The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was supposed to settle the question of abortion’s legality once and for all, but the Court’s ruling has instead become a fulcrum of debate. Placed squarely at the intersection of civil rights, health, religion and law, abortion is one of America’s most heated controversies.
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Should Abortion be Legal?
its called prevention
Even rape victims can prevent their pregnancies. its called the morning after pill. since the egg hasn't implanted yet it can not be consitered an abortion since the woman isn't pregnant yet.
murder is not legal so i'm not sure why abortion is even a debate
Roe of roe vs. wade. is now pro life and fighting to over turn that death sentence
- superherom03
August 11, 2008 6:35AM
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Almost
This would almost be a decent compromise, except rape is a lot more complicated than that.
Many times violence is also involved in rape, and in a hospital emegency room your immediate health is what they are focused on, and you may not be able to get a pill within that 24 hour window. And there are many places that refuse to sell morning after pills. What happens then if you live in a small town and the only pharmacy around won't give it to you? What if they're raped by a family member, and can't get away within 24 hrs? What if you can't afford the pill? It can cost more than $300 to get one from a hospital ER, which is the only thing open during off-hours.
Say what you might against abortion, rape victims should always have that option. This includes statutory rape. No 15 year old should have their dreams shattered by being forced to have a baby, be it by violent rape, being coerced into sex by an older male, incest, or anything else that may have been out of their control.
- TwentySomethingAndSmiling
August 19, 2008 2:16PM
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yes rape is complicated
but i am responding as a rape victim. i am holding in my arms the results of that rape. my son is the world to me. an abortion would be just as tramatizing as a rape
- superherom03
August 30, 2008 11:53AM
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What about when it is the other way around?
For some women having the rapist's child would be more traumatizing than abortion . You are a very brave and strong woman. You had the choice though, to continue the pregnancy or not. That option should be available to all women, whether or not you personally agree with their ultimate decision.
- illusion
June 10, 2009 2:13PM
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If abortion is murder ...
If abortion is murder in some cases, then it is murder in every case. If a fetus has rights, then there is no moral basis to make an exception for rape. That just takes the rape victims feelings into account, which can't be put above the rights of the fetus.
- Adam Hammond
September 3, 2008 6:27PM
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The right to life
is not the right to exist under any and all sets of circumstances. No human being has that right. And the development of the distinctive characteristic of human being's to reason and make judgments is the operative context in which the law defines the ages at which the full support of (recognition) and weight of (punishment)the law extends in any set of circumstances. Children, for example, do not, under normal circumstances, have the right to decide how they will be raised. By the same token, parents do not have the right to beat a child into submission, either. In both cases, it is the adults who are in judgment, not the children. Since it is the adults who are considered to be 'of the age of majority' it is they to who have the right to raise their child and they who are punished for the abuse.
- Atlas Fan
August 30, 2008 10:43AM
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Dangerous ground
You make a distinction between conception and implantation? How is the fetus less of a human before implantation. If you argue that there is something that has rights because of a unique combination of genetics, then IUDs and Morning After pills are murder and implantation has no relevance.
If, instead, you argue that implantation is the important event, then I would wonder, why not some other event in development? Gastrulation is a miracle, so is the rearrangement of the MHC complex (where the fetus defines what is self and what is other). How about a heart beat or a first breath. They all seem like equally momentous events in the creation of a new human being.
- Adam Hammond
September 3, 2008 6:21PM
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another possibility
One could look at the womb as an organic life support system. If someone is alive, but needs mechanical aid to breath, then taking that away would be murder. One could reason that the same would be true if it were non-mechanical. On the other hand, if someone needed life support, and they were in the process of trying to get it from you without your consent, then denying it would probably not be murder. If it did not pose a hardship to provide the aid, then it might be depraved indeifference to human life, but if it did impose a hardship it might not even be that.
- ockraz
January 30, 2009 12:04AM
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Not completely true
Too many times hospital ER's (usually Catholic) refuse to give woman the information that they can take the 'morning after' pill or pharmacists refuse to give them out because it's 'against their religion'. Hence the rape victim must then resort to the medical procedure.
- Thedes
February 21, 2009 12:27PM
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Morning after pill is not 100% effective.
The morning after pill has a failure rate. What do you suggest for these women who have taken Plan B after rape, and the Plan B fails? Then what?
- illusion
June 10, 2009 2:09PM
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