Pros and Cons of Abortion as Highlighted in The Ny Times Article

Pros and cons of abortion

To discuss the topic of abortion pros and cons, this essay explores the heated debate surrounding the practice of terminating a pregnancy. Abortion has always been practiced since ancient times, bringing forth the idea of removing a fetus from a woman’s body. Years go by and the argument of pro-life and pro-choice come upon society causing a giant fire. Women began getting raped and didn’t want to have the child of their rapist which lead to people arguing that its murder to kill that baby before its born, yet others support it because it is that woman’s body which is what truly matters at the end of the day. The importance of this issue resides in the fate of the unborn child. Yes, that baby will die, but a woman has rights to what happens to her own body and nobody should be able to take that right away from any person. Also, this depends on the case at hand. Was this consensual sex or was this violent, unwanted rape? Abortion has created the obvious case of people building abortion clinics, considering it is a medical state at hand. Some states and countries have banned these clinics throughout the world because of the majority population being pro-life and believing that killing that child is either murder or against their religion or just plain wrong in their eyes. This leads to pro-life rioters in front of abortion clinics which lead to violence against those doctors and victims in various ways. In a recent NY Times Op-Ed Article, author Katha Pollitt brings forth her point of view on those issues in front of clinics.

In this article, Katha explains the amount of violence outside of abortion clinics. She brings up Planned Parenthood, which helps women all around the world with their reproductive heath issues for free including receiving condoms, birth control, HIV/STD testing, pregnancy tests, abortions, and more. Yet, recently videos and support have caused harassment, violent threats, and worse. Those threats have always been there but they have increased to the extremes. Because of the supreme court case Roe v. Wade in 1973, the government felt it was unconstitutional to only give abortions to save the life of the mother. Thats when they legalized abortion altogether, but beforehand, the United States allowed the states to determine whether or not abortion was legal in that state or not. With abortion being legalized, over 6,000 acts of violence, including murders, attempted murders, bombings, and more have arose. Katha also mentions how antiabortion leaders portray abortion to be something out of the World War II holocaust and being a capitol crime. Because of clinics being attacked, the ones who are abled to stay open have to have armed security, metal detectors, and emergency drills to prevent the angry crowds from getting in.

In my opinion, the strengths in this argument is the points brought up. Katha brought up evidence of almost every point that needed to be brought and confirmed. Her strong ideas truly get the point across and put the icing on the cake for pro-choice people. Her article is convincing, which is what makes it good. The examples of other issues around the world, such as muslims and Black Lives Matter groups connect to the issue and help people truly understand what is being said and can even possibly relate. Katha helps point people in the pro-choice direction in this strong article, making the readers face the facts about what is happening and to open their eyes to the trouble there is on these women and doctors. Her statement at the end of the article is what sells the entire article being “Do we want to live in a country where extremists use violence to deny women legal health care..?”. That statement is what brings everything together showing her belief in how violence is defiantly not the answer and that is what’s unfortunately happening around the world. She feels that her views are right in her own mind. She is confident on what she is writing and shows the cons of being pro-choice and trying to help these innocent women, and what the consequences are for those employees in clinics.

The weaknesses brought forth in this article is Katha’s attack on pro-life. She basically calls out pro-choice leaders and people and shuts them all down as if their opinions are completely incorrect. She speaks about how violence against pro-choice people and clinics are bad, yet, she is obviously attacking pro-life people in this article when she could have clearly showed both sides of the argument and still give in her point of view. I understand what she is saying about how they shouldn’t be attacking these clinics and the victims, which is true because no one likes violence, but at the same time, she is blaming these people and if I was pro-life, I know I would find this article hurtful and I would get angry so whats to say actual pro-life people won’t find this article threatening? Katha also doesn’t bring enough evidence from that side of the argument. There are no quotes from these anti-abortion leaders in the article to support what she is saying about them. If she brought more evidence, it would be more convincing and less offensive to those who believe in pro-life and give the reader more of something to think about. I feel like this article would cause even more riots than she’s even explaining.

Reflection

I am pro-choice, even though I agree with the idea that killing an infant is wrong, it is the choice of the woman because of her constitutional rights and her body. Her body, her decision. So, I have the same points of views with the author of this article, however I am not as violent when it comes to pro-life riots. Yes, I dislike the violence and believe that it can be settled in a better way, yet I can’t blame them for not wanting to kill a child. It’s understandable to not want to kill an innocent fetus. If I had written this article, I would have considered the other side of the coin so at the end of the article, my point is brought and it’s up to the reader to determine what they want to think, because it is a “free country” so I would want people to finish the article feeling as if they can consider and pick a side, not so much of what Katha did where I felt almost like I had to be pro-choice or else. The article felt slightly threatening against people standing up for what they believe in, which is anti-abortion. We can’t help that some people believe in God, choose to be vegan, and choose to believe in anti-abortion. That is life, and hate crimes happen everywhere and I feel this article as more of a hate crime towards those anti-abortion believers. Even if that was not her intent, it still felt that way without the evidence and reasoning of the other side. I believe the violence happening is unacceptable and that women should have that right to choose and that if people want to settle this, then violence is not the answer.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I feel that women have been given enough torment in history that they deserve to have a right to their body and their child. Therefore, the don’t deserve the violence happening outside their safe haven, also known as their abortion clinics. To predict the future, to see the rates of pro-choice increasing in the population, I see more violence and I feel that it could go two ways. One way I see it, I see this being like the Gay Rights Movement where everything started to go away once it became so largely popular and supported. The other way is it could end badly and then all of a sudden, pro-life people can dominate in some way because the two valid points in this argument are a tie and its difficult to see just one side staying this way forever. Katha did a wonderful job with proving her point and bringing forth her opinion, but I do wish she had worded it a lot better. Not every single anti-abortion person believes that abortion is a sin against God and the world, and not every single pro-life person believes that abortion is like the holocaust. I know many anti-abortion people who just feel that it will leave negative affects on the mother, herself, showing their support in the women’s health. Everyone is different and I don’t feel that Katha brought that up in this article.

Works Cited

1. Finer, L. B., & Zolna, M. R. (2014). Shifts in intended and unintended pregnancies in the United States, 2001-2008. American journal of public health, 104(S1), S43-S48.
2. Guttmacher Institute. (2019). Induced abortion in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states
3. Jones, R. K., & Jerman, J. (2017). Population group abortion rates and lifetime incidence of abortion: United States, 2008-2014. American journal of public health, 107(12), 1904-1909.
4. National Abortion Federation. (2021). Abortion care providers and patients at risk of harassment, intimidation, and violence. Retrieved from https://prochoice.org/resources/abortion-care-providers-and-patients-at-risk-of-harassment-intimidation-and-violence/
5. National Right to Life. (2021). Abortion. Retrieved from https://www.nrlc.org/issues/abortion/
6. Planned Parenthood. (2021). Abortion.
7. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
8. Saad, L. (2021). U.S. abortion attitudes remain steady; partisans remain sharply divided. Gallup News.
9. Supreme Court of the United States. (2020). June Medical Services LLC v. Russo.
10. Wise, L. A., & Rothman, K. J. (2019). Commentary: Adverse birth outcomes and induced abortions–A possible confounding factor? Epidemiology, 30(2), 254-256.