Week 1- Article 2: Meet My Son

 Central Argument: Emily Rapp defends women’s right to terminate a pregnancy with the knowledge and information deduced from prenatal testing.

 

                 Abortion has always been an issue of great debate and controversy for a few decades. People argue about the cases where abortion should or not. Many believe that in cases where the girl has been a victim of rape or sexual harassment or if she herself has decided to give up the baby, then abortion should be legal. However, others believe that no matter what, aborting a child means taking the life of a human being, which is a crime. In certain cases, like in the one of Emily Rapp, people can understand why abortion is necessary. Rapp highlights the problem of babies being born with physical or mental disabilities and incompetence. In cases like her own, doctors predict that these babies aren’t even going to live till they are two years old. And their lives for the two years comes with great difficulty and hardships: paralysis, low rates of responding to the environment, or being deaf or dumb. I think that Rapp is correct when she states that abortion should be legal, but only in cases like her son’s.  In other cases, legalizing abortion can have a negative effect.

                If the baby is born with severe disabilities, abortion should be legal. For example, a few years back, our English class analyzed a short story about a boy named Christy Brown. This boy, being the youngest of several children, was born paralyzed. The doctors believed that he could never walk or talk or be a “normal kid.” His mother, along with handling all of her others kids, had to pay special attention to Christy due to his disability. She had to dedicate all her strength into raising Christy the right way. Many a times, the story told the reader about the times the mother broke down because it was so overwhelming for her. Even though Christy ends up being able to write an “A” with his left foot, the story highlights the difficulty of being born with a disability. Even if the mother loved her son with all her heart, she still had to face a lot of problems as Christy lived a different lifestyle from his siblings. Therefore, in cases where both the parties are being hurt, abortion can only prove to have a more positive effect than a negative.

                However, legalizing abortions completely can have negative effects, especially in the culture aspects of life. For example, many villages in rural places of Asia have conserved their traditional ways and try to implement their customs and traditions in their daily lives. In places like China, India, and Pakistan especially, the uneducated villagers have the mindset that having a baby girl is a curse in the family. According to them, along with a baby girl comes the burden of raising her well only to give her away with a lot of dowry. Therefore, if abortion in legalized, and if these kinds people find out about the sex of the baby in a mother’s stomach somehow, they will only force the woman to adopt her baby. It is called female infanticide. To many people, legalizing abortions would mean a way to be warned about the “misfortunes” to come and being able to deal with them through abortions.

                All in all, I think that Emily Rapp is right when she says that abortion is a choice of a mother and should be legal when she chooses to take necessary steps. It could save a lot of suffering in the caretaker’s part and the victim’s. However, abortion can also have negative effects when it is used by backward people for female infanticide. What would be best would be to make abortions legal depending on the situation.