Methods of persuasion for building consensus on contemporary issues

Abortion: An Argument in Favor

Abortion is one of the most controversial topics of our day as it involves an entanglement of truly pressing issues that people generally feel incredibly passionate about: human life, religion, morality, and the rights of women. Historically, America has been a nation founded by and run by Caucasian men, which has meant that the bulk of legislation can be and has historically been harsh, unfair and unequal to women and minorities. Women (and minorities) have had to work harder and fight harder to receive rights that white men don't hesitate in giving themselves. For example, women have had to fight for the right to be reinstated to their jobs after maternity leave, for equal pay, and to fight against federal laws that have made it a crime to use contraceptives or birth control information (ACLU, 2012). Women have had to fight in certain states to teach in public schools if they were married and against laws which made it a crime for a white woman to have the child of a black man; the ACLU has also had to attack the exclusion of women from juries and other forms of discrimination against women (ACLU, 2012). The denial of equal rights and outright discrimination against women by men is nothing new. It is a fight that women have had to wager for decades upon decades. However, what makes the denial of abortion so unjust is that it represents the attempt of men to exert control over the bodies of women. Thesis: Abortion needs to be legal, accessible and affordable to all women. Any attempt by men to alter any of those factors represents an unconscionable injustice and is something which should be abolished as being unfair and un-American.

One of the major reasons that abortion should be legal, accessible and affordable to all women in need is one of the simplest and most basic arguments of them all -- and also one of the most valid. If the shoe were on the other foot and if men were able to conceive and bear a child, and understand firsthand what it's like to raise a child by oneself after carrying it for nine months, they would most certainly have no problem making abortion legal, accessible to all and affordable. However, men generally lack the empathy it requires to make just laws; history is full of examples which demonstrate how men have no problem demoralizing women or minorities because it makes life more suitable for them, allowing them to exert a wider scope of control over others. For example, it's no coincidence that vasectomies have never been illegal in this country, as doing so would infringe on the rights of men to exert total and complete control over their bodies. If men want to remove the ability to conceive children from their bodies, then they make sure that such a desire can be made into a reality. While a pro-life supporter would argue that vasectomies don't "kill human life" the same principle is there: it kills the possibility of fostering human life. "If men could get pregnant, it is safe to assume that they would not women, or female-run institutions, telling them what they could or could not do with their own bodies" (Alessio, 2011). This is the bottom line for the inherent injustice of making abortion illegal, inaccessible or unaffordable -- it's a manifestation of the heinous injustice and lack of empathy for individual rights that American law has demonstrated for centuries.

The failure of this nation to provide abortion in a safe, legal, and affordable manner essentially relegates women's relationship to sex as a purely biological one for having children. It essentially says that women don't have the right to enjoy sex for pleasure, that women are fundamentally baby-making machines. Men are aware of this and understand that if they keep women forced to carry pregnancies to term, they'll have more power of them: "…they [pro-lifers] know that making women remain pregnant not only takes away their power, but it also keeps them busy, in line, controlled, as well as a baking factory for their failing economy. The more people they have to rule over, the more they have to work and buy. Period" (amplify, 2012). Furthermore, pro-lifers know that the more children that a woman has, the more likely she is to be at an economic disadvantage: "Reproductive choice can be the only thing that stands between a woman and poverty. There is a reason that the 1 billion poorest people on the planet are female. In sub-Saharan Africa and west Asia, women typically have five to six children, which leaves them powerless to provide for not only their own families, but themselves" (amplify, 2012). To attempt to strip women of their reproductive rights is attempting to strip them of the autonomy which they have every right to guide the course of their lives. Removing a woman's right to choose the fate and destiny of her own body and life, a fact in and of itself which is unconstitutional. This country was founded on the idea of individualism and independence and was something that we fought dearly for in the war of independence. That victory is something which belongs to everyone and to deny women a shred of the autonomy which is inextricable from their very souls is something which is absolutely un-American and unconstitutional.