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Pro-Choice Does Not Mean Pro-Abortion: An Argument for Abortion Rights Featuring the Rev. Carlton Veazey

Since the Supreme Court’s historic 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade , the issue of a woman’s right to an abortion has fostered one of the most contentious moral and political debates in America. Opponents of abortion rights argue that life begins at conception – making abortion tantamount to homicide. Abortion rights advocates, in contrast, maintain that women have a right to decide what happens to their bodies – sometimes without any restrictions.

To explore the case for abortion rights, the Pew Forum turns to the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, who for more than a decade has been president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Based in Washington, D.C., the coalition advocates for reproductive choice and religious freedom on behalf of about 40 religious groups and organizations. Prior to joining the coalition, Veazey spent 33 years as a pastor at Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

A counterargument explaining the case against abortion rights is made by the Rev. J. Daniel Mindling, professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.

Featuring: The Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, President, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Interviewer: David Masci, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Question & Answer

Can you explain how your Christian faith informs your views in support of abortion rights?

I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a Baptist minister for many years in Memphis, Tenn. One of the things that he instilled in me – I used to hear it so much – was free will, free will, free will. It was ingrained in me that you have the ability to make choices. You have the ability to decide what you want to do. You are responsible for your decisions, but God has given you that responsibility, that option to make decisions.

I had firsthand experience of seeing black women and poor women being disproportionately impacted by the fact that they had no choices about an unintended pregnancy, even if it would damage their health or cause great hardship in their family. And I remember some of them being maimed in back-alley abortions; some of them died. There was no legal choice before Roe v. Wade .

But in this day and time, we have a clearer understanding that men and women are moral agents and equipped to make decisions about even the most difficult and complex matters. We must ensure a woman can determine when and whether to have children according to her own conscience and religious beliefs and without governmental interference or coercion. We must also ensure that women have the resources to have a healthy, safe pregnancy, if that is their decision, and that women and families have the resources to raise a child with security.

The right to choose has changed and expanded over the years since Roe v. Wade . We now speak of reproductive justice – and that includes comprehensive sex education, family planning and contraception, adequate medical care, a safe environment, the ability to continue a pregnancy and the resources that make that choice possible. That is my moral framework.

You talk about free will, and as a Christian you believe in free will. But you also said that God gave us free will and gave us the opportunity to make right and wrong choices. Why do you believe that abortion can, at least in some instances, be the right choice?

Dan Maguire, a former Jesuit priest and professor of moral theology and ethics at Marquette University, says that to have a child can be a sacred choice, but to not have a child can also be a sacred choice.

And these choices revolve around circumstances and issues – like whether a person is old enough to care for a child or whether a woman already has more children than she can care for. Also, remember that medical circumstances are the reason many women have an abortion – for example, if they are having chemotherapy for cancer or have a life-threatening chronic illness – and most later-term abortions occur because of fetal abnormalities that will result in stillbirth or the death of the child. These are difficult decisions; they’re moral decisions, sometimes requiring a woman to decide if she will risk her life for a pregnancy.

Abortion is a very serious decision and each decision depends on circumstances. That’s why I tell people: I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice. And that’s an important distinction.

You’ve talked about the right of a woman to make a choice. Does the fetus have any rights?

First, let me say that the religious, pro-choice position is based on respect for human life, including potential life and existing life.

But I do not believe that life as we know it starts at conception. I am troubled by the implications of a fetus having legal rights because that could pit the fetus against the woman carrying the fetus; for example, if the woman needed a medical procedure, the law could require the fetus to be considered separately and equally.

From a religious perspective, it’s more important to consider the moral issues involved in making a decision about abortion. Also, it’s important to remember that religious traditions have very different ideas about the status of the fetus. Roman Catholic doctrine regards a fertilized egg as a human being. Judaism holds that life begins with the first breath.

What about at the very end of a woman’s pregnancy? Does a fetus acquire rights after the point of viability, when it can survive outside the womb? Or let me ask it another way: Assuming a woman is healthy and her fetus is healthy, should the woman be able to terminate her pregnancy until the end of her pregnancy?

There’s an assumption that a woman would end a viable pregnancy carelessly or without a reason. The facts don’t bear this out. Most abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Late abortions are virtually always performed for the most serious medical and health reasons, including saving the woman’s life.

But what if such a case came before you? If you were that woman’s pastor, what would you say?

I would talk to her in a helpful, positive, respectful way and help her discuss what was troubling her. I would suggest alternatives such as adoption.

Let me shift gears a little bit. Many Americans have said they favor a compromise, or reaching a middle-ground policy, on abortion. Do you sympathize with this desire and do you think that both sides should compromise to end this rancorous debate?

I have been to more middle-ground and common-ground meetings than I can remember and I’ve never been to one where we walked out with any decision.

That being said, I think that we all should agree that abortion should be rare. How do we do that? We do that by providing comprehensive sex education in schools and in religious congregations and by ensuring that there is accurate information about contraception and that contraception is available. Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress has not been willing to pass a bill to fund comprehensive sex education, but they are willing to put a lot of money into failed and harmful abstinence-only programs that often rely on scare tactics and inaccurate information.

Former Surgeon General David Satcher has shown that abstinence-only programs do not work and that we should provide young people with the information to protect themselves. Education that stresses abstinence and provides accurate information about contraception will reduce the abortion rate. That is the ground that I stand on. I would say that here is a way we can work together to reduce the need for abortions.

Abortion has become central to what many people call the “culture wars.” Some consider it to be the most contentious moral issue in America today. Why do many Catholics, evangelical Christians and other people of faith disagree with you?

I was raised to respect differing views so the rigid views against abortion are hard for me to understand. I will often tell someone on the other side, “I respect you. I may disagree with your theological perspective, but I respect your views. But I think it’s totally arrogant for you to tell me that I need to believe what you believe.” It’s not that I think we should not try to win each other over. But we have to respect people’s different religious beliefs.

But what about people who believe that life begins at conception and that terminating a pregnancy is murder? For them, it may not just be about respecting or tolerating each other’s viewpoints; they believe this is an issue of life or death. What do you say to people who make that kind of argument?

I would say that they have a right to their beliefs, as do I. I would try to explain that my views are grounded in my religion, as are theirs. I believe that we must ensure that women are treated with dignity and respect and that women are able to follow the dictates of their conscience – and that includes their reproductive decisions. Ultimately, it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that women have the ability to make decisions of conscience and have access to reproductive health services.

Some in the anti-abortion camp contend that the existence of legalized abortion is a sign of the self-centeredness and selfishness of our age. Is there any validity to this view?

Although abortion is a very difficult decision, it can be the most responsible decision a person can make when faced with an unintended pregnancy or a pregnancy that will have serious health consequences.

Depending on the circumstances, it might be selfish to bring a child into the world. You know, a lot of people say, “You must bring this child into the world.” They are 100 percent supportive while the child is in the womb. As soon as the child is born, they abort the child in other ways. They abort a child through lack of health care, lack of education, lack of housing, and through poverty, which can drive a child into drugs or the criminal justice system.

