RU-486 - The Debate Continues :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

RU-486 - The Debate Continues Professor’s comment: I am excited to submit this research paper to 123HelpMe. It will provide an excellent model for other students. This student wisely sidesteps the emotional â€Å"Abortion: Pro or Con?† element, focusing narrowly on RU-486, the so-called abortion pill. She draws our attention primarily to scientific and medical controversy, with forays into history, politics, and economics, drawing attention to facts instead of emotional or personal appeals. Her research and careful approach challenge the assumption that pro-choice must favor legalization and antiabortion must oppose it. She helps us to see RU-486 as a separate issue with specific benefits and drawbacks, making her own nicely balanced contribution to the controversy. Picture yourself as a sixteen-year-old girl. Your friends and family used to describe you as happy, vivacious, and carefree. But as you have been awaiting your period, now two weeks overdue, you have become sullen and agitated with worry. Two more weeks go by and you buy a home pregnancy test. You perform the test only to find out what you already know. It doesn’t really matter how you got pregnant—the condom tore, your boyfriend lied about pulling out, you forgot to take your birth control pills—it just matters that you are and you don’t want to be. To complicate matters, let’s say that you are from a strict Catholic family with very devout parents, and you cannot possibly bring yourself to talk to them about it. After a few weeks of seemingly endless painful deliberation that you thought you would never have to endure, you have your best friend take you to an abortion clinic. Picketers block the front door to the clinic carrying signs that read â €Å"Abortion = Murder.† Before you can even begin to process the words on the signs, your best friend grabs you by the arm and pulls you past the crowd and into the small lobby of the clinic. Expecting an ordinary doctor’s office waiting room, you are unsettled by the unfamiliarity of the stark dà ©cor. The lobby is nothing but an entryway with a front desk encapsulated by bulletproof glass. While checking in you speak to the receptionist through a hole in the glass, as though you are paying for gasoline at a station after midnight. Now more than ever you feel scared and alone. Since the legalization of surgical abortions in 1973, this has become a common scenario for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.