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Key Arguments From Both Sides of the Abortion Debate

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B.A., English Language and Literature, Well College

Many points come up in the abortion debate . Here's a look at abortion from both sides : 10 arguments for abortion and 10 arguments against abortion, for a total of 20 statements that represent a range of topics as seen from both sides.

Pro-Life Arguments

Since life begins at conception, abortion is akin to murder as it is the act of taking human life. Abortion is in direct defiance of the commonly accepted idea of the sanctity of human life.
No civilized society permits one human to intentionally harm or take the life of another human without punishment, and abortion is no different.
Adoption is a viable alternative to abortion and accomplishes the same result. And with 1.5 million American families wanting to adopt a child, there is no such thing as an unwanted child.
An abortion can result in medical complications later in life; the risk of ectopic pregnancies is increased if other factors such as smoking are present, the chance of a miscarriage increases in some cases, and pelvic inflammatory disease also increases.
In the instance of rape and incest, taking certain drugs soon after the event can ensure that a woman will not get pregnant. Abortion punishes the unborn child who committed no crime; instead, it is the perpetrator who should be punished.
Abortion should not be used as another form of contraception.
For women who demand complete control of their body, control should include preventing the risk of unwanted pregnancy through the responsible use of contraception or, if that is not possible, through abstinence .
Many Americans who pay taxes are opposed to abortion, therefore it's morally wrong to use tax dollars to fund abortion.
Those who choose abortions are often minors or young women with insufficient life experience to understand fully what they are doing. Many have lifelong regrets afterward.
Abortion sometimes causes psychological pain and stress.

Pro-Choice Arguments

Nearly all abortions take place in the first trimester when a fetus is attached by the placenta and umbilical cord to the mother. As such, its health is dependent on her health, and cannot be regarded as a separate entity as it cannot exist outside her womb.
The concept of personhood is different from the concept of human life. Human life occurs at conception, but fertilized eggs used for in vitro fertilization are also human lives and those not implanted are routinely thrown away. Is this murder, and if not, then how is abortion murder?
Adoption is not an alternative to abortion because it remains the woman's choice whether or not to give her child up for adoption. Statistics show that very few women who give birth choose to give up their babies; less than 3% of White unmarried women and less than 2% of Black unmarried women.
Abortion is a safe medical procedure. The vast majority of women who have an abortion do so in their first trimester. Medical abortions have a very low risk of serious complications and do not affect a woman's health or future ability to become pregnant or give birth.
In the case of rape or incest, forcing a woman made pregnant by this violent act would cause further psychological harm to the victim. Often a woman is too afraid to speak up or is unaware she is pregnant, thus the morning after pill is ineffective in these situations.
Abortion is not used as a form of contraception . Pregnancy can occur even with contraceptive use. Few women who have abortions do not use any form of birth control, and that is due more to individual carelessness than to the availability of abortion.
The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing a woman to use contraception or undergo sterilization?
Taxpayer dollars are used to enable poor women to access the same medical services as rich women, and abortion is one of these services. Funding abortion is no different from funding a war in the Mideast. For those who are opposed, the place to express outrage is in the voting booth.
Teenagers who become mothers have grim prospects for the future. They are much more likely to leave school; receive inadequate prenatal care; or develop mental health problems.
Like any other difficult situation, abortion creates stress. Yet the American Psychological Association found that stress was greatest prior to an abortion and that there was no evidence of post-abortion syndrome.

Additional References

Alvarez, R. Michael, and John Brehm. " American Ambivalence Towards Abortion Policy: Development of a Heteroskedastic Probit Model of Competing Values ." American Journal of Political Science 39.4 (1995): 1055–82. Print.
Armitage, Hannah. " Political Language, Uses and Abuses: How the Term 'Partial Birth' Changed the Abortion Debate in the United States ." Australasian Journal of American Studies 29.1 (2010): 15–35. Print.
Gillette, Meg. " Modern American Abortion Narratives and the Century of Silence ." Twentieth Century Literature 58.4 (2012): 663–87. Print.
Kumar, Anuradha. " Disgust, Stigma, and the Politics of Abortion ." Feminism & Psychology 28.4 (2018): 530–38. Print.
Ziegler, Mary. " The Framing of a Right to Choose: Roe V. Wade and the Changing Debate on Abortion Law ." Law and History Review 27.2 (2009): 281–330. Print.

“ Life Begins at Fertilization with the Embryo's Conception .” Princeton University , The Trustees of Princeton University.

“ Long-Term Risks of Surgical Abortion .” GLOWM, doi:10.3843/GLOWM.10441

Patel, Sangita V, et al. “ Association between Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and Abortions .” Indian Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS , Medknow Publications, July 2010, doi:10.4103/2589-0557.75030

Raviele, Kathleen Mary. “ Levonorgestrel in Cases of Rape: How Does It Work? ” The Linacre Quarterly , Maney Publishing, May 2014, doi:10.1179/2050854914Y.0000000017

Reardon, David C. “ The Abortion and Mental Health Controversy: A Comprehensive Literature Review of Common Ground Agreements, Disagreements, Actionable Recommendations, and Research Opportunities .” SAGE Open Medicine , SAGE Publications, 29 Oct. 2018, doi:10.1177/2050312118807624

“ CDCs Abortion Surveillance System FAQs .” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 Nov. 2019.

Bixby Center for Reproductive Health. “ Complications of Surgical Abortion : Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology .” LWW , doi:10.1097/GRF.0b013e3181a2b756

" Sexual Violence: Prevalence, Dynamics and Consequences ." World Health Organizaion.

