INFAVOR OF ABORTION

A baby should not come into the world unwanted. Having a child is an important
decision that requires consideration, preparation, and planning. The Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment stated that unintended pregnancies are
associated with birth defects, low birth weight, maternal depression, increased risk of
child abuse, lower educational attainment, delayed entry into prenatal care, a high risk
of physical violence during pregnancy, and reduced rates of breastfeeding 45% of all
pregnancies among American women are unintended.

Abortion is justified as a means of population control. Philosopher Peter Singer,

MA, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, defended abortion as a way to curb
overpopulation. The United Nations estimated that the world's population will increase to
9.3 billion by 2050, which would be "the equivalent of adding another India and China to
the world," according to the Los Angeles Times. Malnutrition, starvation, poverty, lack of
medical and educational services, pollution, underdevelopment, and conflict over
resources are all consequences of overpopulation. With 55.9 million abortions
performed worldwide each year, the population increase if abortion were unavailable
could be substantial.

Women's rights arguments in favor of abortion

Women have a moral right to decide what to do with their bodies

 The right to abortion is vital for gender equality
 The right to abortion is vital for individual women to achieve their full potential
 Banning abortion puts women at risk by forcing them to use illegal abortionists
 The right to abortion should be part of a portfolio of pregnancy rights that enables
women to make a truly free choice whether to end a pregnancy

This argument reminds us that even in the abortion debate, we should regard the
woman as a person and not just as a container for the fetus. We should therefore give
great consideration to her rights and needs as well as those of the unborn. Choosing an
abortion is usually a case of choosing the least bad of several bad courses of action.

Bodily rights

Many people regard the right to control one's own body as a key moral right. If women
are not allowed to abort an unwanted fetus they are deprived of this right.

The simplest form of the women's rights argument in favor of abortion goes like this:
 A woman has the right to decide what she can and can't do with her body
 The fetus exists inside a woman's body
 A woman has the right to decide whether the fetus remains in her body
 Therefore a pregnant woman has the right to abort the fetus
The issue brings many ideas about human rights into brutally sharp focus.
  Every human being has the right to own their own body
 A fetus is part of a woman's body
 Therefore that woman has the right to abort a fetus they are carrying
 The important US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade to some extent
supported that view when it ruled that a woman's right to terminate her
pregnancy came under the freedom of personal choice in family matters and was
protected by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

This leads some people to claim is that it is unethical to ban abortion because doing so
denies freedom of choice to women and forces 'the unwilling to bear the unwanted'.

Opponents of this argument usually attack the idea that a fetus is 'part' of a woman's
body. They argue that a fetus is not the same sort of thing as a leg or a liver: it is not
just a part of a woman's body, but is (to some extent) a separate 'person' with its own
right to life.

A second objection to this argument is that people do not have the complete right to
control their bodies. All people are subject to various restrictions on what they do with
their bodies - and some of these restrictions (laws against suicide or euthanasia) are
just as invasive.

Childbearing, freedom and equality

The women's liberation movement sees abortion rights as vital for gender equality.

They say that if a woman is not allowed to have an abortion she is not only forced to
continue the pregnancy to birth but also expected by society to support and look after
the resulting child for many years to come (unless she can get someone else to do so).

They argue that only if women have the right to choose whether or not to have children
can they achieve equality with men: men don't get pregnant, and so aren't restricted in
the same way.

Furthermore, they say, bearing children, and the stereotypes, social customs, and
oppressive duties that went with it limit women’s freedom and life choices.

They also regard the right to control one's own body as a key moral right, and one that
women could only achieve if they had were entitled to abort an unwanted fetus.

 Women need free access to abortion in order to achieve full political, social, and
economic equality with men
 Women need the right to abortion in order to have the same freedoms as men
 Women need the right to abortion to have full rights over their own bodies
(including the right to decide whether or not to carry a fetus to birth) - without this
right they do not have the same moral status as men
  The US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, which gave women a right to
abortion (under certain conditions) is seen by many as having transformed the
status of women in the USA.

