Ethan Meyer

Mr. Molnar
English 10 CP: Period 9
23 May 2014
Abortion: It is a Matter of Life and Death
The matter of whether or not abortion should be legal in the United States has been a
controversial topic since the 1970s. Many people are against abortion because they believe that
aborting an unborn fetus is the killing of an innocent child, while supporters of abortion claim
that it is the womans right to have the child or not. In the book Enders Game, written by Orson
Scott Card, it is illegal for families to have more than two children without permission from the
government. If they have more than two without permission, it is implied that the children are
aborted before they are born. Ender is a third child, but his family was given permission from
the government, and he is the only third child in the book. This was very rare, and he was teased
a lot for it. Most people believed that he should have been aborted, like all of the other third
children. The legalizing of abortion is so controversial because some believe that it is the
womans choice, while others believe that it is never okay to kill a human being.
One reason many people are against abortion is that they believe that aborting an unborn
fetus is murder. In the year 2010, there were 753,065 abortions that took place in America
(Pazol). Many people are upset about the large amount of abortions that take place every year.
Opponents of abortion claim that it is morally wrong to kill the fetus. They claim that life begins
at the very moment of conception, so if the unborn baby is aborted, a living human being is being
killed.
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A reason that many people think abortion should be legal is that they think that women
should be able to make their own choice. Supreme Court Justice Sandra OConner wrote in the
1992 decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, "The ability of women to participate equally in
the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their
reproductive lives." This shows that it is constitutional for women to decide whether or not they
want to have the baby or not. No one can make the decision for them; they have the
constitutional right to make it themselves.
Another reason that people argue that abortion should be illegal is that women that have an
abortion are much more likely to have harmful psychological issues. It has been proven that
women that have an abortion are 154% more likely to commit suicide than women who go
through with the birth (Reardon). Women can feel a lot of guilt for terminating their pregnancy,
and it is something they carry with them for the rest of their lives. It is very hard for them to
cope with the fact that they have killed a human being before it had a chance at life. Abortions
can also harm the male partner psychologically. 51.6% of the men reported regret, 45.2% felt
sadness, and 25.8% experienced depression (Coleman). Abortions can really cause serious
psychological issues with people and it is very hard for many people to cope with.
A reason that many people think abortion should be allowed is that abortion was declared
constitutional by the Supreme Court. In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, it was said that abortion
was constitutional because it is, a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy," and that "This
right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate
her pregnancy." This is the reason why many people argue that abortion should undisputedly be
legal. Those people say that if the Supreme Court said that it is constitutional, than it should not
be a problem.
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Another reason that people disagree with abortion is that abortion can have harmful
physical effects on women. A study in February of 2014 claims that abortion, "is significantly
associated with an increased risk of breast cancer" and that "the risk of breast cancer increases as
the number of [abortions] increases. (Huang) A Chinese study in 2013 said that, "Induced
abortion by vacuum aspiration is associated with an increased risk of first-trimester miscarriage
in the subsequent pregnancy. (Sun) Women are more likely to become affected with breast
cancer, and are more likely to have a miscarriage if they decide to terminate their pregnancy.
Both of these can have very negative effects on women who receive an abortion.
A reason that many people are in favor of abortion is that abortions can protect women from
financial struggles. Children can be very expensive to raise. In 2013, the average cost to raise a
child to the age of 18 was $241,080 (Hicken). Women who decide to have an abortion many
times feel that they do not have enough money to properly raise their children, and they do not
want to bring a child into a broken home. In the 2005 survey, Perspectives on Sexual Health,
women were asked why they decided to get an abortion and ,73% of respondents said they
could not afford to have a baby, and 38% said giving birth would interfere with their education
and career goals. (Finer) Many women do not want a child to get in the way of their career or
their education. Women feel like a child would prevent them from achieving many of their life
goals, so they decide it would just be easier to get an abortion. They believe that it would be
better to wait to have a child until they have the rest of their life on track.
