A deeper insight to Abortion

When you think of topics to debate about, there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. One of the more popular and heated ones to talk about though is abortion. Up until now, I had never had much to say about it, except simply my stance on it. But today, I read an article in my city’s local newspaper (The Colorado Springs Gazette) and I fell much obliged to share and discuss it.

Now, in the Colorado ballot for this coming election, there is an amendment that has gone farther and is more radical then any other anti-abortion/anti-contraception law proposed in the U.S. It is Amendment 48, and it states that a singled-celled, newly fertilized human egg is to have the same rights as any fully grown human. If this was to pass, it would make Colorado the only place in US, and the 4th place on earth to, by law, define life as starting at a singled-celled, newly fertilized human egg.

Now you may be thinking, ‘Ok, so what exactly does this mean?’ It means that abortion in any shape or form will be punishable as if it was murder. This includes if the egg isn’t attached to the uterus wall before it is fertilized, in which the egg will just be naturally flushed out of the body with no signs. Any thing that prevents this, such as the pill and intrauterine devices (IUDs) [IUDs make the uterus wall hostile to the eggs, therefore preventing the egg from attaching], would be illegal to buy or even have possession of (including if you were just traveling through Colorado and didn’t live there).

Now the problem with the idea that most people have about abortion is that it simply applies to not wanting a baby that will live, but this law will have NO exceptions of any sort. This includes but isn't limited to miscarrages (if intentional), health problems, both to the fetus and/or the mother, rape caused pregnancies, etc...

For example, a young woman who is pregnant goes for an ultrasound at her doctor. The doctor discovers though that the baby that she is carrying has a serious mutation, and it will not survive long after birth. There is nothing the doctor can do to fix the fetus, and by law, since the fetus is alive in this woman’s womb, he cannot take it out and giving her an abortion. So he tells the woman this, and that her only option is to continue on with the birth, through the labor and everything else, to have a baby that is doomed to die.

Now imagine how traumatizing this would be to a woman, especially one who has never had a child, and what it may do. One thing she may do is that she goes out and kills herself. Or, she might do out to try to intentionally get a miscarriage (which would also be against the law if a woman had a miscarriage on purpose) through means of drug and alcohol abuse, or other means of hurting her body. Or even if the woman went ahead and had the birth, she could easily suffer from devastating psychological consequences.

Another major example of a NO exception to this law would be if something was going wrong with the fetus’s growth in a woman, such as the fetus growing in a fallopian tube instead of in the uterus, and further growth was going to hurt the woman for certain, with high probability of death. And while the surgery for this is relatively easy to do, the only way for the doctors to be able to legally do anything to help the woman was if the fetus was to die. If the doctor was to do anything, he/she and the woman with the fetus would both be punished by law. So instead of the woman being saved and just killing the fetus, both the woman and her fetus die, causing an avoidable death.

The worst part about this is that there is physical proof that this will happen. In November of 2006, Nicaragua passed a law identical to this. And as above, there have been a large increase in avoidable deaths in pregnant woman, and a large number of doctors and woman jailed for doing anything at all. While I can see how someone can argue abortion in general, I cannot see how anyone can still go for this. But this has been presented to many anti-abortion and anti-contraception groups, and it is disturbing how little response and compassion it has created in them.

One more thing I see a major problem with being is the Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinics, which help people with problems such as infertility, by taking an already fertilized egg and implanting it into a woman’s uterus wall. These clinics easily have tens of thousands of fertilized eggs, donated by donors or held for their clients, which is enough to be considered as a small city. Seeing that a fertilized egg would now have the rights of any of us, do they get things like the right to vote? Do they get added to the population census? Can a pregnant woman drive in a carpooling lane? The list can go on for ever too. Where do you stop it?

Now, I obviously can’t make anyone change their minds about abortion, I think everyone must ask themselves a few questions. Are you willing to force someone to risk their health and life to have a child? Guys, are you ready to place your wife or girlfriend on that line? Ladies, are you ready to take that risk yourselves and make it so you can’t receive any help if you have problems? Because I can guarantee that if it is approved here, then it will pop up on the ballot of every other state as well.