necessary for the life of the mother when she is in danger or when it can cause substantial harm to their financial stability. The point of this argument is to show that the sacrifice is in the name of something more important. Therefore, we must compare whether the life of another human or the matter of their ease of living is more important than the life of another child. For most people to compare someone's life's worth to ease of living is not a good enough reason for abortion (or slavery, or many other things for that matter) because that places

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