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Argumentative Essays on Pro Choice (abortion)

What makes a powerful pro choice essay topic.

When it comes to crafting a compelling pro choice abortion essay, the selection of a captivating topic is paramount. A well-chosen topic has the potential to make your essay shine and captivate the reader's attention. So, how can you brainstorm and discover the perfect essay topic? Here are some expert recommendations:

• Consider your passions: Embark on a journey of brainstorming topics that truly ignite your interest. By doing so, you ensure that you remain engaged throughout the writing process, allowing you to produce an essay that is truly compelling.
• Immerse yourself in research: Dive deep into the vast sea of information surrounding the pro choice abortion movement. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter, you can identify potential essay topics that will expand your knowledge base and captivate your readers.
• Analyze the ongoing debates: Stay up-to-date with the latest discussions and controversies surrounding pro choice abortion. By analyzing diverse viewpoints and arguments, you can find inspiration for unique and thought-provoking essay topics.
• Evaluate personal experiences: Reflect upon your own encounters or experiences with the pro choice abortion movement. These personal insights can provide invaluable perspectives and make your essay more relatable to your readers.
• Consider your target audience: Ponder upon the diverse readership that your essay will reach. Choose a topic that appeals to both supporters and skeptics of pro choice abortion, ensuring a broader and more impactful discussion.

Overall, a good pro choice abortion essay topic should be thought-provoking, relevant, and capable of sparking meaningful discussions.

Best Pro Choice Abortion Essay Topics

Here, we present some of the most compelling pro choice abortion essay topics:

• The Empowering Role of Pro Choice Abortion in Women's Reproductive Rights Movement
• Analyzing the Ripple Effect: The Impact of Pro Choice Abortion on Society
• The Ethical Enigma: Exploring the Considerations of Pro Choice Abortion
• Untangling the Web: A Critical Analysis of the Media's Portrayal of Pro Choice Abortion
• Unearthing the Roots: Examining the Historical Background of the Pro Choice Abortion Movement
• The Dance of Equality: The Intersectionality of Pro Choice Abortion and Feminism
• A Constitutional Right or a Moral Dilemma: Delving into the Controversy of Pro Choice Abortion
• Unveiling the Unseen: The Psychological Effects of Pro Choice Abortion on Women
• Abortion Access and Healthcare Disparities: A Closer Look at the Impact
• Shifting Paradigms: The Influence of Pro Choice Abortion on Religious Beliefs and Practices
• Unmasking the Numbers: Exploring the Economic Implications of Pro Choice Abortion
• Pro Choice Abortion and Population Control: A Deeper Examination
• The Global Tapestry: A Comparative Analysis of Pro Choice Abortion Perspectives
• Unlocking the Mind: The Impact of Pro Choice Abortion on Mental Health
• Examining the Opposition: Religious versus Secular Arguments against Pro Choice Abortion
• The Symphony of Empowerment: The Relationship between Pro Choice Abortion and Women's Empowerment
• Peering into the Crystal Ball: Predictions and Challenges for the Future of Pro Choice Abortion
• Through the Prism of Diversity: Exploring the Impact of Pro Choice Abortion on LGBTQ+ Rights
• Beyond Statistics: The Role of Pro Choice Abortion in Reducing Maternal Mortality Rates
• Analyzing the Legal Frameworks: A Global Perspective on Pro Choice Abortion

Engaging Pro Choice Essay Questions

To ignite meaningful discussions, consider these thought-provoking questions for your pro choice abortion essay:

• What are the main arguments employed by supporters of pro choice abortion?
• How does the pro choice abortion movement differ across various countries?
• What are the ethical implications of pro choice abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities?
• How does the media shape public opinion on pro choice abortion?
• What are the potential consequences of restricting access to pro choice abortion?
• How does pro choice abortion intersect with racial and socioeconomic disparities?
• What role does religion play in shaping attitudes towards pro choice abortion?
• How has pro choice abortion influenced women's reproductive healthcare policies?
• What are the psychological effects experienced by women who choose pro choice abortion?
• How has the pro choice abortion movement evolved over time?

Pro Choice Abortion Essay Prompts

Consider these essay prompts to explore various angles of pro choice abortion:

• Imagine a world where pro choice abortion is universally accepted. Describe the potential positive outcomes and challenges.
• Write a persuasive essay arguing that pro choice abortion is an inherent human right.
• Create a captivating dialogue between two individuals with contrasting views on pro choice abortion.
• Analyze the impact of pro choice abortion on the future of gender equality.
• Compose a compelling personal narrative about a woman's journey in making a pro choice abortion decision and its consequences.

Addressing Pro Choice Abortion Essay FAQs

Here are answers to frequently asked questions about writing pro choice abortion essays:

Q: What are the key elements of a compelling pro choice abortion essay?

A: A compelling pro choice abortion essay should possess a powerful thesis statement, well-researched arguments supported by credible evidence, and a clear logical structure. Additionally, incorporating personal experiences and maintaining a balanced tone can elevate the impact of your essay.

Q: How can I address counterarguments in my pro choice abortion essay?

A: Address counterarguments by presenting them objectively and refuting them with logical reasoning and evidence. This demonstrates your ability to consider different perspectives and strengthens your overall argument.

Q: How can I make my pro choice abortion essay stand out?

A: To make your essay stand out, choose a unique and thought-provoking topic, present original arguments supported by credible sources, and employ engaging and persuasive language. Incorporating personal anecdotes or real-life examples can also make your essay more memorable.

Q: Is it important to consider the opposing viewpoint in a pro choice abortion essay?

A: Yes, considering the opposing viewpoint is crucial to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Address counterarguments respectfully and refute them with strong evidence to strengthen your own argument and showcase your ability to engage with different perspectives.

Q: Are there any specific guidelines for referencing sources in a pro choice abortion essay?

A: Yes, it is important to properly cite all sources used in your pro choice abortion essay. Follow the guidelines of a recognized citation style, such as APA or MLA, to ensure accurate and consistent referencing. This adds credibility to your essay and avoids plagiarism.

Remember to always consult your instructor or follow any specific guidelines provided for your essay assignment. Happy writing!

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Argumentation of Anti-abortion and Abortion-rights in United States

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The pro-choice movement is a collective advocacy effort that upholds the principle of individual autonomy and reproductive rights, asserting that individuals should have the legal freedom to make decisions regarding their own bodies, including the choice to have an abortion.

The pro-choice movement has a rich history that spans several decades, characterized by significant milestones, activism, and legal battles. It emerged as a response to the restrictive abortion laws and societal stigmatization surrounding reproductive choices, aiming to challenge and change the status quo. During the mid-20th century, trailblazers such as Margaret Sanger played a crucial role in advocating for birth control and setting the stage for reproductive rights activism. The pro-choice movement reached a significant milestone with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade in 1973. This pivotal decision granted women the constitutional right to choose abortion, solidifying the legal foundation upon which the movement was built. However, the pro-choice movement has not been without its challenges. It has faced opposition from anti-abortion groups, prompting pro-choice advocates to organize, mobilize, and form influential organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Grassroots activism, public awareness campaigns, and strategic lobbying have been vital in defending and expanding access to abortion services. Throughout its history, the pro-choice movement has also sought to address the societal stigma surrounding abortion. By sharing personal stories, fostering empathy, and promoting open dialogue, activists have aimed to destigmatize abortion and create a more compassionate and understanding society.

A significant portion of the population supports the principles and goals of the pro-choice movement. Many people believe that individuals should have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, including the choice to have an abortion. They argue that access to safe and legal abortion services is essential for reproductive autonomy, gender equality, and the overall well-being of women and marginalized communities. This perspective emphasizes the importance of comprehensive reproductive healthcare and the removal of barriers that restrict access to abortion. At the same time, there are individuals who hold reservations or have moral objections to abortion. Some may believe in the sanctity of life from conception or have religious or cultural values that influence their stance. These individuals may align themselves with the anti-abortion movement and advocate for stricter regulations or the complete prohibition of abortion. Public opinion on the pro-choice movement is also influenced by factors such as education, socioeconomic status, political ideology, and personal experiences. Cultural shifts, increased awareness about reproductive rights, and public discourse have contributed to a greater acceptance and understanding of the pro-choice position in many societies. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on intersectionality within the pro-choice movement, recognizing that reproductive justice intersects with other social justice issues, including race, class, and LGBTQ+ rights. This broader perspective aims to address the diverse needs and experiences of individuals seeking reproductive healthcare and advocates for policies that promote equitable access to comprehensive reproductive services.

The topic of the pro-choice movement is crucial as it centers on the fundamental principles of bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and gender equality. It emphasizes the importance of individuals having the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, including the choice to have an abortion. The pro-choice movement highlights the significance of safe and legal access to reproductive healthcare, ensuring that individuals have the power to determine their reproductive futures. By advocating for reproductive rights, the movement challenges oppressive structures, fights against stigma, and strives to create a society where individuals are empowered to make informed choices about their reproductive health, free from judgment and coercion.

The topic of the pro-choice movement is worthy of an essay because it encompasses profound social, ethical, and legal dimensions. Exploring this subject provides an opportunity to delve into the complexities surrounding reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and the ongoing struggle for gender equality. Writing about the pro-choice movement allows for an examination of historical milestones, legal battles, and the impact on individuals and society. Additionally, it prompts critical analysis of the intersections between reproductive justice and other social issues like healthcare access, socioeconomic disparities, and cultural norms. By exploring this topic, one can contribute to the discourse, promote awareness, and foster a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of the pro-choice movement.

1. The pro-choice movement extends beyond the United States: While the pro-choice movement gained significant momentum in the United States, its influence is not limited to a single country. 2. Intersectionality plays a crucial role in the pro-choice movement: The pro-choice movement recognizes that reproductive rights intersect with other social justice issues, such as race, class, and LGBTQ+ rights. 3. Access to abortion services remains an ongoing battle: Despite the landmark ruling of Roe v. Wade in the United States, access to abortion services continues to be a contentious issue. Numerous states have implemented restrictive laws, such as mandatory waiting periods, targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) laws, and limitations on insurance coverage. These efforts have led to a patchwork of access across the country, with disparities in availability and barriers for individuals seeking reproductive healthcare.

1. Steinem, G. (2015). My Life on the Road. Random House. 2. Norris, A., Bessett, D., Steinberg, J. R., Kavanaugh, M. L., & De Zordo, S. (2011). Abortion stigma: A reconceptualization of constituents, causes, and consequences. Women's Health Issues, 21(3), S49-S54. 3. McNeil, R. M., & Berer, M. (2017). The abortion law in Northern Ireland: Lessons for the United States. Guttmacher Policy Review, 20, 98-103. 4. Luker, K. (1984). Abortion and the politics of motherhood. University of California Press. 5. Rees, D. I., Sabia, J. J., & Argys, L. M. (2017). A review of the effects of abortion policies. Southern Economic Journal, 83(4), 823-869. 6. Stotland, N. L., & Bryant, A. G. (2020). ACOG practice bulletin No. 225: Management of pregnancies with substance use disorders. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 135(6), e274-e298. 7. Jones, R. K., & Jerman, J. (2017). Population group abortion rates and lifetime incidence of abortion: United States, 2008-2014. American Journal of Public Health, 107(12), 1904-1909. 8. Clark, A. (2017). Reproductive rights and the state: Getting the birth control, RU-486, and morning-after pills and the Gardasil vaccine to the US market. Law and Policy, 39(2), 139-165. 9. Upadhyay, U. D., Weitz, T. A., & Jones, R. K. (2013). Barriers to abortion and their consequences for patients traveling for services: Qualitative findings from two states. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 45(2), 84-91. 10. Roth, R. A. (2003). Making women pay: The hidden costs of fetal rights. Cornell University Press.

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Key facts about the abortion debate in america.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade – the decision that had guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years – has shifted the legal battle over abortion to the states, with some prohibiting the procedure and others moving to safeguard it.

As the nation’s post-Roe chapter begins, here are key facts about Americans’ views on abortion, based on two Pew Research Center polls: one conducted from June 25-July 4 , just after this year’s high court ruling, and one conducted in March , before an earlier leaked draft of the opinion became public.

This analysis primarily draws from two Pew Research Center surveys, one surveying 10,441 U.S. adults conducted March 7-13, 2022, and another surveying 6,174 U.S. adults conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. Here are the questions used for the March survey , along with responses, and the questions used for the survey from June and July , along with responses.

Everyone who took part in these surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. About six-in-ten adults (57%) disapprove of the court’s decision that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion and that abortion laws can be set by states, including 43% who strongly disapprove, according to the summer survey. About four-in-ten (41%) approve, including 25% who strongly approve.

About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (82%) disapprove of the court’s decision, including nearly two-thirds (66%) who strongly disapprove. Most Republicans and GOP leaners (70%) approve , including 48% who strongly approve.

Most women (62%) disapprove of the decision to end the federal right to an abortion. More than twice as many women strongly disapprove of the court’s decision (47%) as strongly approve of it (21%). Opinion among men is more divided: 52% disapprove (37% strongly), while 47% approve (28% strongly).

About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the summer survey – little changed since the March survey conducted just before the ruling. That includes 29% of Americans who say it should be legal in all cases and 33% who say it should be legal in most cases. About a third of U.S. adults (36%) say abortion should be illegal in all (8%) or most (28%) cases.

Generally, Americans’ views of whether abortion should be legal remained relatively unchanged in the past few years , though support fluctuated somewhat in previous decades.

Relatively few Americans take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion – either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances. The March survey found that support or opposition to abortion varies substantially depending on such circumstances as when an abortion takes place during a pregnancy, whether the pregnancy is life-threatening or whether a baby would have severe health problems.

While Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on the legality of abortion have long differed, the 46 percentage point partisan gap today is considerably larger than it was in the recent past, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling. The wider gap has been largely driven by Democrats: Today, 84% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 72% in 2016 and 63% in 2007. Republicans’ views have shown far less change over time: Currently, 38% of Republicans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, nearly identical to the 39% who said this in 2007.

However, the partisan divisions over whether abortion should generally be legal tell only part of the story. According to the March survey, sizable shares of Democrats favor restrictions on abortion under certain circumstances, while majorities of Republicans favor abortion being legal in some situations , such as in cases of rape or when the pregnancy is life-threatening.

There are wide religious divides in views of whether abortion should be legal , the summer survey found. An overwhelming share of religiously unaffiliated adults (83%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do six-in-ten Catholics. Protestants are divided in their views: 48% say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 50% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. Majorities of Black Protestants (71%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (61%) take the position that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while about three-quarters of White evangelicals (73%) say it should be illegal in all (20%) or most cases (53%).

In the March survey, 72% of White evangelicals said that the statement “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” reflected their views extremely or very well . That’s much greater than the share of White non-evangelical Protestants (32%), Black Protestants (38%) and Catholics (44%) who said the same. Overall, 38% of Americans said that statement matched their views extremely or very well.

Catholics, meanwhile, are divided along religious and political lines in their attitudes about abortion, according to the same survey. Catholics who attend Mass regularly are among the country’s strongest opponents of abortion being legal, and they are also more likely than those who attend less frequently to believe that life begins at conception and that a fetus has rights. Catholic Republicans, meanwhile, are far more conservative on a range of abortion questions than are Catholic Democrats.

Women (66%) are more likely than men (57%) to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling.

More than half of U.S. adults – including 60% of women and 51% of men – said in March that women should have a greater say than men in setting abortion policy . Just 3% of U.S. adults said men should have more influence over abortion policy than women, with the remainder (39%) saying women and men should have equal say.

The March survey also found that by some measures, women report being closer to the abortion issue than men . For example, women were more likely than men to say they had given “a lot” of thought to issues around abortion prior to taking the survey (40% vs. 30%). They were also considerably more likely than men to say they personally knew someone (such as a close friend, family member or themselves) who had had an abortion (66% vs. 51%) – a gender gap that was evident across age groups, political parties and religious groups.

Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms , the March survey found. Overall, just 7% of all U.S. adults say having an abortion is morally acceptable in all cases, and 13% say it is morally wrong in all cases. A third say that having an abortion is morally wrong in most cases, while about a quarter (24%) say it is morally acceptable in most cases. An additional 21% do not consider having an abortion a moral issue.

Among Republicans, most (68%) say that having an abortion is morally wrong either in most (48%) or all cases (20%). Only about three-in-ten Democrats (29%) hold a similar view. Instead, about four-in-ten Democrats say having an abortion is morally  acceptable  in most (32%) or all (11%) cases, while an additional 28% say it is not a moral issue. 

White evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly say having an abortion is morally wrong in most (51%) or all cases (30%). A slim majority of Catholics (53%) also view having an abortion as morally wrong, but many also say it is morally acceptable in most (24%) or all cases (4%), or that it is not a moral issue (17%). Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, about three-quarters see having an abortion as morally acceptable (45%) or not a moral issue (32%).

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Public Opinion on Abortion

Majority in u.s. say abortion should be legal in some cases, illegal in others, three-in-ten or more democrats and republicans don’t agree with their party on abortion, partisanship a bigger factor than geography in views of abortion access locally, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

There’s a Better Way to Debate Abortion

Caution and epistemic humility can guide our approach.

If Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization becomes law, we will enter a post– Roe v. Wade world in which the laws governing abortion will be legislatively decided in 50 states.

In the short term, at least, the abortion debate will become even more inflamed than it has been. Overturning Roe , after all, would be a profound change not just in the law but in many people’s lives, shattering the assumption of millions of Americans that they have a constitutional right to an abortion.

This doesn’t mean Roe was correct. For the reasons Alito lays out, I believe that Roe was a terribly misguided decision, and that a wiser course would have been for the issue of abortion to have been given a democratic outlet, allowing even the losers “the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight,” in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, for nearly half a century, Roe has been the law of the land. But even those who would welcome its undoing should acknowledge that its reversal could convulse the nation.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

If we are going to debate abortion in every state, given how fractured and angry America is today, we need caution and epistemic humility to guide our approach.

We can start by acknowledging the inescapable ambiguities in this staggeringly complicated moral question. No matter one’s position on abortion, each of us should recognize that those who hold views different from our own have some valid points, and that the positions we embrace raise complicated issues. That realization alone should lead us to engage in this debate with a little more tolerance and a bit less certitude.

Many of those on the pro-life side exhibit a gap between the rhetoric they employ and the conclusions they actually seem to draw. In the 1990s, I had an exchange, via fax, with a pro-life thinker. During our dialogue, I pressed him on what he believed, morally speaking , should be the legal penalty for a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs one.

My point was a simple one: If he believed, as he claimed, that an abortion even moments after conception is the killing of an innocent child—that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being deserving of all the moral and political rights granted to your neighbor next door—then the act ought to be treated, if not as murder, at least as manslaughter. Surely, given what my interlocutor considered to be the gravity of the offense, fining the doctor and taking no action against the mother would be morally incongruent. He was understandably uncomfortable with this line of questioning, unwilling to go to the places his premises led. When it comes to abortion, few people are.

