The abortion debate

Dr George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the United States that provide late term abortions, was shot dead yesterday during church service.

Abortion, is a very controversal issue indeed...

When I was about 5, I vividly remember standing on the street, watching a heavily pregnant woman being dragged away by 2 men, while she was kicking and screaming and pleading. I found out later why she was being dragged and where she was going. She already had one child, and it was at the height of the "one child policy", she was not allowed to have a second child. She hid away but was still found out. And that day, she was being dragged away to have an abortion. I don't think I would ever forget the look on her face when she was being dragged away, I think i could still hear her pleads for help, for her unborn child. I think that early memory determined that personally, I would never have an abortion and will never allow anyone to pressure me into one.

A couple of decades later, I was travelling around China, and what do I see plastered everywhere, on billboards, behind the seats on public transports etc? Ads for painfree aboortions, with a smiling teenage girl on the ad, same day service, takes about 10 minutes, you continue on with your life as usual... Then I read in newspapers that teenagers are having multiple abortions, lunch time procedures, straight from class, chatting, laughing and joking with their friends while there. Just when, and how does a matter of life and death become so rountine and blasé?

All that being said, I do believe abortion should remain legal.

How I see it, abortion is about the individual woman that is making the choice, and having to live with that choice for the rest of her life. While it saddens me to see the statistics that such high percentage of abortions are done due to social or psychological reasons. However, I would like to still believe that for most women, that it's not a routine choice. It is often done as a last resort when all else failed.

I know women from both sides, one that carried a child that would not live beyong birth due to non-existing kidneys, to full term, and one that had 2 routine abortions in a matter of 6 months as a teenager. I KNOW that both women are in pain. The first had to watch her new born son die in her arms only hours after birth, and the second, years after the abortions, only just starting to feel the weight of her decision.

Abortion should remain legal, so that women can have a choice to terminate pregnancies that are medically necessary, such as congenital deformities that would result in neo-natal deaths, or cases that would cause the mother to die in child birth. I believe there should be a choice. Surely, like every choice in life, some people take them lightly, and yes, it can be exploited and abused. But without the choice, is it fair to make mothers watch their new born babies die after knowing they will, months before hand? Is it fair to make mothers risk their lives to give birth? Comparably, would it be justifiable to take away the c-section just because there are people who do it for convinience, while there are many who NEED the procedure to save their lives and the lives of their babies?

Whatever reasons a woman choose to abort, she is the one that lives with that decision for the rest of their lives. It needs to be her choice, either way. She definitely shouldn't be dragged to a clinic, kicking and screaming. But she shouldn't be forced to go to dodgy illegal abortion operators and risk serious long term damanges to her health or even death either because the anti-abortion crazies killed off anyone who is brave enough to provide the choice for the women.