Honor Government Research Paper

Alberto Piasentier Honor Government

Period 1 10\18\2007

ABORTION
I choose to write about abortion becasue it is a very controversial matter that still moves

public opinion and involves political, religion, social and ethical issues.

The principles of democracy that best relates to abortion are:

 “Individual rights and freedoms” which guarantees that all the American citizens

have rights to be free and make decisions for themselves.

 “Limted government” ; Government is allowed to invade the privacy of their citizens

only to protect state interests .

Applying these principles to this issue, there is no state interest in regulating abortion and

so a woman who gets pregnant has the right of choosing to do what she wants with a

unwanted embryo growing on in her body.

Abortion is a highly charged issue with significant political and ethical debate. The first

and central issue in the abortion debate is whether the fetus is a person. The second issue

is how we should behave if we can't decide if the fetus is an human being. This debate still

moves public opinion which is divided in two opposite ideological fences: pro-choice and

pro-life movments. People who are pro-choice believe that women should have access to

safe and legal abortion and that women should be protected from forced abortions. Some

see abortion as a last resort, and focus on a number of situations where they feel abortion

is a necessary option. Among these situations are those where the woman was raped, her

health or life (or that of the fetus) is at risk, contraception was used but failed, or she feels

unable to raise a child.

 Honor Government Research Paper

Pro-choice activists frequently oppose legislative measures that would require abortion

providers to make certain statements to patients, because they argue that these measures

are intended to make obtaining abortions more difficult. These.on the opposite side pro-

life view considers human fetuses and embryos to have the full legal rights of a human

being; thus, the right to life of a developing fetus or embryo trumps the woman's right to

bodily autonomy.

In 1832 states regulated for the very first time under what conditions a woman could

receive an abortion. Matters such as fetal viability, economics and women’s health were

evaluated within medical, legal and government institutions. The Supreme Court’s ruling in

Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 established a right of privacy for the use of birth control

and set a precedent. In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion under the Fourteenth

Amendment’s right to privacy provision. The ruling far from settled the public debate or

legal battles. Subsequent court cases on the state and federal level reviewed parental and

spousal consent laws, counseling in federally-funded clinics and the use of emergency

contraception. The development of ultrasound images and prenatal testing further

complicated the ideas of fetal viability and whether prenatal diagnosis of disease or

disability is reason to abort. Currently, in 2003, the Republican Congress is bent on

passing additional legislation to restrict access to abortion or, like the Partial-Birth Abortion

Ban Act of 2003, to reduce public support for it simply by making people queasy. Abortion

will still remain an highly charged matter since it involves religion, social and political

issues. Medically speaking abortion will be easier in the future thanks to new medicines

that will replace surgery. However the most effetive way to prevent an unwanted pregancy

is sexual education in the school; in fact many statistics show that most of the time

teenager get pregnant because they don’t use either condoms or other contraceptions.
Bibliography:

http://www.library.sau.edu/bestinfo/Hot/hotindex.html

http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/pubpol.html

http://www.multcolib.org/homework/sochc.html

http://www.firstgov.gov/citizen/topics/all_topics.shtml