The bans being placed on abortions this past year are escalating to a point of ridiculousness. Alabama passed a near full ban with no exceptions to rape or incest, Georgia’s six-week abortion ban has exceptions to medical conditions or rape/incest, only if a police report is filed, Kentucky passed a six-week abortion ban with medical conditions being the only exception, and so many more. Luckily enough, these bans have all been temporarily put on hold, but Alabama strives to have their ban take effect by 2020. The basis of America being the “land of the free” is that we have a right to our own choices and freedoms, yet that seems to be disregarded when it comes to abortion. Why should the government be allowed to have a voice on what someone else does with their own body? Of course, in terms of pregnancy, I agree that abortions should not be allowed when a woman has reached a certain point in her 9-month journey (generally being cut off after 24 weeks according to Planned Parenthood). This, of course, excludes those cases where abortions are absolutely necessary when the mother’s life is in danger. However, the bans that the previously-mentioned-states have made all intended to cut off at 6 weeks, before a woman even realizes she’s pregnant, making it nearly impossible for her to be able to get a safe and legal abortion, if so desired.
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Most arguments that are in favor of banning abortion always resort to the same line: “What if that baby grew up to cure cancer?” Well, then we should think of it in a different light. What if that mother later cured cancer? What if she was on track to being a researcher or working in the science field and had to drop all of that because she was forced to birth and raise a child she was nowhere near mentally and financially stable enough yet to handle?
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It’s so ironic that all those that preach to save the lives of babies never even care about the mother or even the child after it’s born. This is especially evident in the way that Alabama, as mentioned before, won’t make an exception to rape/incest cases. Most of these women who end up in an unintended pregnancy are young, aged 15-19, or are women with low-income, with less than 200% of the federal poverty level.
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How could anyone sit there and demand them to give birth to that child when they themselves are still children. If they care about saving lives so much, then why do they always overlook the mother’s life? It’s not selfish to give up your child when you know that you wouldn’t be able to raise them properly and provide them with everything they’d need. But it is selfish to force a child, most likely still in high school, to give up her education for the sake of “saving a life.” It’s selfish to force a still-developing body to go through such a major body change at such an early time in her life. And it’s especially selfish to force a teenager to have a kid and then not even care about how to positively impact her and her child’s life after birth. That child could grow up to feel unloved, mentally ill, in the streets and financially poor — but that’s never something that pro-lifers seem to take into consideration.
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People seem to classify those who abort as selfish, unloving creatures, but they feel emotional pain just like anyone else. The fact that they were able to go through with an abortion shows just how much they care, not only for themselves but also for the child by realizing that they wouldn’t be able to provide for them and didn’t want to make them suffer a life not worth living.
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This is exactly why Planned Parenthood is so important in our society, because they aren’t just a clinic revolved around giving abortions, they also play an active role in making sure that these unwanted pregnancies don’t happen in the first place. These abortion banning laws are aiming to take down Planned Parenthood, but all that will do is increase the risk of unsafe abortions and the number of unwanted pregnancies.
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It just continues to baffle me how this is such a controversial topic in 2019– this isn’t being progressive, this is us reverting back to mistakes of the past when unsafe abortions were at an all-time high before the 90s, resulting in deaths that could have been easily prevented.Â
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Hopefully we will find ourselves in a future where women’s bodies aren’t governed by men in power, but for now we continue to juggle this predicament.