The issue of abortion and its health and moral aspects has always caused debates among sociologists, medical specialists, and ordinary people. The opinion that abortion can be perceived as a legalized murder causes most of the discussions. Indeed, while some people consider abortion a necessary measure in certain cases, others claim that the act of killing an unborn child is inhumane and should be prohibited. The goal of this paper is to summarize and analyze the issue from different points of view.
The views about abortion are often based on the cultural and ethical values of people and on how an individual perceives the status of the fetus. For example, pro-life activists “adopt the rhetoric of fetal personhood, and advocate that abortion ends a human life” (Sharma et al. 2). According to this opinion, abortion is the act of unjustified killing that should be banned. Moreover, there is a widespread view that the life of a person begins at the time of conception, which makes abortion an act of killing (Ross 109). Therefore, many people call for banning abortion or imposing legal constraints on this act.
Another opinion focuses on the rights of a woman herself and the freedom of choice. The supporters of this idea emphasize “the importance of bodily integrity and freedom to make decisions about family” (Ross 108). Moreover, since a female herself possesses and controls her own body, termination of pregnancy should not be regulated by the government and should be a choice of an individual (Ross 109). According to Sharma et al., strict legal regulations led to multiple feminist movements, where the supporters of abortion advocated for reproductive rights of a female (2). Therefore, the regulation of such issues is an important and delicate task.
The discussion demonstrated that there are two main opinions about the moral side of abortion. Some people consider it a murder, while others accentuate the rights of a pregnant female to control her body and her life. It is necessary to understand that each case is individual. In some situations, unjustified abortion can be considered a killing indeed; however, in certain cases, it is necessary for the health of a female or for ethical reasons. Therefore, this issue remains controversial and should be considered in relation to a particular situation.
Works Cited
Sharma, Eva, et al. “Analyzing Ideological Discourse on Social Media.” Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference of The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas on – CSS 2017, edited by Association for Computing Machinery, 2017, pp. 1-8.
Ross, LaTasha. “It’s My Choice, Right? Abortion Law Reform in the United States.” Undergraduate Law Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 106-113.