Abortion Home
Opinion 1 - Ayn Rand
Opinion
2 - The National Right to Life Association
Opinion 3 - T. F. Barans
Opinion 4 - Andrea Lynn,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Opinion 1 - Ayn Rand
"An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential,
only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is
born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the
unborn). Abortion is a moral right--which should be left to the
sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other
than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can
conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she
is to make of the functions of her body?" - Of Living Death, The Objectivist
" Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a
'right to life.'
A piece of protoplasm has no rights--and no life in the
human sense
of the term. One may argue about the later stages of
pregnancy, but
the essential issue concerns only the first three
months. To equate
a potential with an actual, is vicious; to
advocate the
sacrifice of the latter to the former is
unspeakable....Observe
that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e.,
the nonliving,
the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living:
the right of
young people to set the course of their own lives." - The Ayn Rand Letter
Opinion 2 - The National Right to Life Organization
Life truly begins at fertilization. At fertilization, when the sperm
and the ovum meet to form a single cell, a new human life is
created.
All characteristics of each person - sex, eye color, shoe size,
intelligence, etc. - are determined at fertilization by the baby's
genetic code in the 46 human chromosomes.
Every person begins as a separate single cell; nothing new is added
but oxygen and nutrition. If the process is not interrupted, a human
being will live about nine months in the mother's uterus and decades
outside it. That person has never existed before and will never exist again.
Nothing magic(al) occurs at birth which suddenly makes an unborn
baby human. The baby is the same baby, whether inside or outside the
uterus.
Every unborn baby is a complete, individual, living human being from
the earliest moment of his or
her existence at fertilization.
In a twisted distortion of human rights, some people advocate abortion
as a woman's right, but
legitimate human rights must recognize the rights
of all other human beings too. When rights
are in conflict, the most basic right must prevail
- not the rights of the most powerful.
Abortion is not a legitimate "freedom of choice,"
but the ultimate violation of
another human being's most fundamental right.
If the zygote/embryo/fetus is a person from the moment of fertilization, then we are dealing with two bodies of two persons: the body of the zygote/embryo/fetus and the body of the woman in which it resides throughout pregnancy. Presumably, then, both the woman and the fetus would each maintain a separate and equal right to the sovereignty and integrity of their own bodies. The zygote/embryo/fetus would have the right not to have its body invaded or infringed, and so would the woman!
So, we must consider where the infringement occurs. If the woman is the owner of her own body (as the zygote/embryo/fetus is of its tiny, embryonic body), then her rights to control that body and protect its integrity would certainly not be less than that of the zygote/embryo/fetus.
During the 1980s, there was a court case in Ohio. Two brothers had become estranged over the years. One of them was stricken with a kidney failure and required ongoing dialysis in order to survive until a donor match could be found. It was determined that his estranged brother was an excellent match, but the brother refused to offer one of his kidneys. The ailing brother sued the healthy brother in court, claiming that Mr. Healthy did not need two kidneys to live, and had no right to deny Mr. Sick -- a fully-endowed human person -- the "right to life." Needless to say, the courts held that Mr. Healthy had the right to control his own body and could not be forced to have his body used to keep Mr. Sick alive if he did not agree. It would be a beautiful CHOICE if he were to voluntarily offer the gift of life, but as a legal matter it could not be FORCED.
Similarly, even if the embryo is human, it still would not have the right to force the mother to use her body to keep it alive against her will. If the decision to give birth is what she wants, then "life" is a "beautiful choice." But it is her choice; she cannot legally be forced into it.
Human life did NOT begin at conception. Human LIFE existed BEFORE CONCEPTION. The sperm and the egg are both alive, active, and genetically human (and each has its own uniquely individual genetic structure derived from but distinct from the male or female from whence they came and from each other sperm or egg produced). If you say that LIFE is what is equal to a HUMAN PERSON, then how do you propose to save all the sperms or eggs that are wasted and die without being fertilized? All of the arguments claiming that LIFE begins at conception would apply equally to the human LIVES that begin BEFORE CONCEPTION.
Opinion 4 - Andrea
Lynn, Humanities Editor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Women's Perspective On Abortion More Complex Than
Earlier Thought
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.-- A new study finds that women's
attitudes toward abortion and toward
media depictions of abortion are far more complex
than previously thought. Social class, for
example, both links and divides women's views on
the controversial issue, and television
representations of abortion are well received by
some groups of women, strongly resented
by others.
The researchers, Andrea Press and Elizabeth Cole,
also find that the struggle over abortion
in the United States does not appear to be reaching
any conclusion, because, among other
things, "The abortion issue is not just about women's
reproductive choices. It is a prism that
refracts other issues in our culture having to do
with women's roles and the way people think
about family and women's identity in our culture,"
write Press and Cole, whose findings
appear in a new book, "Speaking of Abortion: Television
and Authority in the Lives of
Women" (University of Chicago Press).
Press, a professor of communication and women's studies
at the University of Illinois, and
Cole, a professor of psychology and African American
studies at Northeastern University,
spent four years talking to women about abortion
in small focus groups in the women's
homes in housing projects and suburban subdivisions,
condominiums and city houses. Each
group viewed one of three prime-time TV shows that
constituted "a diverse sampling of
television's treatment of the abortion issue."
Press and Cole found that television depicts abortion
as a "classed issue" in which some
women, lacking social support and money, are depicted
as worthy candidates for abortion
while others, rich in these resources, are regularly
spared such decisions through
manipulation of the story line.
"In this construction of abortion, those who produce
entertainment television present a
worldview in which financial reality defines individual
choice in a deterministic way,
dictating the spectrum of available alternatives
and serving as perhaps the most important
consideration in evaluating which of the options
is most appropriate," the authors write. In
their study, they found that many middle-class pro-choice
women share the same point of
view as that displayed on television. Other findings:
Pro-life women view the media
and medical experts outside the Christian pro-life
community "critically and
with suspicion," and they interpret the teachings of religious
and scientific authorities
to support their arguments. "In a complex way, pro-life
women's scientific facts
were carefully selected and interpreted in order to exclude or
neutralize evidence that
might support the pro-choice position."
Pro-choice women's beliefs,
on the other hand, are divided along class lines.
Working-class women defend
choice because they view themselves as a group whose
interests are continually
threatened by legal authorities. Middle-class women argue for
individual rights and think
abortion necessary for those who aren't financially ready.
Still, the most "overtly
contradictory" positions on abortion came from middle-class
pro-choice women. They "claimed
to be passionately pro-choice, but paradoxically,
most were also adamantly
opposed to abortion for themselves."