Women’s Right To Abortion

The famous French feminist Simone de Beauvoir once famously remarked that freedom for women “began with the womb.” (Quoted by Kopaczynski, 1995) Ever since, the choice of abortion for women has become a symbol of women’s rights. Its denial, more than anything else, is just a legacy of the ancient, deep-rooted discrimination against the female sex.

Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right of women for abortion in the landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973 by holding that “the right of personal privacy [implicit in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment] includes the abortion decision.” Despite the ruling, prejudice against women’s freedom to choose continues through a concerted campaign against the legalization of abortion.

The most oft-repeated argument against abortion is that human life begins at conception and, consequently, abortion is murder of a person. On the contrary, there is no scientific evidence in support of the argument: it is, in fact a religious belief and the “religious right” leads the anti-abortion movement. (“Legal Abortion … ” 2005)

A related argument against giving the right of abortion to women is that the fetus is not a “part” of the mother, but is a separate human being; hence a woman has no right of terminating her pregnancy. The fetus, of course, is inexorably attached to the mother by the umbilicus and is totally dependant on the body of the woman for its life support. It is, therefore, well within the rights of a woman to choose abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.

In short, any society that denies the right of women to abortion implicitly recognizes the second-class status of women. It unfairly takes away the fundamental right of an individual to control her own body and relegates women to the demeaning position of birth-giving machines.

References

“Legal Abortion: Arguments Pro & Con.” (2005). Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion, Inc. (WCLA) Online. Retrieved on August 22, 2005 from http://www.wcla.org/articles/procon.html

Kopaczynski, G. (1995). No Higher Court: Contemporary Feminism and the Right to Abortion. Chapter 5: “Pro-Choice Feminism,” pp. 181-201. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press.

Of course, no one can deny that a fetus at conception is a “potential human being.” But so are millions of sperms; hence if we recognize abortion as murder, masturbation should logically be considered murder too!