Humane pro-life advocates respond that while an abortion is the taking of a human life, the woman having the abortion has been misled by our degraded culture into denying the humanity of the child. She is a victim of misinformation; she can’t be held accountable for what she doesn’t know. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument, but I think it ultimately falls short. In other contexts, insisting that people who committed atrocities because they truly believed the people against whom they were committing atrocities were less than human should be let off the hook doesn’t carry the day. I’m struggling to understand why it would in this context.

There are other complicating matters. For example, about half of all fertilized eggs are aborted spontaneously —that is, result in miscarriage—usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Focus on the Family, an influential Christian ministry, is emphatic : “Human life begins at fertilization.” Does this mean that when a fertilized egg is spontaneously aborted, it is comparable—biologically, morally, ethically, or in any other way—to when a 2-year-old child dies? If not, why not? There’s also the matter of those who are pro-life and contend that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being but allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. That is an understandable impulse but I don’t think it’s a logically sustainable one.

The pro-choice side, for its part, seldom focuses on late-term abortions. Let’s grant that late-term abortions are very rare. But the question remains: Is there any point during gestation when pro-choice advocates would say “slow down” or “stop”—and if so, on what grounds? Or do they believe, in principle, that aborting a child up to the point of delivery is a defensible and justifiable act; that an abortion procedure is, ethically speaking, the same as removing an appendix? If not, are those who are pro-choice willing to say, as do most Americans, that the procedure gets more ethically problematic the further along in a pregnancy?

Read: When a right becomes a privilege

Plenty of people who consider themselves pro-choice have over the years put on their refrigerator door sonograms of the baby they are expecting. That tells us something. So does biology. The human embryo is a human organism, with the genetic makeup of a human being. “The argument, in which thoughtful people differ, is about the moral significance and hence the proper legal status of life in its early stages,” as the columnist George Will put it.

These are not “gotcha questions”; they are ones I have struggled with for as long as I’ve thought through where I stand on abortion, and I’ve tried to remain open to corrections in my thinking. I’m not comfortable with those who are unwilling to grant any concessions to the other side or acknowledge difficulties inherent in their own position. But I’m not comfortable with my own position, either—thinking about abortion taking place on a continuum, and troubled by abortions, particularly later in pregnancy, as the child develops.

The question I can’t answer is where the moral inflection point is, when the fetus starts to have claims of its own, including the right to life. Does it depend on fetal development? If so, what aspect of fetal development? Brain waves? Feeling pain? Dreaming? The development of the spine? Viability outside the womb? Something else? Any line I might draw seems to me entirely arbitrary and capricious.

Because of that, I consider myself pro-life, but with caveats. My inability to identify a clear demarcation point—when a fetus becomes a person—argues for erring on the side of protecting the unborn. But it’s a prudential judgment, hardly a certain one.

At the same time, even if one believes that the moral needle ought to lean in the direction of protecting the unborn from abortion, that doesn’t mean one should be indifferent to the enormous burden on the woman who is carrying the child and seeks an abortion, including women who discover that their unborn child has severe birth defects. Nor does it mean that all of us who are disturbed by abortion believe it is the equivalent of killing a child after birth. In this respect, my view is similar to that of some Jewish authorities , who hold that until delivery, a fetus is considered a part of the mother’s body, although it does possess certain characteristics of a person and has value. But an early-term abortion is not equivalent to killing a young child. (Many of those who hold this position base their views in part on Exodus 21, in which a miscarriage that results from men fighting and pushing a pregnant woman is punished by a fine, but the person responsible for the miscarriage is not tried for murder.)

“There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?”

That strikes me as right; with abortion, we’re dealing with an awesome mystery and insoluble empirical questions. Which means that rather than hurling invective at one another and caricaturing those with whom we disagree, we should try to understand their views, acknowledge our limitations, and even show a touch of grace and empathy. In this nation, riven and pulsating with hate, that’s not the direction the debate is most likely to take. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying.

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Abortion rights: history offers a blueprint for how pro-choice campaigners might usefully respond

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In October 1971, the New York Times reported a decline in maternal death rate. 1 Just 15 months earlier, the state had liberalised its abortion law. David Harris, New York’s deputy commissioner of health, speaking to the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, attributed the decline—by more than half—to the replacement of criminal abortions with safe, legal ones. Previously, abortion had been the single leading cause of maternity related deaths, accounting for around a third. A doctor in the audience who said he was from a state “where the abortion law is still archaic,” thanked New York for its “remarkable job” and expressed his gratitude that there was a place he could send his patients and know they would receive “safe, excellent care.” Harris urged other states to follow the example set by New York and liberalise their abortion laws.

Just two years later, in 1973, the US Supreme Court intervened. In the landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled that the constitution protected a woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion, and in doing so, struck down the “archaic” abortion laws that still existed in many states.

As surely everyone knows by now, Roe v. Wade was repealed on 24 June 2022, setting off a wave of fear, uncertainty, rage, and apprehension among those committed to the right to choose. Thirteen states with “trigger bans,” designed to take effect automatically if the ruling was ever struck down, are due to prohibit abortion within 30 days. 2 At least eight states banned the procedure the day the ruling was released. Several others are expected to act, with lawmakers moving to reactivate their dormant legislation. But as the 1971 New York Times article indicates, banning abortion only bans safe abortion.

In November 1955, Jacqueline Smith found out she was about six weeks pregnant. Historian Gillian Frank describes what happened next. 3 Unmarried and anxious about the social consequences for mothers and babies born out of wedlock, Jacqueline and her boyfriend Daniel started looking for methods to end the pregnancy. On the 24 December 1955, Daniel paid a hospital attendant, $50 to perform an illegal abortion in the living room of the boyfriend’s Manhattan apartment. Just a few hours later, Jacqueline was dead. Before abortion was legalised in Great Britain in 1967, the situation on this side of the Atlantic was similar.

As the New York Times article suggests, these names were just some of thousands of women who lost their lives to backstreet abortions or forced birth, and of many more who had their lives irreparably altered by being made to carry babies to term that they were not able to care for or that they simply did not want. But if history foreshadows a terrifying history for women in America, it also offers a blueprint for how pro-choice campaigners might usefully respond.

Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision, but it came only after decades of grassroots feminist activism. In early 1960s California, radical activist Pat Maginnis taught women how to fake the symptoms that would get them a “therapeutic abortion” (then the only legal kind). 4 She founded a group called the Society for Humane Abortion that demanded the repeal of abortion laws and ran an underground network focused on helping women obtain safe abortions, compiling lists of abortion providers outside the US, and providing women with tips on how to evade suspicion at the Mexican border. While some doctors and others were advocating reformed abortion laws in the first half of the twentieth century, it was feminists like Maginnis who were the first to publicly insist that abortion should be completely decriminalised. In 1969, the radical feminist group Redstockings organised an “abortion speakout” in New York City, where women talked about their experiences with illegal terminations. This history shows that women have always been at the forefront of pro-choice activism, and sadly will have to be once again.

But abortion rights also need to be protected closer to home. While abortion is legal in Northern Ireland, millions of women, girls, and people remain without access and must travel to England to receive appropriate reproductive care. Similarly, due to the legacy of nineteenth-century legislation, abortion remains a criminal offence in England—and doctors must lend their substantial social and political capital to the campaign to overturn the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. 5

The world is radically different to how it was in the 1960s. But two things remain constant. Reproductive rights are fundamental to women’s health, safety, and autonomy. And if access to abortion is to be reinstated or expanded in both the United Kingdom and the United States, then healthcare professionals need to be led by, and work in collaboration with, feminist activists.

Competing interests: AA-F’s research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Provenance and peer review: commissioned, not peer reviewed.

• ↵ The New York Times. Decline in Maternal Death Rate Linked to Liberalized Abortion. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/13/archives/decline-in-maternal-death-rate-linked-to-liberalized-abortion.html?searchResultPosition=1
• ↵ NPR. 'Trigger laws' have been taking effect now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107531644/trigger-laws-have-been-taking-effect-now-that-roe-v-wade-has-been-overturned
• ↵ Slate. The Death of Jacqueline Smith. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/jacqueline-smiths-1955-death-and-the-lessons-we-havent-yet-learned-from-it.html
• ↵ NPR. Inside Pat Maginnis' radical (and underground) tactics on abortion rights in the '60s. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/29/1047068724/pat-was-an-early-radical-abortion-rights-activist-her-positions-are-now-common
• ↵ Freeman H. The Guardian. Abortion should be a medical matter, not a criminal one. The law needs to change. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/01/uk-abortion-criminal-offence-24-week-time-limit

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5.1: Arguments Against Abortion

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• Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob
• Morehouse College & University of South Carolina Sumter via Open Philosophy Press

We will begin with arguments for the conclusion that abortion is generally wrong , perhaps nearly always wrong . These can be seen as reasons to believe fetuses have the “right to life” or are otherwise seriously wrong to kill.

5.1.1 Fetuses are human

First, there is the claim that fetuses are “human” and so abortion is wrong. People sometimes debate whether fetuses are human , but fetuses found in (human) women clearly are biologically human : they aren’t cats or dogs. And so we have this argument, with a clearly true first premise:

Fetuses are biologically human.

All things that are biologically human are wrong to kill.

Therefore, fetuses are wrong to kill.

The second premise, however, is false, as easy counterexamples show. Consider some random living biologically human cells or tissues in a petri dish. It wouldn’t be wrong at all to wash those cells or tissues down the drain, killing them; scratching yourself or shaving might kill some biologically human skin cells, but that’s not wrong; a tumor might be biologically human, but not wrong to kill. So just because something is biologically human, that does not at all mean it’s wrong to kill that thing. We saw this same point about what’s merely biologically alive.

This suggests a deficiency in some common understandings of the important idea of “human rights.” “Human rights” are sometimes described as rights someone has just because they are human or simply in virtue of being human .

But the human cells in the petri dish above don’t have “human rights” and a human heart wouldn’t have “human rights” either. Many examples would make it clear that merely being biologically human doesn’t give something human rights. And many human rights advocates do not think that abortion is wrong, despite recognizing that (human) fetuses are biologically human.

The problem about what is often said about human rights is that people often do not think about what makes human beings have rights or why we have them, when we have them. The common explanation, that we have (human) rights just because we are (biologically) human , is incorrect, as the above discussion makes clear. This misunderstanding of the basis or foundation of human rights is problematic because it leads to a widespread, misplaced fixation on whether fetuses are merely biologically “human” and the mistaken thought that if they are, they have “human rights.” To address this problem, we need to identify better, more fundamental, explanations why we have rights, or why killing us is generally wrong, and see how those explanations might apply to fetuses, as we are doing here.

It might be that when people appeal to the importance and value of being “human,” the concern isn’t our biology itself, but the psychological characteristics that many human beings have: consciousness, awareness, feelings and so on. We will discuss this different meaning of “human” below. This meaning of “human” might be better expressed as conscious being , or “person,” or human person. This might be what people have in mind when they argue that fetuses aren’t even “human.”

Human rights are vitally important, and we would do better if we spoke in terms of “conscious-being rights” or “person-rights,” not “human rights.” This more accurate and informed understanding and terminology would help address human rights issues in general, and help us better think through ethical questions about biologically human embryos and fetuses.

5.1.2 Fetuses are human beings

Some respond to the arguments above—against the significance of being merely biologically human—by observing that fetuses aren’t just mere human cells, but are organized in ways that make them beings or organisms . (A kidney is part of a “being,” but the “being” is the whole organism.) That suggests this argument:

Fetuses are human beings or organisms .

All human beings or organisms are wrong to kill.

Therefore, fetuses are wrong to kill, so abortion is wrong.

The first premise is true: fetuses are dependent beings, but dependent beings are still beings.

The second premise, however, is the challenge, in terms of providing good reasons to accept it. Clearly many human beings or organisms are wrong to kill, or wrong to kill unless there’s a good reason that would justify that killing, e.g., self-defense. (This is often described by philosophers as us being prima facie wrong to kill, in contrast to absolutely or necessarily wrong to kill.) Why is this though? What makes us wrong to kill? And do these answers suggest that all human beings or organisms are wrong to kill?

Above it was argued that we are wrong to kill because we are conscious and feeling: we are aware of the world, have feelings and our perspectives can go better or worse for us —we can be harmed— and that’s what makes killing us wrong. It may also sometimes be not wrong to let us die, and perhaps even kill us, if we come to completely and permanently lacking consciousness, say from major brain damage or a coma, since we can’t be harmed by death anymore: we might even be described as dead in the sense of being “brain dead.” 10

So, on this explanation, human beings are wrong to kill, when they are wrong to kill, not because they are human beings (a circular explanation), but because we have psychological, mental or emotional characteristics like these. This explains why we have rights in a simple, common-sense way: it also simply explains why rocks, microorganisms and plants don’t have rights. The challenge then is explaining why fetuses that have never been conscious or had any feeling or awareness would be wrong to kill. How then can the second premise above, general to all human organisms, be supported, especially when applied to early fetuses?

One common attempt is to argue that early fetuses are wrong to kill because there is continuous development from fetuses to us, and since we are wrong to kill now , fetuses are also wrong to kill, since we’ve been the “same being” all along. 11 But this can’t be good reasoning, since we have many physical, cognitive, emotional and moral characteristics now that we lacked as fetuses (and as children). So even if we are the “same being” over time, even if we were once early fetuses, that doesn’t show that fetuses have the moral rights that babies, children and adults have: we, our bodies and our rights sometimes change.

A second attempt proposes that rights are essential to human organisms: they have them whenever they exist. This perspective sees having rights, or the characteristics that make someone have rights, as essential to living human organisms. The claim is that “having rights” is an essential property of human beings or organisms, and so whenever there’s a living human organism, there’s someone with rights, even if that organism totally lacks consciousness, like an early fetus. (In contrast, the proposal we advocate for about what makes us have rights understands rights as “accidental” to our bodies but “essential” to our minds or awareness, since our bodies haven’t always “contained” a conscious being, so to speak.)

Such a view supports the premise above; maybe it just is that premise above. But why believe that rights are essential to human organisms? Some argue this is because of what “kind” of beings we are, which is often presumed to be “rational beings.” The reasoning seems to be this: first, that rights come from being a rational being: this is part of our “nature.” Second, that all human organisms, including fetuses, are the “kind” of being that is a “rational being,” so every being of the “kind” rational being has rights. 12

In response, this explanation might seem question-begging: it might amount to just asserting that all human beings have rights. This explanation is, at least, abstract. It seems to involve some categorization and a claim that everyone who is in a certain category has some of the same moral characteristics that others in that category have, but because of a characteristic (actual rationality) that only these others have: so, these others profoundly define what everyone else is . If this makes sense, why not also categorize us all as not rational beings , if we are the same kind of beings as fetuses that are actually not rational?

This explanation might seem to involve thinking that rights somehow “trickle down” from later rationality to our embryonic origins, and so what we have later we also have earlier , because we are the same being or the same “kind” of being. But this idea is, in general, doubtful: we are now responsible beings, in part because we are rational beings, but fetuses aren’t responsible for anything. And we are now able to engage in moral reasoning since we are rational beings, but fetuses don’t have the “rights” that uniquely depend on moral reasoning abilities. So that an individual is a member of some general group or kind doesn’t tell us much about their rights: that depends on the actual details about that individual, beyond their being members of a group or kind.

To make this more concrete, return to the permanently comatose individuals mentioned above: are we the same kind of beings, of the same “essence,” as these human beings? If so, then it seems that some human beings can be not wrong to let die or kill, when they have lost consciousness. Therefore, perhaps some other human beings, like early fetuses, are also not wrong to kill before they have gained consciousness . And if we are not the same “kind” of beings, or have different essences, then perhaps we also aren’t the same kind of beings as fetuses either.

Similar questions arise concerning anencephalic babies, tragically born without most of their brains: are they the same “kind” of beings as “regular” babies or us? If so, then—since such babies are arguably morally permissible to let die, even when they could be kept alive, since being alive does them no good—then being of our “kind” doesn’t mean the individual has the same rights as us, since letting us die would be wrong. But if such babies are a different “kind” of beings than us, then pre-conscious fetuses might be of a relevantly different kind also.

So, in general, this proposal that early fetuses essentially have rights is suspect, if we evaluate the reasons given in its support. Even if fetuses and us are the same “kind” of beings (which perhaps we are not!) that doesn’t immediately tell us what rights fetuses would have, if any. And we might even reasonably think that, despite our being the same kind of beings as fetuses (e.g., the same kind of biology), we are also importantly different kinds of beings (e.g., one kind with a mental life and another kind which has never had it). This photograph of a 6-week old fetus might help bring out the ambiguity in what kinds of beings we all are:

In sum, the abstract view that all human organisms have rights essentially needs to be plausibly explained and defended. We need to understand how it really works. We need to be shown why it’s a better explanation, all things considered, than a consciousness and feelings-based theory of rights that simply explains why we, and babies, have rights, why racism, sexism and other forms of clearly wrongful discrimination are wrong, and , importantly, how we might lose rights in irreversible coma cases (if people always retained the right to life in these circumstances, presumably, it would be wrong to let anyone die), and more.

5.1.3 Fetuses are persons

Finally, we get to what some see as the core issue here, namely whether fetuses are persons , and an argument like this:

Fetuses are persons, perhaps from conception.

Persons have the right to life and are wrong to kill.

So, abortion is wrong, as it involves killing persons.

The second premise seems very plausible, but there are some important complications about it that will be discussed later. So let’s focus on the idea of personhood and whether any fetuses are persons. What is it to be a person ? One answer that everyone can agree on is that persons are beings with rights and value . That’s a fine answer, but it takes us back to the initial question: OK, who or what has the rights and value of persons? What makes someone or something a person?

Answers here are often merely asserted , but these answers need to be tested: definitions can be judged in terms of whether they fit how a word is used. We might begin by thinking about what makes us persons. Consider this:

We are persons now. Either we will always be persons or we will cease being persons. If we will cease to be persons, what can end our personhood? If we will always be persons, how could that be?

Both options yield insight into personhood. Many people think that their personhood ends at death or if they were to go into a permanent coma: their body is (biologically) alive but the person is gone: that is why other people are sad. And if we continue to exist after the death of our bodies, as some religions maintain, what continues to exist? The person , perhaps even without a body, some think! Both responses suggest that personhood is defined by a rough and vague set of psychological or mental, rational and emotional characteristics: consciousness, knowledge, memories, and ways of communicating, all psychologically unified by a unique personality.

A second activity supports this understanding:

Make a list of things that are definitely not persons . Make a list of individuals who definitely are persons . Make a list of imaginary or fictional personified beings which, if existed, would be persons: these beings that fit or display the concept of person, even if they don’t exist. What explains the patterns of the lists?

