Term Paper on "U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law"

Term Paper 5 pages (1806 words) Sources: 2 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

U.S. government interfere with existing federal law that gives the decision to abort a child or not to abort the woman's along to make, in her own private way? The first point-of-view in this paper will be to answer the question above with a firm "no."

Background and Facts on the Abortion Issue

In 1973, the High Court ruled, in Roe v. Wade, that a woman's right to choose whether or not she will keep a fetus falls under the Constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. In other words, what a woman does with regards to her pregnancy is her personal private right to decide.

Meanwhile, the Planned Parenthood organization (www.plannedparenthood.org) explains that abortion occurs "naturally" in 15 to 40% of pregnancies, "...when an embryo or fetus stops developing and the body expels it." it's called "spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, or early pregnancy loss." Also, there are about 6,000,000 pregnancies in America each year, the Planned Parenthood information shows, and of those, "less than 25%" are aborted and fifty percent of the aborted pregnancies are "unintended."

Planned Parenthood points out that "through the ages" women have turned to abortion to end "unwanted pregnancies." And "induced abortion was common among Native Americans" in the years prior to the arrival of Europeans. After the arrival of Europeans and the establishment of the new American nation, abortion was legal "from colonial times to the middle of the 19th Century," Planned Parenthood explains on its Web site; so it's clear that abortion is not a 20th Century development.

Indeed, the "pro-choice" movement in America has been on the winning

Continue scrolling to

download full paper ⤓

side of the abortion issue since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision (basically making abortion legal) in 1973. And yet, there is an ongoing debate - often spirited and even bitter - about what the Supreme Court of the United States will do when it takes up the issue again.

This portion of the paper takes the position that abortions should remain a legal option for a woman; her right to control what happens to her own body should not be in the hands of politicians in Washington, or anti-abortion activists anywhere. Her right to privacy is, according to Roe v. Wade, protected by the Constitution; and even though the present executive branch of the U.S. Government (George W. Bush) has a "pro-life" philosophy, and has placed two new Justices - who are potentially able to tip the scales to overturn Roe v. Wade - on the High Court in the past year, it is this writer's opinion that the law should continue to uphold a woman's right to privacy, and allow abortions in clean, medically appropriate healthcare facilities.

ARGUMENT #2: Banning abortions will push women into backroom, dirty medical clinics, and banning abortions won't stop young people from having sex. In fact, when "unclean, primitive medical practices" made abortions "very dangerous" during the 1800s, laws were passed to protect women's lives, Planned Parenthood continues. But "cleaner, advanced medical procedures made safer abortions possible" by the middle of the 20th Century, and of course anti-abortion laws were overturned in 1973.

Planned Parenthood offers advice to women who are considering an abortion; the most common reasons a woman would consider an abortion include that she is "not ready to become a parent"; she can't afford a baby; she isn't pleased about becoming a single parent and facing all those challenges for herself and her baby; she is too young to be a parent; she has all the children she can handle now; her husband or partner wants her to have an abortion; the fetus or mother has a health problem; and lastly, she may be a survivor of rape or incest.

More recently, in the years prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal, but thousands of abortions were conducted every year, and many deaths were attributed to those "back room" abortions. The Abortion Law Homepage explains (http://members.aol.com/abtrbng/)that abortion law comes from two basic governmental sources; the legislatures of states and the Supreme Court of the United States. Most states made abortion a criminal offence, up until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment "provided a fundamental right for women to obtain abortions." The 14th Amendment to the Constitution led to the Court's decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, which established that a woman had a "right to privacy" in cases of contraception.

ARGUMENT #1 (continued). From the "Pro-Life" side of the discussion, those individuals believe that "human life should be valued either from fertilization or implantation until natural death" (Wikipedia.org from pro-life sources). Christian morality has had a direct influence on the pro-life movement, in that the pro-life movement believes that any action that destroys an embryo or a fetus basically is killing a human being. Destroying human life is wrong in any manner or form, the pro-life group believes, and even if the fetus "...that would almost certainly be unviable, such as an encephalitic fetuses."