This landmark decision... not only protects rights of bodily integrity and autonomy, but
has enabled millions of women to participate fully and equally in society.
Kathryn Kolbert (1992)

 Many women do not become pregnant by choice. It is wrong to force these

women to remain pregnant when they do not want to be.
 Some pregnancies are the result of an act of violence like rape. If she was not
mentally stable “to carry” or raise a child, then abortion may have to be
consideration.
 Many women are not given proper sex education and are not aware of the risk of
unprotected sex.
 A woman may not feel emotionally, mentally or otherwise prepared to have a
child, and ultimately this could be damaging for the child and for the relationship
between the mother and child.
 She is in the middle of a divorce. Maybe she is afraid she will be outcast by her
loved ones. Money can be a big realistic problem too. These are cases that might
lead to abortion, besides rape. Making people take full responsibility for things
they cannot control is wrong. Many people such as the government, the man, or
the prejudices of society in whole is part of the blame. But, banning abortion
without proper welfare is shoving all the blame upon the woman.
 Pregnancy and parenthood are very expensive and time consuming. Many
women who gets abortions are already mothers, and they want to provide the
best care they can to their existing children, financially, emotionally, and
physically. This should be their choice.
 The birth of an unwanted child may have significant effects on existing children,
including reductions in availability of care giving and increases in poverty. A
study by university of California shows that existing children of women denied an
abortion have 4 percentage point lower scores across all six domains of child
development.
 Women have a moral right to bodily autonomy.
 When abortion is banned, many women who do not ant a child, seek out illegal
abortions. These are unsafe, and risk the lives of the women that try hem.

 Preventing women and girls from accessing an abortion does not mean they stop needing
one. That’s why attempts to ban or restrict abortions do nothing to reduce the number of
abortions, it only forces people to seek out unsafe abortions.
 The World Health Organization (WHO) defines unsafe abortions as “a procedure for
terminating an unintended pregnancy carried out either by persons lacking the necessary
skills or in an environment that does not confirm to minimal medical standards, or both.”
 They estimate that 22 million unsafe abortions take place each year, the vast majority of
which occur in developing countries.
 In contrast to a legal abortion that is carried out by a trained medical provider, unsafe
abortions can have fatal consequences. So much so that unsafe abortions are the third
 leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide and lead to an additional five million largely
preventable disabilities, according to the WHO.
 Access to safe abortion services is a human right. Under international human rights law,
everyone has a right to life, a right to health, and a right to be free from violence,
discrimination, and torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
 Human rights law clearly spells out that decisions about your body are yours alone – this is
what is known as bodily autonomy.
 Forcing someone to carry on an unwanted pregnancy, or forcing them to seek out an unsafe
abortion, is a violation of their human rights, including the rights to privacy and bodily
autonomy.
 In many circumstances, those who have no choice but to resort to unsafe abortions also risk
prosecution and punishment, including imprisonment, and can face cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment and discrimination in, and exclusion from, vital post-abortion health
care.
 Access to abortion is therefore fundamentally linked to protecting and upholding the human
rights of women, girls and others who can become pregnant, and thus for achieving social
and gender justice.
 Amnesty International believes that everyone should be free to exercise their bodily
autonomy and make their own decisions about their reproductive lives including when and if
they have children. It is essential that laws relating to abortion respect protect and fulfill the
human rights of pregnant persons and not force them to seek out unsafe abortions.

PRO-CHOICE ARGUMENTS

1. Nearly all abortions take place in the first trimester when a fetus is attached by
the placenta and umbilical cord to the mother. As such, its health is dependent
on her health, and cannot be regarded as a separate entity as it cannot exist
outside her womb.
2. The concept of personhood is different from the concept of human life. Human
life occurs at conception, but fertilized eggs used for in vitro fertilization are also
human lives and those not implanted are routinely thrown away. Is this murder,
and if not, then how is abortion murder?
3. Adoption is not an alternative to abortion because it remains the woman's choice
whether or not to give her child up for adoption. Statistics show that very few
women who give birth choose to give up their babies; less than 3 percent of white
unmarried women and less than 2 percent of percent black unmarried women.
4. Abortion is a safe medical procedure. The vast majority of women (88 percent)
who have an abortion do so in their first trimester. Medical abortions have less
than 0.5 percent risk of serious complications and do not affect a woman's health
or future ability to become pregnant or give birth.
5. In the case of rape or incest, forcing a woman made pregnant by this violent act
would cause further psychological harm to the victim. Often a woman is too afraid
to speak up or is unaware she is pregnant, thus the morning after pill is
ineffective in these situations.
6. Abortion is not used as a form of contraception. Pregnancy can occur even with
responsible contraceptive use. Only 8 percent of women who have abortions do
not use any form of birth control, and that is due more to individual carelessness
than to the availability of abortion.
 7. The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take
away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the
government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing a
woman to use contraception or undergo sterilization?
8. Taxpayer dollars are used to enable poor women to access the same medical
services as rich women, and abortion is one of these services. Funding
abortion is no different from funding a war in the Mideast. For those who are
opposed, the place to express outrage is in the voting booth.
9. Teenagers who become mothers have grim prospects for the future. They are
much more likely to leave school; receive inadequate prenatal care; rely on
public assistance to raise a child; develop health problems; or end up divorced.
10. Like any other difficult situation, abortion creates stress. Yet the American
Psychological Association found that stress was greatest prior to an abortion and
that there was no evidence of post-abortion syndrome.