One other reason that people are against abortion is that abortion drastically reduces the
number of children that are available for adoption. In 2007, only 18,000 children were put up for
adoption (Koch), and in 2002, there were 2.6 million American women looking to adopt a child
(Child Welfare Information Gateway). If the women who terminated their pregnancies would
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instead go through with the pregnancy and give up the child for adoption, the child would still be
able to live, and it would also have a home with parents who really wanted it. Many people
cannot adopt a child because there are so few out there compared to the number of people
looking to adopt. Women who cannot become pregnant would be very happy to have the chance
to adopt a child, but sometimes it just cannot happen.
One more reason that people support abortion is that it could protect the Earth from
overpopulation in the future. The United Nations estimated that the world's population will
increase to 9.3 billion by 2050, which would be "the equivalent of adding another India and
China to the world," according to the Los Angeles Times. (Weiss) People think that the large
number of abortions will help protect the world from overpopulation. If the world were to
become overpopulated, it would lead to starvation and increased disease. People see abortion as
a way to prevent this from happening. Others think aborting fetuses is a small price to in order to
protect the world from overpopulation. There were 43.8 million abortions in 2008 performed in
the world (Guttmacher Institute), and without this, The population increase if abortion were
unavailable could be substantial. (Mumford) Without abortions, the future for the world could
be a very hard place to live.
It is very easy to see why abortion is such a controversial topic in the United States. People
think abortion should be illegal because it is killing an innocent child, it can have negative
psychological impacts on women, it can also have harmful physical effects on women, and it
reduces the amount of children that can be put up for adoption. People think it should be legal
because it is supported by the Supreme Court, women should be able to make their own choice,
abortion can protect women from financial problems, and abortion could protect the world from
overpopulation. The reasonable conclusion to this argument is that abortion should be outlawed
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in the United States. It is not fair to the children to kill it before it can have a chance at life.
There are many better alternatives to not have the responsibility of raising the child than to kill it.























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Works Cited
Child Welfare Information Gateway, US Department of Health and Human Services. "Persons
Seeking to Adopt." childwelfare.gov. Feb. 2011. Web. 15 May 2014.
Coleman, Priscilla. "The Quality of Abortion Decisions and College Students' Reports of Post-
Abortion Emotional Sequelae and Abortion Attitudes." Journal of Social and Clinical
Psychology. Apr. 1998. Web. 18 May 2014.
Finer, Lawrence. "Reasons US Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative
Perspectives." Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Sep. 2005. Web. 18
May 2014.
Guttmacher Institute. "In Brief: Fact Sheet: Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide."
guttmacher.org. Jan. 2012. Web. 18 May 2014.
Hicken, Melanie. Average Cost to Raise a Kid: 241,080. CNNMoney. N.p. 14 Aug.
2014. Web. 15 May 2014.
Huang, Yubei. "A Meta-Analysis of the Association between Induced Abortion and Breast
Cancer Risk Among Chinese Females." Cancer Causes & Control. Feb. 2014. Web. 18
May 2014.
Koch, Wendy. "USA Faces Critical Adoption Shortage." usatoday.com. 10 Jan 2014. Web. 18
May 2014.
Mumford, S.D. "Role of Abortion in Control of Global Population Growth." Clinical Obstetrics and
Gynecology. Mar. 1986. Web. 18 May 2014.
Pazol, Karen. Abortion Surveillance- United States, 2010. MMWR Surveillance Summaries.
62.8 (29 Nov. 2013): 1-44. Consumer Health Complete- Ebscohost. Web. 12 May 2014.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania et al. v. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania, et
al. law.cornell.edu. 29 Jun. 1992. Web. 12 May 2014.
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Reardon, David. "Deaths Associated with Pregnancy Outcome: A Record Linkage Study of Low
Income Women." Southern Medical Journal. Aug. 2002. Web. 18 May 2014.
Roe v. Wade. US Supreme Court. lp.findlaw.com. 22 Jan. 1973. Web. 15 May 2014.
Sun, Yuelian."Induced Abortion and Risk of Subsequent Miscarriage." International Journal of
Epidemiology. June 2003. Web. 18 May 2014.
Weiss, Kenneth. "Fertility Rates Fall, but Global Population Explosion Goes On." latimes.com.
22 Jul. 2012. Web. 18 May 2014.