Rocks, carrots, cups and dead gnats are clearly not persons. We are persons. Science fiction gives us ideas of personified beings: to give something the traits of a person is to indicate what the traits of persons are, so personified beings give insights into what it is to be a person. Even though the non-human characters from, say, Star Wars don’t exist, they fit the concept of person: we could befriend them, work with them, and so on, and we could only do that with persons. A common idea of God is that of an immaterial person who has exceptional power, knowledge, and goodness: you couldn’t pray to a rock and hope that rock would respond: you could only pray to a person. Are conscious and feeling animals, like chimpanzees, dolphins, cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, and cows more relevantly like us, as persons, or are they more like rocks and cabbages, non-persons? Conscious and feeling animals seem to be closer to persons than not. 13 So, this classificatory and explanatory activity further supports a psychological understanding of personhood: persons are, at root, conscious, aware and feeling beings.

Concerning abortion, early fetuses would not be persons on this account: they are not yet conscious or aware since their brains and nervous systems are either non-existent or insufficiently developed. Consciousness emerges in fetuses much later in pregnancy, likely after the first trimester or a bit beyond. This is after when most abortions occur. Most abortions, then, do not involve killing a person , since the fetus has not developed the characteristics for personhood. We will briefly discuss later abortions, that potentially affect fetuses who are persons or close to it, below.

It is perhaps worthwhile to notice though that if someone believed that fetuses are persons and thought this makes abortion wrong, it’s unclear how they could coherently believe that a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest could permissibly be ended by an abortion. Some who oppose abortion argue that, since you are a person, it would be wrong to kill you now even if you were conceived because of a rape, and so it’s wrong to kill any fetus who is a person, even if they exist because of a rape: whether someone is a person or not doesn’t depend on their origins: it would make no sense to think that, for two otherwise identical fetuses, one is a person but the other isn’t, because that one was conceived by rape. Therefore, those who accept a “personhood argument” against abortion, yet think that abortions in cases of rape are acceptable, seem to have an inconsistent view.

5.1.4 Fetuses are potential persons

If fetuses aren’t persons, they are at least potential persons, meaning they could and would become persons. This is true. This, however, doesn’t mean that they currently have the rights of persons because, in general, potential things of a kind don’t have the rights of actual things of that kind : potential doctors, lawyers, judges, presidents, voters, veterans, adults, parents, spouses, graduates, moral reasoners and more don’t have the rights of actual individuals of those kinds.

Some respond that potential gives the right to at least try to become something. But that trying sometimes involves the cooperation of others: if your friend is a potential medical student, but only if you tutor her for many hours a day, are you obligated to tutor her? If my child is a potential NASCAR champion, am I obligated to buy her a race car to practice? ‘No’ to both and so it is unclear that a pregnant woman would be obligated to provide what’s necessary to bring about a fetus’s potential. (More on that below, concerning the what obligations the right to life imposes on others, in terms of obligations to assist other people.)

5.1.5 Abortion prevents fetuses from experiencing their valuable futures

The argument against abortion that is likely most-discussed by philosophers comes from philosopher Don Marquis. 14 He argues that it is wrong to kill us, typical adults and children, because it deprives us from experiencing our (expected to be) valuable futures, which is a great loss to us . He argues that since fetuses also have valuable futures (“futures like ours” he calls them), they are also wrong to kill. His argument has much to recommend it, but there are reasons to doubt it as well.

First, fetuses don’t seem to have futures like our futures , since—as they are pre-conscious—they are entirely psychologically disconnected from any future experiences: there is no (even broken) chain of experiences from the fetus to that future person’s experiences. Babies are, at least, aware of the current moment, which leads to the next moment; children and adults think about and plan for their futures, but fetuses cannot do these things, being completely unconscious and without a mind.

Second, this fact might even mean that the early fetus doesn’t literally have a future: if your future couldn’t include you being a merely physical, non-conscious object (e.g., you couldn’t be a corpse: if there’s a corpse, you are gone), then non-conscious physical objects, like a fetus, couldn’t literally be a future person. 15 If this is correct, early fetuses don’t even have futures, much less futures like ours. Something would have a future, like ours, only when there is someone there to be psychologically connected to that future: that someone arrives later in pregnancy, after when most abortions occur.

A third objection is more abstract and depends on the “metaphysics” of objects. It begins with the observation that there are single objects with parts with space between them . Indeed almost every object is like this, if you could look close enough: it’s not just single dinette sets, since there is literally some space between the parts of most physical objects. From this, it follows that there seem to be single objects such as an-egg-and-the-sperm-that-would-fertilize-it . And these would also seem to have a future of value, given how Marquis describes this concept. (It should be made clear that sperm and eggs alone do not have futures of value, and Marquis does not claim they do: this is not the objection here). The problem is that contraception, even by abstinence , prevents that thing’s future of value from materializing, and so seems to be wrong when we use Marquis’s reasoning. Since contraception is not wrong, but his general premise suggests that it is , it seems that preventing something from experiencing its valuable future isn’t always wrong and so Marquis’s argument appears to be unsound. 16

In sum, these are some of the most influential arguments against abortion. Our discussion was brief, but these arguments do not appear to be successful: they do not show that abortion is wrong, much less make it clear and obvious that abortion is wrong.

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Are you about to write a persuasive essay on abortion but wondering how to begin?

Writing an effective persuasive essay on the topic of abortion can be a difficult task for many students. 

It is important to understand both sides of the issue and form an argument based on facts and logical reasoning. This requires research and understanding, which takes time and effort.

In this blog, we will provide you with some easy steps to craft a persuasive essay about abortion that is compelling and convincing. Moreover, we have included some example essays and interesting facts to read and get inspired by. 

So let's start!

• 1. How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?
• 2. Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples
• 3. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion
• 4. Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics
• 5. Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments. 

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay .

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing. 

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument. 

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both? 

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information.

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Step 3: Define Your Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and audience, it is time to craft your argument. 

Start by defining what you believe and why, making sure to use evidence to support your claims. You also need to consider the opposing arguments and come up with counter arguments. This helps make your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. 

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of argumentative essay with introduction, body and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay. 

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

• Should abortion be legal in the United States?
• Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
• What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
• Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
• What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
• How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
• Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
• Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
• Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
• How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values? 

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you. 

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

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Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

• According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
• The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
• Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
• In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban most forms of abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
• Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
• In places where abortion is illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
• A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
• According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing. 

Need the services of a professional essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com is a persuasive essay writing service that provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i talk about in an essay about abortion.

When writing an essay about abortion, it is important to cover all the aspects of the subject. This includes discussing both sides of the argument, providing facts and evidence to support your claims, and exploring potential solutions.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

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Abortion Argumentative Essay: Definitive Guide

Academic writing

Abortion remains a debatable issue even today, especially in countries like the USA, where a controversial ban was upheld in 13 states at the point this article was written. That’s why an essay on abortion has become one of the most popular tasks in schools, colleges, and universities. When writing this kind of essay, students learn to express their opinion, find and draw arguments and examples, and conduct research.

It’s very easy to speculate on topics like this. However, this makes it harder to find credible and peer-reviewed information on the topic that isn’t merely someone’s opinion. If you were assigned this kind of academic task, do not lose heart. In this article, we will provide you with all the tips and tricks for writing about abortion.

Where to begin?

Conversations about abortion are always emotional. Complex stories, difficult decisions, bitter moments, and terrible diagnoses make this topic hard to cover. Some young people may be shocked by this assignment, while others would be happy to express their opinion on the matter.

One way or another, this topic doesn't leave anyone indifferent. However, it shouldn’t have an effect on the way you approach the research and writing process. What should you remember when working on an argumentative essay about abortion?

• Don’t let your emotions take over. As this is an academic paper, you have to stay impartial and operate with facts. The topic is indeed sore and burning, causing thousands of scandals on the Internet, but you are writing it for school, not a Quora thread.
• Try to balance your opinions. There are always two sides to one story, even if the story is so fragile. You need to present an issue from different angles. This is what your tutors seek to teach you.
• Be tolerant and mind your language. It is very important not to hurt anybody with the choice of words in your essay. So make sure you avoid any possible rough words. It is important to respect people with polar opinions, especially when it comes to academic writing. 
• Use facts, not claims. Your essay cannot be based solely on your personal ideas – your conclusions should be derived from facts. Roe v. Wade case, WHO or Mayo Clinic information, and CDC are some of the sources you can rely on.

Speaking of Outline

An argumentative essay on abortion outline is a must-have even for experienced writers. In general, each essay, irrespective of its kind or topic, has a strict outline. It may be brief or extended, but the major parts are always the same:

• Introduction. This is a relatively short paragraph that starts with a hook and presents the background information on the topic. It should end with a thesis statement telling your reader what your main goal or idea is.
• Body. This section usually consists of 2-4 paragraphs. Each one has its own structure: main argument + facts to support it + small conclusion and transition into the next paragraph.
• Conclusion. In this part, your task is to summarize all your thoughts and come to a general conclusive idea. You may have to restate some info from the body and your thesis statement and add a couple of conclusive statements without introducing new facts.

Why is it important to create an outline?

• You will structure your ideas. We bet you’ve got lots on your mind. Writing them down and seeing how one can flow logically into the other will help you create a consistent paper. Naturally, you will have to abandon some of the ideas if they don’t fit the overall narrative you’re building.
• You can get some inspiration. While creating your outline, which usually consists of some brief ideas, you can come up with many more to research. Some will add to your current ones or replace them with better options.
• You will find the most suitable sources. Argumentative essay writing requires you to use solid facts and trustworthy arguments built on them. When the topic is as controversial as abortion, these arguments should be taken from up-to-date, reliable sources. With an outline, you will see if you have enough to back up your ideas.
• You will write your text as professionals do. Most expert writers start with outlines to write the text faster and make it generally better. As you will have your ideas structured, the general flow of thoughts will be clear. And, of course, it will influence your overall grade positively.

Abortion Essay Introduction

The introduction is perhaps the most important part of the whole essay. In this relatively small part, you will have to present the issue under consideration and state your opinion on it. Here is a typical introduction outline:

• The first sentence is a hook grabbing readers' attention.
• A few sentences that go after elaborate on the hook. They give your readers some background and explain your research.
• The last sentence is a thesis statement showing the key idea you are building your text around.

Before writing an abortion essay intro, first thing first, you will need to define your position. If you are in favor of this procedure, what exactly made you think so? If you are an opponent of abortion, determine how to argue your position. In both cases, you may research the point of view in medicine, history, ethics, and other fields.

When writing an introduction, remember:

• Never repeat your title. First of all, it looks too obvious; secondly, it may be boring for your reader right from the start. Your first sentence should be a well-crafted hook. The topic of abortion worries many people, so it’s your chance to catch your audience’s attention with some facts or shocking figures.
• Do not make it too long. Your task here is to engage your audience and let them know what they are about to learn. The rest of the information will be disclosed in the main part. Nobody likes long introductions, so keep it short but informative.
• Pay due attention to the thesis statement. This is the central sentence of your introduction. A thesis statement in your abortion intro paragraph should show that you have a well-supported position and are ready to argue it. Therefore, it has to be strong and convey your idea as clearly as possible. We advise you to make several options for the thesis statement and choose the strongest one.

Hooks for an Abortion Essay

Writing a hook is a good way to catch the attention of your audience, as this is usually the first sentence in an essay. How to start an essay about abortion? You can begin with some shocking fact, question, statistics, or even a quote. However, always make sure that this piece is taken from a trusted resource.

Here are some examples of hooks you can use in your paper:

• As of July 1, 2022, 13 states banned abortion, depriving millions of women of control of their bodies.
• According to WHO, 125,000 abortions take place every day worldwide.
• Is abortion a woman’s right or a crime?
• Since 1994, more than 40 countries have liberalized their abortion laws.
• Around 48% of all abortions are unsafe, and 8% of them lead to women’s death.
• The right to an abortion is one of the reproductive and basic rights of a woman.
• Abortion is as old as the world itself – women have resorted to this method since ancient times.
• Only 60% of women in the world live in countries where pregnancy termination is allowed.

Body Paragraphs: Pros and Cons of Abortion

The body is the biggest part of your paper. Here, you have a chance to make your voice concerning the abortion issue heard. Not sure where to start? Facts about abortion pros and cons should give you a basic understanding of which direction to move in.

First things first, let’s review some brief tips for you on how to write the best essay body if you have already made up your mind.

Make a draft

It’s always a good idea to have a rough draft of your writing. Follow the outline and don’t bother with the word choice, grammar, or sentence structure much at first. You can polish it all later, as the initial draft will not likely be your final. You may see some omissions in your arguments, lack of factual basis, or repetitiveness that can be eliminated in the next versions.

Trust only reliable sources

This part of an essay includes loads of factual information, and you should be very careful with it. Otherwise, your paper may look unprofessional and cost you precious points. Never rely on sources like Wikipedia or tabloids – they lack veracity and preciseness.

Edit rigorously

It’s best to do it the next day after you finish writing so that you can spot even the smallest mistakes. Remember, this is the most important part of your paper, so it has to be flawless. You can also use editing tools like Grammarly.

Determine your weak points

Since you are writing an argumentative essay, your ideas should be backed up by strong facts so that you sound convincing. Sometimes it happens that one argument looks weaker than the other. Your task is to find it and strengthen it with more or better facts.

Add an opposing view

Sometimes, it’s not enough to present only one side of the discussion. Showing one of the common views from the opposing side might actually help you strengthen your main idea. Besides, making an attempt at refuting it with alternative facts can show your teacher or professor that you’ve researched and analyzed all viewpoints, not just the one you stand by.

If you have chosen a side but are struggling to find the arguments for or against it, we have complied abortion pro and cons list for you. You can use both sets if you are writing an abortion summary essay covering all the stances.

Why Should Abortion Be Legal

If you stick to the opinion that abortion is just a medical procedure, which should be a basic health care need for each woman, you will definitely want to write the pros of abortion essay. Here is some important information and a list of pros about abortion for you to use:

• Since the fetus is a set of cells – not an individual, it’s up to a pregnant woman to make a decision concerning her body. Only she can decide whether she wants to keep the pregnancy or have an abortion. The abortion ban is a violation of a woman’s right to have control over her own body.
• The fact that women and girls do not have access to effective contraception and safe abortion services has serious consequences for their own health and the health of their families.
• The criminalization of abortion usually leads to an increase in the number of clandestine abortions. Many years ago, fetuses were disposed of with improvised means, which included knitting needles and half-straightened metal hangers. 13% of women’s deaths are the result of unsafe abortions.
• Many women live in a difficult financial situation and cannot support their children financially. Having access to safe abortion takes this burden off their shoulders. This will also not decrease their quality of life as the birth and childcare would.
• In countries where abortion is prohibited, there is a phenomenon of abortion tourism to other countries where it can be done without obstacles. Giving access to this procedure can make the lives of women much easier.
• Women should not put their lives or health in danger because of the laws that were adopted by other people.
• Girls and women who do not have proper sex education may not understand pregnancy as a concept or determine that they are pregnant early on. Instead of educating them and giving them a choice, an abortion ban forces them to become mothers and expects them to be fit parents despite not knowing much about reproduction.
• There are women who have genetic disorders or severe mental health issues that will affect their children if they're born. Giving them an option to terminate ensures that there won't be a child with a low quality of life and that the woman will not have to suffer through pregnancy, birth, and raising a child with her condition.
• Being pro-choice is about the freedom to make decisions about your body so that women who are for termination can do it safely, and those who are against it can choose not to do it. It is an inclusive option that caters to everyone.
• Women and girls who were raped or abused by their partner, caregiver, or stranger and chose to terminate the pregnancy can now be imprisoned for longer than their abusers. This implies that the system values the life of a fetus with no or primitive brain function over the life of a living woman.
• People who lived in times when artificial termination of pregnancy was scarcely available remember clandestine abortions and how traumatic they were, not only for the physical but also for the mental health of women. Indeed, traditionally, in many countries, large families were a norm. However, the times have changed, and supervised abortion is a safe and accessible procedure these days. A ban on abortion will simply push humanity away from the achievements of the civilized world.

Types of abortion

There are 2 main types of abortions that can be performed at different pregnancy stages and for different reasons:

• Medical abortion. It is performed by taking a specially prescribed pill. It does not require any special manipulations and can even be done at home (however, after a doctor’s visit and under supervision). It is considered very safe and is usually done during the very first weeks of pregnancy.
• Surgical abortion. This is a medical operation that is done with the help of a suction tube. It then removes the fetus and any related material. Anesthesia is used for this procedure, and therefore, it can only be done in a hospital. The maximum time allowed for surgical abortion is determined in each country specifically.

Cases when abortion is needed

Center for Reproductive Rights singles out the following situations when abortion is required:

• When there is a risk to the life or physical/mental health of a pregnant woman.
• When a pregnant woman has social or economic reasons for it.
• Upon the woman's request.
• If a pregnant woman is mentally or cognitively disabled.
• In case of rape and/or incest.
• If there were congenital anomalies detected in the fetus.

Countries and their abortion laws

• Countries where abortion is legalized in any case: Australia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.
• Countries where abortion is completely prohibited: Angola, Venezuela, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Oman, Paraguay, Palau, Jamaica, Laos, Haiti, Honduras, Andorra, Aruba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, Senegal, etc.
• Countries where abortion is allowed for medical reasons: Afghanistan, Israel, Argentina, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana, Israel, Morocco, Mexico, Bahamas, Central African Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Algeria, Monaco, Pakistan, Poland, etc. 
• Countries where abortion is allowed for both medical and socioeconomic reasons: England, India, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, Finland, Taiwan, Zambia, Iceland, Fiji, Cyprus, Barbados, Belize, etc.

Why Abortion Should Be Banned

Essays against abortions are popular in educational institutions since we all know that many people – many minds. So if you don’t want to support this procedure in your essay, here are some facts that may help you to argument why abortion is wrong:

• Abortion at an early age is especially dangerous because a young woman with an unstable hormonal system may no longer be able to have children throughout her life. Termination of pregnancy disrupts the hormonal development of the body.
• Health complications caused by abortion can occur many years after the procedure. Even if a woman feels fine in the short run, the situation may change in the future.
• Abortion clearly has a negative effect on reproductive function. Artificial dilation of the cervix during an abortion leads to weak uterus tonus, which can cause a miscarriage during the next pregnancy.
• Evidence shows that surgical termination of pregnancy significantly increases the risk of breast cancer.
• In December 1996, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics concluded that a fetus is considered a human being on the 14th day after conception.

You are free to use each of these arguments for essays against abortions. Remember that each claim should not be supported by emotions but by facts, figures, and so on.

