“With this week’s anti-abortion display on campus, perhaps the message about why abortion is needed in any civilized society is missing due to the very sensitive nature of the debate between anti-abortion and abortion rights sides. An abortion is a medical procedure that requires a skilled physician to perform and must be done in a controlled and sterile environment to minimize any harm to the woman.”
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With this week’s anti-abortion display on campus, perhaps the message about why abortion is needed in any civilized society is missing due to the very sensitive nature of the debate between anti-abortion and abortion rights sides.

An abortion is a medical procedure that requires a skilled physician to perform and must be done in a controlled and sterile environment to minimize any harm to the woman.

As Nicaragua, the third nation in the Americas to outright ban any type of abortion after Chile and El Salvador, has proven, making abortion completely illegal will not stop abortions, but will cause the mortality rate of women to raise as they find back-alley alternatives.

Abortion is not a contraceptive, nor is it anything that should be taken lightly. There are several reasons why an abortion may be a reasonable choice to end a pregnancy, and to deny a woman the right to have an abortion can result in death of not only the fetus, but the mother as well.

If the woman dies before the fetus can exist on its own because she could not legally have the abortion, what good does denying that abortion ever do, besides take two lives?

Some pregnancies are the result of rape or incest. The mental health of a woman is just as important as the life of her unborn child.

Should a woman have to relive the experience of a rape or incest every day for the duration of her pregnancy, even if she were to give the baby up for adoption at the end?

That constant reminder may be enough to drive a woman into a deep depression and could jeopardize her life if she decides that it is not worth remembering that moment. 

Stories of women committing suicide because they could not get the abortion, or harming themselves to try to force the end of the pregnancy hit the news too often.

The health of the fetus should also be considered.

If it’s highly likely the baby will be stillborn, or its life will be painful or short-lived due to an anomaly, the moral question the woman should ask is whether the suffering the baby will endure is worth it coming to term in the first place.

Or should the fetus chance complications or her own health if doctors have diagnosed that her pregnancy will cause her harm?

Granting to women the logical choice of controlling their own bodies, namely whether to abort a pregnancy, should be the decision of each individual woman regardless of society concerns or religious beliefs.

Because a woman can legally have an abortion does not mean that women will wantonly travel to Planned Parenthood or other facilities to abort every pregnancy. 

The thoughts of women having to make dire choices and travel to back alleys or rural facilities to have an illegal abortion because our government has decided that abortion is bad regardless of its reason will reflect poorly on our civilization.

Irresponsible couples are not the reason to ban abortions. The health and welfare of the woman and the unborn baby should be the reason to keep abortions legal and in the hands of professionals.

Making abortions illegal will not stop abortions and will only drive up the rate of deaths associated with abortions. 

This should make it more immoral to those who believe in the sanctity of any life.

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