Abortion Or Theath Who Knows Essay Example For Students

Abortion Or Theath Who Knows Essay Life Or Death , Who Chooses?In Roman times, abortion and the destruction of unwanted children was permissible, but as out civilization has aged, it seems that such acts were no longer acceptable by rational human beings, so that in 1948, Canada along with most other nations in the world signed a declaration of the United Nations promising every human being the right to life. The World Medical Association meeting in Geneve at the same time, stated that the utmost respect for human life was to be from the moment of conception. This declaration was re-affirmed when the World Medical Association met in Oslo in 1970. Should we go backwards in our concern for the life of an individual human being?The unborn human is still a human life and not all the wishful thinking of those advocating repeal of abortion laws, can alter this. Those of us who would seek to protect the human who is still to small to cry aloud for its own protection, have been accused of having a 19th Century approach to lif e in the last third of the 20th Century. But who in reality is using arguments of a bygone Century? It is an incontrovertible fact of biological science Make no Mistake that from the moment of conception, a new human life has been created. Only those who allow their emotional passion to overide their knowledge, can deny it: only those who are irrational or ignorant of science, doubt that when a human sperm fertilizes a human ovum a new human being is created. A new human being who carries genes in its cells that make that human being uniquely different from any and other human being and yet, undeniably a member, as we all are, of the great human family. All the fetus needs to grow into a babe, a child, an old man, is time, nutrition and a suitable environment. It is determined at that very moment of conception whether the baby will be a boy or a girl; which of his parents he will look like; what blood type he will have. His whole heritage is forever fixed. Look at a human being 8 weeks after conception and you, yes every person here who can tell the difference between a man and a women, will be able to look at the fetus and tell me whether it is a baby boy or a girl. No, a fetus is not just another part of a womens body like an appendix or appendage. These appendages, these perfectly formed tiny feel belong to a 10 week developed baby, not to his or her mother. The fetus is distinct and different and has its own heart beat. Do you know that the fetus heart started beating just 18 days after a new life was created, beating before the mother even knew she was pregnant? By 3 months of pregnancy the developing baby is just small enough to be help in the palm of a mans hand but look closely at this 3 month old fetus. All his organs are formed and all his systems working. He swims, he grasps a pointer, he moves freely, he excretes urine. If you inject a sweet solution into the water around him, he will swallaw because he likes the taste. Inject a bitter solution and he will quit swallowing because he does not like the taste. By 16 weeks it is obvious to all, except those who have eyes but deliberately do not see, that this is a young human being. Who chooses life or death for this little one because abortion is the taking of a human life? This fact is undeniable; however much of the members of the Womens Liberation Movement, the new Feminists, Dr. Henry Morgentaler or the Canadian Medical Association President feel about it, does not alter the fact of the matter. An incontrovertible fact that cannot change as feelings change. If abortion is undeniably the taking of human life and yet sincere misguided people feel that it should be just a personal matter between a women and the doctor, there seems to be 2 choices open to them. (1) That they would believe that other acts of destruction of human beings such as infanticide and homicide should be of no concern of society and therefore, eliminate them from the criminal code. This I cannot believe is the thinking of the majority, although the tendency for doctors to respect the selfish desire of parents and not treat the newborn defective with a necessary lifesaving measure, is becoming increasingly more common. (2) But for the most part the only conclusion available to us is that those pressing for repeal of the abortion laws believe that there are different sorts of human beings and that by some arbitrary standard, they can place different values on the lives of there human beings. Of course, different human beings have different values to each of us as indivi duals: my mother means more to me than she does to you. But the right to life of all human beings is undeniable. I do not think this is negotiable. It is easy to be concerned with the welfare of those we know and love, while regarding everybody else as less important and somehow, less real. Most people would rather have heard of the death of thousands in the Honduras flooding disaster than of a serious accident involving a close friends or favourite relatives. That is why some are less disturbed by the slaughter of thousands of unborn children than by the personal problems of a pregnant women across the street. To rationalize this double standard, they pretend to themselves that the unborn child is a less valuable human life because it has no active social relationships and can therefore, be disposed of by others who have an arbitrary standard of their own for the value of a human life. I agree that the fetus has not developed its full potential as a human being: but neither have any of