The pro-life side of the discussion also (but not in every case) opposes some forms of birth control (especially the "day after" pill which makes it impossible for the eggs to remain fertilized even though sperm reached the eggs during intercourse). Another form of birth control opposed by the pro-live movement is the hormonal contraception, ECP, which is believed to prevent the implantation of an embryo.

What the pro-life movement seeks to do, above all, is "restore legal protection to innocent human life" (http://www.nrlc.org/missionstatement.htm).The Roman Catholic Church teaches that "abortion is a grave sin against the natural law" (http://www.vatican.va).Moreover, the Catholic Church (along with most pro-life groups that are not affiliated with an organized religion) believes that human life begins at conception, and so abortion is the equivalent to murder. "There are no permissible exceptions," the Church insists, unless the life of the woman is in jeopardy; in that event, it is permissible under Church guidelines to give the ailing woman life-saving treatments even if the secondary result means the fetus will be killed.

Church law requires that any person who "directly participates in an abortion," the Vatican asserts, "is automatically excommunicated (providing they are aware of this penalty at the time of the act)." Other religions go along with the sentiment of the Catholic Church; indeed, the conservative, evangelical or fundamentalist Christian groups are very often in philosophical agreement with the pro-life groups.

Pro-life groups engage in several kinds of activism. They urge women to accept free ultrasound scans, since many times when a pregnant woman actually sees the fetus inside her, she chooses to keep the baby. They form a "life chain" which entails a large group of pro-life people standing along a sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic with signs that say, "Abortion Kills Children," "Abortion stops a beating heart," "I'm a child not a choice," "Jesus Loves the Little Children," and others along those same lines. There is also "the rescue" strategy in which pro-life activists attempt to block anyone from entering. This often brings in law enforcement and there are known to have been violent confrontations using this method.

ARGUMENT # 3: If the Bush Administration is successful in its attempt to place enough pro-life justices on the Supreme Court, will abortions be illegal in the foreseeable future? The answer to that question would be pure speculation, but in the long run, since the pendulum tends to swing both ways, it would seem reasonable to expect that eventually a new more pro-choice administration will be in the White House. And as Supreme Court Justices die or leave office, that new, more liberal administration will in turn place pro-choice justices on the Court to overturn what a majority of the previous pro-life justices had done previously.

CONCLUSION: Unless there is a "compelling interest" in preventing the abortion, a woman would have the right to get an abortion if she so chooses to do so.

Meanwhile, every interested citizen who has a viewpoint on the abortion issues, should desire to be informed and to read both sides of the issue. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has a "historical highlight" page on their Web site that gives the dates of important legal watermarks relating to abortion rights and to those who oppose abortions ("pro-life" groups). In 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court nullified a Connecticut statute prohibiting married couples from using birth control pills; not many people today are aware that it was actually illegal in some states for a woman to use birth control. This can be viewed as a sexist situation coming in to play, where men in three-piece suits in state government were deciding what women could do and what they could not do with their bodies. The Court ruled that the "right to marital privacy" allows married couples to use contraceptives if they wish to.

There was a law in 1972 that was struck down by the Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird; the Court ruled that distribution by doctors of the birth control pill… READ MORE

Download Full Paper

Write a New Paper for Me

Quoted Instructions for "U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law" Assignment:

“

Research Paper (Manuscript) Formatting Rules: general information that applies to all entries

References should appear in hanging indent form; first line at the left margin, each succeeding line indented.

All entries should be doubled spaced. Examples are given in single space to save space in this document.

In titles of books, articles, films, and broadcasts capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word after a colon or dash, and proper nouns.

In periodical titles capitalize all major words and all words of four letters or more.

Periodical titles should be in italic.

_____________________________________________________________

SAMPLE REFERENCES FOR PRINT MATERIAL, FILM, AND ORAL COMMUNICATION: Remember for all of these examples the first line is at the left margin and all succeeding lines are indented; titles that appear here in italic should be in italic; do not underline. (Examples in this section provided by Rudy Pugliese or from the APA Manual)

Magazine/Journal Article,Basic Form for articles, One Author example, Two Author examples:

Author, A.A.(Date of Publication). Title of article: Subtitle of article. Magazine/Journal Title, Volume number (issue number if each issue begins on page 1),pages.

Lacayo, R.(1991,April22).Global warming: A new warning. Time, 137(16),32.