So is it selfish to bring children into the world and not care for them? I think the other side can be very selfish by neglecting the children we have already. For all practical purposes, children whom we are neglecting are being aborted.

This transcript has been edited for clarity, spelling and grammar.

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Persuasive Essay Writing

Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Learn How to Craft a Compelling Persuasive Essay About Abortion With Examples!

Published on: Jan 12, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 29, 2024

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Writing an essay on abortion is a controversial and often difficult undertaking. 

But with the right approach, you can craft an effective persuasive essay that brings awareness to this complex issue. 

In this blog post, we’ll outline how to approach your research. You will also learn how to create a strong argumentative structure to support your stance. 

So without further ado, let's dig in to learn more about this.

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How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Writing a persuasive abortion essay can be tricky. After all, abortion is an emotionally charged topic, and it can be hard to write objectively. 

But with careful planning and research, you can write an effective persuasive essay on abortion. 

Here are five steps to get you started. 

Step 1: Research Both Sides of the Issue

Before writing your essay, you should familiarize yourself with both sides.

 Read up on both pro-choice and pro-life arguments so that you have a comprehensive understanding of the debate. 

This will help ensure that your argument is well-informed and balanced.

Step 2: Choose a Stance and Develop Your Thesis Statement.

Once you've researched, decide which side of the debate you want. Construct a thesis statement that reflects this stance. 

This statement should be clear, concise, and specific enough to guide your essay.

Step 3: Support Your Argument With Evidence & Sources.

Now it's time to back up your thesis statement with evidence from credible sources such as scholarly articles or government reports. 

As much as possible, use facts rather than opinions when citing evidence to make your argument more convincing. 

Be sure to cite any sources used properly in either MLA or APA format so readers can easily find them. Check out this video explaining the importance of supporting your persuasive essays with evidence.

Step 4: Keep a Formal and Persuasive Tone Throughout Your Essay. 

When writing about such a sensitive subject, it’s important to maintain a formal tone throughout your essay.  

Avoid emotional language or personal anecdotes, as these can be biased or unprofessional.

Instead, focus on presenting logical arguments backed up by reliable evidence. 

This helps to create an argument that is compelling yet unbiased in presenting both sides of the issue.

Step 5: Make Sure You’ve Addressed Counterarguments & Objections. 

Before submitting your essay for grading or publication, take some time to reflect on potential counterarguments.

Address these issues directly, if necessary, to strengthen your argument’s validity and persuasiveness further. 

Read our extensive guide on crafting a persuasive essay , so that you know all ins and outs of crafting a perfect persuasive essay.

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Outline of a Persuasive Essay on Abortion

Here is a detailed outline of a persuasive essay about abortion. Follow this to make sure your essays stand out.

Read our extensive blog on how to create a persuasive essay outline here!

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples 

Having different examples and points of view on an abortion essay is a great way to learn about this controversial issue. 

Here are a  few examples of persuasive essays about abortion that you can look at for more information.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Check out some more persuasive essay examples to learn more!

Example of Argumentative Essay About Abortion 

Reading samples of argumentative abortion essays can provide insight into different perspectives.

Argumentative essays seek to challenge existing beliefs as well as propose new ones. 

Here are a few examples of argumentative essays about abortion that you can look at for more information: 

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

Here is a list of few topics that can inspire you for your next essay. Take a look at them.

• Should abortion remain legal? 
• Are there any circumstances where abortion should be illegal? 
• Is there a moral obligation to have an abortion in certain situations? 
• Why is the debate on abortion so contentious?
• What are the psychological effects of abortion? 
• How can society better support pregnant women who do not wish to have a baby? 
• Should there be stricter regulations around access to abortion services? 
• What are the long-term effects of abortion on a woman’s reproductive health? 
• Could pro-choice and pro-life advocates come together to compromise on abortion policies? 
• Does a woman’s right to choose trump the potential life of a fetus? 
• What are some of the possible medical complications related to abortion? 
• Can men have an opinion on abortion that is just as valid as a woman’s? 
• Are there any alternatives to abortion that can be used in cases where the baby cannot survive? 
• How has the legality of abortion affected women’s rights over the years?
• What is the best way to reduce abortions without denying a woman her right to choose? 

Check out our comprehensive list of  persuasive essay topics . You might find the inspiration to write your next persuasive essay!

A Few Interesting Facts About Abortion 

Abortion is a highly controversial topic, and many different viewpoints exist.

Some people believe that abortion is morally wrong, while others believe that it is a woman's right to choose what happens to her body. 

There are many facts about abortion that both sides of the debate can agree on, however. Here are some key points

1. Globally, an estimated 56 million abortions are performed each year. 

2. In the US, about 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion. 

3. Most women who have abortions (78%) are unmarried, and 25% are younger than 20. 

4. About half of all abortions performed in the US are done in the first eight weeks of pregnancy. 

5. There is a direct correlation between the legal availability of abortion and decreased infant mortality rates. 

6. In countries where abortion is illegal, women are more likely to die during childbirth due to a lack of access to safe, medical abortions. 

7. Most women (75%) who have abortions do so because they cannot afford to care for a child. 

8. The most common reasons why a woman would choose to have an abortion are financial, relationship issues, and feeling unprepared for the responsibility of parenting. 

9. Most abortions in the US occur in clinics or doctor’s offices rather than hospitals. 

10. Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures available, with a low rate of complications (less than 0.3%). 

In the end, a persuasive essay is all about making your point convincingly. With the right evidence, logical reasoning, and engaging tone, you can make an argument for any topic you choose. 

If you’re still struggling to put your thoughts together or need help getting started, don’t worry. Trust our professional essay writer with your next essay.

CollegeEssay.org offers top essay writing service  that will take care of everything for you. We guarantee a high-quality persuasive essay writing service that will get you the grades you deserve. So what are you waiting for? 

Contact us today, and let our essay writer AI help you write the perfect essay about abortion!

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Abortion as a right: arguments for pro-choice.

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Abortion rights are some of the most hotly contested issued in our society. Though the right to an abortion has been enshrined in American law for the past several decades, there has been a recurring attempt by conservative elements of the population to ban the practice or make it too difficult to access effectively. Regardless of the legality of abortion, there are many arguments for and against the procedure. The research paper service writer that wrote this argues in favor of the right of a woman to obtain an abortion. 

Pro-choice: Each woman has the right to an abortion

Abortion is one of the most divisive issues facing our country today. Supporters and critics of abortion will usually define themselves as being strictly pro-choice, in that they support a woman’s right to make decisions about her body , or strictly pro-life, in that they believe the fetus is a human life which should not be destroyed. However, most individuals do not define themselves within these restrictive concepts as they may find themselves somewhere in the middle of the debate with room for compromise . They recognize that the real life circumstances of abortion are not black and white. They may believe that in some cases it is justifiable to have an abortion such as in the cases of rape. Others are conflicted about the issue as their religion may have taught them one view and their experience has led to another. These conflicting views add to the debate as well as other complicated issues which deepen the discussion around the issue of abortion.

