Abortion: Pro Life or Pro Choice?

Abortion: Pro life or Pro Choice?
There are very few topics that can cause as big a rift in people as abortion can. There are only two choices, Pro life or Pro choice. Pro life is the decision to reject any form of abortion. Pro choice is the belief that the decision to whether an abortion should take place belongs to the mother of the unborn embryo. Both sides of abortion have very strong activists constantly fighting back and forth to determine what decision is the right one. Ron Randall of Articlebase.com is a very passionate supporter of Pro life.
He states, “Centuries ago cultures did human sacrifices and we are horrified that a culture would do that. Well we are doing the same thing through abortion. Human sacrifices for just mere convenience.” (Randall, Human rights violation).
Leonard Peikoff on the other hand, is a supporter of Pro choice, He believes, “The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as consulting a person.” (Peikoff, abortion rights are pro life). Although each author is completely against one another in terms of abortion, both take different approaches to conveying their opinions. Leonard Peikoff takes the approach of appealing to logic and the women’s’ ability to make an informed decision whether or not to go through with an abortion. Hey says, “If we are to accept the equation of the potential with the actual and call the embryo an “unborn child,” we could, with logic, call any adult an “undead corpse” and bury him alive or vivisect him for the instruction of medical students.” (Peikoff) He uses logic to force people to think about abortion logically and get them to question what an unborn child or fetus actually is. He almost describes an unborn child as a parasite in that it is part of a woman’s body and that it is not an independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person.
Ron Randall is similar to Peikoff in his approach that he uses extremes to get his point across and pull at the heart strings of people who may be on the fence about the subject. An example of this comes from his article Pro Life, Abortion is a Human Rights Violation; “The most sacred and safest place in life is the mother’s womb where life is started or at least it should be. It is now not safe at all. No unborn child is safe anymore, and we consider ourselves a civilized society. Not even close. (Randall).” His tone through the whole article is to make the reader feel terrible for the unborn child and to view abortion as an absolute crime and that is should not be accepted in any way. Peikoff sets the tone as more informative without making the reader feel bad for abortion but gives the option to formulate their own opinion. It is clear he is for the choice of whether or not the woman has the right to choose if she wants and abortion or not. He uses a lot of Ayn Rand to get his point across. One that sticks out in the article is, “ Rights” “do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born.” Although Ayn Rand sounds harsh it is still logical to percieve it that way. Ayn Rand greatly influences Peikoff’s standing on abortion which I believe is the reason it comes off as more logical than opinionated.
Ron Randall’s influence leans heavily towards religion but he uses statistics and the shock and awe tactic to push his opinion across. For example, he describes an abortion he witnessed, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I was horrified, I actually saw it online. I just had to see the actual act. I was not prepared for what I actually saw. The arms and legs were actually torn off the body. This was not some fetus it was an actual child about 7 months.”
The issue with this statement is that he saw it online and there is no credible source to as to whether or not he was actually seeing an abortion. The lack of evidence does not prove that this is the way all or any abortions or preformed this way. There are strict time tables of when an abortion can take place and the 7 months he said is way outside of the first trimester which is the cutoff for abortions. I believe when it comes to validity, Peikoff did more research and he stayed closer to reality with his article. Randall had a lot of hyperboles in his article. One example that sticks out is his reference to abortion potentially leading to communism saying, “This may sound a little crazy but just perhaps abortion may possibly lead to communism because if you do not care about the unborn then how can you care about anyone else in the life cycle. Who is next, the elderly? Euthanasia is right around the corner. (Randall)”
It is exaggeration like this that makes it hard to connect with Randall and his choice of Pro life. When it comes to evidence, Randall does not put forth very much evidence but rather how strong his opinion of pro life is. He tries to connect with readers by quoting the declaration of independence and because we are in a war it helps people relate more to his cause. He says “in the Declaration of Independence it states, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If you have no life you can forget about the other two. And if we take life away through abortion we can also forget about the other two. It affects humanity at a very deep level.” This is a very large stretch to use the declaration of independence to support pro life for that is not what the declaration was intended for.
I find that the evidence and logic Peikoff uses is far more persuading in his side of pro choice. He believes that any woman already suffers enough for having to make the decision to abort the embryo and the emotional stress is more than enough punishment than having to outlaw abortion and making a woman serve actual jail time for it. He thinks that there are legitimate reasons for a woman to have an abortion like rape, accidental pregnancy, birth defects, and danger to her health. He only states that the main issue is the proper role for government to intervene. He believes, “A pregnant woman acts wantonly or capriciously, then she should be condemned morally but not treated like a murderer.” It is much easier to side with him because he makes sense from a logical point of view instead of making hyperbolic statements to draw readers to his cause.
From a Perception point of view I think Randall views Abortion as an epidemic because he uses statistics frequently like saying, “40 million abortions have been done in the United States alone. That is more children being killed through abortion than all the people killed in all the wars in the 20th century.” This statistic seems very scary but that is if a person believes an unborn embryo is a living being. On the other hand, Peikoff perceives abortion as more an issue that can be controlled through government if they find the right place to intervene. He is more logical and concise in getting his message across. He is able to give information without making the reader feel horrible for not choosing pro choice. He lets the reader decide for themselves whether they are for or against abortion. His information is more accurate and is not biased nearly as much as Randall.
Although it was difficult to remain neutral when reading both articles, I could understand what each author was going for in terms of getting each of their respected opinions across. They both used completely different techniques to get the reader to choose their side and their style of writing was also completely different. I have a greater understanding of both sides of abortion and can now better explain my personal opinion on the matter.

Works Cited
Peikoff, Leonard. "Abortion rights are prolife." capitalism magazine. Ayn Rand institute, 2003. Web. 12 Dec 2010. <www.capitalismmagazine.com/polotics/abortion/2404-abortion-rights>.
Randall, Ron. "Pro Life - Abortion is a human rights violation." Article Base. Article Base, 2008. Web. 12 Dec 2010. <www.articlebase.com/print/655175>.

Cited: Peikoff, Leonard. "Abortion rights are prolife." capitalism magazine. Ayn Rand institute, 2003. Web. 12 Dec 2010. &lt;www.capitalismmagazine.com/polotics/abortion/2404-abortion-rights&gt;. Randall, Ron. "Pro Life - Abortion is a human rights violation." Article Base. Article Base, 2008. Web. 12 Dec 2010. &lt;www.articlebase.com/print/655175&gt;.