Emily Mandev / Staff reporter
The stigma women suffer with about getting an abortion has been around since the science of this procedure was invented and has been banned in most countries in the world. This is purely a choice woman should be able to make on their own and here is why.
A common debate on abortion is that men should have a say in a woman’s choice to have an abortion. Men should not have any sort of choice when it comes to a woman’s body and a woman should never be forced to bear children if she feels unprepared. What some people may not understand about abortion is that too many women or forced to give birth against their will due to rape, toxic relationships, toxic households, financial stability, and age.
The education system in most of the world does not cover the amount of information that they need to in sex education and schools and administrations do not really see it as that big of a deal. In the school district 43 in Coquitlam BC, they do not start teaching sex education until grade 4. From personal experience the sex education that the students in our current school system have received have never had more than 3 classes, if any, on the topic of sexual education. If sexual education is not taken as seriously as it should be, why should the women that get pregnant due to lack of education be forced to keep a baby that they did not plan on having?
Another argument against abortion is that you are killing a baby and that the life inside of you is being murdered. A fetus is part of a woman’s body. She has the choice to keep the fetus and let it grow into a child, but until the fetus is born it would not possibly be able to survive without the woman, because it is a part of her body. A woman’s right of being able to protect her own body is completely violated when you force her to go through growing something that she did not choose to have inside of her. More people need to understand what women have to endure during pregnancy, especially if they already have health problems such as medical complications, drug or alcohol abuse issues, or mental health issues that they do not wish to genetically pass to another human being.
Men have the options to use contraceptives, or more seriously get a vasectomy, if they do not want to have children. However, if they refuse to do so, then in the end, the woman is the one that ends up having to deal with the consequences. A vasectomy is not a permanent surgery and its reversable in most cases, but if a woman decides she wants to get her tubes tied then that’s a decision they must keep for the rest of their life, and it cannot be reversed. There are people who want to make the argument that women can just go on birth control, even though it is not 100% effective for everyone and in certain cases birth control can be dangerous to some women, including women who suffer from antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, which causes severe blood clotting in your system. It may be uncommon; however, many women don’t know they have this disease until they have a bad reaction to birth control, or in more upsetting cases having a miscarriage or stillborn.
Now, if the pro-life side still wants to defend the “killing babies” theory, in these severe cases, having a baby or being on birth control can be extremely dangerous and can lead to severe emotional and physical trauma. Wouldn’t you think that the woman who is carrying the fetus should have to risk their own life for a life that may or may not be properly loved and cared for in the world? The value of one’s life that has been loved and cared for in this world should be just as important to people if they really do care so much about the fetus that the woman carries.
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Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life: Can They See Eye To Eye? | Middle Ground