SCOTUS rules women have the right to choose

In my opinion, women have the right to have an abortion. It is their freedom of choice as well control over their body. However, more and more individuals are trying to make the decision for us. According to Luker, 2009, many of these individuals who attempt to make the decision for women are m en who would never have to make that personal decision of having an abortion themselves. Women have fought hard to be able to get the right to vote, be counted as a human being without a man attached and the right to make decisions over their body. By taking away the rights of women to make decisions about their body would make a negative impact on the progress made by the women's movement.

Individuals who involve themselves in the debate need to acknowledge that what may be the right decision for some may not be the best decision for others. While I believe that it is a women’s right to choose I am not fully supportive of all cases of abortion. I think that the time frame in which a woman is able to get an abortion need to be scaled back in some ways. However, this cannot occur for all cases as each individual woman may have different circumstances surrounding their decision to have an abortion. The pros and cons of the debate surrounding abortion will be analyzed to present a concise analysis of the issue. The various factors impacting the issue will also be analyzed. It is important to take into account both sides of an issue in order to understand what barrier exist in enacting or maintaining legislation.

Pros of abortion

The pros of abortion are often highlighted in cases in which women are raped or sexually abused and a pregnancy results. Supporters of abortion argue that women should not be forced to have a baby after a horrible incident such as a rape. The baby would serve as a reminder of the rape. Some individuals also support abortion in cases in which there may be medical problems which would significantly limit the quality of life for the baby that would be born. They would argue that a fetus is not a person right at conception which makes it okay to terminate a pregnancy early in the first trimester which often when abortions occur. Those who support abortion would argue that abortion is a safe medical procedure which significantly relieves the woman of the stress of having an unwanted pregnancy. 

The supporters of abortion would also argue that, although women have come a long way, they are still a group of individuals who oppressed . The chances of being oppressed increase if a woman is poor or belongs to a minority group. Having a baby which the woman is unable to care for keeps the woman in a cycle of poverty and deprivation. This oppression often makes it so that women are unable to make decisions about their reproductive rights. They are often involved in relationships which make it difficult for them to make contraceptive decisions on their own. These women often find themselves in poverty as they are unable to afford the many children they continue to have. By having the option of abortion available to them these women can make a decision about their reproductive rights and options. 

Arguments against abortion

The primary argument against abortion is that it is essentially murder which is against the First Amendment and our laws. Pro-life advocates consider the fetus a person right at conception once the sperm fertilizes the egg. This personhood argument makes it so that those women who are having abortions are killing the fetus.

“First, they can be used to make the claim that fetuses are creatures with interests of their own right from the start, including, preeminently, an interest in remaining alive, and that therefore they have the rights that all human beings have to protect these basic interests, including a right not to be killed” (Dworkin, 2011 n.p).

Those arguing against abortion also make the argument that it is often being utilized as a form of contraception when there are multiple other forms of effective contraception. They would also argue that other options are available for pregnant women such as adoption. This would save the life of the baby and provide families who have been unable to have a child with a baby of their own. The woman would be able to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity to help a family in need. 

Detractors of abortion often cite practical reasons such as medical or psychological consequences of having an abortion, which, for the most part, have been proven untrue . They argue that abortion can be an unsafe procedure which can result in numerous complications affecting the fertility of the woman for the rest of her life. They also argue that abortions can cause psychological distress in women who have them. The guilt associated with the act and thoughts of destroying their baby can make it difficult for them to function. This can lead to mental illness such as depression or anxiety which can be debilitating. Young women often have abortions in order not to have their future compromised by the responsibility of having children. However, the guilt associated with having an abortion can impact these young women for the rest of their lives. 

Many religions argue against abortion

Multiple factors impact the issue of abortion such as religious, legal and moral concerns which lean individuals in favor or against the issue. Religious views against abortion are that committing abortions go against God. This is not only because it violates the seventh commandment which states that murder is against the laws of God. Other religious views are that ending a pregnancy is acting as God since he is the only one that can make a decision to take a life. However, often religious individuals are also against contraception so their perceived solution to the problem is that individuals only have sex for procreation which is unrealistic. Those who have religious views are usually against abortion by any means. One recent example of moral attacks against abortion is the late-term abortion debate. Opponents argue this is murder because the child has a heartbeat and a chance for survival outside the womb .

Moral concerns of abortion revolve around the morality of limiting the civil rights of women but also around ending pregnancies due to the possibility of disabilities such as downs syndrome occurring in the baby. By not allowing a woman to control her body is denying her rights. However, the situation is complicated and is unique to women as men do not ever have to make that decision about their body. This is why it makes it easy for men, especially in legislative positions, to attempt to take away their right to choose. However, abortion often occurs when parents realize that their child may have a lifelong disability such as downs syndrome. In our current day and age, we realize that although downs syndrome can limit the ability of individuals with the disorder. 

However, these individuals are able to have long fulfilling lives and terminating a pregnancy due to this disorder is a form of genocide. Increased scientific knowledge (thanks to the writing of many college research papers by scientists) has also resulted in the ability of parents to predict the sex of their child early on in the pregnancy. this provides parents with the ability to terminate the pregnancy if it is not the sex they wanted. This gender selection is immoral and is often used in foreign countries in which patriarchal countries where women are looked down upon. Those who take into account moral reasons may believe in a woman’s right to have an abortion but not in the case of a child having downs syndrome.

Legal concerns

Legal concerns around the topic of abortion revolve around the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in Roe versus Wade that it is unconstitutional to deny a woman’s right to have an abortion. They deemed that abortions are protected rights which every woman has the right to make.

“But in the four decades since Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has come to recognize the abortion right as an equality right as well as a liberty right” (Siegel, 2013 pg. 160).

A woman’s right to make decisions over her body not only make her equal to men but also are a basic freedom that she should have. Those who take into account legal factors will state that despite personal opinion every woman has been given the right by the highest law of the land to make their own decision. They would argue that as long as an individual follows the laws set forth in each state about when a woman can have an abortion they are legally in their right to do so. Those who take into account legal reasons believe in a woman's right to choose in any situation. For example, the Texas restrictive abortion laws obey the letter of the law but place undue burdens on women seeking to terminate their pregnancy.

No end in sight for legal and ethical debates

Few people believe in just the religious, moral or legal factors regarding an issue. Their views are often influenced by a combination of these factors (much like the ethical debate of online essay services ). Therefore it is important to understand all of the various arguments that are contributed to the discussion. Both sides of the abortion debate need to be able to understand and take into account the views of the other side. By doing so they can better inform their own argument. Individuals may also be swayed to the other side of the debate. Having the right to debate an issue is a fundamental right of living in our free society. However, this freedom does not give individuals the right to deny abortion or reproductive rights to women as many have. By understanding the basic tenets of freedom and liberty provided to us by our constitution those against abortion may see the errors of their ways. 

