Abortion: The Fetus Has A Right To Live

Globally, the practice of abortion terminates millions of pregnancies every year. In the United States alone, abortion “peaked in 1990 (1.6 million), and public support for abortion peaked soon thereafter”. This statistic was averaged to 1.3 million every year. Historically, two opposing groups have emerged in debates over abortion-the “Pro-life” and the “Pro-choice.” The main question is in the determination of whether a fetus is “human” or “nonhuman.” The pro-life camp believes that the fetus is a human from the moment of conception, and any attempt to remove an early pregnancy is simply an act of “murder”, and a denial of life to the helpless unborn. This assumption receives vigorous opposition from the pro-choice activists, who focus their arguments on compassion and freedom of choice of the women as a solution to unwanted pregnancies, such as those caused by rape, incest, family planning, and other unexpected pregnancies. I do not regard myself against any freedom of choice, but I do strongly believe that life begins at conception; therefore, the guilt of circumstances should not be extended to the fetus. Since reproduction is a natural process, the fruit of that process also has some inherent rights that should not be terminated by the reprehensible practice of abortion. Because the fetus is unable to defend its own rights, society needs to guarantee that the rights of the fetus are not trumped by the rights of the parents (Ponnuru, 2006).

The balancing of different rights is not always easy to attain. Abortion rights are at the heart of the US Constitution. Whitman discusses the declining support of “a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion free from state coercion without any sustained effort on the part of ...

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...s over those who are still nonverbal. By definition, the two words human and person both refer to one body. As established scientifically, a fetus and a person are the same, in the sense that both are simply a huge number of cells existing as one unit. The only difference is in the number of cells. Therefore, since a cell is defined as a unit of life, the fetus has the same life and natural right to live as any adult (Ponnuru, 2006).

References

Carlin Jr., D. R. (1991, September 13). The new old abortion battle. Commonwealth, 118(5), pp. 504-505.

Condon, G. M. (1991, June 24).You say choice, I say murder. Christianity Today, pp. 20-24.

O’Neill, T. (2002, December 2). The heart of healing Report Newsmagazine (Nation Edition), 29(23). pp. 34.

Ponnuru, R. (2006, May 8). Winning and losing, on abortion. Nation Review, 58(8), pp. 34-37.