My Pro-Life Position: Abortion is Murdering

Abortion is a topic that has captivated American citizens for years now, and there is considerable evidence that shows how abortion is murdering a human being. I want to show you that rape isn’t a reason for aborting a child, women should not be able to use abortion as a form of contraception, and abortion is murder.

All life is precious; there was a time when I thought I was better off not being “here”, or not useful to this world, I even had thoughts of “I wish I would have been aborted”. Most of you may or may not know that I have been medically diagnosed with three mental illnesses; depression, anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. During my sophomore year, I was sexually assaulted by my step-father(at the time). I was then put into the foster care system and sent to two psychiatric hospitals. I had many tests were done on my head and body, as well as many other traumatic experiences at the hospital. In my Junior year, I bounced back, and then I was sexually assaulted by 3 men for an excruciating month. To add to my pain these men were my biological father’s friends. Once again I made my way back to the foster care system and the hell of which I called the hospital. That’s a lot, right? Do you think you could have survived this? In a short 2 years, I went through a trauma that I could not explain in just words! Trauma is horrible, and it should never happen to anyone ever. But life experience has made me a strong believer in justice and given me a passion for life. Now, what if I was aborted? Then what, Who would I be? Would those experiences that I went through, happened to my little sisters? Luckily, none of those instances lead to a pregnancy, but being put through this has changed my perspective on what life is, and how we let people determine what is life, and what is not.

You see, there are a lot of debates, including the survey you filled out, about whether or not abortion is okay if rape or incest is involved. US Today states that there was a study done by the Guttmacher Institute that less than 1% of women obtain a pregnancy that is due to rape. So why do we automatically assume that rape is the only reason women are having abortions. Now some may want to argue the issue, what if we made abortions only legal if it was a rape scenario? I believe, that when women are in an intimate relationship(s), and that relationship(s) leads to pregnancy, that the male doesn’t want and then asks the woman to get an abortion, we would see more situations where women claim that a rape occurred solely because they didn’t want to follow through with the pregnancy. Mariska Hargitay also known as Olivia Benson, who you may or may not have heard of, stars on “Law & Order Special Victims Unit” stated in an open interview on “The View” that there is already a significant backlog in criminal rape-kit testing and if more rapes were “claimed”, that would continue to add to the backlog and take away from the significance of an actual situation. Not every rape or potential rape situation can be legally determined in a timely manner when it concerns abortion. Not saying that women who do claim to be raped, are lying; but it would open a door for women who aren’t raped to go to that as their contraceptive method to prevent that unwanted pregnancy from happening.

Now some may argue that abortion is not murder. But I believe abortion is murder. Now you may say, “It's my body, my choice” which is true by all means and I do NOT want to strip you of your rights, and liberties, and I don’t want to take your choices away from you. I only want to take away from killing another human being, who is alive. I believe life starts at conception, and 42.9% of students polled believe that as well. Now say you had an intimate relationship that lead to the “consequence” of a baby, and you don’t want to have that big of responsibility yet, or can’t afford the baby, or don’t have the support you believe you need in order to have that baby. I believe there are other alternative contraceptives that work just as effectively, which are; abstinence, birth control, condoms, and other alternatives other than having to raise a child or abort the baby.

We live in a society where people can’t claim that they don’t have contraceptives available. The topic of contraceptives is discussed in schools at a much younger age than it used to be. Now some questions that I’ve come across that people ask is “do health clinics give free birth control and condoms?” In an article about Planned Parenthood Kendall stated that health centers “ give condoms away for free, and the staff there can also help you learn about prescription birth control methods”. Most insurances now have some form of free birth control medication. Babies can be expensive, there is now a program called WIC. WIC is for soon-to-be mothers, mothers, and children from the age of 0-5 years old. Kendell additionally states “To be eligible for the WIC program you must fall at or below the 185% of U.S Poverty Income Guidelines.” If you are under the age of 18, you are living with a parent/guardian/foster parent and are not paying all the bills that you would if you were living in an apartment or house alone you would qualify. So there have been programs made so that the mothers that don’t have a father in the picture or don’t have a very well-paying job can afford to take care of the baby, other than aborting it.

I want to explain that just because you don’t “think” you have access to contraceptives, or you think there is no alternative way to care for the child, is not an excuse to commit murder. In the United States, if you were to kill a pregnant woman, whether it be homicide, accident, or involuntary manslaughter. You can be tried for 2 counts of murder, and most of the time they’re convicted of the two counts. In an NCSL article, the author stated “At least 29 states have fetal homicide laws that apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy, which include any state of gestation(1st week of pregnancy)/development,' 'conception,' 'fertilization' or 'post-fertilization” which Missouri is part of that program/law. So to summarize this law, it means from the moment of conception you can be charged with fetal homicide.