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Works Cited

“Declaration of Independence - A History.” Declaration of Independence - A History. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration , n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. <http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html>.

“Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence: Right to Institute New Government.” Declaration of Independence: Right to Institute New Government. The Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffdec.html>.

Parker, Dennis. Jefferson's masterpiece: the story of the Declaration of Independence. Raleigh, N.C.: Dennis Parker, 2010. Print

Dworkin, R. (2011). Life's dominion: An argument about abortion, euthanasia, and individual freedom. Vintage.

Luker, K. (2009). Abortion and Politics of Motherhood. American Identities: An Introductory Textbook, 272.

Siegel, N. S., & Siegel, R. B. (2013). Equality Arguments for Abortion Rights. UCLA L. Rev. Disc., 60, 160-160.

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Comparison/Contrast Essays: Two Patterns

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First Pattern: Block-by-Block

By Rory H. Osbrink

Abortion is an example of a very controversial issue. The two opposing viewpoints surrounding abortion are like two sides of a coin. On one side, there is the pro-choice activist and on the other is the pro-life activist.

The argument is a balanced one; for every point supporting abortion there is a counter-point condemning abortion. This essay will delineate the controversy in one type of comparison/contrast essay form: the “”Argument versus Argument,”” or, “”Block-by-Block”” format. In this style of writing, first you present all the arguments surrounding one side of the issue, then you present all the arguments surrounding the other side of the issue. You are generally not expected to reach a conclusion, but simply to present the opposing sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined) Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Block-by-Block Format

One of the most divisive issues in America is the controversy surrounding abortion. Currently, abortion is legal in America, and many people believe that it should remain legal. These people, pro-choice activists, believe that it is the women’s right to chose whether or not to give birth. However, there are many groups who are lobbying Congress to pass laws that would make abortion illegal. These people are called the pro-life activists.

Explains pro-choice

Abortion is a choice that should be decided by each individual, argues the pro-choice activist. Abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet fully human, therefore, it is not in defiance against God. Regardless of the reason for the abortion, it should be the woman’s choice because it is her body. While adoption is an option some women chose, many women do not want to suffer the physical and emotional trauma of pregnancy and labor only to give up a child. Therefore, laws should remain in effect that protect a woman’s right to chose.

Explains pro-life

Abortion is an abomination, argues the pro-life activist. It makes no sense for a woman to murder a human being not even born. The bible says, “”Thou shalt not kill,”” and it does not discriminate between different stages of life. A fetus is the beginning of life. Therefore, abortion is murder, and is in direct defiance of God’s will. Regardless of the mother’s life situation (many women who abort are poor, young, or drug users), the value of a human life cannot be measured. Therefore, laws should be passed to outlaw abortion. After all, there are plenty of couples who are willing to adopt an unwanted child.

If we take away the woman’s right to chose, will we begin limiting her other rights also? Or, if we keep abortion legal, are we devaluing human life? There is no easy answer to these questions. Both sides present strong, logical arguments. Though it is a very personal decision, t he fate of abortion rights will have to be left for the Supreme Court to decide.

Second Pattern: Point-by-Point

This second example is also an essay about abortion. We have used the same information and line of reasoning in this essay, however, this one will be presented in the “”Point-by-Point”” style argument. The Point-by-Point style argument presents both sides of the argument at the same time. First, you would present one point on a specific topic, then you would follow that up with the opposing point on the same topic. Again, you are generally not expected to draw any conclusions, simply to fairly present both sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined)

Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Point-by-Point Format

Point One: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Supporters of both pro-life and pro-choice refer to religion as support for their side of the argument. Pro-life supporters claim that abortion is murder, and is therefore against God’s will. However, pro-choice defenders argue that abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet a fully formed human. Therefore, abortion would not be a defiance against God.

Point Two: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Another main point of the argument is over the woman’s personal rights, versus the rights of the unborn child. Pro-choice activists maintain that regardless of the individual circumstances, women should have the right to chose whether or not to abort. The pregnancy and labor will affect only the woman’s body, therefore it should be the woman’s decision. Pro-life supporters, on the other hand, believe that the unborn child has the right to life, and that abortion unlawfully takes away that right.

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There’s a Better Way to Debate Abortion

Caution and epistemic humility can guide our approach.

If Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization becomes law, we will enter a post– Roe v. Wade world in which the laws governing abortion will be legislatively decided in 50 states.

In the short term, at least, the abortion debate will become even more inflamed than it has been. Overturning Roe , after all, would be a profound change not just in the law but in many people’s lives, shattering the assumption of millions of Americans that they have a constitutional right to an abortion.

This doesn’t mean Roe was correct. For the reasons Alito lays out, I believe that Roe was a terribly misguided decision, and that a wiser course would have been for the issue of abortion to have been given a democratic outlet, allowing even the losers “the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight,” in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, for nearly half a century, Roe has been the law of the land. But even those who would welcome its undoing should acknowledge that its reversal could convulse the nation.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

If we are going to debate abortion in every state, given how fractured and angry America is today, we need caution and epistemic humility to guide our approach.

We can start by acknowledging the inescapable ambiguities in this staggeringly complicated moral question. No matter one’s position on abortion, each of us should recognize that those who hold views different from our own have some valid points, and that the positions we embrace raise complicated issues. That realization alone should lead us to engage in this debate with a little more tolerance and a bit less certitude.

Many of those on the pro-life side exhibit a gap between the rhetoric they employ and the conclusions they actually seem to draw. In the 1990s, I had an exchange, via fax, with a pro-life thinker. During our dialogue, I pressed him on what he believed, morally speaking , should be the legal penalty for a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs one.

My point was a simple one: If he believed, as he claimed, that an abortion even moments after conception is the killing of an innocent child—that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being deserving of all the moral and political rights granted to your neighbor next door—then the act ought to be treated, if not as murder, at least as manslaughter. Surely, given what my interlocutor considered to be the gravity of the offense, fining the doctor and taking no action against the mother would be morally incongruent. He was understandably uncomfortable with this line of questioning, unwilling to go to the places his premises led. When it comes to abortion, few people are.

Humane pro-life advocates respond that while an abortion is the taking of a human life, the woman having the abortion has been misled by our degraded culture into denying the humanity of the child. She is a victim of misinformation; she can’t be held accountable for what she doesn’t know. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument, but I think it ultimately falls short. In other contexts, insisting that people who committed atrocities because they truly believed the people against whom they were committing atrocities were less than human should be let off the hook doesn’t carry the day. I’m struggling to understand why it would in this context.

There are other complicating matters. For example, about half of all fertilized eggs are aborted spontaneously —that is, result in miscarriage—usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Focus on the Family, an influential Christian ministry, is emphatic : “Human life begins at fertilization.” Does this mean that when a fertilized egg is spontaneously aborted, it is comparable—biologically, morally, ethically, or in any other way—to when a 2-year-old child dies? If not, why not? There’s also the matter of those who are pro-life and contend that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being but allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. That is an understandable impulse but I don’t think it’s a logically sustainable one.