Health complications after abortion

One way or another, abortion is extremely stressful for a woman’s body. Apart from that, it can even lead to various health problems in the future. You can also cover them in your cons of an abortion essay:

• Continuation of pregnancy. If the dose of the drug is calculated by the doctor in the wrong way, the pregnancy will progress.
• Uterine bleeding, which requires immediate surgical intervention.
• Severe nausea or even vomiting occurs as a result of a sharp change in the hormonal background.
• Severe stomach pain. Medical abortion causes miscarriage and, as a result, strong contractions of the uterus.
• High blood pressure and allergic reactions to medicines.
• Depression or other mental problems after a difficult procedure.

Abortion Essay Conclusion

After you have finished working on the previous sections of your paper, you will have to end it with a strong conclusion. The last impression is no less important than the first one. Here is how you can make it perfect in your conclusion paragraph on abortion:

• It should be concise. The conclusion cannot be as long as your essay body and should not add anything that cannot be derived from the main section. Reiterate the key ideas, combine some of them, and end the paragraph with something for the readers to think about.
• It cannot repeat already stated information. Restate your thesis statement in completely other words and summarize your main points. Do not repeat anything word for word – rephrase and shorten the information instead.
• It should include a call to action or a cliffhanger. Writing experts believe that a rhetorical question works really great for an argumentative essay. Another good strategy is to leave your readers with some curious ideas to ponder upon.

Abortion Facts for Essay

Abortion is a topic that concerns most modern women. Thousands of books, research papers, and articles on abortion are written across the world. Even though pregnancy termination has become much safer and less stigmatized with time, it still worries millions. What can you cover in your paper so that it can really stand out among others? You may want to add some shocking abortion statistics and facts:

• 40-50 million abortions are done in the world every year (approximately 125,000 per day).
• According to UN statistics, women have 25 million unsafe abortions each year. Most of them (97%) are performed in the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 14% of them are especially unsafe because they are done by people without any medical knowledge.
• Since 2017, the United States has shown the highest abortion rate in the last 30 years.
• The biggest number of abortion procedures happen in the countries where they are officially banned. The lowest rate is demonstrated in the countries with high income and free access to contraception.
• Women in low-income regions are three times more susceptible to unplanned pregnancies than those in developed countries.
• In Argentina, more than 38,000 women face dreadful health consequences after unsafe abortions.
• The highest teen abortion rates in the world are seen in 3 countries: England, Wales, and Sweden.
• Only 31% of teenagers decide to terminate their pregnancy. However, the rate of early pregnancies is getting lower each year.
• Approximately 13 million children are born to mothers under the age of 20 each year.
• 5% of women of reproductive age live in countries where abortions are prohibited.

We hope that this abortion information was useful for you, and you can use some of these facts for your own argumentative essay. If you find some additional facts, make sure that they are not manipulative and are taken from official medical resources.

Abortion Essay Topics

Do you feel like you are lost in the abundance of information? Don’t know what topic to choose among the thousands available online? Check our short list of the best abortion argumentative essay topics:

• Why should abortion be legalized essay
• Abortion: a murder or a basic human right?
• Why we should all support abortion rights
• Is the abortion ban in the US a good initiative?
• The moral aspect of teen abortions
• Can the abortion ban solve birth control problems?
• Should all countries allow abortion?
• What consequences can abortion have in the long run?
• Is denying abortion sexist?
• Why is abortion a human right?
• Are there any ethical implications of abortion?
• Do you consider abortion a crime?
• Should women face charges for terminating a pregnancy?

Want to come up with your own? Here is how to create good titles for abortion essays:

• Write down the first associations. It can be something that swirls around in your head and comes to the surface when you think about the topic. These won’t necessarily be well-written headlines, but each word or phrase can be the first link in the chain of ideas that leads you to the best option.
• Irony and puns are not always a good idea. Especially when it comes to such difficult topics as abortion. Therefore, in your efforts to be original, remain sensitive to the issue you want to discuss.
• Never make a quote as your headline. First, a wordy quote makes the headline long. Secondly, readers do not understand whose words are given in the headline. Therefore, it may confuse them right from the start. If you have found a great quote, you can use it as your hook, but don’t forget to mention its author.
• Try to briefly summarize what is said in the essay. What is the focus of your paper? If the essence of your argumentative essay can be reduced to one sentence, it can be used as a title, paraphrased, or shortened.
• Write your title after you have finished your text. Before you just start writing, you might not yet have a catchy phrase in mind to use as a title. Don’t let it keep you from working on your essay – it might come along as you write.

Abortion Essay Example

We know that it is always easier to learn from a good example. For this reason, our writing experts have complied a detailed abortion essay outline for you. For your convenience, we have created two options with different opinions.

Topic: Why should abortion be legal?

Introduction – hook + thesis statement + short background information

Essay hook: More than 59% of women in the world do not have access to safe abortions, which leads to dreading health consequences or even death.

Thesis statement: Since banning abortions does not decrease their rates but only makes them unsafe, it is not logical to ban abortions.

Body – each paragraph should be devoted to one argument

Argument 1: Woman’s body – women’s rules. + example: basic human rights.

Argument 2: Banning abortion will only lead to more women’s death. + example: cases of Polish women.

Argument 3: Only women should decide on abortion. + example: many abortion laws are made by male politicians who lack knowledge and first-hand experience in pregnancies.

Conclusion – restated thesis statement + generalized conclusive statements + cliffhanger

Restated thesis: The abortion ban makes pregnancy terminations unsafe without decreasing the number of abortions, making it dangerous for women.

Cliffhanger: After all, who are we to decide a woman’s fate?

Topic: Why should abortion be banned?

Essay hook: Each year, over 40 million new babies are never born because their mothers decide to have an abortion.

Thesis statement: Abortions on request should be banned because we cannot decide for the baby whether it should live or die.

Argument 1: A fetus is considered a person almost as soon as it is conceived. Killing it should be regarded as murder. + example: Abortion bans in countries such as Poland, Egypt, etc.

Argument 2: Interrupting a baby’s life is morally wrong. + example: The Bible, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics decision in 1996, etc.

Argument 3: Abortion may put the reproductive health of a woman at risk. + example: negative consequences of abortion.

Restated thesis: Women should not be allowed to have abortions without serious reason because a baby’s life is as priceless as their own.

Cliffhanger: Why is killing an adult considered a crime while killing an unborn baby is not?

Examples of Essays on Abortion

There are many great abortion essays examples on the Web. You can easily find an argumentative essay on abortion in pdf and save it as an example. Many students and scholars upload their pieces to specialized websites so that others can read them and continue the discussion in their own texts.

In a free argumentative essay on abortion, you can look at the structure of the paper, choice of the arguments, depth of research, and so on. Reading scientific papers on abortion or essays of famous activists is also a good idea. Here are the works of famous authors discussing abortion.

A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Published in 1971, this essay by an American philosopher considers the moral permissibility of abortion. It is considered the most debated and famous essay on this topic, and it’s definitely worth reading no matter what your stance is.

Abortion and Infanticide by Michael Tooley

It was written in 1972 by an American philosopher known for his work in the field of metaphysics. In this essay, the author considers whether fetuses and infants have the same rights. Even though this work is quite complex, it presents some really interesting ideas on the matter.

Some Biological Insights into Abortion by Garret Hardin

This article by American ecologist Garret Hardin, who had focused on the issue of overpopulation during his scholarly activities, presents some insights into abortion from a scientific point of view. He also touches on non-biological issues, such as moral and economic. This essay will be of great interest to those who support the pro-choice stance.

H4 Hidden in Plain View: An Overview of Abortion in Rural Illinois and Around the Globe by Heather McIlvaine-Newsad 

In this study, McIlvaine-Newsad has researched the phenomenon of abortion since prehistoric times. She also finds an obvious link between the rate of abortions and the specifics of each individual country. Overall, this scientific work published in 2014 is extremely interesting and useful for those who want to base their essay on factual information.

H4 Reproduction, Politics, and John Irving’s The Cider House Rules: Women’s Rights or “Fetal Rights”? by Helena Wahlström

In her article of 2013, Wahlström considers John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules published in 1985 and is regarded as a revolutionary work for that time, as it acknowledges abortion mostly as a political problem. This article will be a great option for those who want to investigate the roots of the abortion debate.

FAQs On Abortion Argumentative Essay

• Is abortion immoral?

This question is impossible to answer correctly because each person independently determines their own moral framework. One group of people will say that abortion is a woman’s right because only she has power over her body and can make decisions about it. Another group will argue that the embryo is also a person and has the right to birth and life.

In general, the attitude towards abortion is determined based on the political and religious views of each person. Religious people generally believe that abortion is immoral because it is murder, while secular people see it as a normal medical procedure. For example, in the US, the ban on abortion was introduced in red states where the vast majority have conservative views, while blue liberal states do not support this law. Overall, it’s up to a person to decide whether they consider abortion immoral based on their own values and beliefs.

• Is abortion legal?

The answer to this question depends on the country in which you live. There are countries in which pregnancy termination is a common medical procedure and is performed at the woman's request. There are also states in which there must be a serious reason for abortion: medical, social, or economic. Finally, there are nations in which abortion is prohibited and criminalized. For example, in Jamaica, a woman can get life imprisonment for abortion, while in Kenya, a medical worker who volunteers to perform an abortion can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

• Is abortion safe?

In general, modern medicine has reached such a level that abortion has become a common (albeit difficult from various points of view) medical procedure. There are several types of abortion, as well as many medical devices and means that ensure the maximum safety of the pregnancy termination. Like all other medical procedures, abortion can have various consequences and complications.

Abortions – whether safe or not - exist in all countries of the world. The thing is that more than half of them are dangerous because women have them in unsuitable conditions and without professional help. Only universal access to abortion in all parts of the world can make it absolutely safe. In such a case, it will be performed only after a thorough assessment and under the control of a medical professional who can mitigate the potential risks.

• How safe is abortion?

If we do not talk about the ethical side of the issue related to abortion, it still has some risks. In fact, any medical procedure has them to a greater or lesser extent.

The effectiveness of the safe method in a medical setting is 80-99%. An illegal abortion (for example, the one without special indications after 12 weeks) can lead to a patient’s death, and the person who performed it will be criminally liable in this case.

Doctors do not have universal advice for all pregnant women on whether it is worth making this decision or not. However, many of them still tend to believe that any contraception - even one that may have negative side effects - is better than abortion. That’s why spreading awareness on means of contraception and free access to it is vital.

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• v.14(1); 2022 Jan

The Moral Significance of Abortion Inconsistency Arguments

William simkulet.

1 Park University, Parkville, MO USA

2 Dodge City Community College, Dodge City, KS USA

Most opponents of abortion (OA) believe fetuses matter . Critics argue that OA act inconsistently with regards to fetal life, seeking to restrict access to induced abortion, but largely ignoring spontaneous abortion and the creation of surplus embryos by IVF. Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce Blackshaw, and Daniel Rodger call such arguments inconsistency arguments and contend they do not matter. They present three objections to these arguments — the other beliefs, other actions, and hypocrisy objection. Previously, I argued these objections fail and threaten to undermine ethical inquiry. Colgrove et al. have recently replied, but here, I argue their reply fails as well and raises a new criticism of the other actions’ objection. This essay sets out to show, as well as any philosophical argument can, that inconsistency arguments are morally significant.

Introduction

Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce Blackshaw, and Daniel Rodger ( 2020 ) set out to show that inconsistency arguments “do not matter”; by inconsistency argument , they mean to pick out a variety (Fleck 1979 ; Murphy 1985 ; Ord 2008 ; Lovering 2013 , 2014 , 2017 , 2020 ; Berg 2017 ; Simkulet 2016 , 2017 , 2019a , b , c , 2020 ; Bovens 2006 ; Schlumpf 2019 ) of disparate criticisms identifying apparent inconsistencies in how opponents of abortion (OA) treat fetuses. Unfortunately, this term is misleading, as practically all philosophical arguments involve identifying some form of inconsistency, confusion, or misunderstanding.

Critics of the prolife anti-abortion position argue that OA hold inconsistent moral beliefs; they claim to believe that fetuses are persons from conception, but they neglect the welfare of fetuses who are spontaneously aborted by natural causes, and overlook the well-being of the surplus frozen human embryos created for IVF. Perhaps the strangest argument that Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) label as an inconsistency argument comes from Sister Joan Chittister (Schlumpf 2019 ), who chastises those who call themselves “pro-life” for neglecting the welfare of born persons. Proponents of inconsistency arguments argue that OA hold inconsistent moral beliefs, arguing that upon revision, they will conclude that they either (i) need to do more, or (ii) need not oppose abortion.

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) contend that such arguments “do not matter.” This paper interprets this as the claim that inconsistency arguments are morally irrelevant for any (widely held) OA view. This paper will show that such arguments are morally relevant to the most widely held OA position.

Another way to read Colgrove et al. is as claiming they “do not matter” because they cannot show that OA need to adopt (ii) over (i). They say, “Inconsistency arguments simply are not equipped to undermine OAs’ views; at most, they reveal what OAs should do (or believe).” (Colgrove et al. 2020 ) This is uncharitable. First, while some inconsistency theorists (Ord 2008 ; Berg 2017 ) might believe that OA do not really believe fetuses are persons from conception, these arguments identify apparent inconsistency, but need not take a stance on how OA ought to resolve this inconsistency. Second, even if OA choose (i) and conclude they ought to do more to prevent spontaneous abortion (education, research, increased access to healthcare (Simkulet 2017 , 2020 ), and perhaps a major shift in social priorities (Ord 2008 ; Berg 2017 ), and more for surplus IVF embryos (adoption, and gestation (Lovering 2020 ; Blackshaw and Colgrove 2020 ; Blackshaw 2021 ), this matters . Colgrove et al. jest that if OA embrace option (i) it would “make the world a (much) worse place (from the critic’s perspective)”; but fail to note that it would make the world a much better place from the perspective of OA!

Complicating matters, there seems to be disagreement among Colgrove, Blackshaw, and Rodger regarding what opposition to abortion requires. Notably, Bruce Blackshaw ( 2021 , 166) contends that Christians ought to act as neighbors, and offers a robust, clear account of what this requires:

Treating frozen embryos as neighbors requires securing them a life like ours through adoption and gestation, and as well as opposing abortion, Christians must work toward this goal for the vast numbers of frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded.

Blackshaw and Rodger ( 2019 ) attempt to justify OA disinterest in spontaneous abortion, claiming that most cases of spontaneous abortion are not currently preventable; but Blackshaw ( 2021 ) notes that “if we regard all human life as equally valuable, we have at least some obligation toward helping reduce deaths from spontaneous abortion where possible”.

This paper argues that inconsistency arguments matter. It is divided into three main sections. The first draws a distinction between restrictivist and moralist views on abortion, arguing only restrictivist views are OA. The second sets out to defend my earlier criticism (Simkulet 2021 ) of the other beliefs, other actions, and hypocrisy objections from Blackshaw et al.’s ( 2021 ) recent response. The third offers a new argument against the other actions objection; I argue that if this objection were to succeed, it would undermine restrictivist opposition to abortion.

Opposition to Abortion

On miscarriage.

Before his collaboration (Colgrove et al. 2020 ) with Blackshaw and Rodger, Colgrove ( 2019 ) raised a different criticism of Berg’s ( 2017 ) inconsistency argument. Berg argues that because miscarriage is so common, if we believe fetuses matter , we ought to devote more medical resources to protecting them. Colgrove replies that “miscarriage is not a cause of death,” but rather “it is an outcome.” Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) accuse me of the same error.

This is rather uncharitable, but it also misses two key points common in inconsistency arguments. First, if OA believe that fetuses matter, one would expect them to be concerned with both spontaneous and induced abortion, as both are tragic. Second, even if spontaneous abortion has many disparate causes, there may be a common solution. For example, Aspirin can treat a wide variety of conditions, from scraped knee to eye strain to migraine. Many proposals inconsistency theorists discuss (for example, education, gene therapy, and ectogenesis technology) would prevent spontaneous abortion by many different causes.  In short, even if miscarriage is not a single cause of death, there is good reason to think a single solution might address many different cases, saving many fetal lives.

On Opposition to Abortion

To play on Colgrove, note that opposition to abortion is not a moral theory, it is an action or stance one can take toward abortion. There are many reasons why one might oppose abortion; one might merely find the word “abortion” to be distasteful, might oppose abortion on teleological grounds, argue that it is outside the scope of medicine, or that it violates the Hippocratic Oath.

However, most opposition to abortion rests on a single belief. Judith Jarvis Thomson ( 1972 ) says, “Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.” Don Marquis ( 1989 ) says “Many of the most insightful and careful writers on the ethics of abortion… believe that whether or not abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether or not a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end.”

In short, most opposition to abortion turns on the belief that a fetus matters from conception (or soon afterwards (Marquis 2007 , 2013 ); that the fetus is morally comparable to an adult human person. This view is usually abbreviated as the view that fetuses are persons, broadly construed to mean one of many disparate theories about moral status; that human fetuses are human organisms (Mulder 2013 ), rational substances (Lee and George 2005 ; Beckwith 2007 ; George and Tollefsen 2008 ; Friberg-Fernros 2015 ), have a possible future it would be wrong to deprive them of Marquis 1989 ; Stone 1987 ), etc.

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) seek to show that inconsistency arguments are morally irrelevant for any (widely held) anti-abortion view, and there seems to be widespread consensus the most widely held anti-abortion view claims fetuses are persons, broadly construed, from conception (PAC). This paper defends the position that inconsistency arguments are morally relevant to the PAC view.

Restrictivism and Moralism

It will be practical to distinguish between two groups of anti-abortion positions — Restrictivism  (Davis 1984 ; Carroll and Crutchfield Forthcoming ), the view that we should adopt social policies that restrict a woman’s access to induced abortion, and Moralism , the view that abortion is merely immoral, but that we do not need adopt Restrictivist social policies.

It is not hard to see why PAC theorists might embrace restrictivism. On this view, fetuses are comparable to adult human persons, and society has adopted policies aimed at protecting the rights of adult human persons, so it is prima facie plausible that we should adopt similar social policies regarding fetuses. However, Thomson ( 1972 ) demonstrates that it is not enough to show that fetuses merely have a right to life by way of the violinist case:

Violinist: The Society of Music Lovers kidnaps you and attaches your circulatory system to a famous, innocent, unconscious violinist suffering from a kidney ailment that will kill him unless he remains connected to your kidneys for nine months. (Adapted)

The violinist obviously has a right to life, but Thomson argues that the right to life does not give him the right to use your body; it is morally permissible for you to disconnect yourself from the violinist. Thomson says it would be a “great kindness” to stay attached to the violinist but that you do not have to accede to this.

Disconnecting the violinist from your body is comparable to disconnecting a patient from life support to let him die. Restrictivists might argue that induced abortion is not a matter of letting die; but of killing; but this will not do, as one can terminate a pregnancy without killing the fetus by severing the umbilical cord or removing the uterus, “merely” letting the fetus die. If this distinction mattered, restrictivists would not be anti-abortion, they would merely oppose how most abortions are currently performed.

