Abortion Laws
The subject of abortion presents itself to contemporary sensibility and understanding as a confusing mixture of moral, legal, and spiritual questions. The matter of controlling abortion is fundamentally an exercise of looking out the balance between a progressively increasing level of medical pragmatism that period and technology gradually bring into the fluid spheres of legal, religious, and ethical normativeness. Some of the many parts of the question, by their design, would fail to yield any conclusive response under the assessment of any court, pragmatic items of when life essentially starts, whose life is more important and the relative sacredness of human life, expected and existing, are, as the judicial systems themselves have identified them as difficult determinations of such a personal state that courts have better leave them out in their determination list and if completely necessary to handle such questions, then practice the highest level of sensitivity when addressing them.
Abortion is a legal, medical process, and the government has no intention of interfering with a woman’s personal and private health care decisions. This notwithstanding, however, the government has passed legislation defunding Planned Parenthood and stopping them from getting involved in public health care plans. Moreover, politicians have taken a step to change laws from tax credit plans to federal family planning subsidy rules to undermine any institution that even mentions abortion (Myers, 2017). The government has taken stringent measures of crippling community family planning facilities and domestic violence housings as collateral damage in its endeavor to control access to abortion care.
The US President, Donald Trump, has stated it categorically that women should be punished for choosing abortion. And to ensure that is enforced, he has constituted his executive cabinet with anti-choice radicals. The President consistently promised that he would nominate anti-choice benches to the Supreme Court. He followed his promise by appointing an anti-choice circuit court magistrate, Neil Gorsuch, to take up the position in court. Throughout his career, Gorsuch ruled against reproductive freedom in many cases.
As an alternative to a constitutional change to ban or control the practice of abortion, the government has introduced many bills meant to achieve the same purpose as the Constitution without resorting to the problematic exercise of amending the Constitution. The mandate for such a process comes from Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which sanctions Congress to implement the due process and equal protection assurances of the amendment by appropriate law (Cook, 2019). For instance, Section 158, established during the 97th Congress, would have pronounced as a congressional finding that human life starts at conception, and would, its promoters opposed it, enable government draft laws safeguarding human life, comprising fetuses.
Legal laws and legislations are, yes, not the only issues affecting women’s access to women, their action and independence in making decisions regarding abortion, and their abortion practices. Educational standards and morals concerning abortion vary significantly across the globe. Some societies, for instance, Japan and Cuba, have, at times, been characterized as having an abortion tradition. That is, abortion is highly considered as an undistinguished means of terminating an untenable or unwanted pregnancy. Each society is confronted with the challenge of choosing to be or against life.
Similarly, the society we are presently in, cannot escape responding to this question of on which position it takes, that of death or life. The self-indulgent lifestyle of most people makes the response to this question still more critical. The mass-media do not sensitize people regarding the true nature of damage caused by both mental and somatic extents in women who subject themselves to abortion (Hoggart, 2017). The real tendency to try to overwhelm the humane sensitivity and realization, which attacks the respect for God, created a gift of a new life (Bhalotra, Clots-Figueras, & Iyer,2018).
The government’s move to regulate abortion will save the country vast sums of money, which would have been channeled to Medicaid financing of abortions. Instead, these funds will be directed to other essential healthcare services. Though it is argued that abortion is one of the methods of family planning, there are better methods that can be used other than abortion.
Information on the effect of abortion on women’s health should be made available to local officials and legislators. They are frequently ignorant of the extent of the problem, its impacts, and ways to minimize abortion. In most instances, inappropriate execution of abortion regulations through ignorance or carelessness results in unnecessary suffering. The consequences of non-execution of these regulations have a grave negative effect on women’s health. Thus, priority needs in the delivery and distribution of proper information in addition to teaching and capacity-building.
I think abortion should be an essential part of complete family planning and extensive health services. If abortions are to be made accessible as a means of family planning, they should only be used as a back-up for omission or contraceptive failure but not as an alternative for contraceptives. Therefore, it is probable that women will primarily use abortion at both ends of the reproductive age limit.
References
Bhalotra, S. R., Clots-Figueras, I., & Iyer, L. (2018). Religion and Abortion: The Role of Politician Identity.
Cook, E. A. (2019). Between two absolutes: Public opinion and the politics of abortion. Routledge.
Hoggart, J. M. C. M. L. (2017). Abortion in legal, social, and healthcare contexts.
Myers, C. K. (2017). The power of abortion policy: Reexamining the effects of young women’s access to reproductive control. Journal of Political Economy, 125(6), 2178-2224.
ulation in Canada