Minseok Seo

Why Abortion Should Be Legal

A new controversial topic has been rising since the twentieth century as medical

technology has been advancing. As people could terminate their pregnancy through medical

processes, more and more people were able to go to the hospital to abort their child. This led to a

controversy as to whether this medical process of abortion should be banned or not. In this essay,

I want to argue that abortion should not be banned because of reasons regarding human rights,

prevention of a population overgrowth, and because there are more effective to ways to grow a

population like offering economic incentives.

Firstly, all people have a freedom of happiness. According to the United States Bill of

Rights, all people should be entitled to pursue life, liberty and happiness (Rakove). This means

that people must have a right to have or not have their child according to their willingness. Also,

this could also mean that because happiness is directly connected to people’s willingness to do

something, they are able to pursue a happy life by choosing to abort their child. Therefore, their

willingness of having or not having a child should not be banned by a country. For example, if

one accidently makes a woman pregnant, the women should be able to abort their child because

it was not her willingness to be pregnant; it should be her choice to abort her child, not her

country. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1 in 3 women worldwide

have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime (Violence). In addition, General

Recommendation No.35 on Gender Based Violence states that “violations of women’s sexual and

reproductive health and rights are forms of gender-based violence that may amount to torture or
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” (General). Therefore, abortion should not be banned

because all people should have the freedom to achieve happiness.

Abortion is often practiced in newly industrializing countries in order to slow down the

population boom. For example, Mexico is one of the countries that prohibits abortion (unless to

save women’s life), and we can tell that their population pyramid looks like a triangle by figure

1. However, Vietnam, which is one of the

countries that does not prohibit abortion, has

a jar-shaped pyramid. This implies that their

population growth rate is slowing down as

shown in Figure 2. (The) This implies that

the prohibition of abortion can be a factor

that affects a country’s population growth.

Figure 1. Mexico’s Population Pyramid.
Alon Tal, who is a professor in Tel Aviv

University says that “overpopulation remains the leading driver of hunger, desertification,

species depletion and a range of social

maladies.” Because of this, we have seen

many countries legislate policies over the

years to prevent overpopulation. A great

example of this is the one-child policy in

China. The Chinese government once

recommended that people abort their

Figure 2. Vietnam’s Population Pyramid.

children because the rate of population

growth was so fast that they feared it might devalue their economic position. As a result, 400
million births were prevented, and two trillion yuan (approximately 315 billion dollars) were

collected by the Government (Five). Also, the total fertility rate decreased from 2.9 in 1979 to

1.7 in 2004, with a rate of 1.3 in urban areas and just under 2.0 in rural areas. (The Effect)

Similarly, for countries where the process of industrialization is on-going, it is very common to

notice a rapid population growth such as China in late-1900s. Because those growths may harm

their countries’ economy, abortion should neither be banned in order to reduce the speed of

population growth nor to recover any economical damage.

However, some people argue that for more economically developed countries, the rate of

population decrease has been a new problem. They argue that for those countries, abortion

should be banned in order to prevent any population reduction. However, I want to suggest that

the countries create a policy on welfare and giving rewards to people instead of banning

abortion. According to the United States abortion statistics, 23 percent of people who aborted

their children aborted due to financial reasons (Facts). This means that countries should try to

give financial support to women to prevent the population decrease. For example, one of the

policies that France put was to encourage a three-child policy which supported a cash incentive

of 675 pounds monthly for a mother to stay off work for one year following the birth of her third

child (Case). As a result, France is maintaining their birth rate, which is the highest on the

continent (Why). Therefore, countries should legislate a new law or policy to encourage people

to have a child.

Therefore, considering human rights and to slow down the population growth in some

countries, abortion should not be banned. However, in very developed countries, the countries
have to legislate a new law or policy in order to encourage people to have a child and prevent

any population reduction. For these reasons abortion should be legal.

Bibliography

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