The Controversial Topic of Abortion Essays

One of the most controversial topics over the years, and still today, is abortion. Is abortion murder or not? When does a fetus become a human? There are no answers to these questions. Everyone individual has their own beliefs on whether or not abortion is justifiable. Abortions have been performed throughout many of centuries. Recently, there has been a number of court cases that has changed the legality of abortions, especially in the United States, for example Roe v. Wade. Even religions have changed their views on abortions over the course of the years. In the abortions wars there are two parties, pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-life believes that abortion is murder and is completely immoral. Pro-choice,

When touching the subject of abortion, one must consider that there are two sides battling for control. That is right, abortion has literally turned into a war zone where even the unlikely of individuals do the unthinkable. Each side has their motives and methods for contradicting the other. For instance, there are cases and events that support both sides of this issue.

A common argument between pro-life and pro-choice believers is abortion considered murder. According to editor Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post, “Setting the record straight on measuring fetal age and the twenty-week abortion.” A fetus is considered viable

For the next few days, the cells of a zygote divide and multiply into a blastocyst, which travels through the fallopian tubes into the uterus. Part of the blastocyst becomes an embryo, which then turns into a fetus. Although it is a well-known fact that fetuses can not survive out of the womb prior to 24 weeks, pro-lifers believe in life even at the zygote stage. “Since this can be established scientifically by looking at the number of chromosomes present in a fertilized egg, it is enough for the pro-lifer to conclude that abortion (at any stage of pregnancy) is morally akin to murder.”

If abortion is murder, then abortionists are mass murderers, and they must be stopped (qtd in Herda 96). With an issue like abortion, it is hard to decide which side is right or wrong. Although abortion has been an American reality since the 1800’s, the legitimacy of legal abortion remains extremely controversial to this day.

The topic I have selected to write about in this research paper is the issue of Abortion, My thesis in this paper is to analyze the history of abortion in the United States prior to the Roe vs. Wade decision and afterwards, and to demonstrate the ways in which our two major political parties’ views on this issue have shifted over time along with the public’s view on the issue.

Abortion is one of the controversial political issues in United State of America today. It has generated much heat, thought, opinions and votes from different angles, school of thought, religions, economic status, and members of the government. So, what is abortion? Abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. Abortion can be in term of surgical or miscarriage. According to U.S National Library of Medicine, “a miscarriage is the spontaneous loss of a fetus before the 20th week of pregnancy.” A Miscarriage could be as a result of stress, genes, environmental toxins, alcohol or drug abuse, hormones problems, smoking, and diseases such as diabetes, reproductive organs’ weakness, and infections.

Abortion has been a perplexing and controversial debate throughout time. There are many articles and philosophers who state their strong polarized opinions on whether it is ethical to have an abortion. Some people believe that abortion is morally unacceptable and under no circumstances will it ever be acceptable. On the contrary, other people believe that a woman should have the right to choose whether she wants to continue with the pregnancy, especially under certain conditions. In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson uses real-life analogies to illustrate her key argument that, even assuming a fetus is considered a person from the moment of conception, the mother and the fetus have an equal right to life. Thomson believes that

In the 40 years since passing of the legislation by Roe v. Wade that gave women a choice to have abortion, a lot has changed. There has been a great deliberation on the topic of abortion. This includes issues surrounding problems of having abortions to the likely advantages of abortion. Legally induced abortion is defined as an operation or procedure which is performed by a licensed professional or physician with an intention of terminating a known or suspected intrauterine pregnancy in order to produce a non-viable fetus. This can be done at any time of the gestational age. Over the past few years, there have been significant changes and alterations in the demographic composition of both young and elderly women who procure abortions.

So long as political debate has existed in America, there has been a strong tension between the ideologies of conservatism and liberalism. While there are numerous differences between the two ideologies, the core of each is expressed clearly through the modern debate of abortion. The vision, ideals, and assumptions of each ideology can be identified through the way in which each ideology argues its position on abortion.

If a woman does not want any of her part to develop, she should be

The pro-life views are based on a more conservative and often religious point of view. While pro-choice activists fight for women’s rights; pro-life activists fight for the right of the baby. Many people believe that a babies’ life doesn’t begin until it is born. From both a pro-life and medical stance, we see otherwise. John Jefferson Davis does a great job in describing when a babies’ life begins, “It is misleading to speak about the newly conceived as “potential” human life. Prior to conception the sperm and egg represent only the potentiality of a new human life, but once fertilization has taken place, and actual human life has begun. More accurately, the newly conceived individual is an actual life with great potential” (Abortion and the Christian, 23). Not only does pro-choice understand the medical realities of an abortion, but they also stand for the sanctity of life. This idea is often formed from the religious standpoint.

Many people opposed to abortion rely on the fact that the fetus is a human being from the moment that they are conceived. At that moment a unique DNA is created and they argue that God places a human soul in that just fertilized Ovum (Robinson, p.1). This has seemed to be a continuing debate between both sides. Pro-life activists disagree with the argument that a fetal life becomes a person only when electrical activity begins in the cerebral cortex. They argue that at the time of conception all major decisions as to what that fetus will become have been determined. For example, whether it will be male of female, what height it will be, what build it will be, and what colour it's

Pro-life and Pro-choice are the main groups associated with this topic. They are each the antitheses of the other. Those sided with Pro-choice advocate that a woman has the final say when it comes to her body. They claim that an unformed human life has less of a choice or say than the mother does. Additionally, certain research has offered the evaluation that “… a fetus is incapable of feeling pain prior to the 24th week of gestation, and possibly throughout pregnancy” (Saporta); thus, furthering the view that a fetus should not be considered human until a certain time during a pregnancy. Supporters of Pro-life view the existence of another human being to be more important than the consequences a woman would have to face by keeping an unwanted child. Furthermore, revealed by Kenneth Jost in “Abortion Debates”, fetal pain expert Kanwaljeet Anand of Oxford

fetus is nothing but a bit of tissue but that does not change the fact