Abortion :: essays research papers

Abortion is one of the most controversial issues around, and is an issue that will never be agreed upon. By bringing morals into the question of whether it should be legal to have abortions, this issue has been elevated to a higher level. By some people, it is no longer looked at as a question of choice but as a question of morality, and these concepts have led to a full-blown debate over something that really should not be questioned. Every woman in America has the right to decide what to do with their bodies. No government or group of people should feel that they have the right to dictate to a person what path their lives should take. People who say that they are "pro-life" are in effect no more than "anti-choice". These pro-lifers want to put the life and future of a woman into the hands of the government. At the time, which the fetus is aborted, it is not a being with personality. Anyone would agree to the fact that it is alive and human, however, it is also true that it is no more a person than a tree would be. Though the fetus may be a large grouping of human cells, with the potential to become more than that, at the state of development which the fetus has reached at the time of abortion, it is not a person and therefore should not be looked at as such. W hen does the fetus become a person? Though the legal moment at which the fetus is looked at for the first time as a human being is deemed to be at the instant that it is born, the difference between an eight- week premature infant and a 24-week-old fetus is virtually nonexistent. So should the fetus be regarded as a person, or should the premature baby still be regarded as a fetus? Thus arises the statement by the pro-life side of the argument that should not the fact that we are unable to pinpoint with absolute certainty the precise moment when a fetus suddenly develops a personality means that we ought to do away with the process until such a time that we are able to ascertain that persons are not being murdered. This argument will go on for quite some time, and is but one in a list of reasons why the pro-life supporters take the standpoint that they do.