Thomson shows it is not enough for restrictivists to believe fetuses are persons with a right to life, they must also believe something more , that (a) the fetus’s right to life is a positive right to assistance, or (b) the gestational mother somehow comes to have a special obligation to provide assistance to the fetus. She argues that this special obligation cannot be explained by merely risking the chance of pregnancy, as this would imply any woman who leaves the house without a hysterectomy has consented to pregnancy, even by rape. Furthermore, David Boonin ( 2002 ) argues that even if one consents to provide aid, one can withdraw consent.

Bone Marrow: Your neighbor is diagnosed with a condition that will kill him unless he receives monthly bone marrow transplants over the course of nine months from a match. You are a match and you agree to donate. However, it soon becomes clear that these surgeries ask more than you are willing to give, and you refuse to go in for the second surgery. (Adapted)

These thought experiments demonstrate that restrictivists must do more than argue fetuses are persons, they must argue that the fetus has a positive right to assistance.

However, one can believe abortion is immoral without believing we ought to adopt restrictivist social policies. There are many prima facie immoral things that it would be inappropriate to restrict by law. For example, I think most of us would agree that it is prima facie immoral to waste scarce resources, but that individuals might have a right to do so in some cases. One might hold that it is wrong to waste food without holding that throwing away leftovers should be illegal. Similarly, one might hold that adultery outside of an open marriage is immoral, but that adopting social policies that restrict such behavior would be undesirable, in part, because they are difficult to enforce, and in part because it might incentivize other immoral behavior, such as murdering one’s spouse to keep one’s adultery secret.

Moralism is the view that abortion is often, all things considered, immoral, but does not require that we adopt social policies that restrict woman’s access to abortion. There are many reasons why moralists might reject restrictivism independent of Thomson and Boonin-style concerns.

For example, restrictivist views have a hard time making exceptions for rape cases, despite the fact that many restrictivists believe such exceptions should be made. Rape victims are often reluctant to report rape and reluctant to take medical exams. Convictions in rape cases are difficult to obtain, especially within the short window in which inducing abortion would be medically preferable. As such, restrictivists face a dilemma – (a) if they require proof of rape, then few rape victims are allowed to abort; while (b) if they do not require proof of rape, they encourage women to merely say they were raped (whether true or not), failing to prevent most induced abortions and encouraging deception.

Restrictivists face a similar challenge with regards to self-defense, as all pregnancies are medically risky. The prospect of drawing a nonarbitrary line with regards to legally obligatory medical risk is dubious, but even if such a task could be achieved, those physicians sympathetic to abortion might overestimate risk and those opposing abortion might underestimate or ignore risk. Furthermore, medical risk of abortion increases with malnutrition and other medical emergencies, so those seeking abortion on medical grounds are incentivized to harm themselves to pass this threshold.

In light of these, and other, difficulties, many people who believe abortion are immoral reject restrictivism and adopt moralism. Notably, moralists need not hold that fetuses have a positive right to assistance, like restrictivists. I have contended (Simkulet 2021 ) that most OA believe fetuses have a positive right to assistance — that most OA are restrictivists. Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) claim that I miss “the target,” as one can be an OA without being committed to the belief that fetuses have a positive right to assistance.

Perhaps Colgrove et al. wish OA to pick out both restrictivist and moralist positions, but this will not do. Although moralists believe induced abortion is immoral, they are prochoice, while Colgrove et al. identify OA as prolife. Perhaps Colgrove et al. mean to say restrictivism does not require the belief that fetuses have a positive right to assistance, but this would merely introduce greater inconsistency regarding medical and legal ethics, as illustrated by Thomson ( 1972 ) and Boonin ( 2002 ).

Do Inconsistency Arguments Matter?

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) raise three objections to inconsistency arguments — the other beliefs, other actions, and hypocrisy objections. I contend (Simkulet 2021 ) these objections threaten to undermine moral analysis completely; opposing parties could always claim to have other beliefs, other actions, or interpret criticism as an ad hominem attack impinging their character.

This section is divided into four subsections. The first looks at two inconsistency arguments. The next three subsections briefly summarize Colgrove et al.’s objections, and my criticisms (Simkulet 2021 ) of these arguments.

Inconsistency Arguments

OA often point to high numbers of induced abortion as a call to action. Upwards of 60% (Boklage 1990 ; Léridon 1977 ) of human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, prompting critics to ask why OA do not see spontaneous abortion as a call to action. Toby Ord ( 2008 ) compares spontaneous abortion to a scourge that kills over half of humanity. Berg ( 2017 ) compares it to Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke. Faced with these overwhelming numbers, inconsistency theorists conclude that if fetuses matter, then the problem of spontaneous abortion calls for a massive shift in our social and political priorities. I have noted (Simkulet 2021 ) that we recently underwent such a shift to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Henrik Friberg-Fernros ( 2015 , 2019 , 2018 ) challenges this position, contending that while fetal death is always tragic, not all fetal deaths are equally tragic; that killing is worse than letting die, and even that fetal lives are worth less than adult human lives because they lack time relative interests (Friberg-Fernros 2019 )! However, inconsistency arguments do not assume that all fetal deaths are equally tragic, merely that if fetuses matter, their deaths are tragic.

OA face a dilemma — either they (i) need to do more to prevent fetal death, or (ii) should withdraw opposition to induced abortion. Some proponents think OA should choose (ii) — that the argument demonstrates they do not really believe fetuses are persons. However, others propose a wide variety of methods by which OA might reasonably seek to confront the problem of fetal death, from increased education and better access to healthcare, to technologies like ectogenesis and gene therapy that those on both sides of the abortion debate could reasonably support (Simkulet 2020 ).

While many inconsistency arguments focus on unaddressed fetal loss, Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) also categorize Chittister's tweet (Schlumpf 2019 ) as an inconsistency argument. She asks whether it makes sense to call OA “pro-life” merely because they oppose abortion, noting all OA seem to be concerned with is ensuring the child is born, not fed, educated, or housed; asserting “That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.”

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) contend that Chittister is using the term “pro-birth” pejoratively, but this is rather uncharitable. The term “pro-life” carries with it a positive emotive context, and when OA present their view as “pro-life,” they may mislead their audience about their position. In contrast, the term “pro-birth” seems to capture the one unifying feature of OA.

Even if Chittister is angry or disappointed that OA misrepresent their position, neglect their moral obligations, or the like… so what? That is how moral judgements work. If you think Φing is wrong, and you see someone Φing, it makes sense to be angry or disappointed. Colgrove et al. speak as though this, and accusations of pro-life hypocrisy are ad hominem attacks on OA; not so. An ad hominem fallacy occurs when one attacks person rather than their argument or view. Inconsistency arguments do not do this; they identify apparent inconsistency within the OA view, and call for change, as Chittister does when she concludes, “We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

Other Beliefs Objection and Response

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) raise three objections to inconsistency arguments. In the first, they contend that inconsistency arguments do not matter because there is a diversity of beliefs among OA, suggesting that no one inconsistency argument undermine them all; “This diversity makes broad accusations of inconsistency problematic.” Following this, one might argue that when an OA is confronted with apparent inconsistency within one view, they can jump ship to another OA view. But moral analysis is not a shell game. If inconsistency arguments identify a problem within even one OA position, they matter; and if they threaten the most widely held OA position, it seems they matter quite a bit.

Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) suggest that OA may have other beliefs which explain away apparent inconsistency and justify their inaction with regards to spontaneous abortion; for example they ask us to consider someone who both opposes induced abortion and opposes universal healthcare; noting these beliefs would justify rejecting the conclusion that we should adopt universal health care to help address the problem of induced and spontaneous abortion (and suffering and death due to lack of medical care, more broadly). To this, I reply (Simkulet 2021 ):

It is not enough to show that some [OA] have some beliefs that are prima facie at odds with some [inconsistency theorist] proposals; they must show that the current level of apparent indifference that many [OA] show is justified by their other beliefs; and it is not clear what set of other beliefs would be both internally consistent and justify the conclusion that while persons [matter], this right requires very little in the way of sacrifice from anyone but gestational mothers.

Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) contend that I argue “this [apparent] indifference must be justified by their other beliefs…” continuing “there is an obvious belief that justifies [OA]’s actions and priorities —… [OA] believe that induced abortion is a more important priority than these other issues.” However, this misses the point. As we have seen above, inconsistency theorists do not claim that OA need to treat the problem of spontaneous abortion as equally important to the problem of induced abortion, but rather they must consistently recognize both are tragic.

Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) continue “induced abortion is the leading preventable cause of death of human beings, as spontaneous abortions are largely unpreventable.” However, they seem to understand “preventable” in an opportunistically narrow way — as preventable with our current technology — to disregard the problem of spontaneous abortion. Amy Berg ( 2017 ) challenges this opportunistically narrow caveat:

But imagine throwing up our hands about a horrible disease… Imagine saying that we should let AIDS, or cancer, or heart disease take its course, rather than expending more effort researching how we might prevent that disease or treat people who contract it. That’s not what we do.

Berg ( 2017 ) notes that just because spontaneous abortion is medically intractable now does not mean it will be in the future, comparing to the AIDs epidemic, “In just a couple of decades, AIDS went from a mysterious underground disease, to a devastating and fatal epidemic, to a relatively manageable chronic condition.”

Perhaps more troublingly, Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) say, “If OAs sincerely believe these claims, then they are acting consistently with their beliefs, and the Other Beliefs Objection succeeds.” Above I have argued that even if one sees one form of abortion as a greater priority than another, this does not justify apparent indifference OAs show with regards to spontaneous abortion.

The real challenge here is “sincerity,” most people have inconsistent beliefs of one form or another and do not realize it; but it is possible that one can realize that they hold two sincere beliefs while also sincerely believing those beliefs to be inconsistent. Consider the problem of evil; one might sincerely believe that God exists, that evil exists, and that God would not allow evil to exist. This belief set is inconsistent, but does not necessarily yield conflicting implications for how we ought to live our lives.

But what if an OA sincerely believes the following?

• All human death is morally tragic.
• Not all human death is morally tragic.
• Propositions (a) and (b) are apparently a contradiction.

It is easy to imagine a Socratic dialogue in which Socrates helps an OA to express position (a) and proposition (b), prompting them to reconsider their position; what’s less easy to imagine is what would happen if an OA freely admits proposition (c), but refuses to reconsider. Moral agency requires some degree of reason-responsiveness, and at least with regards to the topic at hand, it is not clear such an OA would be able to function as a moral agent without rejecting one of these three propositions.

Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) end their reply as follows “If critics of [OA] want to change the subject – to examining whether the things [OA] believe are true or false, rather than fixating on [OA’s] alleged inconstancy — then [our] essay has succeeded.” Here, they again miss the point of inconsistency arguments, as these arguments do set out to examine whether the things [OA] believe are true or false; if the principle of non-contradiction is true, and OA hold contradictory beliefs, then at least one of their beliefs are false !

Why do they miss this point? I cannot be sure, but at times Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) and Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) talk as though inconsistency theorists are uniformly prochoice and hope to convince OA to abandon restrictivism; however, inconsistency arguments might just as easily lead one to believe they ought to do more to prevent spontaneous abortion, address surplus frozen human embryos, and the like. Some inconsistency theorists believe both would lead to less restrictivist opposition to abortion, but this is irrelevant.

What matters is that inconsistency arguments share the same form as the Socratic method, highlighting apparent inconsistency and prompting introspection. Perhaps Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) would also conclude that the Socratic method does not matter , but I hope not.

Other Actions Objection and Response

Colgrove et al.’s second criticism of inconsistency arguments is that they are too specific with their recommendations, suggesting OA can address problems raised by these arguments with different actions than those proposed by inconsistency theorists. For example, rather than adopt and gestate frozen human Embryos, as Lovering ( 2020 ) (and Blackshaw 2021 !) advocate, Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) suggest OA might fight “to change public perception of the status of embryos,” or lobby to change IVF laws.

There are three problems here. First, although inconsistency theorists propose a variety of recommendations, these recommendations are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather representative of the kinds of changes an OA would need to adopt to resolve their apparent inconsistency. Remember, inconsistency theorists argue that OA face a dilemma — either (i) do more, or (ii) abandon their opposition to abortion; to say that an OA can perform other actions to address the problem just is to embrace the first horn of the dilemma.

Second, I have pointed out (Simkulet 2021 ) that the other actions Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) propose are not necessarily mutually exclusive; one might both lobby to change IVF laws and adopt and gestate frozen human embryos. The fact that one lobbies to change IVF laws may reduce the number of surplus embryos created and frozen in the future; but it fails to address the needs of currently existing frozen human embryos, highlighting a third problem, that many of Colgrove et al.’s “other actions” are simply not enough. I illustrate (Simkulet 2021 ) this with a case inspired by James Rachels ( 1979 ):

Jack 2 finds himself in a room with a starving child, surplus sandwich in hand. He receives a call… The caller asks, “Will you donate your sandwich?” and he replies, “I’ll do you one better; I’m going to fight to change the public perception of the status of such starving children and raise awareness!” He proceeds to tweet about the starving child, sets up a donation page to help spread awareness, and posts pictures and videos of the child’s deteriorating state. Jack 2 , an expert in such things, narrates as the child slowly dies.

Jack 2 ’s claim to act to raise awareness pokes fun at Colgrove et al.’s ( 2020 ) proposal to protect frozen embryos by fighting to change public perception. Despite his tweeting, it is clear Jack 2 fails morally — he lets a child starve to death when he could have easily saved that child’s life.

Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) argue that this case is disanalogous to OA (in)action, arguing that OA “live in a world where there are many important issues clamoring for their attention,” and suggest the following case is more analogous:

Jack 100 finds himself in a room with 100 needy children and only enough resources to save 1 child, which he does.

There are three substantive problems with this response. First, the case of Jack 2 is not meant to be analogous to OA inaction (despite poking fun at it); it is meant to demonstrate that merely having other actions is not sufficient to show that inconsistency arguments fail.

Second, the case of Jack 100 begs the question by assuming Jack is saving as many people as possible. However, as Lovering ( 2020 ) and Blackshaw ( 2021 ) seem to show, this simply is not how OA act. Inconsistency theorists argue that OA neglect to address the problems of spontaneous abortion, surplus frozen embryos, and even starving born children. Rather than save all they can, inconsistency theorists contend that OA act like Jack 2 , they do something , but fail to do everything they can.

Third, inconsistency theorists contend that most OA legislation and philosophical literature neglect to discuss the problems of spontaneous abortion, surplus frozen embryos, or starving born children. As such, perhaps the following case would be more analogous:

Jack 300 finds himself in a room with 300 needy children, and he says, “I see 100 needy children, but woe is me I can only save 1,” and so he saves 1 child.

It seems Jack 300 is unreliable; he says he sees 100 needy children in the room, but there are 300 needy children in the room. If we cannot trust Jack 300 to get an accurate headcount, it seems unreasonable to take his word that he is doing all he can.

With the Jack 100 case Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) seem to abandon the other actions objection, instead arguing that OA, like Jack 100 , do the “most good” they can. In short, Blackshaw et al. seem to treat the other actions’ objection as a surrogate for an argument from effective altruism, the view that we should try to do the most good we can. Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) claim that there are many different beliefs about what it means to do the “most good”, and suggest that objectively measuring options might be difficult, as though to claim that it does not matter what other actions OA take as long as they are trying to do the “most good.”

But this will not do. Effective altruism asks us to use reason and empirical evidence to maximize the amount of good we do, and inconsistency arguments seem to show that OA fail to do just this. Like Jack 2 , OA seem to ignore the easily preventable deaths of some with an unearned confidence that their current course of action is sufficient. If OA strive for effective altruism, they should be at least open to the prospect of embracing the first horn of the inconsistency theorist’s dilemma — that maybe should do more. Suppose Jill 100 finds herself in the locked room with Jack 100 , and promises to show Jack 100 how he can save 3 needy children, rather than just 1, with the resources at hand; if Jack 100 seeks to be an effective altruist, should he not at least listen, time permitting?

Effective altruism requires that we guide our choices by reason and evidence; it is not enough to have a sincere belief that one is doing all that one can, the evidence has to back this up. If inconsistency theorists can show that OA are not doing all they can, then they have been succeeding in showing that OA fall short of effective altruism.

Of course, this is exactly what proponents of inconsistency theorists purport to show. Take the aforementioned inconsistency theorist Lovering ( 2020 ) who, like OA restrictivist Blackshaw ( 2021 ), argues that OA should do more than merely fight to change public perception or lobby to change IVF laws, in many cases they ought to also adopt and gestate actually existing frozen human embryos. Of course, not every OA can gestate frozen human embryos — without effective ectogenesis technology and universal healthcare this burden seems to fall on wealthy, female OA alone. However, few OA argue that adopting and gestating these embryos are obligatory for those with the means to do so, and this omission at least appears to be inconsistent with their assertion that all fetuses matter from conception, let alone the position that OA are acting as effective altruists.

Furthermore, Blackshaw ( 2021 ) does not merely side with Lovering regarding OA’s obligations regarding frozen human embryos; he says:

[I]f we regard all human life as equally valuable, we have at least some obligation toward helping reduce deaths from spontaneous abortion where possible. The parable of the Good Samaritan reinforces the notion that Christians do have some responsibility toward this neglected group of human beings, who are also our neighbors.

Here Blackshaw ( 2021 ) contends that these groups — frozen human embryos and those fetuses who die from spontaneous abortion — matter , and that at least some OA — those inconsistency arguments seek to criticize — neglect them. In short, Blackshaw’s ( 2021 ) view seems at odd with the view he expresses in Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) and Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ). This is not meant as a criticism of Blackshaw; philosophers revise their views over time, articles are often published long after their initial submission, and many articles are written for blind review which could disincentivize the author from discussing their previous works.

Note, however, that Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) and Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) set out to argue that inconsistency arguments do not matter for any OA view and in doing so they bite off far more than they can chew. It is easy to contend that all OA have other possible actions – contra Frankfurt ( 1969 ), many philosophers believe alternate possibilities are required for moral agency and responsibility; but it is quite a different matter to argue that all OA are acting as effective altruists, or even that all OA merely sincerely believe they are acting as effective altruists, especially when confronted with criticism from inconsistency theorists. Blackshaw ( 2021 ) contends inconsistency arguments demonstrate that some OA neglect this group, and this alone seems sufficient to show inconsistency arguments are morally significant.

Hypocrisy Objection and Response

In their third objection, Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) contend that inconsistency arguments aim to show that OA are hypocrites, rather than demonstrate inconsistency. I note (Simkulet 2021 ) that Colgrove et al. equivocate between hypocrisy and inconsistency, and that they characterize hypocrisy as a moral failing. Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) say:

[OA] are often described as ’inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities…These objections notwithstanding, perhaps some OAs do act in ways that can be shown to be inconsistent with their beliefs. If so, then they are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is a serious charge regarding the character of OAs, but it has nothing to say regarding the validity and consistency of their beliefs—and OAs’ beliefs are surely what critics should primarily be targeting.

