Life and Works of Rizal
ABORTION The matter of abortion, the quintessential bioethics topic, raises intensely a personal issue for many people. It is a polarizing and divisive issue that discuss about morals, science, medicine, sexuality, autonomy, religions, and politics. A central matter is deciding what can we say about unborn children initially known as embryos and lately fetuses. What is their moral status- how much do they matter and what is our obligation towards them? What is our relationship with them, all of us as member of human families? Should their lives be protected or should their mother is allowed in making decision about killing or protecting them? Should abortion be legal? Generally prohibited with some exception? Should it be regulated? Publicly funded? Abortion refers to the voluntary termination of pregnancy resulting to the death of a fetus. Most polls suggest that Americans by a slim majority call themselves a pro-choice rather than a pro-life. That does not mean, however, that everyone who is pro-choice believes that abortion is acceptable under any circumstance. The pro-life movement is thought of as more black-and-white in its range of opinions than a pro-choice faction. Those who support life are more concerned with the fetus and believe that abortion is a murder. Abortion is an issue because it violates dignity of a human person, does away with innocent babies’ right to live and is ultimately a murder. Abortion is not the answer to a problem and problem is not even the right word. A child is a person not a choice. It is not an option to kill a baby because the mother does not want it. A quote by Mother Teresa reads “It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” The issue of abortion involves balance of rights and freedom between the mother and the baby. There are only two questions: At what point does life begins between conception and birth? and It is a sin to abort a fetus? Life begins at the conception. The baby is