Lay arguments against abortion
"It seems as clear as the day that abortion is a crime"
(Mahatma Gandhi)
There are such thorny issues whose debate always becomes a great controversy. Among these, the issue of abortion stands out too much, because whenever it is polemized, we manage to distinguish two diametrically opposite groups: in favor, mostly, defended by those who keep some affinity with the Church and against the progressive sectors. In Peru, only, therapeutic abortion is allowed, which invites us to reflect whether it is really valid to admit abortion under the popular feminist slogans today "legal, safe and free". Peru of the 21st century as a secular state has the obligation to respond to this debate in a warned way without including some religious subjectivity as it has predominated until today. This essay will postulate that: There are not only religious arguments, but there are enough legal and rational arguments to have a solid posture against abortion. This essay will make a defense of life without using any religious reference type
As Fernando Cubells would tell us: "The names of names are solemn issues of things, and that is why it matters first of all to clarify them to know what we are talking about" (cited in Cortina, 2013, p. 29). Therefore, it is necessary to start this essay making it clear what abortion is. Abortion is the death of the conceived for natural reasons or for some external cause in a definitive and irreversible way. In Feinmann’s magnificent prose we could say «it is chosen to kill or choose not to kill. But death does not return ”(Feinmann, 2004). If we talk about killing it is because we maintain that there is life, but is a life killing an abortion? If this is so, then, at what time does life start? We do not need to resort to the Bible to give an answer to this question, because it is the science that from embryology and biogenetics has shown us, with absolute certainty that, for this I will quote the National Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires textually: «The Human life begins with fertilization, this is a scientific fact with experimental demonstration; It is not a metaphysical argument or a theological hypothesis. At the time of fertilization, the union of the female and masculine pronucleus give rise to a new being with its chromosomal individuality and with the genetic burden of their parents.»(National Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires, 1994)
So independent is the child in gestation, regarding the mother, that neither the placenta, nor the umbilical cord, nor the amniotic fluid are part of it. Before, they were believed that they were part of the mother, but today, thanks to medical advances we know that they are organs generated by the child from their zygote stage necessary for their first phases of development and that it will then abandon at birth, even the child in gestation has a unique DNA and a different heart rate from that of the mother.
Who defends life does not end the privacy of the mother’s belly, which she recognizes, but the property of the belly does not authorize the owner to commit a murder inside. Therefore, anyone who rule against will be morally and legally authorized.
As a law student and human rights defender I consider it necessary to develop the legal arguments that will allow us to have a position against, as well as explain the legality of therapeutic abortion, always in strict respect for our legal framework.
From the constitutional level we must mention that our Political Constitution in article 2˚ INC. 1 considers the conceived as "subject of law in everything that favors him". The "that is to be born" of the 1993 Constitution allows us to specify that the conception is produced is before an existing being whose birth will take place in the near future perfectly determinable; that is, before human life, the first one being the first one related to the protection of life that already enjoys as a human being (Cornejo Fava, 2013). Therefore, any discussion that is proposed to establish in which gestation week is valid to carry out an abortion, it will be totally null. Supposing this would lead us to an insurmountable logic in which we should define why a baby is more worthy and deserving of life a minute after the valid term, but not a minute before. Then we would have to ask ourselves, does the baby not born according to the month of gestation have more dignity?
We also remember that in our legal system the international pacts in which Peru is part of constitutional rank; VERBIGRACIA The Convention on the Rights of the Child that in its article 6 INC. 1 indicates "the States parties recognize that every child has the intrinsic right to life", ergo is impossible a law that regulates legal abortion because it would immediately contravene our Constitution and the treaties in which Peru is a part.
If after explaining all this, someone believes that the solution lies in the existence of a supposed major referendum suppression or decrease in the fundamental rights of the person, nor the international treaties in force ».
The legality of therapeutic abortion; That is, when the mother’s life is in danger, provided in article 119 of the Peruvian Criminal Code, it does not refute at all developed so far. Actually, it only reinforces it, because as we can observe the legislator always recognized the two lives and defended them until pregnancy became a conflict of interest between the life of the mother and that of the child.
In this regard, the Spanish Constitutional Court has stated as follows:
"In this case, it is to be noted that, if the life of the ‘nasciturus’ would be protected unconditionally, it would be more protected from the life of the unborn than to the life of the born, and the woman would be penalized to defend her right to life ( …); Therefore, the prevalence of the mother’s life is constitutional »
(Spanish Constitutional Court, 1985)
Therefore, therapeutic abortion does have constitutional validity and is only used as an extreme measure to keep the life of the mother who is in danger of permanent damage.