The pro-choice side, for its part, seldom focuses on late-term abortions. Let’s grant that late-term abortions are very rare. But the question remains: Is there any point during gestation when pro-choice advocates would say “slow down” or “stop”—and if so, on what grounds? Or do they believe, in principle, that aborting a child up to the point of delivery is a defensible and justifiable act; that an abortion procedure is, ethically speaking, the same as removing an appendix? If not, are those who are pro-choice willing to say, as do most Americans, that the procedure gets more ethically problematic the further along in a pregnancy?

Read: When a right becomes a privilege

Plenty of people who consider themselves pro-choice have over the years put on their refrigerator door sonograms of the baby they are expecting. That tells us something. So does biology. The human embryo is a human organism, with the genetic makeup of a human being. “The argument, in which thoughtful people differ, is about the moral significance and hence the proper legal status of life in its early stages,” as the columnist George Will put it.

These are not “gotcha questions”; they are ones I have struggled with for as long as I’ve thought through where I stand on abortion, and I’ve tried to remain open to corrections in my thinking. I’m not comfortable with those who are unwilling to grant any concessions to the other side or acknowledge difficulties inherent in their own position. But I’m not comfortable with my own position, either—thinking about abortion taking place on a continuum, and troubled by abortions, particularly later in pregnancy, as the child develops.

The question I can’t answer is where the moral inflection point is, when the fetus starts to have claims of its own, including the right to life. Does it depend on fetal development? If so, what aspect of fetal development? Brain waves? Feeling pain? Dreaming? The development of the spine? Viability outside the womb? Something else? Any line I might draw seems to me entirely arbitrary and capricious.

Because of that, I consider myself pro-life, but with caveats. My inability to identify a clear demarcation point—when a fetus becomes a person—argues for erring on the side of protecting the unborn. But it’s a prudential judgment, hardly a certain one.

At the same time, even if one believes that the moral needle ought to lean in the direction of protecting the unborn from abortion, that doesn’t mean one should be indifferent to the enormous burden on the woman who is carrying the child and seeks an abortion, including women who discover that their unborn child has severe birth defects. Nor does it mean that all of us who are disturbed by abortion believe it is the equivalent of killing a child after birth. In this respect, my view is similar to that of some Jewish authorities , who hold that until delivery, a fetus is considered a part of the mother’s body, although it does possess certain characteristics of a person and has value. But an early-term abortion is not equivalent to killing a young child. (Many of those who hold this position base their views in part on Exodus 21, in which a miscarriage that results from men fighting and pushing a pregnant woman is punished by a fine, but the person responsible for the miscarriage is not tried for murder.)

“There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?”

That strikes me as right; with abortion, we’re dealing with an awesome mystery and insoluble empirical questions. Which means that rather than hurling invective at one another and caricaturing those with whom we disagree, we should try to understand their views, acknowledge our limitations, and even show a touch of grace and empathy. In this nation, riven and pulsating with hate, that’s not the direction the debate is most likely to take. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying.

The Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice Debate

What does each side believe?

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• Ph.D., Religion and Society, Edith Cowan University
• M.A., Humanities, California State University - Dominguez Hills
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The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" refer to the dominant ideologies concerning abortion rights. Those who are pro-life, a term that some argue is biased because it suggests that the opposition does not value human life, believe that abortion should be banned. Those who are pro-choice support keeping abortion legal and accessible.

In reality, the controversies related to reproductive rights are much more complex. Some people back abortions in certain circumstances and not in others or believe such procedures should be " safe, rare, and lega l." Complicating matters is that there's no consensus on when exactly life begins . The shades of gray in the abortion debate are why the reproductive rights discussion is far from simple.

The Pro-Life Perspective

Someone who is "pro-life" believes that the government has an obligation to preserve all human life, regardless of intent, viability, or quality-of-life concerns. A comprehensive pro-life ethic, such as that proposed by the Roman Catholic Church, prohibits:

• Euthanasia and assisted suicide 
• The death penalty
• War, with very few exceptions

In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with personal autonomy, as in abortion and assisted suicide, it's considered conservative. In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with government policy, as in the death penalty and war, it's said to be liberal.

Pro-Choice Perspective

People who are " pro-choice " believe that individuals have unlimited autonomy with respect to their own reproductive systems, as long as they don't breach the autonomy of others. A comprehensive pro-choice position asserts that the following must remain legal:

• Celibacy and abstinence
• Contraception use
• Emergency contraception use

Under the Partial Birth Abortion Ban passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003, abortion became illegal under most circumstances in the second trimester of pregnancy, even if the mother's health is in danger. Individual states have their own laws, some banning abortion after 20 weeks and most restricting late-term abortions . 

The pro-choice position is perceived as "pro-abortion" to some in the U.S., but this is inaccurate. The purpose of the pro-choice movement is to ensure that all choices remain legal.

Point of Conflict

The pro-life and pro-choice movements primarily come into conflict on the issue of abortion . The pro-life movement argues that even a nonviable, undeveloped human life is sacred and must be protected by the government. Abortion should be prohibited, according to this model, and not practiced on an illegal basis either.

The pro-choice movement argues that the government should not prevent an individual from terminating a pregnancy before the point of viability (when the fetus can't live outside the womb). The pro-life and pro-choice movements overlap to an extent in that they share the goal of reducing the number of abortions. However, they differ with respect to degree and methodology.

Religion and the Sanctity of Life

Politicians on both sides of the abortion debate only sometimes reference the religious nature of the conflict. If one believes that an immortal soul is created at the moment of conception and that "personhood" is determined by the presence of that soul, then there is effectively no difference between terminating a week-old pregnancy or killing a living, breathing person. Some members of the anti-abortion movement have acknowledged (while maintaining that all life is sacred) that a difference exists between a fetus and a fully-formed human being.

Religious Pluralism and the Obligation of Government

The U.S. government can't acknowledge the existence of an immortal soul that begins at conception without taking on a specific, theological definition of human life . Some theological traditions teach that the soul is implanted at quickening (when the fetus begins to move) rather than at conception. Other theological traditions teach that the soul is born at birth, while some assert that the soul doesn't exist until well after birth. Still, other theological traditions teach that there is no immortal soul whatsoever.

Can Science Tell Us Anything?

Although there is no scientific basis for the existence of a soul, there is no such basis for the existence of subjectivity, either. This can make it difficult to ascertain concepts such as "sanctity." Science alone can't tell us whether a human life is worth more or less than a rock. We value each other for social and emotional reasons. Science doesn't tell us to do it.

To the extent that we have anything approaching a scientific definition of personhood, it would most likely rest in our understanding of the brain . Scientists believe that neocortical development makes emotion and cognition possible and that it doesn't begin until the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy.

Alternative Standards for Personhood

Some pro-life advocates argue that the presence of life alone, or of unique DNA, defines personhood. Many things that we don't consider to be living persons might meet this criterion. Our tonsils and appendices are certainly both human and alive, but we don't consider their removal as anything close to the killing of a person.

