Argumentative Research against Abortion

Introduction

The history of abortion varies from nation to nation depending largely on the culture, the level of technology, and the role and importance of religion in society. Within predominantly Catholic nations, for example, abortion has generally been prohibited. The issue of abortion—or, more broadly, birth control—has been intimately linked with the role of women within each society (Tatalovich, 35). The United States exemplifies abortion's evolution within a largely secular and technologically advanced nation.

Thesis Statement

The practice of abortion should be considered illegal in all its forms and manifestations.



Argument

The essence of power is persuasion, and the key to understanding this is to grasp how particular perspectives on life, or frames, are imposed on people's consciousnesses. Set the frame, and one sets the gestalt by which individuals make sense of their existence (Speckhard, 95). Frames structure experience and give it meaning; they thereby guide social action.

The variability of the frames through which abortion is viewed is in part a result of Americans' deep ambivalence about the matter. As (Segers, 80)has noted, as of 1990, polls revealed that 73% of Americans favored abortion rights, yet 77% regarded abortion as “some form of murder”—in other words, many people live with the dissonance of supporting the legality of what they see as an immoral act. Add to this moral equation Cold War concerns over regime righteousness and reports in the late 1980s that in the godless Soviet state there were an estimated 2.08 abortions for every child born as opposed to 0.4 abortions for every American child born, and that in the Soviet Union an 8-minute abortion was available for 5 rubles ($7.50) whereas in the United States the average abortion cost $213(Donahue, 37).

Also permitting various interpretations of abortion are such underlying issues as women's place in contemporary society, attitudes toward sexuality, the selfishness of excessive individualism, and the nature of social support for mothers and children in a society of increasing illegitimacy (at the beginning of the 21st century, roughly one-third of the nation's children were born out of wedlock—a proportion 2.5 times that of two decades earlier) and high rates of divorce that produce millions of impoverished, unloved, and under socialized youth. Some saw the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of the so-called morning-after abortion pill, mifepristone or RU-486, in 2000 as yet another example of the no-fault, me-first, pill-taking ethos of modern consumer society (Dagg, 57).

These frames have shaped the language of the debate on abortion and the very labels the competing groups apply to themselves, triggering deep-seated feelings. Following the shootings of two Brooklyn, Massachusetts, abortion clinic receptionists in late 1993, for instance, a Planned Parenthood blamed the murders on pro-life rhetoric in a newspaper ad with the headline “Words Kill.” (Condit, 45)

In an informal exploration of when the group labels attached to the opposing sides in the abortion debate first entered American parlance, I found the term pro-life first appearing in the New York Times on November 28, 1972, and the term pro-choice first appearing in the ...