Abortion Should Be Illegal Essay

Every day, thousands of women seek opportunities to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. The developed world, with its continuous emphasis on gender equality and women’s career opportunities, no longer judges women for their abortion decisions. Despite the gruesome demographic picture in many developed countries, abortion remains a legal and widely accessible procedure. Unfortunately, the society rarely considers the opposite side of the problem. Legalization of abortions is a step into nowhere, because it is neither ethical nor moral. Legal abortions provide an easy opportunity for men and women to alleviate the responsibility for their sexual decisions and acts. Easy and affordable abortion options induce irresponsible sexual behaviors and create an atmosphere of all-permissiveness. Abortion should be illegal, because it is a murder; it leads to irreversible physical and psychological changes in women’s health and represents a serious violations of medical ethics.Abortion Should Be Illegal Essay

For the purpose of this paper, abortion is defined as the woman’s voluntary decision to terminate her pregnancy. This definition is borrowed from Warren (434). In this sense, abortion should be illegal, because it is a murder of an unborn baby. The rights of the fetus are a highly contested political, moral, legal, and ethical issue, but it is clear that the life of the fetus starts from the moment of conception. Proponents of legal abortions argue that it is not unreasonable to allow abortions at the earliest stages of pregnancy, because the fetus does not display any distinct brain activity and cannot exist beyond the uterus (Warren 436). Yet, the truth is that, since the moment of conception, the fetus is a human, who has an inalienable right to life. Dubow is right: conception is the moment when a new independent life begins, since “during its passage through the Fallopian tube, its connection with the mother is wholly broken… it is not rational to suppose that its total independence, thus once established, becomes again merged into total identity” (17). Simply stated, the moment of conception is also the moment of creating a new identity, a new person, and a new being. This is why abortion should be equaled to murder, and this is also why it should be made illegal.