I’m a strong believer in “every action has a consequence.” So stating in general, if you do the activities to produce the child; you need to be willing to raise that baby and take responsibility for what you created. I could also use the example, if you don’t want to have an STD, you participate in being protective of not getting those. So if you don’t want a child, you should protect yourself by using the other contraceptives I stated earlier. So let’s compare this to maybe a student’s everyday life. If you don’t want to get injured you take certain precautions for example football players wear helmets to prevent brain injury, and if we took those precautions away then the rules of the game would change completely. So all of these precautions are set up to ensure the safety of every athlete involved. If we take all of these precautions for something as simple as a sports game, then why do we not take these precautions when it comes to human life.

I don’t believe it’s moral for women to use abortion as their escape plan, or their contraceptive. I feel it should be illegal to kill an unborn child for the parents' own convenience. An Article from “Should Abortion be Legal” States that “45% of all women having abortions every year have had at least one previous abortion, and 8.6% of abortions that were reported to the disease, control, and prevention line were undergone by women who had three or more previous abortions.” These articles not only suggest, but prove that more than half of the abortions that happen today, happen because this is a women’s way of using contraception. At ProCon.org author Steven Levitt, Ph.D. wrote that “after abortion was legalized, conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent, indicating that many women are using abortion as a method of birth control, a crude and drastic sort of insurance policy.” That statement shows that we are allowing women to kill their biological babies because they didn’t “want” their baby. I believe that the “adults” involved need to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences ( the baby ). Having sexual intercourse at any point in time, even if contraceptives are used, there’s a risk of having a pregnancy. That unborn baby shouldn’t be murdered because of the decisions made by adults, or people making adult decisions. If we continue to allow these abortions to be made because a mother simply “doesn’t want to have another kid” we are showing that human life is disposable. When in fact, every single life matters. House Representative Randy Hultgren, wrote 'When we tell one another that abortion is okay, we reinforce the idea that human lives are disposable, that we can throw away anything or anyone that inconveniences us.'

However, there are instances when abortion can be necessary for the mother. I believe that abortion of a human being should be allowed when the mother of the unborn child is at risk of dying. That doesn’t mean that I am for abortion because I’m not. I do not support aborting a baby, even if the baby were to die 10 minutes after birth. Miracles happen every day. It rains when sometimes it’s not supposed to, so who is to say that a baby can’t pull through, or a doctor was wrong, and the baby can live? Mistakes happen, but abortion is a mistake you can NEVER take back. I believe that if a mother is at risk of dying if an abortion would need to be necessary, it wouldn’t be murder, but that would be self-defense. But there are also procedures that can be done by doctors to save both the mother and the unborn child. There is a difference between direct abortions, and a treatment a pregnant mother chooses to save her own life. Unfortunately, there are some required medical procedures the mother is required to save her life at the risk of her unborn child. For example, if there was a tumor in the uterus or an ectopic pregnancy that holds the threat of sudden death to the mother and the unborn baby, that would be indirect abortion.

Me saying that there is only one purpose of abortion, and that is to end the life of a child. Even with the “life of the mother” situation, both parties should be treated as patients (baby and the mother). A doctor should try to protect both, and that’s what they do. If there was a situation of a doctor treating a pregnant woman, and the unborn child dies from that procedure, that would not be considered an abortion. An abortion act is done by the mother, the baby has no say. But those are two separate heartbeats and two separate people.

To conclude, I am pro-life because abortion takes the life of another person, a helpless child who has value and rights of their very own, Dr. Seuss stated “A person’s a person, no matter how small”.

Works Cited

• “NY State Senate Bill S240.” NY State Senate, 23 Jan. 2019, www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s240.
• Hargitay, Mariska. “Ending Backlog of Un-Tested Rape-Kits.” YouTube, YouTube, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=57lwI2cvAF8.
• Hargitay, Mariska. “How Playing Benson Changed Her Life, the Facts of Untested Rape-Kits.” YouTube, YouTube, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=57lwI2cvAF8.
• Dastagir, Alia E. “Rape and Incest Account for Hardly Any Abortions. So Why Are They Now a Focus?” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 24 May 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/24/rape-and-incest-account-few-abortions-so-why-all-attention/1211175001/.
• Skinner, Erik, and Alise Garcia. “State Laws on Fetal Homicide.” State Laws on Fetal Homicide and Penalty-Enhancement for Crimes Against Pregnant Women, 2018, www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx.
• Con, Pro. “Pros & Cons - ProCon.org.” Abortion, 2019, abortion.procon.org/.