Dear Next President:

“No women wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.” This quote, by Frederica Mathewes-Green's, reveals the rarely recognized truth about abortion. The definition of abortion is “the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy”. Abortion is not a decision a woman comes to lightly, rather one of careful consideration and extremely difficult thought. Women do not deserve to be punished and slammed with guilt and humiliation for making a choice that should be entirely hers. I believe women should be able to freely practice their right to choose. I am pro-choice.

The world that we call our own is filled with crime, including rape and murder. Let us address rape first in the terms of abortion. Rape is when a man sexually assaults a woman against her will. 32,101 pregnancies result from rape a year. How can we possibly deny a woman the right to choose when she has suffered something that was not her fault? This woman could turn out to be an amazing mother, and her baby could change the world; yet this does not change the fact that she was raped, and her baby will remind her of this every single day for the rest of her life. Yes, the baby is a proof of survival, but it is also a constant reminder of a horrific, and terrible experience, one that the mother can never escape from. Certain women are indeed strong enough to handle this, but others are not. It does not mean that they do not love their unborn child, it means they do not want this baby with that man. Now to address murder. Murder and abortion are not synonyms. Murder is when you hold a gun to another person and intentionally pull the trigger. Murder is not when a mother comes to the painful decision that it is best for the fetus to not be brought into the world, for her sake as well as the baby’s.

Imagine the following metaphor. Your leg is in constant pain and you will never be able to walk again on this leg. It provides zero function. The doctors gives you an option to amputate the limb. It is your choice, a life of pain or the possibility to walk again using a prosthetic. You make the tough decision and choose to amputate. A doctor walks into the room and tells you that he will not allow you to amputate it. This is the reality for a fortune of women everywhere who are being denied abortion and their right to choose. No man or woman should be given the right to make important decisions over another person’s body. Women do absolutely not deserve to be told what to do with their own body by a man let alone another women. It is degrading to watch women's actions in our society be controlled by men and what they think. Women should feel empowered over their own body. It is also very important to set an adequate example for the daughters and sons of future generations.

Thousands of people are opposed to abortion. They argue that you are killing a baby with great potential or God forbids it or irresponsible teenagers are using it as birth control. You could argue a million and one reasons why. In certain instances it people who are pro-life are correct.

In certain cases it is an irresponsible teenager not dealing with the consequences. As awful as this is it is still that teenager’s body and at the end of the day it should 100% be her decision. They are incorrect that you are killing a baby. You are terminating a fetus. The fetus is not a baby until out of the uterus. In the United States the latest you are permitted to get an abortion is 24 weeks. At 24 weeks most doctors believe this is when the fetus is able to feel pain. How can people argue that the “baby” has hands and feet, a heart, a brain, lungs, etc? This is simply horrid. The mother of the fetus is very utterly aware of this, for you are not allowed to receive an abortion unless the doctor educates you on it. Nobody should dare to bring guilt and shame upon a person who had to make this decision because that is ethically wrong and mean. It is like a person shaming someone for giving their child up for adoption, or discriminating people with a different race or ethnicity than you. The mother often makes the appropriate choice for the unborn baby and herself. There are tens of thousands of cases where the baby has a disease that would require a life in the hospital, excruciating pain, and would end fatally. What kind of life is that? There are also cases where the mother develops cancer, or the labor will kill her, etc. Sometimes the family comes to the impossible decision that there is only one of this woman who is a wife, daughter, and sister, and that they can always have another child. Or simply the baby would not have parents that love him, or a family that can support him, or will be a burden to the parents, or there is no one else to raise the baby, or the mother does not want to give the baby up, but is not fit to raise the baby. In cases like these, as sad as they are, it should still be the woman’s decision. People who use religion as a factor for why abortion should be illegal are simply selfish. It is perfectly okay for that family or person to use that as a factor for themselves not getting an abortion, but it should not play a role for anybody else. Not everybody believes in the same God and can not follow the same rules based on that faith. A person can not enforce a law for other citizens of the same faith or not of the same faith to follow. It is simply not acceptable for another human being to deny an abortion from a woman because of their religion. If they choose to say it is ethically wrong, well they are no better. What they are doing is ethically wrong as well. I do not mean to offend anybody while saying this, but they are offending many people by doing this as well.

For these reasons every single strong, independent, and beautiful woman should have the right to choose. We need to stand together and change how people view abortion. We need to change their perspective. We, together as one, need to show that abortion is not a matter of life or death, whether a baby is born or not, but rather if a baby is born into a family who loves them and can care for them, and if they are going to be living a life that they deserve, one that is worth living. As well as on the contrary, if a baby is born it should be born into a society where every single person is able to make decisions about their own body without feeling shame and guilt.

Sincerely,

Kaleigh-Ann