The unique DNA argument is more compelling. Sperm and egg cells contain genetic material that will later form the zygote. The question of whether certain forms of gene therapy also create new persons could be raised by this definition of personhood.

Not a Choice

The pro-life vs. pro-choice debate tends to overlook the fact that the vast majority of women who have abortions don't do so by choice, at least not entirely. Circumstances put them in a position where abortion is the least self-destructive option available. According to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 73 percent of women who had abortions in the  United States  in 2004 said that they couldn't afford to have children.

The Future of Abortion

The most effective forms of birth control —even if used correctly—were only 90 percent effective in the late 20th century. Today, contraceptive options have improved and even should they fail for some reason, individuals may take emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy.

Advancements in birth control may help to further reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancies. Someday abortion may grow increasingly rare in the United States. But for this to happen, individuals from all socioeconomic backgrounds and regions would need to have access to cost-effective and reliable forms of contraception.

• DeSanctis, Alexandra. "How Democrats Purged 'Safe, Legal, Rare' From the Party", November, 15, 2019.
•  Finer, Lawrence B. "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives." Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann M. Moore, Volume 37, Issue 3, Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2005.
• Santorum, Sen. Rick. "S.3 - Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003." 108th Congress, H. Rept. 108-288 (Conference Report), Congress, February 14, 2003.
• "State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy." State Laws and Policies, Guttmacher Institute, April 1, 2019. 
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Pro-Choice Essay

Pro Choice Pros And Cons

The debate about pro-life and pro-choice between abortions will always be around, but finding informative information will educate and help anyone trying to research this topic. “American Choose “Pro-Choice” for First Time in Seven Years” by Lydia Saad reports how pro-choice is increasing throughout the past couple years as well as providing details about where United States citizens stand on the abortion issue. “The Politics of Abortions Will Get More Complicated in 2017” by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Term Paper The article that I chose is called "What choice?", and was published by TIME magazine on January 14, 2013. The author briefly discusses the various arguments made in favor of supporting abortion in the United States, as well as some reasons why the Pro-choice movement isn't fully implemented after the U.S Supreme court ruling Roe v. Wade was enacted. The article continuously draws back to the Red River Woman's clinic in North Dakota to emphasize some issues faced by the patients, physicians

Pro Choice And Pro Life

abortion is; “The termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to being capable of normal growth”. Abortion is one of the most controversial topics today. Although there are two sides of the debate pro-choice and pro life, arguments are mainly centered around the Roe v. Wade decision, women’s rights and state restrictive laws. Women faced many difficulties before Roe V. Wade case. After the case the court made abortions available to women in the United States

Pro Choice Of Abortion

October 2017 Marissa recently found out she was pregnant, she was taking birth control pills as contraceptives to avoid a pregnancy, but she knew she needed to take an emergency contraceptive. Marissa was a pro-life activist, meaning she opposed abortions. She, along with all the other pro-life supporters, never did accept that people had abortions. People felt the same on the topic as her, they were all completely against abortions and shamed woman who had took part in the practice. She did not

Why Pro-Choice Is The Right Choice

Why Pro-Choice is the Right Choice With the evolving moral standards of society, abortions are becoming more and more justified. Abortions, the practice of removing a fertilized egg from a mother, has become a controversial issue in American society, but should be generally supported because women should have the choice on how they choose their eggs to go on, whether it be to end further growth of the fetus or not. Women have a right to control what happens in and with their body. Being a pro-choice

What Is Pro Choice?

Pro Choice In the article “Defending Choice, Yet Again: An Unapologetic Defense of Abortion Rights-- and About Time,” written by Lindsay Beyerstein in The American Prospect, abortion and the reason chose to be Pro Choice are addressed. Many people throughout life can overcome the question, is abortion right? The only problem is no one can never give the reason for yes or no. The information provided in this article shows of ways that people should look back and reevaluate their decision on thinking

Abortion : Pro Choice And Pro-Life

ongoing fight; Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. To determine which group suits you, you can ask yourself do you think abortion should be banned or accepted? I choose to accept abortion and therefore identify as a person who is Pro-Choice. Abortion is not a black and white issue. It can be complicated and personal. My groups position on the issue on abortion is that we believe that abortions are a woman’s choice and shouldn’t be limited by the government or any religious authorities. Pro-Choice does not necessarily

Abortion, Pro Choice, And Pro Life

today. People’s different perspectives and opinion on whether or not abortion is immoral continue to divide America into two groups: “Pro-choice” and “Pro-life”. However, pro-life advocates tend to focus more on the fetus rather than how abortion and programs have actually benefited the mother and families. There is hypocrisy in people who identify themselves as “pro-life” and the word itself can be misleading as it does not align with the true values of protecting a life. Over the years, technology

Abortion: Pro Life Or Pro Choice?

should have the option to chose, and others think that it is still not an excuse. There are many valid arguments for both views, pro life and pro choice. Pro life is a group who thinks women should not have the right to an abortion, and abortion is murder. Pro choice is a group that believes women should have the right to their own bodies and should be able to make the choice of whether or not to go through with their pregnancy and should

Pro Life Vs Pro Choice

been a topic talked about for several years and I strongly believe that abortion should be the mothers choice. The definition of abortion is “The termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to being capable of normal growth.” Pro-life people are against abortion and consider it to be murder whereas pro-choice people believe it is the mothers choice whether she wants to abort the baby or not. Women have many reasons to abort their babies such as religion

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How To Create A Best Abortion Argumentative Essay?

Table of Contents

The topic of abortion is highly debated among various groups of people all around the world. Abortion is a synthetic way of ending a pregnancy by extraction or removal of an embryo before it can live outside the womb.

Because of the moral subsoil of the question, it is fiercely discussed even in the countries where such medical procedure is allowed by the government.

Argumentative essay on abortion: what’s the thing about?

First and foremost you need to remember that the topic which has a medical aspect requires a careful and attentive approach to the research and presentation. Examine the question diligently in order to operate with the terminology you may need freely.

Keep in mind that many people are sensitive to your abortion argumentative essay topic, so be careful with the word choice in your essay not to offend anybody.

The structure for the essay on abortion is the same as for any of a kind.

You begin your essay with the introduction . Here you give the main definitions in case the reader is not aware of the topic. You also include some background information on the problem, describe the reason for your work and end the entry with a thesis. As a rule, a thesis contains your point of view on the subject.

A useful hint: to write a good thesis statement for abortion, you definitely have to be well acquainted with the topic, but also you need to be honest with what you write.

In the main body of your college research paper , you express all the points for and against the abortions. That means you will have two paragraphs for each group of statements. In this part, you place all the ideas you have.

Finally, you write a conclusion for the essay. Here you have to sum up all the thoughts you’ve already written, without adding anything new. Express your own point of view on the question of abortion.

In some cases, you may be asked to write an outline for your essay. It is a table of contents where you enumerate the paragraphs of your essay.

