The Immortality of Abortion

The Immorality of Abortion

Abortion is one of the most controversial political and social issues in the world. The abortion issue is very complex and involves several aspects of political, religion, medical, and social beliefs and contingencies. At what stage human life begins is one of the main arguments of abortion between the pro-choice advocates and the pro-life advocates. The morality of abortion is even more complex than abortion itself. Abortion is immoral and may be considered as murder.

The legal argument in the abortion issue revolves around whether a fetus is alive at conception or birth and whose rights, the woman’s rights or the fetus’ rights, are being infringed. Pro-choice advocates argue that a fetus is not alive thus should not have any legal rights, and they argue that the mother’s rights would be infringed if abortion was made illegal. Pro-life advocates argue that a fetus is alive at conception and should have equal legal rights to that of the mother, and they argue that the fetus’ rights would be infringed if aborted. The moral argument for the right to choose says the fetus is not yet a person, then, of course, the fetus has neither moral standing nor the capacity to have rights that can be infringed. The moral argument for the right to life says the fetus is a person, and if its life is terminated, then the fetus’ rights are infringed. What composes abortion’s immorality is not just the fetus’ rights being infringed, it’s the nature of abortion, the procedures of abortion, and the Christian belief that abortion is murder.

Roe v. Wade is the landmark case that lead to the legalization of abortion in 1973 stating that abortion is a constitutional right of the mother. (Smolin, 2001) The National Abortion Right Act League argues that without legal abortion, women would be denied their constitutional right of privacy and liberty. The woman’s right to her own body subordinates those of the fetus, and the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade argued that the woman’s right to privacy overruled the fetus’ right to life. The decision in Roe v. Wade did not define nor protect the constitutional rights of the father or the fetus. In 2001, a new Chinese law gives the father the same rights as the mother. The United States has not followed suit; the father does not have any rights concerning abortion. In fact, in 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled that spousal consent could not be required by any state. The United States courts have consistently decided that a mother’s right to an abortion can not be vetoed by the father in any circumstance, and the mother does not even have to notify the father that she intends to have an abortion. In other words, a woman can legally deprive a man of his right to become a father, which makes abortion morally wrong. (Smolin, 2001)

The United States law does not define the fetus as being a human being independent of the mother, thus the fetus has no rights equal to the mother’s rights. President Bush has signed a partial birth ban law that bans a particular type of late term abortions procedure. The law was written so vague that it can constitute a ban on all abortions; therefore, the ban law was challenged in the United States Supreme Court and ruled unconstitutional. In 2004, President Bush signed a new bill that gave a fetus rights. President Bush stated, “As of today, the law of our nation will acknowledge the plain fact that crimes of violence against a pregnant woman often have two victims.