Human Rights of the Unborn

Jessie Lucas
October 16th 2009
12:08pm

In Malaysia, where this article is from, the debate about abortion is not as great as here in the US…yet. The article states that approximately one in every five pregnancies end in abortion worldwide. The number of abortions in Malaysia has increased causing the pro-life and pro=choice groups to come head to head. The issue they are arguing is whether the woman has the human right to make choices about her body or whether the unborn child has human rights at all and has the right to live. The pro-choice groups cite that it is the woman who is affected most by the abortion, that unwanted pregnancies cause strain, specifically those related to teen pregnancy, unmarried women, adultery, rape, or incest. They believe that by not allowing women to abort, the rates of poverty, hunger, disease, and overcrowding will increase. The last thing they focus on is that by legalizing abortion there will be less illegal abortions which are potentially deadly. Then of course you have the pro-life advocates who believe that the unborn child is a human being with the right to live and to abort would be murder. They see the fetus as an individual and not part of the woman’s body. They believe that women have the right to choose whether to have a child or not, but that the choice must be made before she becomes pregnant.
Okay so this week I opted for a highly debatable and very controversial topic. Abortion is a moral, ethical, personal belief issue. I am to an extent pro-choice. Especially in extreme cases (rape, incest, life threatening to the mother etc) but I believe that a decision must be made early in the pregnancy. Once the fetus reaches a certain level of development I believe that it is a human and deserves the right to live. Basically I’m completely against third trimester (or partial birth) abortions. I chose this article particularly because I had never thought of abortion to be a human rights issue before. Its different to see it from this angle than from one of it being legal or not. I agree with what the end of the article says when it talks about how the pro-life and pro-choice groups need to come together and work on having less unwanted pregnancies through education of our children about sexuality and the consequences of unprotected sex and the right to say no. I know not everyone is going to agree with my points of view on this particular topic because like I said it is a very controversial one, but I thought it was important to put it out there anyway so that we could all look at it from a human rights prospective.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/10/15/focus/4891773&sec=focus