Essay 4

Simret Mulugeta

Eng 111

Prof: Ishai Barnoy

 Essay 4

                                                Death Before Life

The decision to continue your pregnancy or to end pregnancy is a very personal matter; however, abortion is one of the world’s biggest problems and a major issue in an American society. Abortion is a medical procedure done to terminate a pregnancy. There are about 1.37 million abortions per year in the United States which is about 3,700 per day.

The first stage of the process to end a pregnancy is for a woman to decide whether to keep her unborn baby or not. Clearly, there are many reasons why women choose to have an abortion. For instance, if she is not able to support or care for the child, has unwanted pregnancy, if she has health condition that will put her life in endanger should she continue with the pregnancy, or if her pregnancy is a result of a rape. On the other hand, men in some cases attempt to force their girlfriends to have an abortion. According to Wisconsin’s right to life committee,” Two New York men have been jailed for killing their pregnant girlfriends who refused to have an abortion, and a couple in Maine kidnapped their pregnant 19-year-old daughter and attempted to take her to New York and force her to have an abortion.”

Once a woman decides to have an abortion the next step will depend on the stage of her pregnancy and the size of her unborn child. There are different methods of abortion in the United States. Abortion pills are the most common used which is a medication that ends an early pregnancy of up to 63 days and after the first day of a woman's last period. Women who are more than 9 weeks pregnant can have an in-clinic abortion. The most common in-clinic abortion is called,Vacuum Aspiration abortion. Vacuum Aspiration abortion is for women who are five to fifteen weeks into the pregnancy. This process works by inserting a tube into the vagina and using suction to remove the embryo from the uterus. The third most common abortion method used is called: Dilation Evacuation method. Dilation evacuation method is for women who are in the fifteen to nineteen weeks of their pregnancy. The process is gone by stretching the womb with forceps, onceopen;they use suction to remove the embryo from the uterus. If the woman is within the twenty to twenty four weeks of pregnancy, she must have the abortion surgically which is the most dangerous method for the woman.

The most compelling and horrifying part of the process of abortion is dealing with the side effects. There are psychological problems after having an abortion such as: regrets, eating disorders, nervous disorders, sleep disorders, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse. In addition, sometimes women become very aggressive after having an abortion because of an unpleasant thought of the abortion or the aborted child they had, and women often experience flashbacks of their abortion experience. These women often get depressed on the date of the abortion or the due date of the aborted pregnancy. Basically these women who have had abortions suffer from their own consciousness of guilt.After abortion most women are not able to maintain loving or trusting relationships, which leads to divorce and constant relationship problems.

Abortion can lead women to medical problems such as infections, sepsis, recurrent miscarriages, and abortions always decreases the chances of having children later in life. According to Rhode Island’s right to life committee, “breast cancer takes more female lives than any other cancer in the U.S, one of the factors that increase a woman's chance of getting breast cancer is abortion.” more than 1,800 women were studied and appeared in the journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1994, the study found that women having abortions increased their risk of getting breast cancer before age 45 by 50%.  In general, dealing with different kinds of physical and mental problems is the scariest part of having an abortion not to mention the effects the abortion has on a woman’s spirit.

 Many religion believers especially Christians believe abortion is going against the commandment “Thou shall not kill.”Personally I believe abortion is murder. There are no excuses to take life be it your economic ability to take care of a child or the lack there of. Women shouldn’t look to abortion to answer this difficult moment in their life. Some people make an argument saying what if a woman is raped, should she keep the baby?  My answer to this difficult question is to consider the life that is growing in her womb.  What did the baby do to deserve death before the baby even has a chance at life? Yes, I agree that the rape is bad enough on its own, but to take one wrong and add another makes you worse than the person who commits the rape.  What is rape compared to murder? My faith tells me that all life was conceived in the mind of god before it was conceived the minds of men, that tells me no matter the circumstance life is Gods and to take it is unforgivable. 

                                                      Works Cited.

Rhode Island Right to Life Committee.  Side Effects of Abortion: 1998 Web.

4/26/2012

Wisconsin Right to Life Committee. Statistics & Why Woman Abort: 2009 Web.

4/26/2012