TOPIC: Under what circumstances should we permit the government to require a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy against her will?
I. We should not treat the issue of pregnancy as we do, say, the measles or some other disease. Pregnancy may not always be a matter of choice, but it is always a question of choice of action and of personal responsibility. By this we mean that the woman had to decide to engage in certain activity in order to become pregnant, and that choice has created a life that now comes under the protection of the law. The unborn child is a human being and deserves the protection of the law. The government has not determined that a woman should get pregnant, but once she is pregnant, the government has the responsibility to protect the child.
Even the court that imposed the Roe v. Wade decision on America in the first place could see a reason, a rationale, and a responsibility for requiring a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy against her will, under certain circumstances. Justice Blackmun wrote the majority decision for Roe v. Wade and affirmed the opinion of seven justices that there was a constitutional right to abortion. Blackmun wrote:
[A] state may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision.
This means that the right to an abortion is not absolute and that privacy interests on the part of the mother at some point give way to the rights of the unborn child. This is very much the state of the law today, even after the Pennsylvania decision. The middle ground has always been the essence of the Roe v. Wade decision, which created the trimester division of a pregnancy to determine when an abortion could legally take place. "Abortion on deman...