The fact that abortion is a social reality and that is practiced in our country is not at all a need to be legalized. "Rights are not about what exists except the type of world in which we must reasonably want to live" (Benhabib, 2008). The woman who dies by voluntarily resorting to an abortion is not a victim but victimizer and who in her victim’s quality accidentally ends up dying: the true victim of all this is the child. This death was an unwanted consequence of a criminal activity.
To exemplify, let’s take the case of drug trafficking. To any reader of this essay, it would occur to legalize drug trafficking, which is a reality and exists in our society, in order to ensure that the poor woman who consumes Paco can consume better quality cocaine And thus affect your health less? Public policy must be looking for fewer poor people to consume Paco and fewer rich people consume cocaine, not give cocaine to both and thus equate. In that sense it does not matter if the children who die are abortions produced by poor women or if the children who die are produced by rich women, the important thing is that they do not die more child. If clandestine abortion is a health problem corresponds to the State to promote the best preventive and healing measures and not have to violate the fundamental human right to life.
Finally, this essay would be incomplete if the possible case of pregnancy produced by a violation is not addressed. It is usually sustained, wrong, that under this assumption and extremely "exceptional" we should legitimize abortion. It is so "exceptional" that after the law all those who want to abort claim to have been violated, this without ever to prove the violation or identity of the rapist. De facto, most of these accusations are nothing more than crude lies since just saying that it was raped and with its verbal testimony it will be judicially authorized to kill the child inside, of course the child’s perception and their life are seen with Absolute disdain for those who defend abortion, we can observe it in "the second sex" when Beauvoir refers to the child in gestation as "parasite" that the woman carries inside (textually defined by the Maoist Simone de Beauvoir, 1949, p. 128).
Let’s not forget that the commission of a crime is not, in any way, a source of another crime; In other words, in the face of the crime of violation, this empowers us to commit another crime: the murder of who is only a product and not part of the punishable act? Clearly that no, crimes are not exchangeable.
In our criminal code, the penalty requires the author’s criminal responsibility, this means that for someone to receive a penalty from the judicial apparatus, it necessarily has to have some kind of responsibility with the punishable act, then the question comes immediately: What responsibility does the child have in gestation of what his father did? None of us respond criminally for the crimes that our father committed, contradictory, death is ordered for the innocent, death not even the author of the crime receives.
At this point she is not in debate if the mother wants or not having the child, because she already has it, what she can vary is whether she is still a mother of a living son or if she will be a mother of a dead son, whose death herself requested. Therefore, the State must be emotional support and provide psychological help towards the mother, if she does not want. That is, the crime of rape does not redeem with the right to kill the innocent minor, there is no dilemma in whether to have it or not have it, she already has it, then she decides if she wants to raise it or give it to adoption.
«There is an ethical problem at the root of our philosophical difficulties; Men are very fond of looking for the truth, but very reluctant to accept it ”(Etienne, 1998, p. 280) In spite of everything explained, there will be those who still think that the opposition to abortion is done only from religious jurisdiction or those who still believe that the debate is with religion and not with science, despite having developed the whole present essay without the need to resort to any religious appointment.
I conclude this essay confirming the initial thesis that allowed me to start this arduous work. Thanks to scientific and legal arguments I could see that: abortion is the death of the conceived, science has determined that life begins from conception, the child in gestation is not part of the mother’s body, that the belly is the belly not Legitimate to kill the life inside, any law that legalizes abortion is unconstitutional, in therapeutic abortion the two lives are considered until that of the child puts that of the mother at risk and there is no other option, the fact that It is done does not mean that it should be legalized, abortion is not a social classes issue and to end, the crime of violation is not a source of another crime such as the death of the innocent.
The defense of life is a mission that corresponds to us all and to which we cannot give up.
References
- National Academy of Medicine. (March 22, 1994). Declarations about abortion. Buenos Aires.
- Benhabib, s. (2008). Another universalism: about the unity and diversity of human rights. Itegoria, page 188.
- Penal Code of Peru. (1991). Lima Peru.
- Democratic Constituent Congress. (1993). Political Constitution of Peru. Lima Peru.
- Children’s rights convention. (1989).
- Cornejo Fava, M. T. (2013). The beginning of human life, its protection and the decriminalization of abortion. Journal of the Faculty of Law of the Women’s University of the Sacred Heart, 5.
- Curtain, a. (2013). What is ethics really for? Spain: Grupo Planeta. from Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Barcelona: Twenty century.
- Etienne, g. (1998). The unity of philosophical experience. Madrid: Rialp.
- Feinmann, j. P. (March 28, 2004). The Eternal Eros. Page 12.
- Spanish Constitutional Court. (April 11, 1985). Point 11 of its legal foundations.
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