To make it as well-directed as possible, select the main ideas of every paragraph and note them down. It may look like this:

Introduction: The problem of abortions.

Main body: Everything considered on the topic of abortions, namely

• Paragraph 1: Advantages an abortion can provide.
• Paragraph 2: Disadvantages and negative consequences of an abortion.

Conclusion: Inference and personal point of view on the problem.

Argumentative essay on abortion examples and ideas

How about some examples and ideas for your research paper writing needs? Try one of the following topics:

• Will abortion illegalization increase the number of backstreet abortions?
• The attitude to abortion in different cultures.
• What are the effects of abortion on a woman’s health?
• What should be the lowest age for abortion?
• What are the reasons behind the decision of married couples to do an abortion?
• Can the unborn fetus feel pain during the procedure of abortion?
• Should abortion be considered as a murder?
• Why women do abortions?

A general argumentative essay on abortion pro-choice which fits the outline above may have the following structure:

Introduction.

• The definition of an abortion.
• The analysis of the social aspect.
• Thesis: “Should society’s disapproval break not only the women’s, but also the families and unwanted children’s lives?”
• Paragraph 1. An argument in favor of abortion (two, three, or more).
• Paragraph 2: An argument against abortion (same as in the previous paragraph).

Conclusion.

• A general deduction that confirms the thesis in the introduction.
• Expression of a personal vision of a problem.

What’s more, it may be of great help for you to search for some full free argumentative essays on abortion. This will help you to get a complete picture of an essay.

Supporting arguments for abortion

Here are some ideas of pro-abortion thesis statements. You may use them in your essay or make up your unique arguments.

• Everybody has a basic fundamental right to do anything with own body.
• It is crucial for a woman’s independence to decide whether she wants to have a child.
• Some scientists claim that personhood starts when a fetus is able to live outside the womb, so after the birth.
• Most neuroscientists believe that fetuses can’t feel pain when the abortion is done.
• Legal and professional abortions reduce women’s injury or even death from illegal backstreet abortions.
• Modern methods of abortion won’t cause infertility and other lasting health problems.
• Abortion is the chance not to give birth to a child with deviations.
• Women who can’t do an abortion may become unemployed, live below the poverty line, or become a victim of domestic violence.
• A child may not come to the world unwanted.
• Abortion is considered to be one of the methods of population control.

What to say against abortion?

If you’ve decided to adhere to the opposite side, here are some useful arguments against abortion. Take one of these or come up with own.

• Abortion is a murder of the innocent creature.
• Life begins in the womb of a woman, so the unborn child is a human who has the right to live.
• Many scientists believe that fetuses feel sufferings while abortion is done.
• Abortion contradicts God’s commandments.
• Abortion causes psychological problems.
• Abortions may reduce the number of children available for adoption.
• Abortion, because of the embryo’s abnormalities, can be regarded as discrimination of a physical feature.
• Abortion is not a form of contraception.
• Women have to accept the responsibilities that come with pregnancy.
• Originally, the Hippocratic Oath forbids abortion.
• Abortion popularizes the disrespect of life.
• According to the investigations of a Guttmacher Institute, black women are doing abortions more frequently than white, which means that it violates the balance of African babies.
• Abortion destroys the possible social contribution of an unborn child.
• Abortion may cause future health problems of a woman.

On balance…

The topic of abortion is highly discussed nowadays so it won’t be too difficult to make up your mind about the issue you’d want to cover in your essay.

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Are you about to write a persuasive essay on abortion but wondering how to begin?

Writing an effective persuasive essay on the topic of abortion can be a difficult task for many students. 

It is important to understand both sides of the issue and form an argument based on facts and logical reasoning. This requires research and understanding, which takes time and effort.

In this blog, we will provide you with some easy steps to craft a persuasive essay about abortion that is compelling and convincing. Moreover, we have included some example essays and interesting facts to read and get inspired by. 

So let's start!

• 1. How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?
• 2. Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples
• 3. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion
• 4. Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics
• 5. Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments. 

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay .

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing. 

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument. 

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both? 

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information.

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Step 3: Define Your Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and audience, it is time to craft your argument. 

Start by defining what you believe and why, making sure to use evidence to support your claims. You also need to consider the opposing arguments and come up with counter arguments. This helps make your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. 

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of argumentative essay with introduction, body and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay. 

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

• Should abortion be legal in the United States?
• Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
• What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
• Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
• What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
• How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
• Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
• Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
• Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
• How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values? 

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you. 

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

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Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

• According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
• The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
• Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
• In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban most forms of abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
• Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
• In places where abortion is illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
• A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
• According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing. 

Need the services of a persuasive essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com that provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion. 

So, just ask our experts ' do my essay ' and get professional help.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i talk about in an essay about abortion.

When writing an essay about abortion, it is important to cover all the aspects of the subject. This includes discussing both sides of the argument, providing facts and evidence to support your claims, and exploring potential solutions.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

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Caleb S. has been providing writing services for over five years and has a Masters degree from Oxford University. He is an expert in his craft and takes great pride in helping students achieve their academic goals. Caleb is a dedicated professional who always puts his clients first.

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Apr 26, 2023

Essays on Abortion: Insightful Perspectives and Real-Life Examples to Inspire Your Writing

Abortion is a complex and highly debated topic that touches on issues of morality, politics, and personal choice. Whether you're writing an essay for a class or simply want to explore the topic more deeply, finding the right inspiration and structure for your writing can be a challenge. But fear not: in this article, we've gathered some of the most compelling examples of abortion essays and broken down the essential elements of a strong abortion essay. Whether you're pro-choice, pro-life, or somewhere in between, this article has something for everyone. So buckle up and get ready for an insightful and thought-provoking exploration of this controversial topic.

When writing an essay on the abortion debate, it is important to provide insightful perspectives to help readers understand the complex issues . One way to do this is by offering real-life examples that illustrate the impact of abortion on individuals and society as a whole. By highlighting both the personal and societal consequences of this controversial topic, you can help readers gain a more nuanced understanding of the issue.

For instance, you could discuss how access to safe abortion legislation has improved women's health and autonomy in countries where it is legal. On the other hand, you could also explore how restrictive abortion laws can lead to unsafe and illegal procedures, putting women's health and lives at risk.

In addition to providing real-life examples, it's important to offer insightful perspectives on the abortion essay arguments. This might involve examining the legal, social, and ethical considerations of abortion and how different perspectives on these issues might shape public policy.

Overall, writing an essay on the abortion debate requires careful thought, research, and analysis . By providing insightful perspectives and real-life examples, you can help readers understand the complexities of this important topic.

About abortion essay arguments

The abortion essay arguments surrounding induced abortion are complex and multifaceted, with many ethical considerations at play. One of the primary debates is the role of abortion legislation in regulating access to this medical procedure. 

Some argue that regulations that restrict access to abortion, particularly for minors, are necessary to protect the welfare of individuals and society at large. Others contend that such regulations infringe upon the rights of individuals to make their own decisions about their bodies.