In short, it seems that Colgrove et al. mischaracterize inconsistency arguments as ad hominem fallacies; but as we have already seen there is a difference. Inconsistency arguments are simply not aimed at showing OA are hypocrites; only that they have inconsistent beliefs.

In their reply to my previous work (Simkulet 2021 ), Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) say something bizarre “Simkulet offers no empirical evidence regarding [OA’s] supposed lack of interest in relevant issues.” But inconsistency theorists do this ; Lovering ( 2020 ) goes to great lengths to discuss OA who do go out of their way to address these concerns and provides evidence such altruism is rare . Still, it is difficult to take this call for empirical evidence seriously, as neither Colgrove et al. ( 2020 ) nor Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) provide such evidence on behalf of OA.

Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) also challenge my claim (Simkulet 2021 ) that legislation seeking to reduce the creation of surplus IVF embryos would be relatively easy to pass:

Not so. Italy, for example, passed a law in 2004 prohibiting the freezing of embryos, and requiring that all embryos be implanted. (Riezzo et al. 2016 ) The law was swiftly condemned, eventually overturned and, in one case, actions prescribed by the law were declared by the UN to have constituted a ‘human rights violation.’ (Scaffidi 2019 ) Thus, relevant laws would likely face international resistance. So, a central problem Simkulet puts forth as having an ‘easy’ solution does not.

There are two big problems here. First, I propose (Simkulet 2021 ) passing legislation to limit the creation of surplus embryos, not to force all created embryos to be implanted. The difference is obvious, my restrictivist proposal would limit the number of embryos created at a time, so it might take multiple tries before a successful embryo is created.

In contrast, the Italian law seems to place no limits on how many embryos can be created, rather it sets out to force women to undergo invasive, risky medical procedures. IVF has a relatively low chance of success; but imagine more attempts at fertilization succeed than expected; this law would compel physicians to perform, and women to undergo, dangerous medical procedures against their wills. This is hauntingly similar to forcing you to donate bone marrow even at the cost of your life in Boonin’s ( 2002 ) bone marrow case. In short, the Italian law threatens to harm citizens and undermine professional ethics by requiring medically risky and unnecessary interventions without the patient’s consent.

In contrast, my proposal (Simkulet 2021 ) would merely require physicians limit the number of embryos created at one time; not entirely dissimilar from legal limits on how many drugs a physician can prescribe within a period of time. Furthermore, I do not say such legislation would be easy, only “relatively easy” compared to restrictivist legislation – legislation that has far more in common with the Italian law than Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) acknowledge. Both restrictivist legislation and the Italian law seek to undermine women’s rights to control their body and force them to risk their lives for the sake of others. Meanwhile limiting the number of embryos created does not limit one’s reproductive freedom, nor compel them to take on additional medical risk.

Both OA restrictivist legislation and the Italian law seek to limit women’s reproductive choices and force women to take on additional medical risk. Legislation of this kind faces strong opposition from those seeking to protect women’s liberty and reproductive freedom. This kind of legislation also faces strong opposition from biomedical ethicists and medical professionals, as it threatens to violate patient autonomy and the Hippocratic Oath by forcing patient and physician to perform risky medical procedures to benefit a third party, not unlike forcing you to remain attached to the violinist in Thomson’s infamous violinist case (Thomson 1972 ).

In contrast, it is not clear that my proposed legislation (Simkulet 2021 ) to limit the number of embryos that can be created at a single time, would face much opposition at all. Perhaps eugenicists would oppose such legislation for limiting a parent’s right to choose the “best” fetus from the widest possible net, but this does not seem like a widely held position. Perhaps bioethicists and medical professionals would oppose such legislation believing it cumbersome and impractical, but this seems like a much weaker ground for opposition than the autonomy and professional ethics violations epitomized by OA restrictivist legislation and the Italian law.

The Prochoice Other Beliefs Objection

I have argued (Simkulet 2021 ) that if the other beliefs, other actions, and hypocrisy objections are not successful in showing inconsistency arguments “do not matter,” they threaten to undermine the discipline of ethics. No person has merely one moral belief, so if a diversity of beliefs invalidates moral analysis, ethics is impossible. In all cases in which a person acts morally responsibly (save maybe some interpretations of Frankfurt-style cases (Frankfurt 1969 ), agents have other possible actions, so if merely having other actions was sufficient to disregard moral analysis, ethics fails. Finally, if interpreting moral analysis as an ad hominem attack of hypocrisy was sufficient to rebuff criticism, one can shut down all moral debate merely by being thin-skinned. Here, I have argued that Blackshaw et al. ( 2021 ) fail to defend these objections, and fail to show that inconsistency arguments do not matter.

However, these are lofty claims about the discipline of ethics; let’s consider something a bit more down to Earth. Consider the following case:

Jacqueline is surprised to find herself pregnant, calling into question her school’s sexual education program. While discussing the matter with her physician, she learns that some people believe embryos are persons from conception! She finds this view intuitive and compelling, and outraged by her school’s poor sexual education program, she endeavors to work tirelessly to change the public perception of the status of embryos. Later, her physician expresses concern about her exertion, recommending that she puts her efforts to educate on hiatus during the pregnancy, fearing the worst. Jacqueline faces a choice — (i) continue with her pregnancy for the next 6 months, losing ground on her fight to change public perception of embryos or (ii) induce abortion (perhaps by hysterectomy) and continue the fight. When speaking with her physician, Jacqueline quotes an influential piece of literature (Colgrove et al. 2020 ), “It may be unclear, however, which option is superior. Many considerations apply to each, and they may be highly individualistic.” She continues “Objectively evaluating options to determine the most appropriate action for a particular belief held by a specific individual seems a very difficult task.” Upon careful and thoughtful reflection, she chooses (ii), judging that it will do the most good. After all, her embryo is but one embryo and while it is tragic to disconnect it from her body and let it die, her tireless efforts might do more good overall.

If the other actions objection shields OA from inconstancy arguments, it seems that it equally shields Jaqueline from restrictivist OA arguments that seek to restrict her freedom. Therefore, it seems that Blackshaw et al. face a dilemma — (i) reject the position that merely having other actions, beliefs, etc. is sufficient to shield a position from criticism, or (ii) abandon their opposition to induced abortion. If (i), then inconsistency arguments matter. Then again, if (ii), then it seems as though no ethical arguments matter.

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How to Write an Abortion Argumentative Essay?

Table of Contents

According to different views, the abortion essay topic is very popular to discuss in various papers on abortion. If you have to create this document, there are various methods to build it, depending on the task and your opinion. When you’re required to complete a custom essay but get no idea about how to fulfill this work properly, read our guide and get some help from real professionals!

5 Successful Abortion Essay Writing Tips

Abortion is an interesting subject that is always hotly debated in various sides of life of any country. People argue about the main advantages and disadvantages of the termination of a pregnancy. Needless to say, it is possible to view and discuss abortion from various positions.

Sometimes woman’s health condition doesn’t allow her to carry a healthy child, and the doctor could even recommend abortion. This could also happen if they discovered the fetus has some abnormalities, so without making an abortion, a woman would have a baby with mental or/and physical injuries. Sometimes, such babies wouldn’t be able to live for long.

But some religious views are totally against abortion, and they suppose only God could give and take lives. Follow our useful tips on creating a successful abortion argumentative essay.

Tip 1 – Create the Paper Structure

At the start, you should know that a paper must be well-structured to keep it solid and logical. We suggest using a 5-paragraphs structure that contains next points:

• Introduction – it’s quite important to create a bright start to involve people in reading a whole argumentative essay on abortion. Here you should place a thesis statement of your document.
• The main part – the most important and the biggest part of your work that should contain at least three paragraphs. Remember that each part should cover one idea.
• Conclusion – it is the final part of your paper where you need to restate a thesis briefly and finish your work logically.

Tip 2 – Outline Your Work

Before you have started to create your paper, it’s important to outline your future abortion arguments essay. It is an important step that will keep your work well-structured. You won’t lose any important thought or idea with the prepared outline, so don’t neglect this stage if you really want to create a successful paper.

Tip 3 – Plan Your Time Wisely

Plan your time during writing, so you’d never appear in a situation when you will have to write the whole work last night. Try to plan some time for brainstorming ideas and creating an outline, some time for writing your paper, and some time for proofreading and making corrections. Only in this way your argumentative essay about abortion will look professional and interesting to read.

Tip 4 – Find Good Sources

When you create an argumentative paper, it’s quite important to find trustworthy sources to support your argument. No matter which position you take – for or against abortion, it’s not enough just to tell your opinion to readers. You need strong arguments to make a successful document that will help to persuade people.

Tip 5 – Read Abortion Essays Examples

It’s useful to find online and read successful argumentative essay on abortion examples. You can find many interesting persuasive techniques and see the structure of other authors’ documents to make your own paper. There are many free services with various types of manuscripts online, including essays on abortions.

Do’s and Don’ts of Abortion Essay Writing

As we already said before, there are many ways in argumentative abortion essay topics. Here are some examples of papers you could choose:

• Essay against abortion – in this work, you should put a thesis statement that making abortion is a huge mistake and support this idea with strong evidence;
• Essay on abortion – this paper proofs that some cases are really needed termination of the pregnancy;
• Abortion argument essay – this type of work should discuss if this is right or wrong to make abortion;
• Persuasive essay against abortion – here, an author should bring as many as possible arguments, ideas, and research to get the audience to agree with their point of view;
• Abortion pro-choice essay – shows to the readers the ideas why, in some cases, a pregnancy terminating is really necessary.

And here are several do’s and don’ts tips that will help create your paper without wasting time:

When you’re writing a paper about abortion, you can put in the document any facts from trustworthy sources, including stories from real life. Maybe you know a woman who didn’t make an abortion and how it changed her life for the better in the future. Tell readers a bright and interesting story to persuade them.

Abortion essays are quite complex papers to create that require good skills in writing persuasive papers. We do not recommend including a long and boring introduction in this paper. Start by highlighting a problem and then go to the “action.” People like to read interesting stories from life, so give them what they want!

Abortion Essay Sample

It goes without saying, it’s quite important to protect human rights because every person can select how to live their life, and nobody else cannot intrude. But when there is too much freedom, it can lead to disorder and chaos. One of the important social issues that have been discussed by many people all over the world is abortion.

For many years, the subject of abortion keeps the first position when it’s going about different opinions. Some people act for legalization when others think it’s just impossible to let someone decide if their future child will die or not. Both sides have their arguments, but overall, abortion is a complex thing that harms both baby and mother, and it’s not just about physical things.

People who keep the position for abortions are ensured the life of the baby begins at his birth, so the unborn baby isn’t a human, so a woman can terminate her pregnancy. But is it true that life begins only at birth? If so, then a fetus would be dead when it’s inside the mother. As all people know, a fetus feels and even hears music being in the womb. So, when does life begin? Where is the line between a dead and alive child? Where is a position between termination and killing?

Understandably, any normal woman wouldn’t kill her child after birth. Everyone would say that a mother who has killed her 1-year old child is a murder and she should go to jail, but nobody thinks the same about a woman who did an abortion because she didn’t want to have a baby. The thing of destroying the baby inside the woman doesn’t look like an act of killing for many people.

Many people think abortion is a standard procedure like any other operation, but it’s not true. We make various operations to stay healthy, but it’s not about abortion. This kind of operation doesn’t bring any positive impact to the woman because it affects health badly and may cause many bad things in the future, including ectopic pregnancy, infertility, and cancer. A woman who made an abortion once gets a risk of ectopic pregnancy for 30%, and a woman who made 2-3 abortions gets about 160% probability of the same problem. For example, in America, when abortion was legalized, women get an increase in ectopic pregnancies.

Apart from this, women suffer psychologically when they make an abortion. Maybe some of them do not understand the whole importance of the problem, but it’s not normal for a healthy woman to destroy her baby, even if it’s unborn yet, even if it’s very tiny if it’s just appeared inside her and starts to grow up and develop. According to the statistics, about 28% of women who made abortions attempted suicide at least once.

A mother shouldn’t decide if to have or to kill her future baby, except for complex situations when a pregnancy can cause serious damage to the woman’s life or there are some serious problems with a fetus, and it cannot develop and grow normally.

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Argumentative Essay on Abortion – Sample Essay

Published by gudwriter on October 24, 2017 October 24, 2017

A Break Down of my Abortion Argumentative Essay

Styling format: APA 6th Edition

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Title: Abortion Should Be Legal

Introduction.

The introduction paragraph of an argumentative essay constitutes of 4 parts. Topic introduction, a reason why the topic is important, accepting there is a difference of opinion on this topic and lastly a statement that gives the writer’s main premises, popularly known as a thesis statement.

The body of my abortion argumentative essay contains reasons + evidence to support my thesis. I have also included opposing arguments to show the reader that I have considered both sides of the argument and that am able to anticipate and criticize any opposing arguments before they are even stated. I have made sure to show the reader that though I have written opposing arguments and that I do not agree with them.

The conclusion paragraph of this abortion essay constitutes of three main parts. The first part restates the main premises: The decision to terminate a pregnancy should generally lie with pregnant women. The second part presents 1 – 2 sentences which summarizes the arguments that support my thesis. And lastly my personal position.

I tried to use credible resources for this essay. Books from respectable publishers on this subject.  Peer reviewed articles and journals are also acceptable.

Argumentative Essay on Abortion

The abortion debate is an ongoing controversy, continually dividing Americans along moral, legal, and religious lines. Most people tend to assume one of two positions: “pro-life” (an embryo or fetus should be given the right to gestate to term and be born. Simply put, women should not be given the right to abort as that constitutes murder) or “pro-choice” (women should be given the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy).

When you are writing an abortion  argumentative essay , you are free to support any side that you want. Whichever position you take, make sure you have good points and supporting facts.

In this abortion essay, I have decided to take the pro-choice position: a woman carrying a fetus should be given the right to abort it or carry the baby to term. In fact, my thesis statement for this argumentative essay is abortion should be legal and women should have the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

My essay is divided into three basic parts, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Read till the end to find the brief analysis of the parts /sections.

Here is my abortion argumentative essay. Enjoy!

Abortion Should Be Legal

A heated debate continues to surround the question of whether or not abortion should be legal. Those who feel it should be legal have branded themselves “pro-choice” while those opposed to its legality fall under the banner of “pro-life.” In the United States of America, not even the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case (Parker, 2017) that declared abortion as a fundamental human right has served to bring this debate to an end. The pro-choice brigade front an argument that abortion is a right that should be enjoyed by all women and one that should not be taken away by religious authority or even governments. They claim that this right cannot be superseded by the perceived right that should be enjoyed by a fetus or embryo. If not legalized, the pro-choice claim, women would resort to unsafe means. However, to pro-life, the life of a human being begins at fertilization and therefore abortion condemns an innocent human being to immoral murder. They further argue that the practice exposes the unborn human to pain and suffering. This paper argues that abortion should be legal and women should have the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

Perhaps you may find comparing and contrasting the higher education between England and Kenya interesting .

Just as was observed by the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, an individual should be allowed certain privacy zones or areas. The decision of a pregnant woman to terminate her pregnancy or not should fall within this fundamental right (Parker, 2017). Interfering with this right is a kin to deciding for a person the kind of people they may associate with or the kind of a person they may fall in love with. These kinds of private matters are very sensitive and any decision touching on them should be left at the discretion of an individual. After all, it is the woman who knows why they would want to terminate a pregnancy. It could be that seeing the pregnancy to its maturity and eventual delivery would endanger the life of the bearer. It could also be that a woman is not comfortable with having a baby due to some reason(s). Whatever reason a woman might have, it is their private affair; they should be left to handle it in private.

On the same note, women get empowered by reproductive choice as they get the opportunity to freely exercise control over their bodies. Just like male members of the society, women should be allowed to be independent and be able to determine their future. This includes the freewill of determining whether or not to have children. The ability to control their productive lives would ensure that women are well placed to take part equally in the social and economic matters of the society (Mooney, 2013). It should not be that upon conceiving, a woman has no otherwise but to deliver the baby. What if the conception was accidental? Even if it was not accidental, a woman can realize or determine before delivery that she is just not ready to have the baby as she might have initially planned. At that point, they should have the freedom to terminate the pregnancy.

The pro-life’s argument that abortion is murder is a bit far fetched. The fetus or embryo may be innocent as they claim. However, it is noteworthy that it is only after the fetus becomes able to survive outside the womb that personhood begins (Ziegler, 2015). This is definitely after birth and not during the pregnancy or at conception. In this respect, the claim that abortion kills innocent human beings is actually not valid. On the contrary, this stance or statement culminates in the victimization of innocent women who have committed no wrong but exercised their right of controlling their reproductive life. Ideally, an embryo or fetus should not be considered a human being just yet. There   should thus be nothing like “unborn babies” but fetuses or embryos.

Legal abortion also ensures that women may avoid maternal injury or death by securing professional and safe means of performing abortion. The point here is that illegalizing abortion would compel some women to resort to unsafe abortion means. In the process, they might sustain life threatening injuries or even lose their lives (Schwarz & Latimer, 2012). Whether legal or not, a woman would make up their mind and terminate her pregnancy! The only difference is that in a “legal” environment, she would be safe. Why then endanger the lives of pregnant women who may like to have an abortion by illegalizing the practice? In addition, the pro-life argument that a fetus feels pain during the procedure of abortion is less convincing. It may be that the reason a mother is terminating a pregnancy is to prevent the yet to be born child from facing the pains of the world. If a mother feels she may not accord her child all the necessities of life, she would be right to subject the child to the “short-term pain” during abortion.

Those opposed to abortion further argue that the practice brews a traumatic experience for women as it involves the death of a human being. Specifically, they contend that the experience emanates from a woman witnessing how she intentionally and violently condemns her unborn child to death by physically destroying it. They hold that it also subjects the woman to unacknowledged grief and thoughts of severed maternal attachments and as well violates her parental responsibility and instinct (Major et al., 2009). According to this argument, this experience can be as traumatic as to plunge a woman into serious mental health problems, in what may be called post-abortion syndrome (PAS). This syndrome may attract symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they say. Anti-abortion crusaders further contend that the aftermath of undergoing the procedure may see a woman experience such PTSD related symptoms as substance abuse, guilt, shame, anger, grief, depression, denial, and flashbacks (Major et al., 2009). While all these may seem to be sensible to some extent, they fail to recognize that a woman who willfully secures an abortion would not have to worry about having “killed” her unborn baby. Instead, she would appreciate that she was able to successfully terminate the pregnancy before it could grow to maturity.

The decision to terminate a pregnancy should generally lie with pregnant women. It is a private decision that should not be interfered with. Women should be able to determine when to have a child. If she deems it not yet time, she should be allowed to abort. A woman actually kills nobody by aborting but rather prevents the fetus from being able to survive outside the womb. The reason for aborting should not be questioned, whether medical, involving incest or rape, or just personal. Whatever reason it might be, it falls within the right of a woman to determine and control their productive life.