1. Government gets to control a woman's body.

2. "Back alley" abortions would increase if it were made illegal, leading to increased
risk of young women dying or becoming sterile.
3. It's arguably better for society to have babies aborted than have them be brought
up poor and neglected, where not only will the child suffer but society when that
child develops a higher attraction to crime, welfare, etc.
4. One brief mistake can take away a woman's childhood and trap her for life.
5. Giving up a child for adoption can be just as emotionally damaging as having an
abortion.
6. Carrying and delivering a baby can be painful & dangerous to the mother, and a
number of complications can develop.
7. Abortion is not murder because it is performed before a fetus has developed into
a human person.
8. Abortion eliminates legal rights of the unborn child.
9. Abortion exposes women to various health risks and the danger of losing fertility.
10. Abortion is against doctors' Hippocratic oath.

No

1 Government gets to control a woman's body. By making abortion illegal,

you're introducing a slippery slope that gives government control over a woman's
body. You're taking away a personal freedom. Who knows what other controls
the government may legislate in the future. Will it have the power to force
sterilization? Will it have the power to make motherhood mandatory? Will it next
take away the right to use other birth control methods such as The Pill?
2 "Back alley" abortions would increase if it were made illegal, leading to
increased risk of young women dying or becoming sterile. Regardless of
what laws are in place, there will always be young women out there who want to
have an abortion. They may not want to face the wrath of their parents, the
embarrassment at school, or the lifetime responsibility of motherhood. If we
 criminalize abortion, many woman will simply look for other ways to get rid of the
child. They could starve themselves or seek unlicensed "back alley" abortions.
So instead of getting an abortion in a controlled environment where there is one
last chance for counseling on options, women may subject themselves to a
potentially dangerous situation. These type of methods often lead to sterility or
other harm, even death.
3 It's arguably better for society to have babies aborted than have them be
brought up poor and neglected, where not only will the child suffer but
society when that child develops a higher attraction to crime, welfare, etc.
This is probably a controversial point but it has to be said. Without legalized
abortion, a lot more women will become parents whether or not they want to be
and whether or not they're ready to be. Raising a child properly is a full-time labor
intensive process. The children who are neglected or abused are usually the
ones that grow up to be drug addicts, lifelong government aid recipients, and
criminals. Do we want to subject the child to such misery? Do we want to saddle
society with the added burden? Some people say, "What if Abe Lincoln's mom
had an abortion?". You could also ask, "What if Adolf Hitler's or Osama bin
Laden's mom had an abortion?"
4 One brief mistake can take away a woman's childhood and trap her for life.
We all make mistakes in our life, especially when we are young. The pressure to
have sex at an early age is fierce in today's society. Even a girl who lives a good,
responsible life can have one slip up. But that one slip-up can take away all her
life plans and trap her. She may have planned to go to medical school, train for
the Olympics, travel the world, or just have fun while she's still young. All this can
be thrown down the drain with one brief mistake. We shouldn't penalize someone
for life.
5 Giving up a child for adoption can be just as emotionally damaging as
having an abortion. Women develop an emotional bond with a child when they
carry it through the full term and go through the experience of delivery. Giving up
that child for adoption might be the only reasonable option for a young girl too
immature or poor to raise a kid. However, the women now has to live with a
feeling of abandoning their child for the rest of her life. Why do you think so many
adoptive parents seek out their kids when they're grown? There's no doubt that
some women suffer psychological damage from having an abortion; however, the
damage done from giving a child up for adoption is much worse.
6 Carrying and delivering a baby can be painful & dangerous to the mother,
and a number of complications can develop. Any woman who has ever been
pregnant will tell you that is not always very pleasant. Weight gain, edema, back
pain, morning sickness, and constipation are among the common complaints.
After delivery, postpartum depression & psychosis, stretch marks, varicose veins,
and other problems sometimes follow the woman. And of course, during delivery,
a number of complications can develop that could cause permanent harm or kill
the mother.
7 Abortion is not murder because it is performed before a fetus has
developed into a human person. A fetus doesn't become a real human being
until it is physically delivered from a mother's womb. If you define a fetus as a
 human, are you going to go back and say a sperm or egg is a human? Should
we ban birth control altogether then since we'd be killing a "human"?