Homco, Juell B, et al. “ Reasons for Ineffective Pre-Pregnancy Contraception Use in Patients Seeking Abortion Services .” Contraception , U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2009, doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2009.05.127

" Working With Pregnant & Parenting Teens Tip Sheet ." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Major, Brenda, et al. " Abortion and Mental Health: Evaluating the Evidence ." American Psychological Association, doi:10.1037/a0017497

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Abortion — Argumentative Essay Outline On Abortion

Argumentative Essay Outline on Abortion

Categories: Abortion

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Words: 665 |

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Words: 665 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Introduction, thesis statement, paragraph 1: the right to bodily autonomy, paragraph 2: the health and safety of women, paragraph 3: reproductive freedom and economic justice.

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Guest Essay

To Be Pro-Choice, You Must Have the Privilege of Having Choices

By Monica Simpson

Ms. Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Her organization is the lead plaintiff in SisterSong v. Kemp, challenging a Georgia anti-abortion law.

As a queer woman who grew up in North Carolina, I learned at an early age that my Blackness could be a source of great joy — but it could also pose a threat to my safety and autonomy.

In middle school, white boys laid their hands on me without my consent when I sharpened my pencil. To travel through town, I had to pass a building dedicated to Senator Jesse Helms, a champion of modern-day anti-abortion laws. It was all a daily reminder of the tight grip that whiteness had on my full liberation. I did not consent to that either.

Systemic racism is built into every facet of our society, including sexual and reproductive health. In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade affirmed the constitutional right to abortion, barring states from banning abortion before the point of fetal viability. But too many states, especially in the South, interpreted and applied the decision as strictly as they could get away with, disproportionately affecting women of color.

In the decades since, lawmakers have enacted hundreds of dangerous restrictions that have made getting an abortion nearly impossible for many poor women and women of color. In 2021 alone, over 100 anti-abortion bills that restrict or ban abortions were passed in 19 states. This summer, the Supreme Court could deliver a lethal blow to Roe v. Wade.

As devastating as that outcome would be, it’s important to keep in mind that Roe never fully protected Black women — or poor women or so many others in this country. That’s because Roe ensured the right to abortion without ensuring that people could actually get an abortion. People seeking abortions in America must consider: Do I have the money? How far is the nearest clinic, and can I get there? Can I take off work? Will I be safe walking into the clinic? For more privileged people, these questions are rarely a deterrent. But for many women of color and poor people, they are major obstacles. That’s how white supremacy works.

It didn’t help matters that almost as soon as Roe was decided, lawmakers started rolling it back. The Hyde Amendment, which first passed three years after Roe, bans coverage of abortion through federally funded programs like Medicaid. In addition, 34 states and the District of Columbia bar the use of their state Medicaid funds for abortions except in limited cases.

The Hyde Amendment has made it very difficult for many women to afford an abortion in America, and that affects women of color the most: In 2019 women of color made up a majority of women insured through Medicaid . As a result of all this, many women have had to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

This has ripple effects on people’s lives. According to the decade-long Turnaway Study , women who seek an abortion but are unable to gain access to one are four times as likely to eventually live in poverty as women who were able to get the procedure. Their families suffer, too. Black children are three times as likely as white children to grow up in poverty and live in a food-insecure household.

On top of that, women of color in states with restrictive abortion laws often have limited access to health care generally and a lack of choices for effective birth control. Schools often have ineffective or inadequate sex education. In almost every aspect of reproductive health, women of color today are more likely to experience racism and discrimination in the U.S. health care system. We have poorer health outcomes compared with white women. Black women are three times as likely to die of pregnancy-related causes as white women. And police violence cuts short the lives of too many of the babies we do have.

These are complex problems, and they will require complex solutions. As such, we can’t afford to focus on our sexual and reproductive lives with a single-issue lens. We must consider the ways in which all social justice issues intersect and affect the way we are able to make decisions about our bodies and the creation of our futures.

One hurdle toward achieving that goal is that for decades, white-led reproductive rights organizations were the default, and the experiences of those leaders are not the same as the experiences of people of color. That’s why reproductive justice organizations — groups like SisterSong, focused on grass-roots organizing campaigns, promoting policy change and providing education for our communities — have been calling for changes in leadership and representation. We have made progress on that front, but we need to build on it.

What we need is a culture shift.

My experiences navigating my sexual identity and reproductive health inspired me to become an activist and organizer, but for many years the organizations I was part of were led by white men.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned about a group of Black women who called themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice. In 1994 it took out an ad in The Washington Post and Roll Call to proclaim to the world that our reproductive freedom cannot be boiled down to a single issue. When I was introduced to the reproductive justice movement, it was the first time I was exposed to Black women leading and owning their stories and bodies, and that was powerful.

Their work was the road map that grounded my own.

In my state, Georgia, Black women-led organizations have led the charge in pushing back against unjust laws that disproportionately affect our communities and challenge our autonomy, from voting rights to abortion access. People of color don’t have the privilege of focusing on only one issue — everything is connected. Reproductive justice has always been more than just being “pro-choice.” To be pro-choice you must have the privilege of having choices.

The fight for reproductive justice must be led by those most affected. To build collective power, we need a deeper investment in B.I.P.O.C.-led organizations. We also need to normalize sharing our abortion stories, whether we had one or held the hand of someone at a clinic. And we need to work to elect, appoint and confirm officials who are aligned with reproductive justice values. It’s not enough to just show up when an anti-abortion law reaches the Supreme Court — we need to bring that energy to our local school boards, state legislatures, attorneys general offices and every election.

It is our duty to hold everyone accountable at every level, every day, because our lives depend on it. And because Roe might soon be gone. But we can imagine a better world, one in which we have not just the minimum, but stand at the mountaintop: true reproductive justice.

Monica Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Her organization is the lead plaintiff in SisterSong v. Kemp, challenging a Georgia anti-abortion law.

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