My Body My Choice: a Woman’s Right to Choose

Alabama recently mandated a new law that authorizes a complete ban on abortion, the strictest in the United Sates, and it was passed by a group of exclusively older male politicians. This law will unjustifiably affect not only the typical woman, but women of color and poor status that had no representation on their side. Furthermore, most men can walk away from an unwanted pregnancy as the “mothers” headache, even though they supplied half the genetic material to the child. Many arguments from anti-abortionists come from that the fetus is a living human being, however, that is not the case. To state shortly, a fetus is not a separate life from the woman’s, and it cannot live independently. From this point of view, the rights of the mother to abort the fetus flow easily. The potential mother of the baby is a living person who deserves 100% bodily autonomy as we all deserve that. That is the topic for “My body my choice” essay. Here some strong arguments for pro-abortion position are shared. 

A pregnancy to a woman is one of the most crucial outlooks on her life: it changes her entire life: socially, family, and work, and also changes her body- physically and mentally. Furthermore, men do not have the same societal expectations as a as woman does when it comes to the care of a child. Women are forced to follow common stereotypes and social customs as the bearer of a child. The last argument is that women do not abort because they ‘feel’ like it today. When a woman aborts, she is humiliated, loses her health, and most of all a child. Most woman abort because they are desperate and became pregnant through rape or failed birth control. Though abortion bans such as the Human Life Protection Act will tend to argue that abortion is the end of life and murder, I believe that the right the mother has to end a pregnancy rests on her up till the viability of the fetus due to her bodily rights, freedom and equality, and her own self-loss.

The Human Life Protection Act, known as the Alabama abortion ban, is by far the most unconstitutional statute that was proposed due to its sexist voting and cruelty towards women. The act was set to enforce a total embargo on abortion in the state of Alabama, forcing a doctor who performs an abortion be sentenced to life imprisonment. The abortion ban went viral where every news writer addressed the fact that “twenty-five members of the Alabama State Senate voted to pass the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill on Tuesday- and every single one of them were white men”. To neglect a woman’s right to vote what she may do to her body is an unethical misuse of her autonomy. The men that voted for the ban did not consider the effects of the prohibition on a woman’s life, nor do they understand the complications of a pregnancy that is unwanted. How can they choose what is best for a woman and her baby when they have not ever been faced with the fearfulness of an undesirable pregnancy? Furthermore, the Human Life Protection Act, is a pun within its name. Not only does it not protect the women that it is attacking, but it is damaging their life. Eric Levitz addressed the fact that, “The government of Alabama just decided that providing an abortion to a 12-year-old girl who was raped by her father is a more serious crime than raping a 12-year-old-girl”. This act throws the ethical principle of justice out of the window. Voting for this ban, puts an extreme risk to the mental and physical health of the mother of the baby. A woman’s potential childhood/life could be destroyed due to a rape where she will not be able to move on due to her pregnancy. Principally, this law that has been proposed is dangerous, unfair, and unethical.

A woman’s right to choose stems from the argument that a fetus is not viable until the 28th week of a pregnancy, allowing a woman to determine herself if she wants to keep the fetus up to that week. Viability is the potential of the fetus to survive outside the uterus after birth naturally. Before the state of viability, the fetus is completely reliable on the mother carrying it. If a woman is killing an embryo that cannot register sensations or feel pleasure or discomfort or pain, then she is dealing with a “something” that has yet to qualify as a “someone”. If the fetus does not know in its existence or live independently, then it cannot be qualified as a baby. Furthermore, the life of an embryo exists inside the woman’s body and its location gives rise to a right in the woman to decide whether it lives or dies. Before the fetus’s viability, the mother carrying the fetus is the priority of the two. The fetus is colliding with her life, body, and employment, and if she feels as if aborting the fetus is the right decision for her, then she should have the right to proceed with it.

