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Why Abortion Should Remain Legal

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In May 2014, a Gallup.com report by Lydia Saad, read that Americans still stand split on abortion, with 47 percent of adults viewing themselves as “pro-choice” and 46 percent as “pro-life." It is evident that the issue of abortion has been and will continue to be an ongoing battle in the United States. There is no doubt that unwanted pregnancies will occur within the country; the next step is to help the women who are involved. There are various instances in which women choose to have abortions. According to an article by Gudrun Shultz, “the reasons they gave in 2004 were, that 25 percent were not ready for another child or the timing was wrong, 23 percent couldn’t afford a baby at the time, 19 percent were done having children or had other people to take care of” and even more. There are many reasons why abortion should remain legal in the United States, mainly because not all women are ready to be a mother, not all fetuses are healthy enough for normal life, and outlawing the procedure will most definitely not stop it from happening. Before discussing the topic of whether abortion is just or not, and whether or not it should remain legal, one must understand it first. Abortion is not necessarily for women who do not wish to be mothers, it is for women who do not wish to be pregnant. The biggest questions asked about abortion are as follows: Does human personhood begin at conception? If so, is abortion murder? Controversially, the answer is no. According to "Does Human Personhood Begin at Conception?" by Peter Kreeft, “Each and every cell in one’s body has human life, and a single cell kept alive in a laboratory could be considered ‘human-life’ but not ‘a human-being’." A human-being is a human who is capable of emotion, such as think, love, know, feel, commit, relate, aspire, desire, and is one who is able to know it’s past, know it’s future, know its environment, and can communicate. The pro-life movement often tends to confuse the idea of a person and the idea of a life. The zygote (fertilized cell), blastocyst (ball of hollow zygotes), and embryo, cannot be considered people, for they do not experience these things and cannot even feel pain, seeing as there is no brain or nervous system developed yet. Abortion is a procedure that, when done right, will cause no pain to the fetus (Kreeft). It is true that the concept of personhood is not clear and is merely a matter of opinion. But what is a matter of opinion should not be enforced by law. Half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and 40 percent of those are ended with abortion; 51 percent of women who h

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