Major, B. et al. (2009). Abortion and mental health.  American Psychologist , 64 (9), 863-890.

Mooney, C. (2013). Should abortion be legal? San Diego, CA: ReferencePoint Press, Incorporated.

Parker, W. (2017). Life’s work: a moral argument for choice . New York City, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Schwarz, S. D., & Latimer, K. (2012). Understanding abortion: from mixed feelings to rational thought . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Ziegler, M. (2015). After Roe . Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press.

Argumentative Essay against Abortion 2, with Outline

Abortion argumentative essay outline.

Thesis:  Abortion is wrong and should not be legalized since its disadvantages far outweigh its advantages, if any.

Paragraph 1:

It is wrong to condemn an innocent human being to murder.

• Human life begins at conception and this implies that at whatever stage a pregnancy may be terminated, an innocent being would have been killed.
• The fetus is a human being and should be allowed to grow and be born and live their life to the fullest.
• A fetus has a unique genetic code and thus it is a unique individual person.

Paragraph 2:

It is wrong to deliberately cause pain.

• Whatever process is used to secure an abortion subjects the developing human to untold suffering before they eventually die.
• By 18 weeks, a fetus has undergone sufficient development to feel pain.
• Aborting a fetus is the same as physically attacking an innocent person and causing them fatal physical bodily harm.

Paragraph 3:

Abortion increases tolerance of killing which is a wrong precedence for the human race.

• To legalize abortion and to view it as being right is like to legalize killing and see nothing wrong with it.
• The respect people have for human life would be reduced if killing would be legalized.
• Loss of society’s respect for human life may result into increased murder rates, genocide, and euthanasia.

Paragraph 4:

Abortion is can seriously harm a woman’s body and in some cases lead to the death of that woman.

• It yields both anticipated physical side effects as well as potentially more serious complications.
• In other instances, a woman may experience serious complications that may even threaten her life as a result of having an abortion.

Paragraph 5:

People who believe abortion is not morally wrong argue that the fetus should not necessarily be considered a person with the right to life.

• This is wrong because the collection of human cells that is the fetus, if given the opportunity to grow, eventually becomes a complete human being.
• The beginning of human life should be considered to be at conception.
• A conceived human should be allowed to see out their life.

Paragraph 6:

The pro-choice group argues that pregnant women have moral rights too and that these rights may override the right of the fetus to live.

• This argument fails to acknowledge that the moral rights of one human being should not deny another human being their moral rights.
• Both the woman and fetus’ rights should be respected.

Abortion is absolutely wrong and no arguments can justify its morality or legality. It kills innocent human beings before they can develop and experience life. It also causes untold pain and suffering to an innocent fetus. It further increases tolerance to killing.

Argumentative Essay against Abortion Example 2

People across the world have strong opinions for and against abortion. Those who argue for its legalization fall under the “pro-choice” group while those who oppose its legalization are under the “pro-life” group. Even after the practice was declared a fundamental human right in the United States by the  Roe v. Wade  Supreme Court case, the debate about it is still going on in the country. According to pro-choice arguments, all women should enjoy abortion as a human right and no religious and/or government authorities should take that away from them. On the other hand, pro-life brigade argue that abortion immorally murders innocent human beings since the life of a human being begins at fertilization. This paper argues that abortion is wrong and should not be legalized since its disadvantages far outweigh its advantages, if any.

The major reason why abortion is wrong is because it is wrong to condemn an innocent human being to murder.  Human life begins once they are conceived  and this implies that at whatever stage a pregnancy may be terminated, an innocent being would have been killed. The fetus is in itself a human being and should be allowed to grow and be born and live their life to the fullest. As pointed out by Kaczor (2014), a fetus has a unique genetic code and thus it is a unique individual person. It is a potential human being with a future just like people who are already born. It would be wrong to destroy their future on the account of being killed through abortion.

Abortion is also wrong because it is wrong to deliberately cause pain. Whatever process is used to secure an abortion subjects the developing human to untold suffering before they eventually die. By 18 weeks, a fetus has undergone sufficient development to feel pain (Meyers, 2010). Thus, aborting it would be the same as physically attacking an innocent person and causing them fatal physical bodily harm. Under normal circumstances, such an attack would attract condemnation and the person or people involved would be punished accordingly as per the law. This is the exact same way abortion should be viewed and treated. It should be legally prohibited and those who do it should be punished for causing pain on an innocent person.

Further, abortion increases tolerance of killing and this is a wrong precedence being created for the human race. Just as Kershnar (2017) warns, to legalize abortion and to view it as being right is like to legalize killing and see nothing wrong with it. The respect people have for human life would be reduced if killing was legalized. It would be wrong and detrimental to reduce society’s respect for human life as it may result in increased murder rates, genocide, and euthanasia. Just like such measures as vaccination and illegalization of murder are taken to preserve human life, prohibiting abortion should be considered an important way of increasing human respect for life. Society should not tolerate killing in whatever form and should discourage it through every available opportunity.

Another detrimental effect of abortion is that it can seriously harm a woman’s body and in some cases lead to the death of that woman. It yields both anticipated physical side effects as well as potentially more serious complications. Some of the side effects a woman is likely to experience after securing an abortion include bleeding and spotting, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and cramping and abdominal pain. Worse is that these side effects can continue occurring two to four weeks after the procedure is completed (“Possible Physical Side Effects,” 2019). In other instances, a woman may experience serious complications that may even threaten her life as a result of having an abortion. These complications may include damage to other body organs, perforation of the uterus, the uterine wall sustaining scars, the cervix being damaged, sepsis or infection, and persistent or heavy bleeding. In the worst case scenario, a woman undergoing the abortion process might lose her life instantly (“Possible Physical Side Effects,” 2019). While such cases are rare, it is still not sensible to expose a woman to these experiences. A practice that has the potential to endanger human life in this manner should be considered wrong both legally and morally. It is the responsibility of individuals to care for and not expose their lives to harm.

People who believe abortion is not morally wrong argue that the fetus should not necessarily be considered a person who has the right to life. They hold that the fetus is just a collection of human cells and thus does not deserve the express right to live (Bailey, 2011). This argument is misinformed because the fact is that this collection of human cells that is the fetus, if given the opportunity to grow, eventually becomes a complete human being. This is why the beginning of human life should be considered to be at conception and not at birth or after some time after conception. A conceived human should be allowed to see out their life and only die naturally.

Another argument by the pro-choice group is that pregnant women have moral rights too and that these rights may override the right of the fetus to live under certain circumstances. These rights, according to this argument, include the right to take decision without legal or moral interference, the right to decide one’s own future, the right to ownership of one’s own body, and the right to life (Bailey, 2011). This argument fails to acknowledge that the moral rights of one human being should not deny another human being their moral rights. Even in cases where carrying a pregnancy to delivery would endanger the life of a pregnant woman, the fetus should be separated from the mother and be allowed to grow through such other mechanisms as being placed in an incubator.

Abortion is absolutely wrong and no arguments can justify its morality or legality. It kills innocent human beings before they can develop and experience life. It also causes untold pain and suffering to an innocent fetus. It further increases tolerance to killing, a precedence that would make people throw away their respect to human life and kill without a second thought. Even worse is that the practice exposes aborting women to serious bodily harm and could even claim their lives. Those who do not consider the fetus as a moral person who deserves to live are wrong because upon complete development, the fetus indeed becomes a human being. Similarly, those who feel the moral rights of a pregnant woman should override those of the fetus ignore the fact that both the woman and the fetus are human beings with equal rights.

Bailey, J. (2011).  Abortion . New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group.

Kaczor, C. (2014).  The ethics of abortion: women’s rights, human life, and the question of justice . New York, NY: Routledge.

Kershnar, S. (2017).  Does the pro-life worldview make sense?: Abortion, hell, and violence against abortion doctors . New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Meyers, C. (2010).  The fetal position: a rational approach to the abortion issue . Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

“Possible Physical Side Effects after Abortion”. (2019). In  American Pregnancy Association , Retrieved July 5, 2020.

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Trump Says Abortion Law Should Be Left to the States

After months of mixed signals, Donald Trump said that whatever states decide “must be the law of the land,” adding that he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”

• Share full article

By Maggie Haberman ,  Jonathan Swan and Michael Gold

Former President Donald J. Trump said in a video statement on Monday that abortion rights should be left up to the states, remarks that came after months of mixed signals on an issue that he and his advisers have worried could cost him dearly in the election.

Mr. Trump said his view was that the states should decide through legislation, and that “whatever they decide must be the law of the land, and in this case, the law of the state.” But he added that he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”

“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Mr. Trump said in the video, which he posted on his Truth Social website.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about will of the people,” he added. “That’s where we are right now and that’s what we want — the will of the people.”

Mr. Trump appeared to be trying to move past the issue of abortion rights as quickly as possible without discussing a federal ban, which would face steep odds in the House and Senate. He has privately discussed supporting such a ban.

But politically, Mr. Trump’s announcement that abortion should be left to the states will allow Democrats to tag him with some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, including a six-week ban in Florida that he has said was a “terrible mistake.” And his remarks on Monday underscored how Republicans across the country are grappling with their approach to abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a few months before the midterm elections.

In the video, Mr. Trump said he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years. Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded” that Roe should be ended.

He then falsely claimed that Democrats wanted babies “executed after birth.”

For months, Mr. Trump has debated with advisers what he should say about abortion to stop Democrats from using the issue against him in November, as they did so successfully to outperform expectations against Republicans in the 2022 midterms.

Some anti-abortion activists had pushed Mr. Trump to support a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks, to set a minimum national standard and to block later-term abortions in Democratic-controlled states.

As recently as February, Mr. Trump had privately told advisers he liked the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of his deliberations. He made those comments as he was trying to fend off his last significant primary rival, Nikki Haley, in her home state, South Carolina.

He told his aides he wanted to wait until the Republican presidential primary contest was over to publicly discuss his views, because he didn’t want to alienate social conservatives before he wrapped up the nomination, the two people said.

Mr. Trump, who has approached abortion transactionally — and has spoken about it clumsily — since beginning his political career in 2015, told aides he liked the idea of a 16-week federal ban on abortion because it was a round number.

“Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months.”

The Trump campaign called the reporting “fake news” at the time, but Mr. Trump then publicly made clear he was considering supporting a 15-week ban, and his advisers issued statements saying he would come up with a national consensus.

Democrats immediately seized on the report of Mr. Trump’s plans, saying that Mr. Trump favored a national abortion ban. The blowback played a role in his decision to back away from announcing a national limit, according to people who spoke with Mr. Trump afterward. Some campaign advisers tried to distance Mr. Trump from the Times report about what he had been saying privately.

Mr. Trump’s statement on Monday disappointed conservatives who were hoping for more restrictive efforts nationally.

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”

She added, “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats.”

Late into adulthood, Mr. Trump described himself as “very pro-choice” before announcing that he was “pro-life” as he considered running for the Republican nomination in 2011. In the 2016 election, he secured evangelical support by promising to choose his Supreme Court justices from a list of conservative judges who would be expected to favor overturning Roe.

But after the Supreme Court did what Mr. Trump engineered it to do, in June 2022, he told advisers the abortion issue could hurt Republicans badly in that year’s midterm elections. By the time the results were coming in — underwhelming for Republicans — Mr. Trump was privately discussing the issue as if he were a television pundit, claiming credit for being right about how abortion would cost Republicans politically.

Mr. Trump was scathing in his private assessments of Republicans who he thought were overly “harsh” in their positions on abortion, according to advisers. He often criticized two failed G.O.P. candidates for governor — Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan — for being too hard-line on abortion and for not supporting sufficient exceptions.

Still, even as Mr. Trump has avoided taking a clear public position on abortion, he often highlights his role in appointing the three conservative Supreme Court justices who were pivotal to overturning Roe.

Anti-abortion activists are hopeful that Mr. Trump will be as willing to allow them to shape policy in a second administration as he often did when he became president in 2017.

“You must follow your heart on this issue,” Mr. Trump said in his video. “But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.”

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan

Michael Gold is a political correspondent for The Times covering the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and other candidates in the 2024 presidential elections. More about Michael Gold

Our Coverage of the 2024 Presidential Election

News and Analysis

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., expressing sympathy for Jan. 6 rioters, vowed to appoint a special counsel  to investigate the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute them. A vaccine skeptic running as an independent , he has emerged as a wild card in the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump has privately floated the idea of choosing him as a running mate , but those close to the former president don’t consider it a serious possibility.

Melania Trump, who has been mostly absent from public view while her husband campaigns for president, will appear at a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago , marking a return of sorts to the political arena.

The centrist group No Labels has abandoned its plans to run a presidential ticket in the 2024 election, having failed to recruit a candidate. The group had suffered a string of rejections recently  as prominent Republicans and Democrats declined to run on its ticket.

Trump’s falsehoods about mail voting have created a strategic disadvantage for Republicans, who must rely on Election Day turnout . The group Turning Point Action has a $100 million plan to change voters’ habits to encourage early voting.

The focus of Trump’s hotel business is shifting from big cities to his golf resorts,  after a deal to host tournaments for LIV Golf , the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, another example of the ties between the Saudis and the Trump family.

Biden and Trump are the oldest people ever to seek the presidency , challenging norms about what the public should know about candidates’ health.

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and consultant, has spent the past two years telling Democrats they need to calm down. His Biden-will-win prediction is his next big test .

Legalized Abortion and the Public Health: Report of a Study (1975)

Chapter: summary and conclusions.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The legal status of abortion in the United States became a heightened national issue with the January 1973 rulings by the Supreme Court that severely limited states' rights to control the procedure. The Court's decisions on the historic cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton precluded any state interference with the doctor-patient decision on abortion during the first trimester (three months) of pregnancy. During the second trimester, a state could intervene only to the extent of insisting on safe medical practices "reasonably related to maternal health." And for approximately the final trimester of a pregnancy—what the Court called "the state subsequent to viability" of a fetus—a state could forbid abortion unless medical judgment found it necessary "for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." The rulings crystallized opposition to abortion, led to the intro- duction of national and state legislation to curtail or prohibit it, and generated political pressures for a national debate on the issue. Against this background of concerns about abortion, the Institute of Medicine in 1974 called together a committee to review the existing evidence on the relationship between legalized abortion and the health of the public. The study group was asked to examine the medical risks to women who obtained legal abortions, and to document changes in the risks as legal abortion became more available. Although there have been other publications on particular relationships between abortion and health, the Institute's study is an attempt to enlist scholars, researchers, health practitioners, and concerned lay persons in a more comprehensive analysis of the available medical information on the subject. Ethical issues of abortion are not discussed in this analysis, nor are questions concerning the fetus in abortion. The study group recog- nizes that this approach implies an ethical position with which some may disagree. The emphasis of the study is on the health effects of abortion, not on the alternatives to abortion.

Abortion legislation and practices are important factors in the relationship between abortion and health status. In order to examine legislation and court decisions that have affected the availability of legal abortion in the U.S., the study group classified the laws and practices into three categories: restrictive conditions, under which abortion is prohibited or permitted only to save the pregnant woman's life; moderately restrictive conditions, under which abortion is per- mitted with approval by several physicians, in a wider range of circumstances to preserve the woman's physical or mental health, prevent the birth of a child with severe genetic or congenital defects, or terminate a pregnancy caused by rape or incest; and non-restrictive conditions, under which abortion essentially is available according to the terms of the Supreme Court ruling. Before 1967, all abortion laws in the United States could be classified as restrictive. Easing of restrictions began in 1967 with Colorado, and soon thereafter 12 other states also adopted moderately restrictive legislation to expand the conditions under which therapeutic abortion could be obtained. In 1970, four states (Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington) removed nearly all legal controls on abortion. Non-restrictive conditions have theoretically existed throughout all fifty states since January 22, 1973, the date of the Supreme Court decision. There is evidence that substantial numbers of illegal abortions were obtained in the U.S. when restrictive laws were in force. Although some of the illegal abortions were performed covertly by physicians in medical settings, many were conducted in unsanitary surroundings by unskilled operators or were self-induced. In this report, "illegal abortion" generally refers to those performed by a non-physician or the woman herself. The medical risks associated with the last two types of illegal abortions are patently greater than with the first. A recent analysis of data from the first year of New York's non- restrictive abortion legislation indicates that approximately 70 percent of the abortions obtained legally in New York City would otherwise have been obtained illegally. Replacement of legal for illegal abortions also is reflected in the substantial decline in the number of reported complications and deaths due to other-than-legal abortions since non- restrictive practices began to be implemented in the United States. The number of all known abortion-related deaths declined from 128 in 1970 to 47 in 1973; those deaths specifically attributed to other-than-legal abortions (i.e., both illegal and spontaneous) dropped from 111 to 25 during the same period, with much of that decline attributed to a reduced incidence of illegal abortions. Increased use of effective con- traception may also have played a role in the decline of abortion-related deaths. Methods most frequently used in the United States to induce abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy are suction (vacuum aspiration) or dilatation and curettage (D&C). Abortions in the second trimester are usually performed by replacing part of the amniotic fluid that surrounds

the fetus with a concentrated salt solution (saline abortion), which usually induces labor 24 to 48 hours later. Other second trimester methods are hysterotomy, a surgical entry into the uterus; hysterectomy, which is the removal of the uterus; and, recently, the injection into the uterine cavity of a prostaglandin, a substance that causes muscular contractions that expel the fetus. Statistics on legal abortion are collected for the U.S. government by the Center for Disease Control. CDC's most recent nationwide data are for 1973, the year of the Supreme Court decision. Some of those figures are: — The 615,800 legal abortions reported in 1973 were an increase of approximately 29,000 over the number reported in 1972. These probably are underestimates of the actual number of abortions performed because some states have not yet developed adequate abortion reporting systems. — The abortion ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) increased from 180 in 1972 to 195 in 1973. — More than four out of five abortions were performed in the first trimester, most often by suction or D&C. — Approximately 25 percent of the reported 1973 abortions were obtained outside the woman's home state. In 1972, before the Supreme Court decision, 44 percent of the reported abortions had been obtained outside the home state of the patient, primarily in New York and the District of Columbia. — Approximately one-third of the women obtaining abortions were less than 20 years old, another third were between 20 and 25, and the remaining third over 25 years of age. — In all states where data were available, about 25 percent of the women obtaining abortions were married. — White women obtained 68 percent of all reported abortions, but non-white women had abortion ratios about one-third greater than white women. In 1972, non-white women had abortion rates (abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age) about twice those of whites in three states from which data were available to analyze. A national survey of hospitals, clinics, and physicians conducted in 1974 by The Alan Guttmacher Institute furnished data on the number of abortions performed in the U.S. during 1973, itemized by state and type of provider. A total of 745,400 abortions were reported in the survey, a figure higher than the 615,800 abortions reported in 1973 to CDC. The Guttmacher Institute obtains its data from providers of health services, while CDC gets most of its data from state health departments.

