 |
Cinders said:
Pro-lifers propagate the myth that abortions are only obtained by women who are lazy, selfish, and/or underage.
They also claim that the majority of abortions are late term-- this isn't true. In fact, the United States has laws against late term abortions.
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a fetus is not considered alive until it has taken its first breath of air and can live independently of the mother. If a man murders a pregnant woman, he is not charged with double-homicide. On a lighter note, lone pregnant women cannot drive in the carpool lane simply because they're "driving for two."
The real question about this is when does life begin? That's where line drawing comes in. Is the morning after pill as morally reprehensible as an abortion? If you say yes, then are you against contraceptives? Uninterrupted, the sperm would have hit the egg, and created a fetus, which would grow into a baby. Does that mean condoms, which prevent this from happening are wrong?
St Thomas Aquinas believed that God would not bestow a soul onto a vessel that had no use for it. This is why he did not believe a fetus had a soul until quickening-- when the brain and nervous system are developed enough for the fetus to kick in the womb.
Several Catholics believe that life begins at conception-- in which case, the morning after pill is wrong. The same Catholics believe that it's wrong for a woman who was raped to take the morning after pill proceeding her attack.
Abortion-- and regulating it-- has been a tool of political manipulation of women since the 1960s. I read an article in one of my classes detailing how if a woman wanted an abortion, she had to go up in front of a panel of doctors (all men in those days), who would decide for her if she could do it. More often than not, their answer would be no.
Personally, I cannot say what I would do if I was backed so far into a corner I thought I needed an abortion. Some cultures will kill a woman if she has sex out of wedlock (called honor killings), in which case pregnancy can literally be the death of a woman (and often her child) if she does not terminate. It should be noted that honor killings often occur even if the woman was raped.
In the play Mitzi's Abortion, a woman who did not initially want the child bonds with it during the first trimester only to find out later that her baby has suffered a severe birth defect known as anencephaly. Straight from Wikipedia, that means that "Children with this disorder are born without a forebrain, the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres (which include the isocortex, which is responsible for higher level cognition, i.e., thinking). The remaining brain tissue is often exposed—not covered by bone or skin... Most anencephalic babies do not survive birth, accounting for 55% of non-aborted cases. If the infant is not stillborn, then he or she will usually die within a few hours or days
|
|
