Women's rights have been an ongoing fight for centuries. The fight to keep abortions legal has been no different. Men and women have been working together to keep this practice legal, and many seem to agree with them. However, the decisions made in Roe v. Wade are up for discussion once again. Yet the question still remains: is it morally wrong?
In 2013, there was a large controversy over the decision on whether or not to overturn Roe v. Wade. In response to this, The Wall Street Journal put out a survey regarding the beliefs of Americans on said topic. 70% of Americans were not in favor of overturning the decision. However, when Americans were asked for their view on abortions, they were far more divided. Only 9% of Americans believed abortion should be illegal without any exceptions, 35% believed abortions should be illegal with exceptions, 23% said abortions should be legal with restrictions, and 31% said abortion should be legal all of the time.
The Ben Shapiro Show released a podcast voicing the opinions of Ben Shapiro and his view on abortion. He brings up arguments, often supported by morals. Shapiro claims several times throughout the podcast that if abortions were not morally wrong and inhumane, then women would not feel guilty after having one. This, of course, is ignoring the fact that many women do not feel morally wrong and are comfortable talking about their decision to have had abortions. They are often less upfront about their abortions seeing as they would rather not be shamed and ridiculed by people with similar views to Shapiro. Shapiro also talks about the ‘#shoutyourabortion’ campaign and how it is a grotesque movement that should be demolished. He continually attacks the starter of the campaign, Amelia Bonow, with irrelevant insults. Shapiro continues this trend whenever he brings up evidence in support of abortions and pauses the audio footage for speeches to insult the speaker.
Cindi Leive’s article ‘Let’s Talk About My Abortion (and Yours)’ explains why women need to be more vocal about their decisions to have abortions. Leive talks about how many women stay quiet about their abortions simply because it is a medical procedure and they enjoy their privacy, but since a new movement against abortions has started, this practice has led to a lot of misconceptions. First of all, people tend to believe that abortions are far rarer than they really are when, in fact, “nearly one in four of us will have had one by age 45”. She normalizes the idea of an abortion, allowing readers to feel safe and open. Leive makes no attempts to guilt people into supporting her ideas. She wishes to inform readers and give them the other side of the story, rather than persuade readers to follow her beliefs.
As decided previously in Roe v. Wade, banning abortions goes against the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and invades women’s privacy. The Federal government has no right to know which women have had abortions. Due to the reasoning behind not allowing an abortion ban, abortions should remain a legal practice. Any rebuttal involving morals and guilt is irrelevant. Leive speaks openly about this belief as well: “Some found their decisions agonizing, others not at all, but most had the same feeling that I did: not the situation I wanted to be in, but thank God it’s a choice I have”. She expresses the idea that we tend to focus only on the bad aspects and the guilt that very few women feel towards their abortions. This idea of murder and immorality is often blown way out of proportion and is a common method to shame women into hiding their abortions. This is the reason people believe abortions to be so rare. It needs to be spoken about more often and it needs to be normalized. Comparing people to Hitler as Shapiro did in this quote, “I guess the debates over; you have a good heart. If only Hitler had said that”, is the wrong way to go about arguing for or against abortions. Although Leive made some valid points in her article, her ideas are not entirely correct either. The idea that abortions should be a more restricted practice is one that should be supported wholeheartedly. The study done by The Wall Street Journal shows this idea perfectly. After all, this is what most people seems to support: legal, restricted abortions. At the moment, there are almost no restrictions regarding abortions in majority of the states. Since this procedure is the practice of eliminating an already growing human life, we should set in place an amount of time allotted in which a woman may receive an abortion.
In conclusion, I believe that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned as a majority of Americans still believe abortions should be legal. Also, the reasoning for Roe v. Wade’s decision is that it blatantly ignores HIPAA regulations. This should not be a case up for moral review and should not be used as an excuse to bully women for making a decision that could very well affect their entire livelihoods. Abortions should be talked about and should receive the support people have tried so hard to earn.