I found many faults in Allison Crews' personal reflections on abortion. While I sympathize with her personal battle over teenage pregnancy and its' impact on her decision to become pro-choice, I believe Crews' makes unfounded generalizations about gender equality. Crews begins the essay by describing how much progress has been made since the lack of women's' rights and contraception before Roe v. Wade. However, she later reflects on a young mother who choose abortion, saying she had no rights because of her age, her gender, and her decision, respectively. Similarly, Crews criticizes the fact that she was not allowed to birth alone (even though that was presumably for safety reasons) and even blames men for believing they deserve the right to assist in childbirth. This is a complete generalization with no evidence and support (in fact there are many female doctors who help deliver babies).
My other issues with Crews' essay is that she makes personal claims which cannot be refuted but she gives no background information or convincing evidence to support her reasoning. Crews highly critiques her mother for being pro-life and supporting the potential adoptive mother over her own daughter, but then says her mother was there for her all along. Her mother's support is a great thing but she does not explain how her mother went from supporting others to supporting her daughter's decision. Crews makes a similar leap when discussing the birth of her son. She explains her decision to keep the baby and that it has made her pro-choice in terms of abortion. However, Crews then concludes the article by claiming women should have every choose they want, even contradicting the possible safety of their child. She explains they should be able to birth alone (even if they do not know how to), and that they can raise their child against the advice of the general public (which is only partially true).
I enjoyed reading Crews transformation from pro-life to pro-choice from an insiders and personal respective, but her argument would carry much more merit and influence if she avoided generalizations and provided more support for her claims.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In Roe vs. Wade: Opinion of the Court, the legal justifications behind the majority position illustrate from a legal standpoint why the court came to its decision. It was interesting to see the different arguments which the opponents of abortion raised, as well as the historical context within which many of these abortion laws were enacted.
ReplyDeleteAbortion arose not to preserve the life of an unborn child, but because abortions were incredibly dangerous in the 1850’s, when the first anti-abortion laws came into existence. Thus, the context with which they were made is completely different from the perspective of pro-life supporters today, who are mostly religious organizations. This is interesting because today the dialogue is no longer about the safety of the procedure, but about the morality of it. This brings in a whole other array of interests into the subject.
Additionally, it was interesting how the judge concluded where personal privacy, the necessity to preserve life of a developed fetus, and the harm from not allowing abortions all met into a law which would dictate how the states could regulate abortions within their sovereignty. While many would say that no one should be able to tell anyone they ought to treat their bodies, or what procedures you may or may not take, the issue of child birth is interesting because people do think they should have a say in how children are born and raised. The court clearly said that privacy and the dangers and harms of abortion lead to women being able to get an abortion during the first trimester. Yet it also said that the government has a say in what constitutes life and has a right to protect it.
None of this dialogue had anything to do with gender equality, but the meaning of constitutional rights and how they applied to the case of women’s ability to choose whether or not they want to have an abortion.