14.1 Abortion, Arguments For and Against

The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the Constitution of the United States says that people have the right to an abortion.  This ruling was made in the case of Roe vs Wade.  Over 63 million fetuses have been aborted in the United States since that ruling.  The word abortion never comes up in the Constitution.  The argument made by the Supreme Court judges was that the Constitution guarantees due process.  Due process means that the government can't deprive people of liberty unless they broke the law and they had every chance to defend themselves against the accusations that they broke the law.  How did the Supreme Court Justices get from that, to the idea that the Constitution guarantees the right to abortion?  The logic went something like this.  The right to liberty includes the right to privacy from the government telling you what to do in your private life.  For example, if you want to take a birth control pill that's your private business and the government does not have the right to tell you whether you can or cannot take that pill.  There was a case like that in which the Supreme Court did rule that the right to privacy includes the right to take birth control pills.  The Supreme Court in Roe Vs Wade used the same argument with abortion.  They argued that whether a woman chooses to abort or not is her own private business.  What is the flaw of this logic?  One flaw is that abortion does not just involve a woman's privacy, it also involves the life of her unborn baby.  The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that all people have the right to life:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men...

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution says a state can’t deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.  What about the unborn baby's right to life? 

In 2022 there were new justices in the  U.S. Supreme Court and they overturned Roe vs Wade in a case called Dobbs vs Jackson and ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.  They left the decision up to individual states whether to allow abortion or not.  A lot of women reacted with rage. 

In the video below a woman angrily chanted that it's her choice.

The most common argument made against abortion by women is "Keep your laws off my body" or "My body my choice". 

The problem with that argument is that it ignores the fact that there are two bodies and one of those is the baby's body.  Doesn't the baby have the right to their choice to live?

One argument for abortion is that pregnancy itself puts the life of the mother at risk.  According to the Center for Disease Control in 2018, 17.3 mothers out of 100,000 died while giving birth to a child.  The counter argument to that is that abortion does not only put the life of the child at risk it ends the childs life.  Abortion can cause medical problems and can make it harder to have a baby later when a woman wants to have a baby.

Another argument for allowing abortion is that if doctors aren't allowed to do it, women will try and abort the baby without doctors which puts women at higher risk than if they had a doctor doing it.  People who argue this say that every woman has a right to a safe abortion.  The problem with that argument is that abortion isn't safe for the baby and that women don't have to abort the baby, they can be safe and not abort the baby and go to a hospital when the baby is about to be born.   

Many people argue that abortion should be allowed in the case of rape.  Some people say it's not fair for the raped woman to have to carry the child.  Others say it's not fair to the child, it's not their fault their mother was raped.  In the next lesson a young woman who was raped and kept the child says why that was the right thing to do and why she's glad she kept the child.

One of the arguments in favor of abortion is that the unborn baby is not really a baby yet.  In fact when a baby starts it starts as a fertilized cell which divides into 2 cells which divide into 4 cells and so on.  At what point should we consider those cells a baby and not just a collection of cells?

Here is a picture of the fetus at different times during the pregnancy.  When do you think it starts looking like a baby and not a clump of cells?

March for Life posted facts about fetuses at different times in the womb.  Here is what they wrote occurs at 15 weeks.

At 15 weeks, your baby can more around in the womb and even wiggle her fingers and toes. At your ultrasound appointment, you might see her making faces or sucking her thumb...Though you cant feel her yet she is kicking, curling her toes, and stretching her arms and legs... At 15 weeks your baby can sense light.

Here is a table of the gestational age when babies are aborted in the United States.  This data is from a CDC web page from 2021.

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Lets say we look at the picture of fetuses above and decide that the fetus at 3 months looks like a real baby.  According to this table 13.4% + 2.9% + 1.7% + 1.6% + 1% of babies are aborted after that time.  That's 20.6% of babies or 1 in 5 abortions are aborting fetuses that resemble babies.  How many is 20.6%?  About 930,160 abortions were performed in the U.S. in 2020.  20.6% of 930,160 is 191,613 fetuses or almost 200,000 fetuses in 2020.  There were 63 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe vs Wade.  20.6% of that is about 13 million abortions over the age of 3 months. 

The state of New York passed a law in 2019 making it legal to abort a baby at any time up to birth.  If a baby was born alive from a botched abortion it used to be protected but New York lawmakers removed that protection.  There is a group that tries to fight the passage of laws like these called the ACLJ which stands for American Center For Law and Justice.

There are some people who argue that until a baby is born it is not a baby.  What is the difference between a baby just before it's born and after it's born?  It leaves the womb through the birth canal.  Does that magically turn it from a non-baby into a baby?  This ridiculous idea is made fun of in the video below.  One thing to know before watching the video is the definition of C section.  If a baby is stuck and won't come out sometimes a doctor has to make a cut in the uterus to get the baby out.  In that case the baby does not go through the birth canal.

One argument for abortions is that the mother might not be able to provide a good life for the child after its born.  Maybe she doesn't have the money to give the child a good life.  There are a lot of things wrong with that argument.  One is that there are many families that would like to adopt children.  If she doesn't want the child or thinks she can't give the child a good life she can give up the child for adoption.  Even if she doesn't give up the child for adoption welfare laws in the United States insure that children of poor people are provided for. In fact there are women who have babies just in order to get that money.  Even if a child doesn't have a great life that doesn't make it right to kill the unborn child. 

Another reason given for abortion is that not having an abortion might be bad for the mental health of the mother especially if she doesn't want the child.  The mother might suffer from depression after having a baby.  There are mothers who get post-partum depression which is a temporary depression after having a child.  What you don't hear from people who support abortion is how having an abortion can make the mother depressed for the rest of her life.  Tori, a woman who had an abortion made that point when she said "‘you’ll carry a baby for nine months, but you’ll carry an abortion for the rest of your life."   Serena, a girl who had an abortion when she was 15 years old tells her story in the video below.  It's a very sad story because abortion is very sad.  If you want to skip that part then you can scroll to 11:47.  There it's still sad but you can still here the message Serena has on abortion.

 There are many other women who regret having abortions.  Some have posted their stories at cantstaysilent.com .

Here is a table of reasons given by mothers for aborting their child.

Kevin Sorbo is an actor who is best known for his starring role in Hercules The Legendary Journeys.  He is pro-life and narrarated an animation about an abortion that happened called The Procedure.  It's very upsetting because it shows what really happens during an abortion.  Instead of embedding the gruesome video which you can see by clicking on the link above I embedded a video of him talking about it below.  I don't think anyone younger than 12 should watch The Procedure.

People who want to help pregnant women get through difficult circumstances without resorting to abortion, have set up pregnancy centers where women can go and get help.  A group called Janes Revenge which is connected to the violent left wing radical group Antifa, has vandalized and even firebombed some pregnancy centers.  Here is a video about what they did to one pregnancy center. 

Antifa & Transgender Activists used violence and noise to shut down Kristan Hawkins' pro-life campus speaking tour tvent at Virginia Commonwealth University. Kristan speaks about this below.

The left likes to portray itself as compassionate and concerned about the welfare of the weak and less fortunate.  Do the pro-abortion activists strike you as compassionate people or are the people who set up the pregnancy centers compassionate people?

Paul Watson speaks in the video below about more bad behavior by leftists who were angry that Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

People who are for abortion say abortion is necessary for women who have been raped and became pregnant.  Those women through no fault of their own were made pregnant when they didn't want to be by an evil man.  Should she have to support a child that she didn't choose to have?  Shouldn't she abort the child?  Leanna had the option to abort her child for free but chose to keep the child after being raped.  Why did she do that and what happened to her as a result?

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