One of the common arguments of pro-choice proponents is that a women?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s choice to have an abortion or not is a right. If this is true, and I am not arguing it is or not, then this right would supersede any right the embryo/foetus would have to life.
How is the right to choice overriding right to life determined?
In parallel, persons have the right to choose to defend themselves and that right could extend to killing someone. In that regard, they are superseding someone?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s right to life. Of course, the parallel ends there because certainly abortion is not the same as self defense.
When Dad and I were trying so hard to have a child together, a friend of ours had her third abortion in 18 months. The hospital that she went to told her that she would no longer be able to have any abortions in Sask. There was no medical reasons to have these. The pregnancies were a result of too much alcohol and unprotected sex with pretty much strangers met at a party/bar. Knowing this made it very hard to keep liking this single mom when we were trying so hard to conceive and she thought nothing of using abortions as a form of birth control.
There is a place and time for abortions mainly when the life of the mother is in grave jeapordy and I firmly beleive that before any woman should give vent to her need to dispose of a baby she should take councelling and be made accountable to a panel of experts.
I love children too much to ever agree to a woman’s choice of abortion as a form of getting rid of the unwanted. There are too many families out there desperately searching for a baby to adopt. The waiting lists are years long.
My father was constantly after my mother to “force” me to have an abortion when I first found out I was pregnant at 16. This was the alcohol talking in him. But my mother, being the strong Catholic mother that she was, argued and held her ground. Once my Dad saw this little boy and held him in his arms that first time, Mom told me he went to church, got on his knees and asked for forgiveness for ever wanting to get rid of this little baby.
Our right to choose ends where it destroys or seriously interferes with another’s right to choose. If a woman has a trying two-year old child who is driving her crazy, does she have a right to take it to the local incinerator and have the nuisance removed from her life? No. We do not have the God-given, nor society-given right to take life. The choice was to have sex or not. That is why the Church makes certain exceptions for when the choice of having sex did not exist, like rape/incest. But even then, they tell the woman/girl that it will be much easier for her to spiritually and emotionally heal if she can endure the pregnancy and then give the baby up for adoption.
“Our right to choose ends where it destroys or seriously interferes with another’s right to choose.”
I am not sure I agree with this sentiment. Certainly, some would say Tracy Latimer did not have a right to choose since she was unable to formulate a choice based on logic or reason. If this assertion is true, then her father’s choice to kill her did not interfere with her right to choose. Yet, he was still found guilty.
The same could be said of abortion. A foetus is unable to choose, so no rights are superseded when the mother chooses to abort.
I am not sure it can be so cut and dried so that the right to choose is only invalidated if it interferes with that of another.
The US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision essentially dodges the question of rights for the fetus. It looks at the text of the Constitutuion, determines that the word “person” is never used there to describe an unborn person, and without looking any further, concludes that unborn persons are not persons with legal rights. It’s woefully inadequate reasoning. None of the subsequent US Supreme Court decisions revisiting Roe have touched the hot potato of personhood for the unborn.