Abortion Essay

Plan B? What Was Plan A?

When it comes to the sensitive topic of abortion, many people take moral or ethical strong stands in making their opinions known as to when abortion is and is not appropriate. Some will even say abortion is murder. The issue of abortion is the news, posts in social media and can become an emotional conversation among friends and acquaintances. Abortion has become the focus of religious and political platforms. You are either pro-choice or pro-life and you will find that out as you read car bumper stickers as you’re driving. The topic of abortion becomes more complicated when we talk about when a life actually begins or when you call a cluster of cells a person? That very question has torn the United States apart ever since the famous court case of Roe V. Wade in 1973. The court case mandated that a woman has the right to abort a fetus until it is "viable," meaning that it's "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, though with artificial aid”. Even now, 41 years later, states are making laws that challenge the morality of Roe V. Wade verdict. For example the heartbeat bill of Ohio that mandates abortions are illegal if there is a heartbeat. According to The Cleveland Clinic, a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus at (5 weeks) and brainwaves at (6 weeks). I believe abortion should be allowed and therefore not considered the murder of a person when brainwaves or a heartbeat is not detectable.

In the article “Anti-Abortion and Pro-Choice”, E.J. Graff makes an argument about how the cells of the fetus are not alive so abortion should not be consider murder from a moral point. I agree completely with E.J. Graff’s argument. A living person and a fetus without a heartbeat or brainwaves i...

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... medical world when someone ceases brain function (even as the rest of their body may function properly), we often consider them dead. Their consciousness is gone. I therefore assert that a fetus or embryo, which doesn’t have any consciousness, is not a person either, and is morally and medically acceptable to destroy. By making that argument some individuals like Ms. Hazzard would argue if coma patients should be considered a person. Seems to me the answer to that question depends on whether or not the coma patient has a chance of recovering. If the chances of recovery are high, society should still consider that patient a person. This indicates that the personhood of the coma patient depends on their future ability to have reach full consciousness. The same can be said of the fetus. Both the coma patient and the fetus are human; neither have consciousness.