ABORTION IN PHILIPPINES (CLARA PADILLA)

Abortion is a reality for Filipino women. The illegality of abortion has not deterred
Filipino women from inducing unsafe abortion. It has only made it dangerous for them
where estimates in 2012 show that 610,000 women resorted to abortion, over 100,000
women were hospitalized and 3 women die every day due to unsafe abortion
complications.

Just this August, Maria (not her real name), a 21-year old rape victim who became
pregnant as a result of the rape with a child with dwarfism condition, died a day after
giving birth due to childbirth complications. Her mother lamented that her daughter
might be alive today had her daughter been able access to safe and legal abortion.

I have interviewed many poor women who divulged risking their health and lives by self-
inducing abortion using catheters or dispensing drugs without proper dosage and
supervision eventually suffering complications.

Such cases are common in our country where over half of the pregnancies are
unintended, and about 17% and one-third of the unintended pregnancies end in
abortion nationwide and in the National Capital Region, respectively, and where two-
thirds of those who induce abortion are poor.

Views, religion, and abortion

The 2004 national survey on abortion showed that nearly 90% of those who induce
abortion are Catholic. Regardless of Church teachings, Filipino women still resort to
abortion with the poor, rural and young women being the most vulnerable to self-
induced unsafe abortion.

Although the Reproductive Health (RH) Law provides humane, non-judgmental,

compassionate post-abortion care and, a law known as RA 8344 provides for stabilizing
patients in serious cases such as when a woman is bleeding due to complications from
self-induced unsafe abortion, making abortion safe and legal is the best means for
women who resort to abortion to be assured that their health and lives are not at risk.

Even with RA 8344, the problem, in the past years and until now, is that some medical
health care providers erroneously deny life-saving procedures even in cases of
intrauterine fetal death where therapeutic abortion is needed to save the life of the
woman.

In cases of ectopic pregnancy where the pregnancy occurs outside the uterine cavity,
surgery is necessary to save a woman’s life. Within a few hours from a ruptured ectopic
pregnancy, the abdomen becomes rigid and the woman goes into shock. Ectopic
pregnancy is a life-threatening, emergency condition requiring immediate surgery.

Expressing negative views on abortion is dangerous because it maintains the status

quo where many medical providers threaten women with prosecution in cases of
intrauterine fetal death, spontaneous abortion, abortion due to trauma from intimate
partner violence and self-induced abortion.

As a consequence of these threats of prosecution, women end up dying because they

delay going to hospitals or do not seek emergency medical care at all.

Judgmental views about known abortifacients such as Cytotec must be eliminated

because these are lifesaving medications necessary for the evacuation of the uterus for
incomplete abortion, missed abortion, intrauterine fetal death, severe eclampsia, labor
induction, post-partum hemorrhage, and cervical ripening prior to
obstetrical/gynecological procedures such as therapeutic curettage and insertion of
intrauterine devices.

Abortion and law

The current criminal law on abortion is an outdated colonial law that violates the rights
to health and life of Filipino women.

It was a direct translation of the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870s that used to
criminalize abortion—in the time of the Spanish friars and conquistadores. Without
knowing the full consequences of such a harsh and restrictive law, our Congress
enacted the criminal provision in our Revised Penal Code of 1930.

At the time the law was adopted, Filipino women did not even have the right to vote,
there was no Universal Declaration of Human Rights and no international human rights
treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1976),
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1976),
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW,
1981), Convention Against Torture (CAT, 1987), and Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC, 1990). These came much later.

Denying women access to safe and legal abortion is a means to control women’s
bodies, propagating subordination of women where women’s decisions including
personal decisions related to pregnancy and childbirth are totally disregarded.
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Permitting restrictions on women’s right to decide their own bodies perpetuate

discrimination against women and inequality of women in law in clear violation of
women’s right to equal protection of the law and women’s right to privacy.

Allowing penal provisions imposed on women who induce abortion and those who
assist them to prevail in Philippine law based on religious standards violates the
constitutional guarantee of non-establishment of religion.

