Pro-Choice Women\'s Right to Abortion

Women's Right To Abortion

The famous French feminist Simone de Beauvoir once famously remarked that freedom for women "began with the womb." (Quoted by Kopaczynski, 1995) Ever since, the choice of abortion for women has become a symbol of women's rights. Its denial, more than anything else, is just a legacy of the ancient, deep-rooted discrimination against the female sex.

Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right of women for abortion in the landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973 by holding that "the right of personal privacy [implicit in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment] includes the abortion decision." Despite the ruling, prejudice against women's freedom to choose continues through a concerted campaign against the legalization of abortion.

The most oft-repeated argument against abortion is that human life begins at conception and, consequently, abortion is murder of a person. On the contrary, there is no scientific evidence in support of the argument: it is, in fact a religious belief and the "religious right" leads the anti-abortion movement. ("Legal Abortion ... " 2005)

A related argument against giving the right of abortion to women is that the fetus is not a "part" of the mother, but is a separate human being; hence a woman has no right of terminating her pregnancy. The fetus, of course, is inexorably attached to the mother by the umbilicus and is totally dependant on the body of the woman for its life support. It is, therefore, well within the rights of a woman to choose abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.