I feel abortion is similar to euthanasia, where doctors assist mothers in killing the life that mother decided to create. Why are children in mother's womb treated differently than children out of the womb? Can a mother take their born child to the hospital and have then euthanized because the mother doesn't want it anymore? I don't think so. So why are children in mother's womb treated differently? I understand that there are unexpected pregnancies but pregnancy is a risk a woman and man are taking when they are having sexual activity with or without contraceptives. If they take the risk, they must take responsibility and face the consequences of their actions. That's life. I recognize that unwanted children is another issue for they end up with uninvolved parents or children end up in foster care. Now I ask, what has our society come to? Why are people making children they don't want? How messed up are our society's morals to allow people to make children and make it acceptable to be irresponsible?
I would disagree with Cristian Jaramillo's blog "Republican legislation = Odd". I feel Texas' sonogram law is necessary when it comes to abortion. The law requires doctors to do ultrasounds, make woman hear their baby’s heartbeats, and all the other required actions. Some say it violates doctors’ and women's 1st Amendment rights but these requirements are already required by hospitals. Whenever a doctor is about to do some kind of surgery or procedure, the doctor must educate the patient about the details and risks of the procedure. It doesn't matter if the patient wants to hear the risk of a procedure, the doctor tells patients the risks anyway and has them sign a waiver that they understand the risk for consent and legal reasons. The blog also links to an article that states the Texas sonogram law contradicts doctor's moral code. But from what I remember and learned, from being an EMT and being a pre-med student, doctors take a Hippocratic oath that includes a Latin statement meaning "DO NO HARM". I would think taking a life created by a human reproductive system is considering doing harm, a contradiction to the doctor's Hippocratic oath.
In the article, Michael talks about abortion and his views of the act. He uses an analogy comparing abortion to another controversial type of killing, assisted suicide. The idea of a doctor helping you remove an unborn baby and a doctor helping you not have to suffer are very similar in the fact that you are deciding when life should and should not continue. Both practices are to ease some type of pain or struggle, whether it be a suffering patient at the end of their life or a mother who doesn't want to go through the burden of raising a child.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I'll say that I am for physician assisted suicide. At least in this case the person is deciding for their own life and not another's. I view it unconstitutional and unfair to tell a person they must suffer until their time comes when the next door down a doctor could be using a machine to keep a person alive who should have died long ago. This is when "Playing God" comes into question. Which of the two, if not both, described above is playing God? Killing a person is one of the furthest things from playing God, man has been doing this for ages. One benefit of assisted suicide is that it reduces the rates of actual suicide. When a doctor helps, everything can be planned and clean. Relatives can say goodbye.
As for abortion... This is an issue I struggle with. I used to be hardcore pro-life. I didn't think it was fair to let some young girl sleep around with guys having no consequences along the way. The only sufferer in this case is the unborn baby who had no say in his/her own life. He/she was basically murdered. Then I came upon questions: What if it was rape? Ok, well, then that's not the girl's fault and she shouldn't have to raise a baby that is half her half a strange guy who raped her. In this case yes, but no more. What if the mom's life is in danger? Well, either they abort the baby or they both die. Sure, let's let them have the operation too. What if the baby was a result of incest? So, this is the girl's fault but at the baby's expense. Aborting this baby is almost identical to assisted suicide. Maybe not everyone agrees, but in the three cases described above and maybe a few other weird cases, the woman should definitely have the choice.
The golden question is, what about in the everyday scenario of a girl accidentally getting pregnant? I am undecided. There are still things that I don't know about pregnancy. But I will talk about a couple arguments. When a girl has a period and didn't get pregnant, isn't this the same result as an abortion? People will say there never was life or there never was the potential to be a baby. These are both wrong. The egg alone was life that went to waste. There was a potential for that egg. At the moment of conception, though, if left alone, this will be a baby. When a sperm meets the egg, is that automatically more life than either part separate? In a way, yes. But how much more? Is this more or less life than an animal? How about an insect you are about to swat for coming in your house? At the moment of conception, it is still only one cell. From there it will be two cells. At what point is the total more than the sum of the individual parts? All cells divide so all cells will be something more. In pregnancy, the fundamental difference is that these cells are not adding to an existing organism but creating a new one.