Sunday, May 9, 2010

Abortion

Abortion is yet another one of those sensitive issues like gay-marriage, affirmative action, etc. that everyone is always debating. Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, there's seems to be no clear resolution to this issue.
If you’re for abortion then you’re basically giving the fetus's parents the sole right to decide whether their baby should live or die. This is clearly a problem because lets say that the parents are suffering from some sort of mental disease that is affecting their judgment. Obviously they are in no condition to decide whether an unborn fetus should live or die especially if that fetus is due to be a completely healthy and functional human being. In addition, if you let one person decide another person's fate then, much like the death penalty, your not even giving the other person a chance to perhaps fight for their life or defend themselves. It’s like kicking someone when their down.
Now if you’re against abortion then you’re denying the parents, more specifically the mother, the ability to control the state of her body. In addition, if the fetus is expected to have some crippling birth defect, then your denying its parents (who we will assume are not mentally challenged) the ability to put it out of its misery before it is born. If you’re completely against abortion then you’re basically forcing parents to care for a child who they for example, have no interest in caring for or are unable to deal with the responsibility.
In this sense, you can't really be either completely for or against abortion unless you’re completely oblivious to the points made above. If I really had to say whether I was for or against abortion I would most likely say for. However, the problem with our current system, which allows abortions, is that anyone can get an abortion. In my opinion, only parents who have proven that they are mentally stable can be granted the right to have an abortion. I know this is a rather abstract realm -- deciding who gets the right to abort their child -- however, we need some method to ensure that the proper decision is made when it comes to deciding whether a potential human being should live or die.
Another potential idea to support the concept of abortion is the fact that an unborn fetus is technically not a human being, meaning that if it were aborted, it would not be affected in any way because technically, an unborn fetus has no conscious. This is debatable, however, because who is to say that fetus’s have no conscious. Just because humans never remember what it was like to be a fetus, does not necessarily mean that, in that state, humans were never conscious.
Unfortunately this debate is far too abstract. Its comparable to searching for the meaning of life. The bottom line is there is no right answer—or perhaps if there is then, we humans, are too mentally underdeveloped to grasp the solution. (I am adding this sentence because believe it or not up until this point I had written exactly 499 words)

No comments:

Post a Comment