By: Sara Boone
Opinion
Being pro-choice means exactly that – I want women to have the choice.
I don’t hope that every pregnant woman I see gets an abortion just for the heck of it. However, I believe there are some circumstances that warrant an abortion.
The first is in the case of rape. I have never experienced sexual abuse myself, so I cannot even begin to imagine what victims go through every day just to cope with the abuse they suffered. If your argument against abortion is that it was a decision made by both parties to have sex, that is immediately invalid in this case.
These women did not choose to be raped, and they definitely didn’t choose to get pregnant from it. For many women, having a child as a reminder of the sexual abuse they suffered is something they, understandably, can’t handle. In some cases, these babies will be turned over to foster care shortly after birth.
There are also instances when the fetus will not be able to survive outside the womb. This may be rare, but who are we to tell a woman that she has to carry a dying baby full-term instead of terminating the pregnancy? I don’t wish this on anyone, and that is why women should have a choice whether to carry the baby full-term or not.
Sometimes a woman must weigh the risk of losing her life if she continues the pregnancy. These cases may be rare, but they are just as valid. This woman might already have children, and I don’t think it’s fair for them or the baby to grow up without a mother. If the father is in the picture, it’s also not fair for him to have the decision taken from him to become a single parent. The lives of everyone involved are important. In this instance, it is trading one life for another, but we cannot make that decision for any person.
Women all over the country fight for the same rights I do. The National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) is just one of these organizations making headway. Its Executive Director Heather Busby, JD, saw firsthand the effect these laws had on women every day.
“Imagine the woman who gets a cancer diagnosis and must decide between continuing the pregnancy or life-saving chemotherapy. And what about the parents who discover in the second trimester that the fetus has severe anomalies and has no chance of living outside the womb? Abortion is essential health care for them…,” Busby said.
Creating life only to have it threaten your own must be a crushing feeling. Making the decision to save yourself over your baby is not and will never be an easy decision. But thinking long term, this baby might not have a great life if its mother dies during labor. Potentially, it could have a great life. Historically, though, the odds are that it will not. If there is no father in the picture, that baby will likely go into the foster system. The same system that 480,000 kids are in right now according to AFCARS.
The foster system is partly effective. About 80,000 out of those 480,000 kids in the system each year get adopted. However, 23,000 kids age out of each year according to the National Foster Youth Institute. Twenty percent of those kids then become instantly homeless.
If someone is truly pro-life, they should care about the actual life of the baby after it is born.
Abortions will still continue to happen every day no matter the legality of them, so let’s also care about the lives of those women. The women who feel that they have no other choice. The women who don’t have the means to raise a baby on their own. The women who are victims of sexual abuse. Every woman deserves a choice.
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