minotesvardet
New Member
Okay y'all...sorry I couldn't quote you exactly-my teacher frowned on internet quoting
Anywho, this is my report...continue your debates...it's pretty interesting.
Anyway, later!
~Jordyn
What comes to mind when a person thinks of “abortion”? Is it an acceptable form of population control? Should abortion ever be considered acceptable? As far as the world being overpopulated, that is a myth. Some scientists have claimed that every person in the world can fit into Texas and it would be less crowded than a regular day in Manhattan! The agricultural industry has stated that the world could feed eight times its own population-which stands at about six billion people. The World Fact Book has stated, “The [worldwide] production of major food crops has increased substantially in the last 20 years; the annual production of cereals, for instance, has risen by 50 percent, from about 1.2 billion metric tons to about 1.8 billion metric tons; production increases have resulted mainly from increased yields rather than increases in planted areas.” In the province of Alberta, Canada, six billion people could be housed in single-family homes (Reality Check n.p.). Should humans be considered mere animals that need to be controlled before we outgrow our environment? Evidently not, if one Canadian province could house the entire world’s population comfortably. Mother Teresa said, “How can there be too many children? It’s like saying there are too many flowers!”
If the world is willing to condone abortion on the count that “It isn’t a real child-that is just a fetus” then perhaps people should be reminded that they too were once “fetuses”. How does a life ascertain worth? Is the life of one person worth more than another merely based on life experiences or age? There is one simple definition for abortion. “Abortion is the deliberate and direct killing…of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence” (Ethics 24). No matter what the living circumstances of a child would be, he or she should at least be given the chance to make something of himself/herself. “It is true that the decision to have an abortion is often tragic and painful for the mother insofar as the decision to rid herself of the fruit of conception is not made for purely selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as…a decent standard of living for the other members of the family. Sometimes it is feared that the child to be born would live in such conditions that it would be better if the birth did not take place. Nevertheless, these reasons and others like them, however serious and tragic, can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” (Ethics 24). Yes, that “fetus” is a human being. “From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. This has always been clear and…modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the program of what this living being will be: a person, this individual person with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization the adventure of a human life begins, and each of its capacities requires time-a rather lengthy time to find its place and to be in a position to act” (Ethics 25). Based on this quote, the child is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment (“…nor shall any State deprive any person of life…without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.&#8221
and aborting him/her would be murder.
Some define abortion as a humane way to get rid of a child. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, M.D., describes one method of aborting a child: “He would have a trained doctor administer general anesthesia. The cervix would have been prepared the night before by inserting a laminaria, a seaweed-based substance that would absorb fluids and swell, dilating the cervix in a matter of hours. He would break the bag of waters and quickly dismember the fetus blindly with a polyp forceps…He illustrated his lecture with slides in color, showing the fetus reconstructed at the end of the abortion like a grisly jigsaw puzzle. One could see where the arms and legs had been ripped from the body and removed separately, how the spine had been snapped in two and removed with dispatch, how the skull had been crushed and the brain drained out before the bony parts were removed” (Nathanson 26-27). Dr. Nathanson later explains yet another process: “With suction, a plastic hollow tube (vacurette) is used, with the caliber varying to match the tightness of the cervix. A clear plastic tube leads from the vacurette to one empty bottle where the bodily remains are trapped in a gauze bag; the blood seeps into the bottle below. A second bottle sets up the suction. With the vacurette, the operator quickly pulls the conceptus from the wall of the uterus. If this is done after about ten weeks, one can see identifiable parts of the fetus’s body dismembered and trapped in the gauze bag…The later one gets in the “first trimester” (the first twelve weeks) the more likely the suction must be alternated with the hand-operated forceps to dismember the fetal body in the womb and extract pieces, working blindly in that large, soft chamber” (Nathanson 72-73).
The fact of the matter is, that whether America realizes it or not, she has witnessed the legalized killing of over thirty-five million innocent unborn children (Ethics 48). Pro-Choice activists need to face a simple fact—“life” and “choice” are not antonyms, but “life” and “death” are complete opposites. There is no correlation between the terms “choice” and “death”; therefore, one can choose to be either Pro-Life or Pro-Death. “In the way that we now look back on slavery, we hope that Americans of the next century will look back with deepest shame on the abortion regime of Roe” (Ethics 50). The child has no choice of whether he desires to live or not—that choice is forced upon him by his parents, much like the slaves of the past were forced into their lifestyles. “We may seek moral shelter behind claims that it is not really a human being, that it is only a potential human being, that it does not look like a human being. But we know that nothing that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and nothing that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being. We hold against it that it is totally dependent, but it will be as dependent one month outside the womb as it is one month inside the womb. Nor can we entirely repress the knowledge that, in the moral tradition that formed our culture, the condition of dependence obliges others to be dependable. As for it not looking like a human being, the embryo or fetus, or call it what we will, is exactly what a human being looks like at that age. It is what each of us looked like when we were that old” (Ethics 48). In conclusion, since it has been determined that life begins at the moment of conception and that the Fourteenth Amendment protects all lives under its power, there is only one answer to the question of abortion. Is it ethical? No, it is not ethical to murder innocent children. There is an American tragedy happening before the very eyes of America herself—her youth is being slaughtered, one child at a time, and she legalized the massacre.