us. Nor will any of us have reached that point: that point of perfect humaness, when we die. Because some of us may be less far along the path than others, does not give them the right to kill us. But those in favour of abortion, assume that they have that right, the standard being arbitrary. To say that a 10 week fetus has less value that a baby, means also that one must consider a baby of less value than a child, a young adult of less value than an old man. Surely one cannot believe this and still be civilized and human. A society that does not protect its individual members is on the lowest scale of civilized society. One of the measures of a more highly civilized society, is its attitude towards its weaker members. If the poor, the sick, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the helpless are not protected, the society is not as advanced as in a society where they are protected. The more mature the society is, the more there is respect for the dignity and rights of all human beings. The function of the laws of the society, is to protect and provide for all members so that no individual or group of individuals can be victimized by another individual group. Every member of Canadian society has a vital stake in what value system is adopted towards its weak, aged, cripple, its helpless intra-uterine members; a vital stake in who chooses life or death. As some of you may know, in 1969, the abortion laws were changed in Canada, so that it became legal for a doctor to perform an abortion if a committee of 3 other doctors in an eccredited hospital deemed that continuation of the pregnancy constituted a severe threat to the life and health, mental or physical of the women. Threat to health was not defined and so it is variously interpreted to mean very real medical disease to anything that interferes with even social or economic well being, so that any unwanted or unplanned pregnancy thus qualifies. What really is the truth about the lasting effect of an unwanted pregnancy on the psyche of a womem? Of course there is a difference of opinion among psychiatrists, but if unbiased, prospective studies are examined certain facts become obvious. (1) The health of women who are mentally ill before they become pregnant, is not improved by an abortion. In fact in 1970 an official statement of the World Health Organization said, Serious mental d isorders arise more often in women previous mental problems. Thus the very women for whom legal abortion is considered justified on psychiatric grounds, are the ones who have the highest risk of post-abortion psychiatric disorders. (2) Most women who are mentally healthy before unwanted pregnancy, despite a temporary emotional upset during the early weeks for the pregnancy, are mentally healthy after the pregnancy whether they were aborted or carried through to term. Childhood Depression EssayAbortion by suction curettage is not just as simple as a pelvic examination performed in a doctors office as Dr. Morgentaler and the television programe W5 who were doing a great disservice to young women in Canada would have us believe. In Canada as reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (the Statistics from Statistics Canada), the complication rate and this being for immediate complications of early abortion is 4.5%. According to the Wyn report with statistics from 12 counties, women who have a previous induced abortion have their ability to bear children in the future permanently impaired. There is a 5-10% increase in infertility. The chances of these women having a pregnancy in the tube increases up to 4 times. Premature delivery increases up to 50% and when one realizes that prematurity is the commonest cause for infants being mentally or physically defective, having cerebral palsy or other difficulties, then one realizes that those doct ors doing abortions in great numbers south of the border or across the water, even in Canada may not be doing the women and her family a service. They will tell you that abortion has almost no complications. What most of them will not tell you, is that once the abortion is done they may refuse to see the women again and that she must take her post-abortal problems elsewhere. Those seeking repeal of the present abortion law will rapidly point out that nevertheless, it is safer to have a legal abortion than illegal abortions, safer for the women that is. This I don not dispute, but here is the real rub. Liberalized abortion laws do not eliminate illegal, back street abortions and in some cases, the overall number of illegal abortions actually rise, usually stays stagnant, and rarely falls. There are still people who would rather try it themselves or go somewhere they will be completely anonymous. Another factor enters the total number of people seeking abortion, legal or illegal rises. The overall pregnancy rate rockets and people become careless with contraception and a women can have 3 or 4 abortions during the time of one full term pregnancy. Are doctors really being kind to the girl to allow her to choose life or death for her unborn child? In aborting a 16 year old this year with so-called informed consent, we may be preventing her from having even 1 or 2 children 10 years later when happily married. No, repealing the abortion law does not make it possible for every women to safely eliminate, what is for her, an unwanted pregnancy. Would limiting abortions to accredited hospitals make it safer? Yes, safer for the women, not for the fetus and it would jeopardize the continued well being of all of the members of the community with the gross misuse of the medical manpower, hospital