Response Essay Week One Number One

Article read: Rick Santorum, Meet My Son

Central Argument: Women should be allowed to have prenatal testing and abortions because women should have the right to choose what they want for their own bodies.

The issue of women’s health is a very sensitive one in the media today. Rush Limbaugh recently called a 19-year-old girl who appeared in Congress to argue for the inclusion of contraception in healthcare plans a “slut.” The issue is often made out to be an argument about values, as that example shows. In the piece, “Rick Santorum, Meet My Son”, Emily Rapp argues that women should be allowed to have prenatal testing and abortions because women should have the right to choose what they want for their own bodies. I personally agree with Rapp’s argument, because women should be able have to prenatal testing to better understand what their children could be like, they should be able to make their own choices regarding delivering children that could have deadly diseases, and women can weigh the morality of their choices in their own minds because they deserve the right to be responsible for their own bodies.

            First of all, women should be able to have prenatal testing to better understand what kind of a baby their children could be. For example, prenatal testing can help detect birth defects and development delays that can be useful for women to know before their births. This information can help women plan better for their children, by researching into child-raising techniques for different disabilities and possibly taking medicine to help lessen birth defects.

In addition, women should be able to have an abortion if they decide that ending the life of the unborn fetus of their child is preferable to having a child born with serious and debilitating disease. If prenatal testing is available, women will be able to make informed choices about whether they would really like to deliver a child that would only lead a life of suffering. For example, Emily Rapp explains how she wish she had aborted her son born with Tay-Sachs disease, because his very short life will be only filled with extreme pain. Women will have to weigh the morality in their minds of making difficult choices like the choice to abort, but it is a decision women should have to make for themselves.

Women can deliberate over the decision of having an abortion for themselves. Women should have the right to decide whether to have an abortion or not, because they are the owners of their own bodies, and we should have the right to make choices about our property. Abortion is a difficult decision, so women should have all the tools they need to make informed decisions about it, tools including prenatal testing.

The issue of women’s health is not an issue of values. It is an issue of choices, and women should have the right to choose what is best for their bodies, because they are the owners of their bodies.