....I however support the pro-choice position of letting the woman decide on abortion, if it is before the time that the fetus depends solely on the womb to survive and would hope those abortions are only done with all due deliberations and thought.
Brother KRS has given his view on abortion rights of women. What he states above is quite reasonable, but the devil is in the detail, how is viability out of the womb going to be ascertained? Is the state going to arbitrarily decide this?
This is the critical question and the US Supreme Court, one that was an all male bench at that time, gave a ruling, way back in 1973, in a much reviled or celebrated case called Roe Vs. Wade, that essentially affirmed a right to privacy of women to make this decision in consultation with their doctors. Now, how have they made this decision, did these "sex crazed" women go on an abortion spree?
Let us look at the report produced by the much respected Centers for Decease Control (CDC). Their 2008 report shows the majority of abortions take place before 8 weeks. Here is a summary:
[TABLE="class: grid, width: 301"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 64"]Gestation (Weeks)[/TD]
[TD="width: 64, align: right"]% of abortions[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 64"]≤8[/TD]
[TD="width: 64, align: right"]62.8[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]9–13[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]28.6[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]14–15[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]3.5[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]16–17[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]18–20[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]≥21[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1.3[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
As can be seen, more than 90% of the abortions take palce within 13 weeks, of which more than 60% within 8 weeks. For more reports from CDC please visit this
link.
There are at least couple of other angles to this question. The so called Pro-Life groups are religious fanatics who resort to
deadly violence against abortion providers for nothing more than providing a legal service, so much for their Pro-Life ideology!!
Further, it is the same so called Pro-Lifers, who assert that even a pregnancy that results from a rape is
God's gift (what kind of God is this god?), and therefore, the victims must be forced to carry it to term, somehow turn callously anti-life once the baby is born and are totally against any federal spending on a variety of programs designed to help babies of poor mothers.
The Republicans in general would like to hide behind reasonable rhetoric, but the fact of the matter is, motivated by their religious beliefs, they want the government to ban all abortions, to them even the "pill" is sin against god and must be banned.
I am sure my dear brother KRS does not share many of these extreme positions, but then, it is not about what Shri KRS thinks, or for that matter what I think, about abortion. It is about trusting women to make this difficult and heart-wrenching decision by themselves, in consultation with her family and her doctor, without getting molested by religious nut-cases shouting at her or forcing her to undergo medically unnecessary procedures just to make her feel guilty.
Cheers!