Anyway, later!
~Jordyn
What comes to mind when a person thinks of “abortion”? Is it an acceptable form of population control? Should abortion ever be considered acceptable? As far as the world being overpopulated, that is a myth. Some scientists have claimed that every person in the world can fit into Texas and it would be less crowded than a regular day in Manhattan! The agricultural industry has stated that the world could feed eight times its own population-which stands at about six billion people. The World Fact Book has stated, “The [worldwide] production of major food crops has increased substantially in the last 20 years; the annual production of cereals, for instance, has risen by 50 percent, from about 1.2 billion metric tons to about 1.8 billion metric tons; production increases have resulted mainly from increased yields rather than increases in planted areas.” In the province of Alberta, Canada, six billion people could be housed in single-family homes (Reality Check n.p.). Should humans be considered mere animals that need to be controlled before we outgrow our environment? Evidently not, if one Canadian province could house the entire world’s population comfortably. Mother Teresa said, “How can there be too many children? It’s like saying there are too many flowers!”
If the world is willing to condone abortion on the count that “It isn’t a real child-that is just a fetus” then perhaps people should be reminded that they too were once “fetuses”. How does a life ascertain worth? Is the life of one person worth more than another merely based on life experiences or age? There is one simple definition for abortion. “Abortion is the deliberate and direct killing…of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence” (Ethics 24). No matter what the living circumstances of a child would be, he or she should at least be given the chance to make something of himself/herself. “It is true that the decision to have an abortion is often tragic and painful for the mother insofar as the decision to rid herself of the fruit of conception is not made for purely selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as…a decent standard of living for the other members of the family. Sometimes it is feared that the child to be born would live in such conditions that it would be better if the birth did not take place. Nevertheless, these reasons and others like them, however serious and tragic, can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” (Ethics 24). Yes, that “fetus” is a human being. “From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. This has always been clear and…modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the program of what this living being will be: a person, this individual person with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization the adventure of a human life begins, and each of its capacities requires time-a rather lengthy time to find its place and to be in a position to act” (Ethics 25). Based on this quote, the child is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment (“…nor shall any State deprive any person of life…without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.&#8221
and aborting him/her would be murder.Some define abortion as a humane way to get rid of a child. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, M.D., describes one method of aborting a child: “He would have a trained doctor administer general anesthesia. The cervix would have been prepared the night before by inserting a laminaria, a seaweed-based substance that would absorb fluids and swell, dilating the cervix in a matter of hours. He would break the bag of waters and quickly dismember the fetus blindly with a polyp forceps…He illustrated his lecture with slides in color, showing the fetus reconstructed at the end of the abortion like a grisly jigsaw puzzle. One could see where the arms and legs had been ripped from the body and removed separately, how the spine had been snapped in two and removed with dispatch, how the skull had been crushed and the brain drained out before the bony parts were removed” (Nathanson 26-27). Dr. Nathanson later explains yet another process: “With suction, a plastic hollow tube (vacurette) is used, with the caliber varying to match the tightness of the cervix. A clear plastic tube leads from the vacurette to one empty bottle where the bodily remains are trapped in a gauze bag; the blood seeps into the bottle below. A second bottle sets up the suction. With the vacurette, the operator quickly pulls the conceptus from the wall of the uterus. If this is done after about ten weeks, one can see identifiable parts of the fetus’s body dismembered and trapped in the gauze bag…The later one gets in the “first trimester” (the first twelve weeks) the more likely the suction must be alternated with the hand-operated forceps to dismember the fetal body in the womb and extract pieces, working blindly in that large, soft chamber” (Nathanson 72-73).
The fact of the matter is, that whether America realizes it or not, she has witnessed the legalized killing of over thirty-five million innocent unborn children (Ethics 48). Pro-Choice activists need to face a simple fact—“life” and “choice” are not antonyms, but “life” and “death” are complete opposites. There is no correlation between the terms “choice” and “death”; therefore, one can choose to be either Pro-Life or Pro-Death. “In the way that we now look back on slavery, we hope that Americans of the next century will look back with deepest shame on the abortion regime of Roe” (Ethics 50). The child has no choice of whether he desires to live or not—that choice is forced upon him by his parents, much like the slaves of the past were forced into their lifestyles. “We may seek moral shelter behind claims that it is not really a human being, that it is only a potential human being, that it does not look like a human being. But we know that nothing that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and nothing that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being. We hold against it that it is totally dependent, but it will be as dependent one month outside the womb as it is one month inside the womb. Nor can we entirely repress the knowledge that, in the moral tradition that formed our culture, the condition of dependence obliges others to be dependable. As for it not looking like a human being, the embryo or fetus, or call it what we will, is exactly what a human being looks like at that age. It is what each of us looked like when we were that old” (Ethics 48). In conclusion, since it has been determined that life begins at the moment of conception and that the Fourteenth Amendment protects all lives under its power, there is only one answer to the question of abortion. Is it ethical? No, it is not ethical to murder innocent children. There is an American tragedy happening before the very eyes of America herself—her youth is being slaughtered, one child at a time, and she legalized the massacre.
