20 October 2016

Dear Mr/Ms. President,

There has been a lot of controversy over abortion and the laws around it lately. A woman’s right to decide what she wants to do with her body is a guaranteed right and is not something the government should be able to take away. There are so many situations in which bringing a baby into the world would not be reasonable or equitable. There are currently more than 400,000 children in foster care which is so problematic already. Illegalizing abortion would cause those numbers to skyrocket, leaving more and more kids without a home or a family. It is simply unfair to bring a baby into a life where he/she cannot be taken care of. In a situation such as rape, where the woman had no desire to have sex in the first place, it unreasonable to expect that woman to birth a child of her rapist. The constant reminder of that tragic event would be more than traumatizing to the mother. There are numerous personal reasons in which a woman cannot follow through with having a child and it is ridiculous to think that she would be forced into it because of laws.

A lot of people disagree with abortion because they consider it murder. A fetus cannot feel any physical pain until week 20-30 or during the second trimester. The majority of clinics refuse to perform an abortion after that point regardless. There are already laws to prevent harming a fetus. Some others disagree with abortion because of religious reasons. However, there are laws against the government being bias to any one religion or it’s beliefs, so this should not affect abortion laws. As of now, abortion is a safe procedure. We have advanced technology and licensed doctors who put the patient's safety above all else. If abortion was illegalized, some women would go to extremes to abort their baby. These extremes are not nearly as safe and put the woman at a very high risk of harming herself or causing an infection. These unsafe procedures could end up doing much more harm than a legal abortion would.

Abortion should be legal because it is the woman’s right to decide what to do with her body. It is unfair for the government to step in and take that right away. In 1973, during the Roe vs. Wade case, the Supreme Court recognized that the constitutional right to privacy allows a woman to make her own choices relating to her body and decided that should be able to have an abortion without government interference. It has been over forty years since this case and to this day 7/10 Americans believe we should stand by this law.