Abortion Issue in the United

Abortion Issue in the United States

Though there is a theoretical separation between Church and State which is said to serve the inherently spiritual but politically secular United States, there is nonetheless an inextricable relationship between the moral codes which guide both sectors. Indeed, it may often be difficult if not impossible to fully distinguish where such moral motives can be said to derive from political imperatives or from religious ones when speaking on such sociologically prevalent issues as those concerning law and order, civil liberty and the sanctity of human life. Perhaps no such issue is as salient in modern discourse as that of abortion, which by no mere incidence of its commonality throughout human history, but by its very implications to our conception of that which defines life, is unlikely ever to be settled in such a fashion as to end our collective disagreement on terms. However, by pitting against one another arguments supposing the wrongness of abortion and consequently discounting such wrongness, it is clear that there is a greater rational foundation for the political perspective taken by pro-choice candidates, which opposes legal obstruction to the right to an abortion.

According to the position paper on the subject offered by the California Medical Association in 1973, "the term abortion refers to 'any procedure performed primarily for the purposes of terminating a pregnancy." (CMA, 42) That this runs afoul of the Christian authored premise that 'life begins at conception' serves as the primary cause for its centrality in a cultural conflict that has taken on greater implications in the political and public spheres of discourse. Indeed, the abortion debate in the United States in particular is highlighted by a stark cultural divide between those in the religious right typically affiliating with the Republic party and frequently with the Christian faith. These characteristics tend to describe those individuals and groups who have defined abortion as a political issue rather than as a medial or privacy rights issue. It is this latter view that is taken by abortion-rights activists, who contend that the moral perspective taken by pro-life activists and lobby group is an imposition of personal values and faith on the law. The argument is thus grounded in the belief that laws opposing freedom of the right to decide for one's self is fundamentally unconstitutional.

This is a view that would be further reinforced by the historically significant 1973 court decision known simply today as Roe vs. Wade. Here, "the United States Supreme Court lifted all restrictions on a woman's right to a physician-performed abortion during the first three months of pregnancy, saying that during the first three months, the decision to have an abortion lies with the woman and her physician; the woman has a 'right of privacy' in which the State cannot interfere." (CMA, 42) In a very substantial way, this court decision would demonstrate the law to have rejected as legally relevant the spiritually inclined view that life begins at conception. Instead, considering the more empirical medical and social considerations at hand, the Supreme Court established the position that stands today.

In spite of this precedent, pro-life groups have mounted powerful, ongoing and determined opposition to this constitutional position. Indeed, the political relevance of abortion can mostly be attributed to this determination, which reflects a belief on the part of the conservative population of the United States that abortion is wrong, that it should be regarded as murder and that the failure of the nation to intervene on the behalf of its unborn children is a fundamental sin. This is a view which has resonated with many Republican office-holders and Christian community leaders in recent years, who have battled aggressively to shift the public perspective to a place of rejection of these values.

However, most of the evidence available to us suggests that abortion is a critical right which must be afforded to women. In nations where religious legalism is more widely tolerated, evidence of abortion prohibitions contributed to higher fatality rates amongst pregnant women suggests something rather troubling. In the deeply Catholic nation of Nicaragua, for instance, a 2007 report by the BBC indicated that "where a new law has put a blanket ban on abortion - even in cases of rape or where the mother's life might be in danger -- campaigners say it has led to 82 deaths this year among women with pregnancy-related complications - and a culture of fear among doctors." (Dreaper, 1) This helps to point to a medical argument in addition to the philosophical objection which pro-choicers have to the constitutional intervention and moral control implied by the pro-life agenda.