“Your baby or your life?

” This question is yet again starting to pull out vastl

y different answers from a lot of people online in different social media platforms.
The internet has divided opinions regarding the topic, sparking heated debates l
eft and right. The bottom line of the whole situation is the question: do you suppo
rt abortion or not? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Tekleen Monique
Raguindin and for physical, financial, and mental reasons, I support the legalizati
on of abortion.
Pregnancy causes a lot of physical changes in a woman’s body. Breast
tenderness, swelling of hands and feet, backache, muscle cramps, fatigue,
dizziness, nausea, frequent urination, constipation, hemorrhoids, and heartburn
are the common discomforts that may occur during the pregnancy stage. Most of
these symptoms already occur during menstruation but during pregnancy, the
pain level is much higher, even reaching or breaking a person’s pain tolerance
which usually results to a hospital confinement. While I do agree that these are
normal when a woman is pregnant, it raises risks to the health. Serious
complications such as having too much or too little amniotic fluid, bleeding due
to cervical infection, development of fetus outside the uterus, displacement of
placenta, and pregnancy-induced high blood pressure also known as eclampsia
may also occur making the pregnancy high-risk. This may lead to a life-or-death
situation while giving birth.
Poverty has always been a national issue and its rate has been getting
worse over the past years. Many Filipinos struggle to find suitable occupations
due to underemployment and job mismatch, resulting to low average income. In
today’s economy where the inflation rate is at 8.6%, it is clear that the nation is at
a state of crisis as the citizens are not fully capable of meeting their basic human
needs for a minimum standard living. If a person is already struggling to even get
through the day and survive with their current financial resources, then it would
be harder for them to raise and provide for a child. It is both impractical and
selfish to bring another organism into this world if it is not ensured that they will
live a comfortable life.
People who became victims of sexual offences are possible parents who
are not at all capable of raising a child. Sexual assault heavily affects the victims’
mental and emotional condition. They would not qualify as good parents if they
are not mentally and emotionally stable enough. It usually results to a negative
connection between the negligent mother and the neglected child. Teenagers
who agreed to having sex with an adult are victims of statutory rape, which
refers to non-forcible sexual activity wherein one of the individuals is below the
legal age of sexual consent. The current legal age of sexual consent in the
Philippines is 16 years old; it used to be 12 years old before lawmakers of the
country raised it in the year 2022. We should not let these puberty-stage children
go through the suffering brought by pregnancy as their bodies are literally not
yet ready for it. We should never put burden on them and expect them to parent
another child when they are also children themselves.
The Philippines has an existing law that the organs of the deceased could n
ot be used in medical transplantation. It is illegal to operate this if the person did
not file a legal registration of their consent for the process when they were still al
ive or if the immediate family did not permit. If lawmakers do not stop criminalizi
ng abortion, then the law is giving more bodily autonomy to a dead person than t
o a living human being. The legalization of abortion will serve as a symbol of the c
ontinuous growth of feminism ideals and movement. Legalizing abortion acknow
ledges the fact that women are actual humans who have a hundred percent contr
ol over their own bodies, and are not just mere vessels kept and used for reprodu
ction. Let women decide what they want to do with their own lives.