Abortion: A Human Rights Violation

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What if someone told you that each year thirty million innocent people were killed without being able to defend themselves (Bradford)? What if you were then told that these thirty million people were unborn babies? Does that change anything? Oxford English Dictionary defines abortion as, “The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.” Notice how the pregnancy is described as human in the definition. Abortion is a human rights violation because it is a form of torture, Article three of The Bills of Rights protects the right to live, and it is similar to the issue of slavery.
Oxford English Dictionary defines torture as, “the act of inflicting severe pain upon someone.” According to the article Unborn Babies Can Feel Pain, unborn babies can positively feel pain by week twenty, but it is quite possible that the development of the spinothalamic pathway, which allows pain, is much earlier. This means that while a child is being aborted, he is feeling the entire process. What makes this situation even worse is the fact that unborn babies have a heightened intensity for pain (Unborn Babies Can Feel Pain). With that in mind, imagine the pain felt by an unborn child as a result of the horrific procedures doctors use to complete an abortion. Among these procedures is a hysterotomy in which a child is removed from the mother’s womb and is allowed to die by neglect or by a direct act. This procedure is used specifically for late term pregnancies, which are considered as pregnancies in the second and third trimesters (Abortion… How is it performed?). Going back to a previous statement, babies positively develop their sense of pain, which is intensified, by twenty weeks. What th...

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Bradford, Haven. “Abortion: A Violation of Human Rights.” The Words of the Gow Family. Feb.
2002. Web. 1 May 2014.

Burleigh, Anne. “Choosing Life.” Modern Age. 1998. Web. 30 April 2014.

Flowers, Nancy. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Human Rights Here and Now.
University of Minnesota: Human Rights Resource Center. 1998. Web. 1 May 2014.

Keller, Donald. “Abortion if a Violation of Human Rights.” Debates. 2013. Web. 1 May 2014.

Koukl, Greg. “Abortion and Human Rights.” Stand to Reason. 21 February 2013. Web. 1 May
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Lewin, Tamar. “Rape and Incest: Just 1% of All Abortions.” The New York Times. 13 October
1989. 1 May 2014.

Unborn Babies Can Feel Pain. “Unborn Babies Can Feel Pain.” Minnesota Citizens Concerned for
Life. 2012. Web. 1 May 2014.

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