Smith, M.L., & Finn, J. (1997, October ). The use of the World Wide Web by undergraduate social work education programs. Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 3(1), 71-84

Stacks, D.W., & Hickson, M. (1991). The communication investigator: Teaching research methods to undergraduates. Communication Quarterly, 39, 351-357

Book/Edited Book, Basic Form for book or single entity, Book with one author, Book with two editors:

Author/Editor. (Date of Publication). Title: Subtitle. (Edition). Place of Publication: Publisher.

Buss, A.H. (1980). Self-consciousness and social anxiety. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman

Chickering, A.W., & Smith, L.E. (Eds.) (1981) The modern American college: Responding to the new realities of diverse students and a changing society. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Article with Two Authors in an Edited Book:

Good, T.L., & Brophy, J.E.(Eds.).(1986). School effects. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd)ed.,pp.570-602). New York Macmillan.

Doctoral Dissertation abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts International:

Byerly, J. (1982). An investigation of factors that condition student enrollment in broadcast courses at Coastline community College ( Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 1981). Dissertation Abstracts International, 43, 58A

Article in Proceedings of Meetings or Symposia:

Brock, D (1981). New public broadcasting programs and services. In J.Brown (Ed.), Technology and Education, January 26-28, (pp.30-59). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

IN-TEXT CITATIONS:(Examples in this section provided by Rudy Pugliese, Linda Coppola or from the APA Manual)

If You are citing a work by a single author, use the surname (do not include suffizes such as JR.) and the year of publication separated by a comma in parentheses:

In a recent study of reaction time (Rogers, 1994)

If have just stated the author*****s name in the text, put the year of publication only in parentheses:

Peplau (1985) defines loneliness as a difference between desired and achieved goal relationships.

If you ar eciting to work with two authors, always cite both names every time the reference occurs in text:

Loneliness is inversely related to communication competence (Reinking & Bell, 1991).

If there are fewer than six authors, cite all of them the first time and subsequently use the first Author*****s name followed by the *****et al.***** and the year:

The misbehaviors of teachers have been investigated (Kearney, Plas, Hays, & Ivey, 1991).

Misbehaviors were found to reduce to three factors***** incompetence, offensiveness, and indolence (Kearney et al., 1991).

If a work has six or more authors, cite only the first authors*****s last name followed by *****el al.***** and the year:

Communication apprehension has many correlates (McCroskey et al., 1981).

If You are including a quotation or referring to a specific part of the source, list the page number(s) after the year:

***** A lack of career success may lower men*****s value in the market place of relationships***** (Reinking & Bell, 1991, p 368).

If the source is electronic and does not have page numbers, use paragraph , if available:

As Myers (2000, para. 5) aptly phrases it, *****positive emotions are both an end *****“ better to live fulfilled. With joy [and other positive emotions] *****“ and a means to a more caring and healthy society.*****

If you are citing an entire website and not a specific part of the site, reference the website in the text (no need to include in the bibliography):

Douglas (http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/) is a well organized site looking for locating American speeches.

Personal Communications , Oral Interviews, Memos, Letters, coversations, e-mail communication. etc.

Unpublished communications should not be listed with references . because the text is not available for others to examine. They are referenced in the paper only. Include the name, type of communication, and date. Example of parenththical citation in text:

R. Rugliese ( personal communication, March 23, 1990) also verified this .

How to Reference "U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law" Term Paper in a Bibliography

“U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law.” A1-TermPaper.com, 2008, https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500. Accessed 3 Jul 2024.

U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law (2008). Retrieved from https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500

A1-TermPaper.com. (2008). U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law. [online] Available at: https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500 [Accessed 3 Jul, 2024].

”U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law” 2008. A1-TermPaper.com. https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500.

”U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law” A1-TermPaper.com, Last modified 2024. https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500.

[1] ”U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law”, A1-TermPaper.com, 2008. [Online]. Available: https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500. [Accessed: 3-Jul-2024].

1. U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law [Internet]. A1-TermPaper.com. 2008 [cited 3 July 2024]. Available from: https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500

1. U.S. Government Interfere With Existing Federal Law. A1-TermPaper.com. https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/us-government-interfere-existing/3500. Published 2008. Accessed July 3, 2024.

Related Term Papers: