Terminating the “(T)issue” (Definition Essay)

Approximately 42 million unborn babies are aborted worldwide each year. About 1.37 million of those babies are aborted in the United States. Roughly 3,700 of those innocent lives are terminated every day. Fifty-two percent of the women having these abortions in the States are under twenty-five years of age (The Centre for Bio-ethical Reform). The situation seems to get worse every year, and it will not stop going in this downward spiral if society doesn’t do something about it. Abortion is the murder of innocent, unborn babies, and the practice of abortion should be put to an abrupt end.

There are two types of abortion, and the procedure varies depending on the stage of pregnancy. The first is the surgical type, and the second is the medical type. Most of all abortions are carried out in an outpatient office setting (such as a doctor's office or in an ambulatory clinic) “under local anesthesia with or without sedation” (eMedicine Health). Abortions that are carried out within the first seven weeks after conception (or nine weeks from the last menstrual period) can be performed either surgically, by means of a procedure, or medically, with the use of drugs. From nine weeks up to fourteen weeks, the abortions are achieved by a dilatation and suction curettage (scraping) procedure. A dilatation is an enlargement made in a body opening or canal for surgical or medical treatment, and a suction curettage is a method involving the removal of the fetus through a suction tube. This procedure is also known as a “D&C.” After fourteen weeks, surgical abortions are carried out by a dilatation and evacuation procedure. This procedure involves surgical evacuation of the “contents” of the uterus. After twenty weeks of pregnancy, the abortions can be performed by “labor induction” (the use medicines to make a woman's labor start, so she can deliver her baby), “prostaglandin” (contraction and relaxation of smooth muscle) labor induction, “saline infusion” (the injecting of salt into one’s vein), “hysterotomy” (a surgical incision of the uterus), or “dilatation and extraction” in which the fetus is removed through the enlarged cervix, the cranial contents being evacuated by suction (eMedicine Health). All of these options would generally be the surgical type of abortion. Medical abortion, however, is generally a lot simpler.
“Medical abortion is a term applied to an abortion brought about by medication taken to induce it. This can be accomplished with a variety of medications given either as a single pill or a series of pills. Medical abortion has a success rate that ranges from 75-95%, with about 2-4% of failed abortions requiring surgical abortion and about 5-10% of incomplete abortions (not all tissue is expelled and it must be taken out by surgery), depending on the stage of gestation and the medical products used” (eMedicine Health).
Most women who have medical abortions express an elevated sense of “satisfaction” with that “route” than with the surgical “route.”

There are two main groups that have strong viewpoints on the topic of abortion, and the first is Pro-life. We, who are Pro-life, believe that the unborn child is, in fact, a human and that life really begins at conception. We do not view abortions as safe procedures at all. We do not believe that the government, in any given situation, should fund abortions and neither should Planned Parenthood (the biggest national provider of abortions) be supported by them. We believe that unborn babies have just as much right to life as we do. We believe that abortion should be made illegal (I am Pro-Life). No matter what the situation may be, no matter how much a pregnant woman may not want her baby, we do not believe that the mother should ever consider denying her unborn child the right to life.

The second group with a strong opinion on abortion is Pro-choice. Contrary to the beliefs held by the “pro-lifers”, however, those who take the Pro-choice outlook on abortion believe that the unborn baby is not human, but a “mass of tissue.” They think that abortion is “safer than childbirth” and that the number of abortions is comparatively minute. “Every child should be a wanted child,” and no one should ever impose his or her values on those who believe in pro-choice. “Planned Parenthood is a group that focuses on contraception” (I am Pro-Choice) and should continue to be financed by the government, is another thing they say. They believe that a woman has the right to her own body and should be able to decide what she does with it, no matter what the consequences are. It apparently doesn’t matter that the women claiming the “right” to their bodies are killing millions of babies in the process.

The abortion genocide needs to stop. We are destroying the future generations by allowing these abortions to take place! The women, who have abortions performed on them, seem to become progressively younger and younger each year. The concept of responsibility has gone right out of the proverbial window! As the Reformer, John Calvin, states in his commentary on Exodus 21:22, which deals with an inadvertently induced premature birth:
“This passage of first sight is ambiguous, for if the word death only applies to the pregnant woman, it would not have been a capital crime to put an end to the foetus, which would be a great absurdity; for the foetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a foetus in the womb before it has come to light” (Davis, 5).
We need to step up and take action against this heinous corruption that runs rampant in society today and opt for the cessation of the legality of abortion.