The protest against the Life March at the State Capitol on Saturday has once again raised the issue of abortion. With this in mind, two of our columnists debate the legality and morality of the issue.
 
 
Macy: First, let me say abortion is not logistically a preventable phenomenon. Long before the modern era pushed the issue into the public forum, premeditated abortions were conducted in secret without any medical knowledge. Herbs and violence were the main means to an end, endangering the lives of the women who attempted them. And yet people still utilized these options. To take away the right to get a safe hospital procedure is to endanger women’s lives and force an entire culture to regress to something almost primitive. That was the past. Does it really need to be the future?
 
 
Chris: You say abortion is not preventable and therefore retrogressive to illegalize. I agree to a certain point that abortion can never be eradicated. Whether something is illegal or not, demand exists and will always be met. However, I feel this argument is used in a lofty sense and does not allow us to realize that the number of abortions needs to be curbed. In saying that abortion is unpreventable, we falsely believe that the number of abortions cannot be reduced as well.
 
 
Macy: But not to the point of zero. Lofty? Really? No. I think we can both agree that prevention is preferable, that people need to be educated and the stigma against contraception needs to be lifted. As you already know, the number of abortions in the last 30 years has decreased and now has leveled off, which I think can be attributed to greater awareness of other options. And hopefully the trend will continue, because it is fantastic. However, prevention doesn’t negate the necessity for abortion. The procedure remains just as important for situations when using birth control either fails or isn’t applicable, such as in the case of a broken condom or rape.
 
 
Chris: Yes, the Centers for Disease Control report that 58 percent of abortions stem from the misguided or inconsistent use of contraceptives. A reduction of the abortion rate, by half obviously not zero, but it has the potential to avert the termination of hundreds of thousands of lives. Do you feel that in the case of rape or a condom breaking, a woman’s pregnancy becomes a punishment if she is not allowed abortion as an option?
 
 
Macy: I would say forbidding the abortion would be termed “reckless” rather than “punishing.” By way of rape, an unintended pregnancy can surely be traumatic, and any state that doesn’t recognize that is careless. The hypothetical woman in this situation would have already gone through so much that to force her to go unwillingly through more would be cruel. In the case of a broken condom, the person’s engaging in coitus obviously wasn’t meant to produce, and to bring a child into a world that either doesn’t want it or isn’t prepared for it is cruel, as well.
 
 
Chris: No doubt unplanned pregnancy can be traumatic. The act of bearing a child for nine months is physically stressful. However, to automatically criminalize the unborn child as merely a product of sexual defilement can be considered reckless, as well. Although you claim that such a child is intrinsically unwanted, measures to place the child in an adoptive family can bring light into a terrible situation.
I do understand that life inside the womb inhabits a gray area that is not universally understood to be human life at all. Laci Peterson’s murder in 2002 probed important questions about the confusion between what is living and not living, as her death was considered a double homicide. She was almost eight months pregnant.
To my understanding, this confusion provides the framework for the legitimization of abortion in situations where the mother’s health is not in danger. If we are allowed to say that some unborn children are not alive and others are, then the act of abortion becomes merely prevention of life rather than cancellation. I propose that all unborn life is in fact human life, and needs to be afforded legal protection  — just as a new-born would be protected.   
  Read: About a dozen University students protest pro-life march
 
Macy: By traumatic, I meant that rape is more than “physically stressful.” It’s incredibly mentally stressful, as I’m sure you know, and the impact it leaves is often only healed by years of introspection and coming to terms with what happened. As for the adoption proposition, you place too much hope in an imperfect system. The adoption system in the world is undoubtedly flawed. There is significantly more supply than demand, which is exemplified by the number of children that remain unadopted. This situation is incredibly irresponsible of today’s population, and I hope more people start adopting to rectify this. It’s unethical to bring a child into the world when there are so many without parents.
As for your proposition, I disagree. Abortion should be legal up until the second trimester and into the third trimester in extenuating circumstances (as in health reasons). A fetus, or “unborn life,” as you put it, isn’t subject to pain until at least the 20th week and possibly up until the 24th, which is reason enough for me to believe abortion up until that point isn’t cruel.
 
Chris: I never tried to mitigate the significance of rape. I was merely conceding that even without the addition of rape, unplanned pregnancy is hard to deal with. The process of adopting a child — at the moment — is indeed incredibly inefficient. This is actually one of my main points. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released information from a comprehensive study that found only 31 percent of women who begin the process of adoption actually adopt.
The study also explains this low percentage comes from a lack of satisfaction most adoption seekers have with the foster care system. Many children in foster care are either too old or unstable. Reformations are desperately needed to efficiently pair adoptive parents with expecting women who are unable to provide care for their child. Hopefully, this will downsize the number of abortions because of poor financial background.
The problem with trying to pinpoint the exact moment human life begins is using tools that are too subjective. You say aborting a fetus while it can feel pain is cruel. I could just as easily say aborting a fetus after it gains the ability to hear  — week 18  — is cruel.  
Who can really say either one of us is truly wrong?  We must abandon such subjective tools in favor of more objective ones. The magical number in this case is 46. This is the number of chromosomes in the human genome. When the egg and sperm fuse, a completely new set of genes is formed, independent of the father’s and mother’s genes. In only this sense can we truly say a new human entity has been formed. Whether it is the cut of the umbilical cord or the first beat of a heart, generating a universal consensus of what is more or less human is tricky.
 
Macy: Unfortunately, while I see your point, in the world of the living we can’t always free ourselves from the weight of decision because of moral ambiguity. Choices must be made eventually, and the legalization of abortion 38 years ago was the right decision. Abortion can be and often is an ethical decision, and the law protects reproductive rights, women and family.
 
Chris: We absolutely cannot escape such decisions and questions, and our decision making is limited by our human imperfection. This does not excuse us from seriously examining the issue of abortion and its widespread availability and practice.  
 
 
Macy Linton is a 19-year-old international studies freshman from Memphis, Tenn. Follow her at @TDR_Mlinton.
 
Chris Freyder is a 21-year-old biological sciences junior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cfreyder.
  Video: Pro-life protest at the Capitol
 
____
contact The Daily Reveille’s opinion staff at [email protected]