One of the most fundamental arguments for a woman’s right to abort is her bodily rights due to the fact that every human being has the right to their own body and a fetus is a part of a woman’s body. It is absurd that a doctor or the government should be persuaded to be allowed to determine the use of one’s body. “All of us make decisions every day about whether or not to support other human lives with our flesh, and most of us choose not to. For example: 96 percent of us choose not to give blood even though we’re eligible to, and 68 percent of us choose not to join the organ donor register. People die on waiting lists. And this is sad, but it’s also acceptable: no one is entitled to your blood or your organs unless you are generous enough to share them”. If we choose for ourselves what we think is the best option for us, then choosing whether or not to abort is the same circumstance. Deciding whether or not you can possibly support a human life in your current standing is a question that every potential mother should ask herself: the mother carrying the fetus comes first. Moreover, what is asked of a pregnant woman is far more serious than donating a liver that you are not using. Not to mention the excruciating labor that she goes through at the end of her pregnancy, but the 9 months of dedication of completely surrendering her body to another than she does not want. Multitudes of people wonder why women do not just give up their unwanted babies to other parents. “The answer is that the physical and emotional trauma of having and surrendering a child is more than any woman should have to bear unless she chooses to bear it-denying a woman abortion so others can have children is nothing more than compulsory surrogacy”. Bodily autonomy is a huge essential factor that makes a person feel in control of themselves and their life. If we break that for a woman, we are breaking their view of self.

An additional assertion for the right for women to abort is the freedom and gender equality argument. In order for women to achieve the full political, social, economic quality and the same freedoms as men, a woman should have the option to choose if she is ready to be a mother. Most anti- abortion acts allow some exceptions where a woman must convince her doctor that continuing the pregnancy would cause grave “permanent injury to (her) physical or mental health”. It should be enough for a woman to blatantly say, “No, I do not want to have this baby”. Most of our laws have slowly started edging on the social norm that a woman was born for motherhood where she is forced to take care of an unwanted child no matter the circumstances. Men, however, cannot get pregnant and do not have to face the same restrictions. They are not expected to stay for the child as the mother is, and can send a child support check while they get to further their career, social standing etc. After a woman bears a child, their freedom and life’s choices are limited to the focus of that child. Additionally, if a woman does go through the long 9-months of carrying a child and decides then to give the baby up for adoption, she is viewed as blameworthy and unrespectable to society. On the other hand, “according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.7 million children, more than 1 in 4 live without a father in the home. Consequently, there is a ‘father factor’ in nearly all of the societal ills facing America today”. Generally speaking, a man leaving his children because he did not want any is more accepted and understandable in our society than a woman doing the same.

Finally, one of the last defenses for pro-abortion is the traumatic experience a woman goes through mentally and physically while getting an abortion. Almost no women deliberately and willfully decide to get an abortion because they just simply ‘wanted’ to-they get an abortion because it is their absolute last resort. A woman on a mental health blog wrote, “I carried on going to work as normal but found myself feeling trapped in the office, experiencing, shaking, chest pain and at its worst a sense of being outside of my own body. I was completely unable to function; I didn’t care about anything and people at work had started to notice. It was at this point that I decided to leave the job”. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is not always the individual’s first choice. Abortion can cause guilt, anger, shame, and even suicidal thoughts, which no individual would choose for themselves. Women with unexpected pregnancies are willing to go through depression, rather than feel as if they cannot give the best life for their potential child. Besides facing mental agony, abortions also add extensive physical damage to the human body. The risks are pelvic infection, blood clots, heavy bleeding, tearing of the uterus wall, nausea, vomiting, and a possible hysterectomy. From looking at these side effects, it is clear that a woman who knows what is right for her body (that she cannot carry the child to birth), would only go through a devasting procedure like abortion. In the New York Times, a woman wrote out her abortion story, and ended it with “I can honestly say if I hadn’t had that abortion, I’d or the child would be dead”.

Many slogans and one-liners that you see today in protests and on the internet make the defense for pro-life seem more compelling and convincing than it really is. For example, statements like “fetuses are human beings, human beings have rights, we should advocate for quality, including equality for unborn human beings, abortion ends a life, abortion is killing” sound powerful and strong, but ultimately can be counter-argued very easily. These slogans have the potential to appear credible because human beings are typically wrong to kill; human rights are applicable to all humans, equality is a good thing, and ending lives and killing are often wrong. However, pro-abortion positions are more complex than pro-life arguments because they build upon more complicated, theoretical, and philosophical questions such as “when is killing not wrong, and do human rights include a right to someone else’s body?” Thus, there is a multitude amount of criticism for pro-life arguments. The first is that if pro-life advocates propose that a human being means biologically human-that means that human cells and tissues in your body have human rights, which they do not. Therefore, fetuses (are biologically human) which are a clump of random cells and tissues do not have rights either. Secondly, if all human beings have rights because we are cognizant, aware, and full of feelings, then fetuses and embryos before viability do not have rights. If we propose that fetuses do have rights, then we might as well suggest that vegetables and fruits also have rights. Finally, supporting the fact that a child and early fetuses are equal can bring up defensible critiques. You cannot say that everything is equal because, unfortunately, it is not. For example, if you say that an organ and a human cell are equal, well, that is wrong. If killing a human cell is not illegal, then some killing can be viewed as right or wrong. Therefore, even though abortion is killing- it does not have to be wrong.