Denying access to safe and legal abortion is a public health issue.

The illegality of abortion with no clear exceptions drives women to self-induce abortion
unnecessarily endangering their health and lives. If we want health care service
providers to provide humane, non-judgmental, compassionate post-abortion care and if
we want to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity due to unsafe abortion, then we
should rethink the archaic colonial law that restricts access to safe and legal abortion.

We should also welcome discussion on exceptions in cases of rape, incest, danger to

the health and life of the woman, grave fetal infirmity incompatible with life outside the
uterus, or allow abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy or, better yet, simply repeal the
penal provisions imposing penalty on the women who induce abortion and the service
providers assisting them.
In other countries

Access to safe and legal abortion is also a social justice issue with rich women being
able to go to places like Hong Kong where abortion is safe and legal while poor women
who do not have funds to go abroad end up self-inducing unsafe abortion.

We need to address the prevailing inequality besetting poor women. Serving this social
justice concern will contribute to greatly reducing maternal deaths and morbidity related
to self-induced unsafe abortion.

Allowing outmoded colonial penal laws on abortion in Philippine law makes us all
complicit to the estimated 3 women who die each day from self-induced unsafe
abortion. Letting such law prevail in our society breeds hatred and hostility towards
Filipino women who resorted to self-induced and unsafe abortion. Our laws should
never countenance this.

Other predominantly Catholic countries and former Spanish colonies have liberalized
their laws on abortion.

Spain legalized abortion on request during the first 14 weeks of the pregnancy in 2010
and other predominantly Catholic countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal,
Poland, Hungary, Costa Rica, and Ireland and former Spanish colonies such as
Uruguay and Colombia allowed abortion on certain grounds. This leaves the Philippines
to contend with its antiquated colonial Spanish law.

Asian countries such as China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have liberal
abortion laws while Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand have recently liberalized their
laws to allow abortion on certain grounds.

Some people mistakenly believe that the Philippine Constitution prohibits abortion
because of the provision on equal protection of the life of the woman and the unborn
from conception.

On the contrary, other countries with constitutions and laws explicitly protecting the life
of the unborn or life from conception allow abortion under certain exceptions such as
Ireland, Slovak Republic, Poland, Kenya, Hungary, and Costa Rica.

In the complaint of LC v Peru filed with the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination

against Women (CEDAW Committee), L.C. was 13 years old when a 34-year old man
started sexually abusing her. She became pregnant as a result of the rape and, in a
state of depression, attempted suicide by jumping from a building, suffering spinal
injuries with “a risk of permanent disability."

Despite her serious and deteriorating condition, her doctors refused to perform an
operation because she was pregnant and denied her request for therapeutic abortion.
L.C. then miscarried spontaneously.
The Committee recommended to Peru in 2009 to provide reparation to L.C., review its
laws to establish effective access to therapeutic abortion, include protocols to ensure
health services are available and accessible in public facilities, and decriminalize
abortion when the pregnancy results from rape.

The 2006 CEDAW Concluding Comments recommended for the Philippines to remove
the punitive provisions imposed on women who induce abortion and to provide access
to quality services for the management of complications arising from unsafe abortions to
reduce maternal mortality rates.

In the 2014 CEDAW Committee report on the inquiry on reproductive rights violations in
the Philippines, the Committee recommended for the Philippines to amend articles 256
to 259 of the Revised Penal Code to “legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, threats
to the life and/or health of the mother, or serious malformation of the fetus and
decriminalize all other cases where women undergo abortion.”

Upholding reproductive rights

In this day and age, we must uphold reproductive rights to the fullest extent where we
champion women’s rights. Our country will be a step closer to women’s equality when
every woman who decides to have an abortion is able to do so in a safe and legal
manner.

We owe such enabling environment to our mothers, sisters, and daughters who risked
their health and lives by making the difficult decision to self-induce unsafe abortion and
most especially to the women and adolescent girls who were hospitalized, threatened
by health care providers, and those who died because of our long-standing restrictive
abortion laws.

Our rule of law is governed by secular standards, not religious standards. To uphold
women’s rights to equality and eliminate discrimination, women must have access to
safe and legal abortion. Philippine law must uphold secular standards, human rights,
and public health.

We should all should work towards a humane society where no woman should die from
unsafe abortion. Making abortion safe and legal will save the lives of women. –
Rappler.com