Risks of medical complications associated with legal abortions are difficult to evaluate because of problems of definition and subjective physician judgment. Available information from 66 centers is provided by the Joint Program for the Study of Abortion, undertaken by The Population Council in 1970-1971. The JPSA study surveyed almost 73,000 legal abortions. It used a restricted definition of major complications, which included unintended major surgery, one or more blood transfusions, three or more days of fever, and several other categories involving prolonged illness or permanent impairment. Although this study also collected data on minor complica- tions, such as one day of fever post-operatively, the data on major com- plications are probably more significant. The major complication rates published by the JPSA study and summarized below relate to women who had abortions in local facilities and from whom follow-up information was obtained. — Complications in women not obtaining concurrent sterilization and with no pre-existing medical problems (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, or gynecological problems) occurred 0.6 times per 100 abortions in the first trimester and 2.1 per 100 in the second trimester. — Complications in women not obtaining concurrent sterilization, but having pre-existing problems, occurred 2.0 times per 100 in the first trimester and 6.7 in the second. — Complications in women obtaining concurrent sterilization and not having pre-existing problems occurred 7.2 times per 100 in the first trimester and 8.0 in the second. — Women with both concurrent sterilization and pre-existing problems experienced complications approximately 17 times per 100 abortions regardless of trimester. The relatively high complication rates associated with sterilization in the JPSA study would probably be lower today because new sterilization techniques require minimal surgery and carry lower rates of complications. The frequency of medical complications due to illegal abortions cannot be calculated precisely, but the trend in these complications can be estimated from the number of hospital admissions due to septic and incomplete abortion—two adverse consequences of the illegal procedure.

The number of such admissions in New York City's municipal hospitals declined from 6,524 in 1969 to 3,253 in 1973; most restrictions on legal abortion in New York City were lifted in July of 1970. In Los Angeles, the number of reported hospital admissions for septic abortions declined from 559 in 1969 to 119 in 1971. Other factors, such as an increased use of effective contraception and a decreasing rate of unwanted pregnancies may have contributed to these declines, but it is probable that the introduction of less restrictive abortion legislation was a major factor. There has not been enough experience with legal abortion in the U.S. for conclusions to be drawn about long-term complications, particularly for women obtaining repeated legal abortions. Some studies from abroad suggest that long-term complications may include prematurity, miscarriage, or ectopic pregnancies in future pregnancies, or infertility. But research findings from countries having long experience with legal abortion are inconsistent among studies and the relevance of these data to the U.S. is not known; methods of abortion, medical services, and socio-economic characteristics vary from one country to another. Risks of maternal death associated with legal abortion are low—1.7 deaths per 100,000 first trimester procedures in 1972 and 1973—and less than the risks associated with illegal abortion, full-term pregnancy, and most surgical procedures. The 1973 mortality rate for a full-term pregnancy was 14 deaths per 100,000 live vaginal deliveries; the 1969 rate for cesarean sections was 111 deaths per 100,000 deliveries. For second trimester abortions, the combined 1972-73 mortality ratio was 12.2 deaths per 100,000 abortions. (For comparison, the surgical removal of the tonsils and adenoids had a mortality risk of five deaths per 100,000 operations in 1969). When the mortality risk of legal abortion is examined by length of gestation it becomes apparent that the mortality risks increase not only from the first to the second trimester, but also by each week of ges- tation. For example, during 1972-73, the mortality ratio for legal abortions performed at eight weeks or less was 0.5, and for those performed between nine and 10 weeks was 1.7 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. At 11 to 12 weeks the mortality ratio increased to 4.2 deaths, and by 16 to 20 weeks, the ratio was more than 17 deaths per 100,000 abortions. Hysterotomy and hysterectomy, methods performed infrequently in both trimesters, had a combined mortality ratio of 61.3 deaths per 100,000 procedures. Some data on the mortality associated with illegal abortion are avail- lable from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and from CDC. In 1961 there were 320 abortion-related deaths reported in the U.S., most of them presumed by the medical profession to be from illegal abortion. By 1973, total reported deaths had declined to 47, of which 16 were specifi- cally attributed to illegal abortions. There has been a steady decline in the mortality rates (number of deaths per 100,000 women aged 15-44) associated with other-than-legal abortion for both white and non-white women, but in 1973 the mortality rate for non-white women (0.29) was almost ten times greater than that reported for white women (0.03).

Psychological effects of legal abortion are difficult to evaluate for reasons that include lack of information on pre-abortion psychological status, ambiguous terminology, and the absence of standardized measurements. The cumulative evidence in recent years indicates that although it may be a stressful experience, abortion is not associated with any detectable increase in the incidence of mental illness. The depression or guilt feelings reported by some women following abortion are generally described as mild and temporary. This experience, however, does not necessarily apply to women with a previous history of psychiatric illness; for them, abortion may be followed by continued or aggravated mental illness. The JPSA survey led to an estimate of the incidence of post-abortion psychosis ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 per 1,000 legal abortions. This is lower than the post-partum psychosis rate of one to two per 1,000 deliveries in the United States. Psychological factors also bear on whether a woman obtains a first or second-trimester abortion. Two studies in particular suggest that women who delay abortion into the later period may have more feelings of ambiva- lence, denial of the pregnancy, or objection on religious grounds, than those obtaining abortions in the first trimester. It is also apparent, however, that some second-trimester abortions result from procedural delays, difficulties in obtaining a pregnancy test, locating appropriate counseling, or arranging and financing the procedure. Diagnosis of severe defects of a fetus well before birth has greatly advanced in the past decade. Developments in the techniques of amniocen- tesis and cell culture have enabled a number of genetic defects and other congenital disorders to be detected in the second trimester of pregnancy. Prenatal diagnosis and the opportunity to terminate an affected pregnancy by a legal abortion may help many women who would have refrained from becoming pregnant or might have given birth to an abnormal child, to bear children unaffected by the disease they fear. Abortion, with or with- out prenatal diagnosis, also can be used in instances where there is reasonable risk that the fetus may be affected by birth defects from non-genetic causes, such as those caused by exposure of the woman to rubella virus infection or x-rays, or by her ingestion of drugs known to damage the fetus. Almost 60 inherited metabolic disorders, such as Tay-Sachs disease, potentially can be diagnosed before birth. More than 20 of these diseases already have been diagnosed with reasonaable accuracy by means of amniocentesis and other procedures. The techniques also can be used to identify a fetus with abnormal chromosomes, as in Down's syndrome (mongolism), and to discriminate between male and female fetuses, which in such diseases as hemophilia would allow determination of whether the fetus was at risk of being affected or simply at risk of being a hereditary carrier of the disorder.

In North America, amniocentesis was performed in more than 6,000 second-trimester pregnancies between 1967 and 1974. The diagnostic accuracy was close to 100 percent and complication rates were about two percent. Less than 10 percent of the diagnoses disclosed an affected fetus, meaning that the great majority of parents at risk averted an unnecessary abortion and were able to carry an unaffected child to term. There are many limitations to the use of prenatal diagnosis, especially for mass screening purposes. Amniocentesis is a fairly expensive procedure, and relatively few medical personnel are qualified to administer it and carry out the necessary diagnostic tests. Only a small number of genetic disorders can now be identified by means of amniocentesis and many couples still have no way to determine whether or not they are to be the parents of a child with genetic defects. Nevertheless, the avail- ability of a legal abortion expands the options available to a woman who faces a known risk of having an affected child. Abortion as a substitute for contraception is one possibility raised by the adoption of non-restrictive abortion laws. Limited data do not allow definitive conclusions, but they suggest that the introduction of non-restrictive abortion laws in the U.S. has not lead to any documented decline in demand for contraceptive services. Among women who sought abortion and who had previously not used contraception or had used it poorly, there is some evidence that they may have begun to practice contraception because contraceptives were made available to them at the time of their abortion. The health aspects of this issue bear on the higher mortality and mor- bidity associated with abortion as compared with contraceptive use, and on the possibility that if women rely on abortion rather than contraception they may have repeated abortions, for which the risk of long-term compli- cations is not known. The incidence of repeated legal abortions is little known because legal abortion has only been widely available in the U.S. for a few years. Data from New York City indicate that during the first two years of non-restrictive laws 2.45 percent of the abortions obtained by residents were repeat procedures. If those two years are divided into six-month periods, repeated legal abortions as a percent of the total rose from 0.01 percent in the first period to 6.02 percent in the last. Part of this increase is attributable to a statistical fact: the longer non-restrictive laws are in effect, the greater the number of women eligible to have repeated legal abortions. Perhaps, too, the reporting system has improved. In any case, some low incidence of repeated abortions is to be expected because none of the current contraceptive methods is completely failureproof, nor are they likely to be used with maximum care on all occasions.

8 A recent study has suggested that one additional factor contributing to the incidence of repeated abortions is that abortion facilities may not routinely provide contraceptive services at the time of the procedure. This is of concern because of recent evidence that ovulation usually oc- curs within five weeks and perhaps as early as 10 days after an abortion. The conclusions of the study group: — Many women will seek to terminate an unwanted pregnancy by abortion whether it is legal or not. Although the mortality and morbidity . associated with illegal abortion cannot be fully measured, they are clearly greater than the risks associated with legal abortion. Evidence suggests that legislation and practices that permit women to obtain abortions in proper medical surroundings will lead to fewer deaths and a lower rate of medical complications than restrictive legislation and practices. —• The substantial differences between the mortality and morbidity associated with legal abortion in the first and second trimesters suggest that laws, medical practices, and educational programs should enable and encourage women who have chosen abortion to obtain it in the first three months of pregnancy. — More research is needed on the consequences of abortion on health status. Of highest priority are investigations of long-term medical complications, particularly after multiple abortions the effects of abortion and denied abortion on the mental health and social welfare of individuals and families the factors of motivation, behavior, and access associated with contraceptive use and the choice of abortion.

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The Pro-Choice Argument

There are those who hold that contraception unfairly manipulates the workings of nature, and others who cannot see the fetus as a child until the umbilical cord is cut. Invoking an almost religious fervor on both sides of the issue, abortion is one of the most emotionally potent present political controversies. Motherhood is a powerful institution in American life, and both the "Pro-choice" (supporting a woman's right to choose) and the "Pro-life" (anti-abortion) forces see the other as attacking the foundations of the mother-infant bond.

Social analysis argues forcibly for the need for safe, legal and affordable abortions. Approximately 1 million women had abortions annually until the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, and abortion had become the leading cause of maternal death and mutilation (40 deaths/100,000 abortions compared to 40 deaths/100,000 live births according to National Abortion Rights Action league.) An estimated 9000 rape victims become pregnant each year (FBI 1973); 100,000 cases of incest occur yearly (National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, 1978). Two-thirds of teenage pregnancies are not planned, because many do not have adequate access to contraceptives (NARAL). And the taxpayer price of supporting a child on welfare is far greater than that of a Medicaid abortion. But the issue that provokes such anger surrounds the fetus's right to life--its status as a potential human being. Anti-abortionist proponents usually take the position that conception is life and therefore abortion is murder and violates the rights of the unborn, or that there is an inherent value in life and abortion is murder because it destroys that value.

The Supreme Court decided in 1973 that the unborn fetus had no constitutional rights until the third trimester (24-28 weeks), as it is incapable of functioning independently from the mother until that time. Right-to-Lifers claim that because the fetus will develop into a human being, it demands the same paternalistic protection that is extended to animals, children and others subject to exploitation and maltreatment. The fetus must be accorded the same constitutional rights as its mother.

Two arguments delineate the problems in giving the fetus these equivalent rights. The first looks at individual rights as the products of a social doctrine. Animals and children are unavoidably present within a society, and to ensure that they remain functioning members of that society they must be protected from exploitation by other societal members. Different political platforms advocate different rights--the right to free medical care, the right to minimal taxation--but all demarcate the interaction of the individual within the group. A person's rights protect him from future harassment, but to actually obtain those rights he must already be a member of the group providing him with those protections. An Australian cannot lay claim to American rights until he is on American soil (or its equivalent). He may have a guarantee that should he enter the United States, he will be accorded many of those protections. But the guarantee depends on his entrance onto American territory. In analogous fashion, until the fetus is actually, not potentially, a member of society, it does not have constitutional rights.

One could object that the fetus in the womb is as signally present in society as the child in the crib, that each are equally members of society. Yet surely the conception of "member" involves some minimal interaction. The fetus reacts to society of the outside world solely through the medium of the mother. Strictly speaking, then, society has no legal responsibility to the fetus, but rather to the mother.

This seems like a rather harsh position, but we can distinguish between the rights of the fetus and the action that a mother might feel morally compelled to take. Consider the following situation: suppose you were to return home one day and find a stranger camped out in your living room and peacefully eating the ham sandwich you saved for dinner. You would be tempted to throw him out in the street. Almost everyone could agree that you had the right to eject him.

But suppose he told you that he could not live outside of your house; perhaps one of his enemies waits outside your door. Moreover, he informs you that he needs food and clothing and someone to talk to--he needs your presence much of the day. He becomes more demanding: you must work less, earn less, give up jogging.

Introduce a complication: your food is strictly rationed, or perhaps your heating, on subsistence level for a single person. If the stranger stays with you, your life will be seriously endangered. You might be very upset, but if it came down to the wire you would probably kick him out of the house. Again, most people would agree you were within your rights to do so.

The difficulty of course arises when it would be possible for you to support him and take care of him, but you would rather not. You might agree if the demand were only for an evening, but hesitate if it were for the rest of your life. Do rights then depend upon the time factor? You could claim a certain moral responsibility towards another human being. But it is hard to say that he has the right to force you to support him. You are not legally required to help an old lady across the street.

One counterargument declares that willing intercourse implies acceptance of a possible pregnancy--that in effect you invited the stranger in, that you knew what you were in for and that he now has the right to demand your help. But faulty contraception is like a broken window. When you return to your suite and find your stereo missing, do you accede the thief's right to take it because your window is easily pried open? The abortion issue thus forces a clarification of the nature of the individual and his social rights. Although we may feel morally constrained to protect the future child, the fetus does not have the right to force us to do so. In the traditional dichotomy of church and state, to restrict abortion is to legislate morality.

The staunchest opposition comes from those who hold absolutely that conception is life. But belief in the inherent value of life is not a trite axiom: it avows some faith in the quality of existence beyond the moral injunction "Thou shalt not kill." It becomes easy to see as hypocritical those anti-abortionists--particularly men--who condone extra-marital intercourse (or even intramarital intercourse) yet would refuse to financially and emotionally support the child conceived because of faulty contraception. The only morally consistent value-of-life position is to have intercourse only if one is willing to accept a child as a possible consequence, and participate in the quality of the child's life. This in part lies behind the Catholic prohibition of premarital sex.

As a personal doctrine few would reproach those who follow it. But pragmatics belie its application to all society, rape being the prime instance where the woman is not free to choose to become pregnant. The restriction of federal support to cases of rape, incest and probable death of the mother suggests an interesting quality-of-life argument: that potentiality is not absolute but must be prorated. Due to society's dread of incest, such a mother and her child would be spared a psychologically unbearable life. In case of danger to the mother's life we do not hear that the 'child' has potentially far more years of happy, productive life than the mother. Rather, the argument runs that the mother's life should not be sacrificed for the child who would bear such a tremendous burden.

Yet an unwanted child may be born into a household with an equally heavy psychological toll. If the potentiality of life thesis rests on an understanding of the inner qualities of life, then abortion is a necessity rather than a crime. Those who deny the right to an abortion under any circumstances fail to see that their argument undercuts itself. Abortion provides a unique understanding of the "inherent good" of existence. It is morally irresponsible to believe that a pregnancy must be brought to term even in case of the mother's death simply because it is a matter of nature and out of our hands when we have the medical means to save the mother. The case involves a comparison of the life-value of the mother and the child: the final decision must evaluate the process of existence--the value of life as it is lived. The inherent value of life cannot be an a priori constant if a choice is to be made between two lives.

Once the quality of life-as-it-is-lived is introduced into the argument, we can say that abortion provides the possibility of improving that quality. Motherhood is a remarkably special bond between mother and child, perhaps the most important relationship we ever have. It requires tremendous emotional capacities, and raising children should be one of the most conscious decisions we make. Many of those who have abortions when young have children later in life, when they are more emotionally and financially equipped to handle them. Contraception is at most 99 per cent safe, and abortion must be available to allow women the freedom to provide the optimum conditions for their child's growth.

According to a 1978 Clark University study, 83 per cent of Massachusetts supports the woman's right to choose. But the trend of recent legislation is distinctly anti-abortion, the result of an extremely well-organized and funded "Pro-life" movement (which some link to the New Right). On the federal level, the 1976-7 Hyde Amendment, a rider on the Labor-HEW appropriations bill, cut off federally funded abortions except in cases of rape, incest, and "medically necessary" instances, defined by the Supreme Court as long-lasting physical or psychological damage to the mother's health.

In 1977 this clause cut 99 per cent of all reimbursements (250,000-300,000 annually prior to the cut-off); this year "medically necessary" has been replaced by probable death of the mother. Military women are similarly restricted under the Dornan Amendment; the Young Amendment funds no abortions at all for Peace Corps women. Employers may refuse to include abortion coverage in their company health plan under the Beard Amendment. Fifteen states have called for a constitutional convention to introduce the prohibition of all abortions: 19 more would fulfill the requisite number of 34.

In Massachusetts the Doyle Bill would cut off state funds in the same manner as the Hyde Amendment. Formerly an adjunct to the budget it was passed and signed as a bill this year. Appealed by MORAL (the Massachusetts Organization for the Repeal of Abortion Laws), the bill is under injunction and pending review by the Federal District Court on the basis of a Supreme Court decision that all medically necessary services must be available to the poor. As of last May, hospitals are no longer required to perform abortions upon demand except in case of probable death to the mother. Legislation restricting abortions to hospitals with full obstetrical care (rather than women's health clinics), now before the Massachusetts House, could place the woman in a double bind. Also under Massachusetts debate is an "Informed Consent" bill which essentially amounts to harrassment: the bill requires spouse and parental notification, with consent of parents or courts for minors, full information concerning the viability and appearance of the fetus, description of the aborting technique, anad a 24-hour waiting period after the 'information session' before the abortion could be obtained.

There is a real danger that anti-abortion legislation could become increasingly more restrictive. It already discriminates against women in lower economic brackets. The power of the pro-life people should not be underestimated: they have targeted 12 Congressmen for defeat in 1980, among them Morris Udall and Birch Bayh. We need to inform our politicians of their pro-choice constituency and reverse the further tightening of the over-restrictive and discriminatory legislation.

Tanya Luhrmann '80-3 is working for Abortion Rights Action Week.

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