We should be pro-abortion for the women because there is mercy, grace, compassion, and the belief of fresh starts in people. People make mistakes every day in this world, and everyone deserves a second chance, especially when they know the immensity of the error they made. Sometimes people make mistakes or have accidents that they pay for the rest of their lives. Some people get in accidental car wrecks that kill their significant other, and that is forgivable with time by themselves and society. Others have unprotected sex at the spur of the moment with a partner, and that maybe it is just not right for them at the time to bring another human being into this life, and they are viewed as murderers. For example, if an individual constantly is choosing to play a sport where they know they will get hurt in and require surgeries, they still play it. That individual gets three surgeries, all on their own doing. Some women have three abortions. Likewise, we should be pro-abortion for the children we have today. The children that were born to ready mothers exemplify the future of society because they could not have existed without the abortion that the woman had in the first place. “All around us living, breathing, and loving are the chosen children of mothers who waited, who ended an ill-timed or unhealthy pregnancy and then later chose to carry forward a new life”. At the end, you will love child that will be the one in front you no matter the amount of abortions you have had. All of the people in front of you that you love and cherish could be from mothers that chose to wait to have that child.

In conclusion, on the grounds that a mother has the right to abort a fetus before its viability by reason of her bodily rights, gender equality, and her own grief, abortion bans such as the Human Life Protection Act, should be unlawful. Restricting the right for woman to have an abortion is an abuse of a human’s right to autonomy. Everyone deserves the right to make their own decisions about their body, especially, if a fetus is taking over their body. Furthermore, women are more compelled to follow societal norms that require them to pursue motherhood and be present for the child’s life, where men, on the other hand, do not have these same stereotypes. Finally, women deserve the right to choose an abortion because their main goal is not to kill the baby, but instead, it is to choose herself first so that in her next pregnancy, if she so chooses to have one, she can give the best life to her baby. We should be compassionate and mindful towards the women that have abortions because they are going through mental and physical suffering. A considerable amount of people bash abortions, but in the end, most of them would choose themselves instead of their fetus first.

Works Cited

• “Ethics - Abortion: Arguments in Favour of Abortion.” BBC, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/mother/for_1.shtml.
• “Abortion Facts.” National Abortion Federation, 12 Sept. 2017, prochoice.org/education-and-advocacy/about-abortion/abortion-facts/.
• Kreidler, Marc. “Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice.” Free Inquiry, 8 July 2016, secularhumanism.org/2016/07/cont-why-i-am-pro-abortion-not-just-pro-choice/.
• Garrand, Danielle. “Alabama Just Criminalized Abortions – and Every Single Yes Vote Was Cast by a White Man.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 24 May 2019, www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-abortion-law-state-criminalized-for-women-every-single-yes-vote-was-cast-by-white-man-2019-05-15/.
• Levitz@EricLevitz, Eric. “The GOP's Assault on Abortion Rights Is Tyranny of the Minority.” Intelligencer, 16 May 2019, nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/alabama-abortion-ban-heartbeat-law-rape-incest-polls-republicans.html.
• Ditum, Sarah. “My Body, My Choice: from Now on, Abortion Rights Must Be Fought for from First Principles.” My Body, My Choice: from Now on, Abortion Rights Must Be Fought for from First Principles, 6 Nov. 2014, www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/my-body-my-choice-now-abortion-rights-must-be-fought-first-principles.
• “Abortion Risks Abortion Dangers and Abortion Complications.” Post-Abortion Bible Study, ramahinternational.org/abortion-risks-dangers/.
• Grob, Kristina. “Abortion and Soundbites: Why Pro-Choice Arguments Are Harder to Make.” Areo, 23 July 2019, areomagazine.com/2019/07/23/abortion-and-soundbites-why-pro-choice-arguments-are-harder-to-make/.