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Avery Punch
Professor Kurian
ENGL 1302-73001
4 May 2015
Abortion: Choice, Innocence and Ethics
Abortion, one of the most polarizing moral issues in our society, is a very distressing
topic for women and men who discover themselves facing the moral perplexity of whether or not
to abort a pregnancy. The decision to undergo an abortion is a harrowing choice that few women
take lightly. It is the personal choice and responsibility of the woman. Women who have
abortions are from all walks of life. Most are well versed in the matter, and most are just plain
middle class individuals. Women will be criticized for whatever decision they make. With the
progressive moral caliber of society, the termination of a fetus, within means, has become further
and more corroborated. Abortions should be generally supported because of a woman’s right to
choose, the potential versus an actual human being within the womb, and a man’s right within
the reproductive decision making.
In his Notre Dame address, President Obama called for “open hearts, open minds and fair
minded words” in the abortion debate (Harrington). January 22 of this year marked the forty-
second anniversary of the overturned Roe vs. Wade decision. Many views were expressed then in
1973 with marches on Washington D.C., feminists responding to state legislatures counter
attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and activists affecting political conventions with
diversely strong demonstrations. The Supreme Court, voting seven to two, in favor of a citizen of
Texas, Norma McCorvey a.k.a Jane Roe who argued that her privacy rights were infringed upon
by the state of Texas; viability from the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extending a
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decision for a woman the right to have an abortion, but that this right must be unprejudiced on
the state's two licit regards in regulating abortions: protection of fetal life and a woman's
constitution (Newswire).
A woman’s prerogative that as a choice to get pregnant, or not, and to have a baby, or
not, remains a private matter, an understanding indicated oftentimes in the used term “choice.” It
may be we deem a few decisions as sound, others inferior, and yet a general percent of
Americans, at present speculate such choices belonging to those primarily affected. Throughout
the late 1960s and early 1970s, proponents of legal abortion used the jargon “rights,” much more
frequently than “choice,” to refer to what they were trying to achieve. What are the logical
grounds for adopting the pro-choice position? What reasons can be given in support of it? Pro-
choice is basically three principal positions: “Abortion is necessary for and morally justified by
