What is Choice?

Freedom of choice has always been one of the greatest factors that America can provide to the citizens but often, the government must make necessary changes and laws that are limiting for the people who do not against it. The issue of abortion in Texas posed a similar problem for the women in Texas. According to Guttmatcher, about 1 in 3 women in America will have had an abortion by the time they are 45. Over half of them are women in their 20s and most of them are unmarried and economically disadvantaged. These statistics show that women don't have abortions because they want to; they have abortion because they know that they cannot provide a decent lifestyle for their own children. Although this does not mean that they are not responsible for the death of a fetus, having no resources to take care of a child and sending them away to adoption might not be what a woman might want for the child.

The Burnt Orange Report recently posted a blog about self-induced abortion. According to the blog,  many women in Texas are choosing to carry out abortions by themselves in their own homes. According to statistics, as many as 100,000 to 240,000 Texans have self-induced abortion and the number is only rising. Because these women are denied abortion by the state for whatever reason but they cannot take care of a child, they must use desperate measures and force themselves to go through excruciating pain and kill the fetus inside their own body. These self-induced abortions are also very dangerous for the child bearer as well. If a mistake is made during an abortion, the woman could very well die in the process.

Although I personally think that denying a child's life and future simply because you cannot take responsibility for the child is a very selfish reason for killing your own child, but then again desperate times calls for desperate measures for many women especially if they believe that they simply have no choice. Because I will never personally experience something like this in my lifetime, my opinion is not significant enough to say whether or not a person is making the wrong choice when having an abortion. I do, however, think that if a woman wants to remove the fetus inside their body for whatever reason, it is completely their own decision and their own responsibility. I don't think that we should force a person to give birth to an unwanted child that they cannot care for. The fact that women are still doing abortions on their own shows how desperate they are and I believe that we shouldn't judge these people simply because we cannot relate to their problems.