Abortions Should Remain Legal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Abortions Should Remain Legal - Essay Example However, before the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 which legalized abortion in the U.S., this practice was common. Prior to abortion being legal, many untold thousands of young women were injured and died while trying to end a pregnancy while the wealthy women were able to have illegal abortions performed safely usually outside the country. The rich were able to travel overseas or pay inflated high prices to a local physician who was willing to perform the operation but poor woman had to resort to more dangerous options. Criminalizing abortions never has and never will stop them from happening; it just harms women. Those persons opposed to legal abortions are the same ones who oppose programs that aid the poor and abused kids who resulted from unwanted pregnancies. They point to ‘family values’ and ‘Christian morals’ as the rationalization for discrimination of the impoverished, the loss of liberty, and the increased numbers of injured women. There will always b e ideological differences between factions but the dispute as to whether abortion should be legal is a matter for the justice system, courts and judges, as are all legal matters. This paper considers the legal arguments of the abortion issue. The emotional arguments for and against are important from a social context yet but peoples ‘feelings’ about abortion will not decide whether or not the procedure remain lawful and safe. The 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court case decided that women have the constitutional right to have an abortion performed up to a point when the fetus is viable, meaning when it can live on its own outside the woman’s body. The decision nullified any state law that disallowed a woman to have or a doctor to perform an abortion during the first trimester (three months) of a pregnancy. The ruling also restricted abortions during the second-trimester with the exception being if a woman’s health is in danger (â€Å"Roe v. Wade†, 1 997: 312). Though the decision was controversial then and remains so today, the Court’s decision was right from a constitutional perspective. Detractors of the decision have commonly made arguments based on personal ethical beliefs which are immaterial when the language of the Constitution is scrutinized. Their moral objections regarding the Roe decision can be rapidly invalidate by evaluating the precedents of constitutional decisions by the Supreme Court and reading the specific wordage of the Constitution. There are, however, legitimate questions concerning the Constitutional issues of the Roe decision that merit answering. When most people speak disparagingly of the Court’s decision, they base their disapproval purely on moral justifications but lawyers, scholars and especially judges who criticize the decision should only do so based for constitutional reasoning in addition to expressing their moral objections. Opposition to the decision should speak to the 9th Am endment which states, â€Å"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people† (â€Å"Bill of Rights†, 2006). Opponents say that the ninth, and all other amendments, do not explicitly mention abortion consequently the Constitution does not apply when trying to establish the legality of abortion rights. This view, however, clearly contradicts the short and succinct statement that is the Ninth Amendment which undoubtedly encourages the right to an abortion and all other rights whether or not explicitly stated in the Constitution. Just because a specific word or phrase does not appear, the Constitution remains the source for legal precedence for this subject as it is for