The Controversial Abortion Rights Debate: Balancing Life and Choice

Name Institutional Affiliations Date Topic: Human Rights Social Problem: Abortion Rights Research Question: Why do states legalize and fund abortion yet life is a fundamental human right? Introduction One can define a social welfare system as a government program that offers assistance to its needy citizens. An excellent social welfare system remains defined by its potential to cater to the well-being of all humans without any discrimination. Such programs cater for various human needs like health care, food, shelter, unemployment, among other human rights that define the well-being of its most deserving citizens. When one talks of human rights, it is imperative to note that any aspect of life that brings satisfaction and happiness to human life may be part of this broad term. For this reason, abortion right serves as one of the human rights that, though defining happiness and satisfaction on one party causes an irreversible injustice to a life that cannot fight for its right to remain protected. Why and how then do states though entitled to embrace social welfare systems that advocate for the well-being of all, legalize and fund abortion. Yet, life is a fundamental human right for all without any discrimination. Abortion right proves a potential social welfare problem that one should argue from both the pro-life and pro-choice perspectives to understand why and why not such a right should be supported. History of the social problem Abortion right is one of the human rights entitled to all women within some states. The legality of abortion remains coined around the pro-choice and pro-life aspects of the social welfare systems employed in different American states (Well, 2021). Arguing from a pro-choice point of view, it is evident that every person has the fundamental right to decide when and whether to have children. For this reason, abortion remains a potential option for unplanned pregnancy, which some states support. Contrary to such a belief, the pro-life approach argues that life is fundamental thus should not be terminated. Such welfare systems fight for the right to life for the unborn child with little concern about the satisfaction of the pregnant woman as life proves more critical. Arguing abortion right from such perspectives, it becomes clear that controversies surround this social problem whose history runs way back from time immemorial. In America, abortion became defined as a booming business in the mid 19th century. During this era, many married, white, and middle-class women ended their pregnancies through abortion. Drugs to induce abortion proved a booming business as advertised in the newspaper and were available from pharmacists, physicians, or mail. Women would freely visit practitioners if such drugs did not work for instrumental procedures. Such freedoms proved a potential cause of increased abortion cases amongst American women. Thousands of lives were lost each day, with women enjoying the liberty of pro-choice. The rising number of deaths for the aborted children who had no potential to fight for their right to live and women upon complications during abortion served as the significant consequence of abortion rights. To this effect, by 1857, the American Medical Association (AMA), in response to the rising number of abortion cases, began an ultimately successful campaign to criminalize abortion. AMA aimed to change the abortion laws and replace them with pro-life approaches that restricted abortion except when a woman’s life was at risk (Tanne, 2019). By 1880, the AMA campaign expressed its success as every state in America had introduced criminal abortion laws with exemptions when a woman's life was at risk. Unfortunately, though illegal, some doctors still performed abortions, and prosecutors enforced the law unevenly and unpredictably. Such loopholes led to a new phase of abortion rights by the mid-1960s. The American Law Institute (ALI) released proposals that defined the legality of abortion and received support from some states. Cathol