As a result of the adoption of family planning as a basic national policy, women tend to enjoy full legal access to abortion services. The government only regulates those abortions over sex selection particularly for the purpose of controlling the gender balance of the new-born. The act of abortion involves the conflict of social issues and many rights. However, public power interference from the government tends to trigger a confrontation between private interest and public interest. According to the constitution, basic human rights are inalienable rights and therefore are not violated or removed. Therefore, the state can only regulate conflicts when it comes to social issues that arise from abortions particularly for the purpose of protecting the public interest. According to Ferree (2002), the main aim of regulations for abortions should be the protections of human rights. Regulations of abortions in many countries is majorly faced with an adjustment particularly on how to guarantee the basic rights of the people. In this regard, the essay will emphasize on the government role in abortion.
First, the government is in charge of ensuring safe abortions services to protect women’s right to health. The right to health require the state to take appropriate measures when it comes to abortion. They ensure women have necessary information and ability to make crucial decisions about their reproductive lives. The main government role is to ensure that women are not exposed to risks of unsafe abortion that can have a devastating effect on their health. It is taking measures such as removing barriers that interfere with women’s access to health services, legal restrictions on abortion and ensuring accessibility to high-quality abortion services and information (Schwarz and Latimer, 2012).
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Secondly, the role of the government when it comes to abortion is a gender equality. All human beings require freedom from discrimination particularly in the enjoyment of their protected human rights. However, discrimination against women are laws that have either the ‘purpose’ or ‘effect’ of preventing a woman from exercising any of their human rights on a basis of equality with men. The government should get rid of the laws that criminalize medical procedures that are needed by women which act as a barrier to women access to appropriate health care (Ferree, 2002).
The third aspect is that the government should protect the right to physical integrity, the right to decide freely and be responsible when it comes to the numbers and spacing of one’s children and the right to privacy. For instance, when a pregnancy is unwanted, its continuation can take a heavy toll on a woman’s physical and emotional well-being. Only a pregnant woman can know whether she is ready to have a child; therefore, the decision should not be made by the government on her behalf. Due to restrictive abortion laws and policies, many women experience complications of pregnancy and needing therapeutic abortion that is forced to suffer from painful, frightening, and life-threatening conditions. Restrictive laws by the government have forced women to carry unwanted pregnancy ending up performing illegal abortions that often place their lives and health in danger. The government is taking measures that will help to prevent these acts that consist of cruel and inhuman treatment (Butler and Walbert, 2011).
The fourth attribute is that the government should enable women to have the right to access the full range of abortion technologies. Schwarz and Latimer (2012) asserted that the government permits medical abortion, it can significantly improve women overall access to safe abortion by providing a broad range of settings. This aspect will help to expand too many providers available to perform safe abortions. In addition, reduction on reliance on physicians will reduce the costs and help to make abortions more available and accessible to women. Therefore, the government is ensuring that women have access to medical abortion in a safe way that enables them to enjoy their right to the benefits of the scientific progress.
The government believes a woman has the right to decide what happens with her body. It is believed that fetus is not a human life; therefore, it does not have to separate individual rights. Therefore, the government should provide a taxpayer funded abortions particularly for women who cannot afford them. According to Butler and Walbert (2011), abortion is a personal choice of a woman regarding her body; thus, the government should protect their right. Women have the right to affordable, legal and safe abortions, including partial abortions. Political and legal arguments for abortion rights tend to compare a pregnant woman to man and thereby making women situation more comprehensible particularly to legal doctrine. Such comparisons are very important when abortion is claimed not just as a privacy right, but as a matter of equality.
The attribute “equal right to liberty” nicely captures the sense that abortion rights sound primary when it comes to liberty. Government restriction is usually an instantiation of sex inequality. Men’s Liberty for instance on having abortions is technically just as restricted as women. As a matter of constitutional doctrine, the rights of abortion should be included to the right to privacy (Butler and Walbert, 2011). This right to liberty is unremunerated and protected by the Due process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. For example, the case of Roe v. Wade has led to feminist critics of Roe, which seems to be a manifesto for doctor’s right rather than women’s rights. This suggests that the decision of abortion is made by the doctor, even when the reasons are non-medical. According to Roe, the decision vindicates the right of a physician to administer treatment according to his professional ethics unless the government or Supreme Court provide a compelling justification particularly for intervention. Therefore; abortion decision is inherent, primarily, a medical decision, and a basic responsibility that must rest with the physicians.
According to Schwarz and Latimer (2012), the first time Supreme Court protected reproductive rights was during the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma. The Supreme Court did this as a matter of equal protection. The government should extend the right to use contraception to unmarried people on equality grounds. Despite the fact that equality between men and women is not at stake, the government should express concern about using pregnancy as a punishment for sex, which is a concern bearing on women’s equality. The choice of abortion is seen as belonging to women who are pregnant and hence link there right to their equal status in the society. Furthermore, it has taken a step a step backward, adopting a paternalistic, thus controlling attitude towards women’s reproductive decisions.
In conclusion, abortion is a major issue that is left to the decision of the mother. However, taking viability of a legal standard should be provided to the unborn. It is the responsibility of the mother to take care of the unborn. A mother who destroys his fetus should not be permitted by the government to have an abortion. The government tends to complain when it comes to delivering more than 20 million babies annually that are seen as a strain on the nation’s medical services and economic resources than to say performing five millions abortions a year. The law, therefore, should take care of the liberty of the mother as well as the unborn as stated by Ferree (2002). Women who have not planned for pregnancies should be given much love and support by the government to assist them to find compassionate alternatives to abortion.
References
Butler, J. D., & Walbert, D. F. (2011). Abortion, medicine, and the law . Place of publication not identified: Fideli Publishing, Inc.
Ferree, M. M. (2002). Shaping abortion discourse: Democracy and the public sphere in Germany and the United States . Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Schwarz, S. D., & Latimer, K. (2012). Understanding abortion: From mixed feelings to rational thought . Lanham: Lexington Books.
