Despite flaring emotions in America and a polarized debate on the issue, the case can be made against abortion without bringing religious beliefs into the argument. If you examine American law it is clear that the unborn are protected, meaning Roe v. Wade was an unfounded and unlawful decision. In American law, both unborn children and their mothers have rights that must lead one to conclude that a fetus is a human being.
Unborn children have property rights by law. For instance, a man can will his estate to his wife and children including any children yet to be born of that marriage. So hypothetically, if a pregnant woman’s husband died and the fortune was left to her and her unborn child, she could have an abortion and inherit not half, but all of the estate. How is that not murder for financial gain? How can the law claim that a fetus has the right to its inheritance, but not to life itself?
In many states it is also law that attacking a pregnant woman so as to cause the death of her unborn baby is considered murder. If a fetus is not a life, then how could this be considered murder? Ironically, many pro-women’s groups that vehemently support abortion-on-demand also support such contradictory laws.
There are many other contradictory arguments from pro-choice supporters. Many mothers claim that they can stop a baby from crying by wrapping the baby tightly in a blanket and holding it upside down against the mother’s stomach. They believe this trick works because as a fetus the baby turned upside down in the womb, and that their infant is calmed by the memory of the security the child felt while upside down in the womb.
It is amazing that mothers believe a child will remember something from a time when, according to abortionists, the child was not even a person. It is contradictory that mothers would support another’s right to kill a child at a stage of development where they, as mothers, admit that their own children had memories and self-awareness.
One main case for abortion is that it prevents the birth of unwanted children. Who says they are unwanted? There are literally millions of Americans who are unable to have children and are willing to adopt. These children can find homes. A typical comeback is that adoption houses are crammed, but this is a separate problem from abortion. Teenage mothers having children out of wedlock is a completely different problem, caused by government bureaucracy and welfare policies, that will never be solved by the taking of what American law clearly establishes as a human life. Abortion is not the answer to these problems.
There are two exceptions to this pro-life legal precedent. Our laws recognize the right to take a life in self-defense; therefore, if a woman’s life is medically threatened by her pregnancy she has the right to end it. She also has the right to defend herself against rape and should not be obligated to bear a child resulting from that atrocity.
These are only a few of the inconsistencies in our legal system. It can only be a matter of time before our own legal experts recognize these inconsistencies and correct the mistake of Roe v. Wade.
Tyler Fultz is a freshman history and political science major from Indianapolis, Ind.
