Charie Slone

WR 122

ABORTION

During the past quarter century, abortion has joined race and war as one of the most debatable subject of controversy in the United States. It discusses human interaction where ethics, emotions and law come together. There are many points of view toward abortion but the only two fine distinctions are "pro-choice" and "pro-life". A pro-choicer would feel that the decision to abort a pregnancy is that of the mothers and the state has no right to interfere. A pro-lifer would hold that from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive, but others approve of abortion because they believe that a fetus is not human until birth.

A mother kills her baby because it is unwanted, yet she is not charged with murder. Is this right? Believe it or not, this has happened more than twenty million times in the past twenty years. The problem is that they have been killed legally because of abortion. If a doctor killed a baby one minute after it was born, he would be charged with murder. But if he were to kill a baby one minute before it was born, and a minute before that and so on, they would not be considered a murderer. At what minute can one consider a life worthless and the next precious?

In the United States about 1.6 million pregnancies end in abortion. Women with incomes under eleven thousand are over three times more likely to abort than those with incomes above twenty-five thousand. Unmarried women are four to five times more likely to abort than married and the abortion rate has doubled for 18 and 19 year olds. Recently the U.S. rate dropped 6 percent overall but the rate of abortion among girls younger than 15 jumped 18 percent. The rate among minority teens climbed from 186 per 1,000 to 189 per 1,000.

A major factor that is missing is in today's world are moral values. If people actually had morals, then abortion might not occur. No matter what anyone argues, abortion is murder, plain and simple. How could one deny that a doctor grabbing his forceps and crushing a child's skull and sucking out what was once a baby's brain, is not murder.

There are many of these disgusting, abortion-slaughter techniques that are used today. Examples are the Dilatation and Curettage (D&C) where a loop shaped steel knife is inserted and the child is cut into pieces. Dilatation and Evacuation (D&E), is the procedure mentioned above. It is similar to the D&C but first the child's brain is cut out. Usually the head is hardened to bone and must be compressed or crushed in order to get the brain out. Another highly controversial technique is the partial birth method. This procedure in performed in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy or between 20 to 32 weeks, sometimes later. Some medical facts, a book printed by the National Right to Life,

The partial birth technique is performed like this:

"Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist reaches into the uterus, grabs the unborn baby's leg with forceps, and pulls the baby into the birth canal, except for the head, which is deliberately kept just inside the womb. (At this point in a partial -birth abortion, the baby is alive.) Then the abortionist jams scissors into the back of the baby's skull and spreads the tips of the scissors apart to enlarge the wound. After removing the scissors, a suction catheter is inserted into the skull and the baby's brains are sucked out. The collapsed head is then removed from the woman."

This next passage I read out of a magazine at my mother's house. Here a nurse tells her version of a partial-birth abortion.

"I stood at the doctor's side and watched him perform a partial-birth abortion on a woman who was six months pregnant. The baby's heart beat was clearly visible on the

Ultrasound screen. The doctor delivered the baby's body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby's body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together while He was kicking his feet. The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby's head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up. Then he stuck the high-powered suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. He pulled the tiny body out of his mother's womb, and moved him to another table. I never went back to the clinic. But I am still haunted by the face of that little boy. It was the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen." (Patriot, Partial Birth- Abortion)

Abortion can be justified by a women's right to choose, but it should be banned because it's immoral and life begins at conception. Women have been given the right to have an abortion under the United States Constitution, but this issue will continue to be protested for the rights of the unborn. Life begins at conception. Before birth the child's heart beats, the gastric juices flow in the stomach, and all its necessary organs have been made present. This is a child that thinks, dreams, and feels pain. Maybe soon the abortion issue will reverse, and people will see the rights of the unborn as greater importance than that of a personal right.

Bibliography

WORKS CITED

Andryszewski, Tricia. Abortion: Rights, Options, and Choices. Brookfield, Conn.: The

Millbrook Press, 1996.

Doerr, Ed. "Partial Birth Abortion." Patriot. Sept/Oct 2000. Nancy R. Jacobs. Vol. 60,

Issue 5, pg. 38-46.

Miller, Patricia G. The Worst of Times. 1st Ed. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1994.

Siegal, Mark A. Abortion: A Serious Issue. Alison Landers. Wylie, TX: Information

Plus, 1994.

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