The new abortion bill signed by Utah's major pro-life advocate governor states that women receiving abortions later than 20 weeks gestation require anesthesia. This law is not based on sound scientific evidence, but rather on political values. Despite no scientific evidence that a fetus at 20 weeks can feel pain, the reasoning behind the bill is that it is inhumane to put a fetus through the pain of an abortion. Many people are also complaining that the bill is just a back-door way of banning abortion. Requiring anesthesia would not only raise the cost of an abortion, it also puts the woman's health in danger by giving her unnecessary medication (no respectable doctor should be okay with putting their patient at unnecessary risk).
I am pro-choice; that is no mystery among my peers. I believe, as the Supreme Court has stated, that a woman has a right to make decisions about her own body. By denying a woman that right, not only is it unconstitutional, it is also saying that a human being does not have a right to their own body. Women have the right to any method of birth control they choose, without a specific reason for why they choose that method, and they definitely do NOT need to explain their decision to the rest of the world. I personally would never have an abortion because I believe any life I create is special and beautiful, but I would never tell someone else how to feel. Everyone has a right to make decisions for their own bodies and who am I to tell them they can't abort a fetus, especially when I don't know their circumstance? If a person is not mentally ready for a child, or for birth, they should not be forced to go through the trauma of giving birth or carrying a child they don't want, or even attempting to take care of a child they don't want. Having a child without wanting that child makes for a very hard and tragic life for the child. That is why I believe in a woman's right to choose abortion.
Now, you can probably guess my reaction to this new Utah bill. That's right: I hate it. Not only is Utah promoting unsupported scientific research and exposing women to unnecessary (and dangerous) medical treatment, the state is also taking its people back many decades to when women had few to no rights to their own bodies. While I am not a medical professional and I have no experience with abortions, I find it hard to understand the state's reasoning for intertwining political values into scientific medical treatment. You would think that with the Supreme Court's decision upholding a woman's right to abortion would deter legislation banning abortion or making it extremely difficult to get an abortion, but apparently there are still people out there that will not accept that decision and still try to take women's rights away.
I hope other states do not follow in Utah's footsteps, but I'm not very optimistic. When states find loopholes around federal laws, they run with it. With so many pro-lifers in the United States, I can see similar bills being passed across the nation, but I hope they don't. If more bills requiring anesthesia for abortions later than 20 weeks, the United States will be thrown back in social progress to the mid-1900s. The United States must continue to progress and not let one group regress medical treatment based on political values.
CNN article on Utah's new 'fetal pain' abortion bill
NY Times article on fetal pain research
The Journal of the American Medical Association research on fetal pain *actual research conducted about fetal pain*
1 comment:
Abortion is such a hard subject these days for people to talk about. We have a separation of the church and state today, but i feel as though religious beliefs are what challenge peoples views on the subject. At the end of the day i'm still pro choice, but strict guidelines and time limits should definitely be made on that choice. Birth control is a completely other topic, the fact that politicians argue that stuff like that shouldn't be covered under insurance is ridiculous. The same goes for abortions if we can come to proper terms with it, i know friends who had to pay a lot out of pocket for such medical procedures.
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