Letter to the Editor: Pro-Choice is Pro-Health

Before Roe vs. Wade, nearly 50% of all maternal deaths resulted from illegal or back-alley abortions.

It is estimated that anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty women died each year from 1950-1960 due to these practices, with thousands more injured.

Many of these women were scared young people who weren't fit to be mothers, or who were raped and could not face keeping the baby.

Thanks to Roe vs. Wade, we can protect these women--many of them wives, mothers, or underage daughters--with access to safe and legal abortion care in desperate times. Modern abortion is 11 times safer than the abortion in the years before Roe vs. Wade.

Opponents of abortion are concerned with the ontological status of the fetus, women using abortion as a means of birth control, and some are worried about the psychological and physical impacts that it has on women.

These issues are easily refuted in simple ways.

Pro-life individuals claim that life starts at conception. Pro-choice people would argue that, yes, an embryo is alive in the same way that skin cells are alive. It does not have personhood. In fact, to claim that personhood should be given at conception is very misguided since conception does not always lead to pregnancy. After conception, there must be implantation for life to flourish.

Many fertilized embryos are simply washed out each month with menstrual fluids simply because fertilization took place at the wrong time during conception.

There are many facts that can be used to argue against the idea of fetal personhood.

Brain activity beyond simple necessary functions and movements does not occur until weeks 20-27. Neonatal pain reception does not occur until the 29th or 30th week. 80% of abortions occur before the 12th or 13th week, where the baby is about the size of a lemon.

Most images shown on pro-life posters are greatly exaggerated, as pictures of real abortions occurring this early are little more than a few clumps of cells.

In fact, only 2% of abortions occur during the third trimester.

As for the other issues, there are more simple arguments.

Nearly half of women who get abortions were already using some form of birth control that failed in some way.

If women solely used abortion as a means of birth control, then each woman would have at least 2 or 3 abortions a year, which contradicts with data that indicates that 52% of women getting abortions have never had one before.

Only 19% of women regret having an abortion. Women who have first-trimester abortions have virtually no risk of problems with future pregnancies. Many exhaustive studies have been done and none can prove that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Keeping abortion safe and legal is necessary to protect women. Women do not simply go out and decide to have an abortion because being a mom doesn't sound fun. They think carefully about their intensely personal decision and weigh the consequences. Some women who get abortions may have even wanted to be mothers but their pregnancy had complications.

Even more women already had their choice taken away when someone forcibly impregnated them.

Don't take their choice away. Don't make women go back into the alleys. Keep our mothers, wives, sisters, aunts, and women of all kinds safe. Vote pro-choice.