Lea Z's List: Abortion

• Roe v. Wade, which was decided on January 22, 1973, legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy,
• “potential” life of the unborn child.
• Rogers
• “If [a fetus] might not be a person, but if it might be, we generally should consider the fact that it might have life over the fact that it might not,” she said.
• “If it might be a person, then you should only be able to have an abortion in the most extreme circumstances.
• “In the last three months of pregnancy, it is very hard to disagree that a fetus is not a moral person. Infants are considered people, and babies in the last three months of pregnancy are essentially the same.”
• Hanle
• “In the case of a third-trimester abortion, what counts as a compelling reason is the deciding factor, which should be the woman’s health.
• Hanley said the woman’s interest should always take precedence over the unborn child’s because the courts have not determined the stage at which a fetus becomes a moral human.
• Hanley
• 
    “Even in the third trimester, they don’t know that there is a person there, so their judgment maintains moral standards,” he said. “We don’t know when we began.”
  

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• Those who see life as beginning at conception generally believe that abortion is unacceptable because it murders innocent human life. People on the other side of the fence who accept abortion defend their stance with their belief that life does not begin until some point after conception.
• Others often attempt to simply describe life as a continuum; the fetus gradually becomes more human with the passage of time.

• The fertilized egg does meet the criterion that are set to determine if organisms can be classified as living or non-living. In addition, an analysis of the development of the unborn being from conception through birth reveals many facts such as the presence of a beating heart, a functioning brain, and muscular movements which can only be found in living organisms. Finally, research has shown that the fetus is a separate entity from the mother. They are not one being, but two distinct individuals.  

      These biological facts lend strong support to the idea that life begins at conception.
• Abortion stops a beating heart.

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• There is no more appropriate moment to begin calling a human "human" than the moment of fertilization.
• "I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion. With purity and holiness I will pass my life and practice my art."

• Women given abortion are forgiven socially, but unconsciously feel guilty and frustrated, because loss of a child is equivalent to loss of a phallus.
• In a sample of 108,055 cases, the overall rate of harmful complications was 3.8%. The complication rate was highest during the fourth month of pregnancy.
• All of the abortions had been performed by gynecologists.
• The January 1973 Supreme Court decisions--Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton--invalidated most existing state abortion laws. Since then 31 states have enacted 57 new abortion laws, both specific and comprehensive.
• Legalization of induced abortion in the U.S. was followed by declines in abortion deaths, in hospitalization of women with complications of abortion, in out of wedlock births, and resulted in improved infant health. In 1971 out of 500,000 legal abortions performed in the U.S., only 99 women died from causes related to the abortion.
• In the Supreme Court abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled that an unborn fetus is not considered a "person" in the context of the 14th amendment.
• A brief article reports that the number of abortions in England and Wales during 1972 was greater by 30,000 than in 1971 and greater by 100,000 than in 1969.
• Women under 20 accounted for 20,000 abortions. 1293 of them already had at least 1 child and 347 of them had had a previous abortion.

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• the "commonly shared principles concerning the protection of life,"
• abortion with murder because the fetus from the moment of conception is defined as a human being and it is generally considered murder to take the life of a human being.
• the social acceptance of abortion will inevitably lead to infanticide and the taking of the lives of the aged and the infirm

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• a fetus is not a person
• heartbeat until the 6th week of conception
• Though some may say that the child is innocent and has a right to life
• The victim would feel more traumatized having the baby and/or giving it up for adoption than to have it aborted which is why most rape victims end up aborting their unborn.
• Suppose that the continuation of the pregnancy would cause the mother’s death, would abortion be ok then? The unborn fetus as a person has the right to life but the mother is a person too, so she should also have the right to life.
• If killing an innocent person is murder and thus a crime, then a mother having an abortion would equate to murdering an innocent child which would also be a crime. But how can this be possibly murder if the mother was only doing it to save her life?
• very early abortion that is within the first trimester clearly does not relate to killing. This is because a group of cells that cannot feel pain can not possibly fear death
• Abortion should not be associated with murder, especially not within the first-trimester of pregnancy as the fetus has not developed functional organs nor does it feel any pain.
  

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• Left to grow, it will always be an ameba - never a human person.
• Left to grow, it will always be an ameba - never a human person.
• Left to grow
• Your hair follicle is just as human as the zygote, but we would never defend its human rights based solely on that fact.
• No. It's merely a potential person.
• distinct entity
• The problem is that consciousness normally doesn't occur until months, even years, after a baby is born.
• individual personhood doesn't occur until well after birth.
• But we also quickly become aware of the "problem" we create if we say a human doesn't become a person until well after its birth. And we end up saying nothing.
• Thus the anti-abortionist's own rhetoric only proves the point of absolute physical dependence.
• 670,000 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year (this number does not include abortions). That's 1,800 women per day.
• women putting herself into a life-threatening situation for that potential person.
• Thus, a gestating fetus has no rights before birth and full rights after birth.
• If the mother chooses to exercise control over her own body and to protect herself from the potential dangers of childbearing, then she has the full right to terminate the pregnancy.
• "location" makes all the difference in the world.
• One will automatically have veto power over the other - and thus they don't have equal rights
• It's not murder if it's not an independent person.
• But that doesn't stop religious fanatics from dumping their judgements and their anger on top of women who choose to exercise the right to control their bodies.
• It's the ultimate irony that people who claim to represent a loving God resort to scare tactics and fear to support their mistaken beliefs.
• abortion is an absolutely moral choice for any woman wishing to control her body.

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