facilities and money. With almost 31,739 abortions performed in Ontario in 1989, the cost to OHIP is about 9 million dollars. Yet to do as has been done in the U.S.A and the United Kingdom namely to make legal, abortions is to turn so-called backstreet butchers into legal operators. Patients now go into the office through the front door instead of the rear. I have heard it said that is abortions became available on request, many less children would be born and we could use the pleasant delivery suites and postnatal beds for abortions. As I have pointed out, however, before today, liberalization of abortion does not reduce the birth rate. There would be little increase in available facilities or indeed doctors time. By the very nature o f the operation and because the longer pregnancy lasts, the more difficult it is, patients for abortions are admitted as urgent cases or emergencies so that all other members of the community must wait longer for their hospital bed or the surgery they need. Who will pay for there abortions? With medicare, of course, it is you and I. I know one full tern pregnancy costs most than an abortion, but not much more. And it does not cost more than 3 abortions and that is what happens when the climate or choice for life or death of the unborn child changes. Let us use this money for constructive purposes, not destructive. It has been suggested that abortions on request would enable the poor to secure abortion as easily as the rich but regrettably, it has been shown that abortion-minded physicians in great demand will respond to the age-old commercial rules, as has already happened in the States and in Britain. Abortion on demand a womens right to choose not to continue an unplanned pregnancy would prevent there being unwanted children in this country, so we are told. This is the final and desperate emotional plea of people anxious, at whatever price, to escape the responsibility for their actions. Nobody here or in Canada, wants there to be unwanted children in this city, and in this country, and also in this world. There is nothing more pitiable or heat rending that an unwanted fetus becoming an unwanted babe or an unwanted babe becoming an unwanted child, or an unwanted child becoming an embittered adult. But few would think it right to kill or have killed an unwanted baby to prevent it from becoming an unwanted child. Then how can they think it right to kill an unwanted fetus, even more defenceless than a newborn babe just because it may grow into an unwanted child. Once a women has conceived, she already is a parent, be it willing or otherwise. The only way she ceases it be a parents is by a natural death or an act of killing. Killing in any form is not the solution to so-called unwanted human beings at any age. Hitler thought this was right. Canadians surely do not. It is a permissive and frightened society that does not develop the expertise to control population, civil disorder, crime, poverty, even its own sexuality but yet would mount an uncontrolled, repeat uncontrolled, destructive attack on the defenceless, very beginnings of life. Let us marshall all our resources financial, educational, those of social agencies, but above all, of human concern and passion for our fellow humans. Let us by all means, make available to all, knowledge of conception and methods of contraception. Let us offer ourselves as loving humans to those already in this country who are unwanted by their natural parents. And incidentally, I am sure I don not need acqu aint you with some of the facts about so-called unwanted children. The Childrens Aid Societies in Toronto and in fact in every major city across our country have many more potential parents anxious and willing to adopt infants and young children than they have such children available for adoption. Let us marshall our technology and humanity in the service of the unfortunate. And in conclusion, I would like to read to you a letter which a member of Birthright received. Dear Birthright:I heard about your work in Birthright and think you can help us. Were in our late 20s and have been married 7 years. After 3 years of waiting, we became the happy adoptive parents of a precious baby girl last fall. This is how you can help us. Please tell every unwed mother who places her baby for adoption how much we love her. We think each of those girls are the most generous, charitable, kind devoted and loving mothers on this earth. We know she must have carried her child out of love or in this day and age should have found some way to have an abortion. We can never thank her enough for the 9 months of time and energy she spent for us. Maybe if she knows that we think shes the most loving person in this world we will never know, it will help us both. As Jenny grows older, we are telling her she has two sets of parents. Well tell her how she came to be our child this way. Her first mommy didnt have a home or a daddy to help love and care for her. She loved her so much that she just couldnt let her daughter grow up without love of two parents and all the things that make a happy home. Well tell Jenny that her 1st mommy thinks of her often and wonders how she is. She will always love her baby. Maybe our thoughts will someday reach Jennys 1st mommy. What she did was an act of faith in mankind, hope for her daughters future and love toward us. We think the strength of her love enabled her to place her precious baby with us. We have faith that as Jenny grows up learning she was placed out of love and not abandoned by her 1st mommy, both Jenny and she will be at peace. Thank you. Words/ Pages : 4,449 / 24