Assalamualaikum
w.b.t.
I’m quite hesitant to write about this
topic as abortion is such a quite sensitive stuff to ladies. But as a lady, it
is my right and my concern to expose this topic to public even though I’m
neither a married lady nor a mother. The reason that triggered me to write about
this was when I read a book entitled ‘Freakonomics’ written by Steven D. Levitt
who is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and Stephen J.
Dubner who was a former writer and editor at the New York Times Magazine. I
haven’t finished reading this book yet but I’m already feel astonished on how
this book changed my perspective towards economy and things that I thought have
nothing to do with economy such as abortion.
Inside the Chapter 4 ‘Where Have All the
Criminals Gone’, when the crime rate began falling in the early 1990s in United
States, it surprised everyone and took some experts many years to recognize
that crime was falling as they were so confident forecasting that crimes will
continuing to rise. So, the effect of the crime-drop is the stronger economy. These
experts started to investigate factors that linked to crime-drop explanation
such as increased use of capital punishment, increased number of police, tougher
gun laws etc. Until they investigated the last factor which is aging of the
population. At first not many experts realized about this as they were only
looking on the surfaces that related to crimes such as laws, police officers
and policies.
Criminologists like Wilson and James
Alan Fox had badly misread the demographic data. The real population growth in
the 1990s was in fact among the elderly. That is what makes this aging-of-the-population
theory of crime reduction so appealing tidy since people mellow out as they get
older, more older people must lead to less crime. So now, the decrease of crime
rate leads to the stronger economy. The increase of older people leads to the
decrease of crime rate. But what leads to increase of older people? Because if
this continue, it will give bad effect to the economy and leads to lack of labor
sources. The experts then started to look back to abortion history in that
nation which started in 1828.
Before I’m telling the whole story,
start here will be quite boring. But yeah, boring knowledge is precious
knowledge for me. So in 1828, New York became the first state to declare
abortion illegal and by 1900, it had been made illegal throughout the country. However,
this leads to uncontrol birth among poor women and there were a lot of unwanted
babies. In the late 1960s, several states began to allow abortion under extreme
circumstances such as rape, incest or danger to the mother. By 1970, five large
states which are New York, California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii had made
abortion entirely legal and broadly available.
On
22nd January 1973, legalized abortion was suddenly extended to the
entire country with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The Supreme
Court gave voice that when a woman does not want to have a child, she usually
has good reasons like bad marriage or too poor to raise a child. In the first
year after Roe v. Wade, some 750,000 women had abortions in the United States.
By 1980, the number of abortions reached 1.6million where it leveled off. Which
means 1.6 million American women a year who got pregnant were suddenly not
having those babies. Plus, any woman could easily obtain an abortion often for
less than $100.
Usually woman who was unmarried or in
her teens or poor, and sometimes all three was the one that take advantage of
Roe v. Wade. One study has shown that if these aborted babies were born, they
were most likely to live in poverty or grow up with just single-parent
household. These are one of the powerful factors leading these kids to
criminality. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness, unwantedness leads to
high crime, legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime. This kind of
theory provokes a variety of reactions. Is the theory true? There are plenty of
people who consider abortion itself to be a violent crime.
In 22nd January 2019, exactly
46 years after Roe decision on legal abortion, New York state has enacted
strong new legal protections for abortion rights including a provision
permitting late-term abortions when a woman’s health is endangered. This new law
also authorizes midwives and physician assistants to perform some abortions.
Some critics argued that it could be harder for prosecutors to bring charges
when a woman is assaulted and loses her pregnancy. Some opponents also
predicted that this will lead to more late-term abortions as abortions usually
take place in the first trimester that equals to 3 months pregnancy.
However, Republican Florida state Rep.
Mike Hill aiming to file the bill to ban abortion if a fetal heartbeat is
detected. He said this ban is to save lives, to save the babies. If any person
who provides an abortion after a heartbeat is detected commits a third-degree
felony (five years in prison, five years probation and a $5000 fine). An
abortion can be provided if a woman has been diagnosed with a condition that
would create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a
major bodily function if the woman delayed terminating her pregnancy. The bill
also replacing the word “fetus” from current abortion-related laws with “unborn
human being”.
When I’m reading the news, I’ve just realized
that these laws are made by human to another human that makes killing the
unborn human is legal. Even though the theory in 1990s that legal abortion
makes crime rates drop, we can’t foresee those unborn babies’ future that if
they were born, they will become criminals. If you said legal abortion is needed
to avoid the babies to live in poverty, then the adults should prepare and
built well environment before you make your babies. In this legal abortion laws,
we have treated this unborn human being as an object that can be thrown away when
you don’t want it. We are the real criminals here.
How about abortion law in Malaysia? Malaysian
Penal Code (a law that codifies most criminal offences and procedures in
Malaysia) sections 312-315 covers abortion which made abortion totally illegal
until in 1989, under pressure from the medical fraternity, another amendment
was made to allow an exception which are if it involves a risk to the life of
the pregnant woman, injury to the mental or physical health of the pregnant
woman or it is carried out by a registered medical practitioner. Before the
amendments came into force, the only grounds for abortion were to save the life
of the woman and to preserve her physical and mental health. As a Muslim
majority country, in 2002, the National Fatwa Committee issued a fatwa which
permits abortion up to 120 days of gestation in cases where the woman’s life is
at risk.
In October 2014, Nirmala Thapa, who was
6 weeks pregnant was arrested in Bukit Mertajam for undergoing an abortion.
Nirmala was the first woman to be found guilty for an illegal abortion since
1989. After about a year, she was finally acquitted in September 2015. This
case courted controversy as some people thought that Nirmala was unfairly targeted
as she was an immigrant and there are so many people still have misconception
regarding the legal status of abortions in this country. If we look back from
1974, a national fertility and family survey found that 71% of women endorsed
abortion on the grounds of rape or incest, 54.3% endorsed abortion for
unmarried women, 52.2% endorsed abortion for health reasons and 34.5% endorsed
abortion for economic and social reasons.
Reading articles about safe abortions
and woman’s right to decide whether they want to keep the baby alive or not
just made me think that are we, Malaysia is going to be like United States
right now? I am not against abortions if it is necessary and for the sake of
woman’s life. But if the baby is aborted just because that woman is still
single or living in poverty, abortion is not a way to solve the problems. Perhaps,
we might can consider if the woman who was the rape victim wants to abort the
baby but for Muslims, advices and fatwa from the National Fatwa Committee are absolutely
necessary for this.
Sources:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-mike-hill-house-bill-235-abortion-ban-fetal-heartbeat/?fbclid=IwAR1dGjk0P8HvGE5XmsTRw2tQmq_xRqkwEgbPASN6mjhA-8iDumSqTW2QfUg&ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=62651797
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-passes-abortion-bill-late-term-if-mothers-health-is-at-risk-today-2019-01-23/?fbclid=IwAR0a8tP7RiuEkkjxdc9CjHiYHwE9EAk4EuPOnaZS6eoJiqIdOYtOhurmeYE&ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=62756228
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