Despite these debates, it is clear that the risks associated with illegal abortion methods are significant, and that individuals who seek out these methods may face serious health consequences . It is therefore important to ensure that safe and legal abortion services are accessible to those who need them, to protect the health and well-being of women and their families.

Types of Abortion

Medical Abortion: This type of abortion involves taking medication to induce the termination of a pregnancy. It typically involves taking two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol , over the course of several days to cause the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy. 

Surgical Abortion: This type of abortion involves a procedure to remove the contents of the uterus. There are several methods of surgical abortion, including vacuum aspiration, dilation and curettage (D&C), dilation and evacuation (D&E), and induction abortion. The type of surgical abortion used will depend on the stage of pregnancy and other factors. 

Chemical Abortion: This is another term for medical abortion, which involves taking medication to induce abortion. 

Late-Term Abortion: This refers to an abortion that takes place after the first trimester of pregnancy (usually after 24 weeks). Late-term abortions are typically performed only in cases where the life or health of the mother is at risk or in cases of severe fetal abnormalities.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay on Abortion

The pros and cons of terminating a pregnancy can be found in an argumentative essay on the topic. One of the most distinguishing features of this type of essay is that it can be written from multiple perspectives. 

Some may conceive of this essay regarding psychology and sociology, while some may care passionately about writing pro-choice essays on abortion and pushing their views in the areas of healthcare and research. No matter your perspective, you must do some groundwork and ensure you correctly process your arguments and data.

Writers of abortion essays should maintain a neutral stance. Those who are very sensitive to the stated topic should not be offended by the topic, the selection of arguments, or the wording used.

The purpose of an argumentative abortion essay is to present the issue and the supporting and opposing arguments. Providing context, outlining the topic's current situation, and incorporating the most recent research is also crucial.

Honesty is paramount when considering a title for an abortion essay. The title shouldn't be misleading or inappropriate in any way. If you're writing an essay on why abortion is wrong, for example, you'll need to decide whether you'll be arguing for or against the topic overall.

What is the structure of writing an abortion essay?

As we all know that a standard essay has an introductory paragraph , body paragraphs (usually 3-5), and a conclusion. Even the abortion essay follows this rule. Abortion essays are similar to other essays in many ways, but there are a few key differences that necessitate a somewhat unique approach.

Introduction

Before you can even begin to write your abortion essay, you need to define the term. Although virtually everyone is familiar with the term "abortion," a clear definition is still required. You can mention afterward how current research or events have made abortion an extremely divisive issue. Your major goal after an introduction should be to show how you feel about the subject.

The task at hand is to put your thoughts into a concise thesis statement. The question, "Should the nation decide for women what to do with their lives and bodies?" is a good candidate for a thesis statement.

Core content

The following structure could be used for the essay's body if you choose to argue in favor of abortion: Provide a single argument against abortion and two or three paragraphs in favour of the practice. Don't just say abortion is good or evil without providing arguments either way.

You should briefly recap what you discussed in the text at the end. When you're writing, keep in mind the thesis statement you introduced. Provide your perspective and approach to the issue at hand.

Example Essays

Essays on abortion are just one of the many topics that Jenni.ai can swiftly and accurately write on. This program uses artificial intelligence to generate essays rapidly on any topic. If you need help writing your thesis, then we recommend Jenni.ai.

Should Abortions be Legal?

In the history of abortion and its legality, there have been many legal changes that sometimes legalize abortion and other times the legality of abortion is abolished. There has been a continuous debate on abortion though it is legally practiced in some regions.

The main issue that is hotly contested in the debate is when life begins so that the debate shifts from merely thinking about whether abortion is morally good or bad to whether the act violates another person’s right to life or not.

Taking into account both the life of the mother and that of the fetus, abortion should be legalized (Women’s International Network, 1982). The paper discusses the legality of abortion and how illegalizing abortion contravenes the very laws that protect the rights of women.

In this essay, the author of this essay argues that abortion should be recognized as a right, and it should be legalized to protect the rights of women. Religious groups, especially Christians and Muslims, have been known to be anti-abortionists, but their arguments are based on subjective interpretations of their holy books.

Legalizing abortion will allow women to be free from harm that may arise from unwanted pregnancies, and it will also allow women to choose whether they want to keep the child they carry or not.

Should abortion be considered murder?

Introduction:

Abortion is a hotly contested topic in today's political climate. The idea that abortion ought to be treated as murder is among the most divisive arguments. Proponents of this view say abortion should be illegal because it is a purposeful killing of a human being. Although abortion is a touchy and morally complicated subject, this essay argues that it should not be deemed murder.

Some who consider abortion murder argue, principally, that a fetus is a person with all the rights and dignity accorded to any other human being. They claim that the fetus can live since it is a living being with the capacity to mature into a human being. Hence, abortion is a form of capital murder.

However, there are several counterarguments to this position. Firstly, the idea that a fetus has the same inherent rights as a fully-formed human being is problematic. While a fetus may be a living being, it is not the same as a fully-formed human being with thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The concept of personhood, which defines the attributes necessary for someone to be considered a person, is not clearly defined, and as such, the question of when a fetus becomes a person is a contentious issue.

Furthermore, the argument that a fetus has the right to life ignores the rights and autonomy of the mother. It is essential to acknowledge that pregnancy and childbirth are complex and challenging experiences that can have significant physical, emotional, and psychological effects on a woman's body and well-being. Therefore, women should have the right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy without fear of legal repercussions.

It is also important to consider the broader social and economic implications of abortion. Criminalizing abortion would not prevent women from having abortions. Instead, it would drive the practice underground and put the health and safety of women at risk. Moreover, it would disproportionately impact marginalized communities who may not have access to safe and legal abortion services, leading to further social and economic inequality.

Finally, it is worth noting that the position that abortion is murder is often based on religious or moral beliefs that are not shared by everyone. While it is essential to respect individual beliefs and values, it is not appropriate to impose them on others through the law.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the assertion that abortion is murder is a highly contentious and morally complex issue. While it is understandable that some may view abortion as the deliberate taking of human life, this perspective does not fully account for the rights and autonomy of women, the complexity of personhood, and the broader social and economic implications of criminalizing abortion. Instead, we should focus on ensuring that women have access to safe and legal abortion services and support them in making informed and autonomous decisions about their bodies and reproductive health.

What are the effects of abortion on a woman’s health?

Abortion is a medical procedure that involves ending a pregnancy. It is a sensitive and controversial issue that raises questions about a woman's physical and mental health. This essay will examine the effects of abortion on a woman's health, both physical and psychological, and provide a balanced and informative perspective on the matter.

Physical Effects:

The physical effects of abortion vary depending on the method used and the gestational age of the fetus. In general, abortions performed during the first trimester are considered safe and have a low risk of complications. However, abortions performed during the second or third trimester are more complicated and may have a higher risk of complications.

Some of the physical effects of abortion can include:

Bleeding and cramping - These are common side effects of abortion, particularly in the days and weeks following the procedure.

Infection - There is a risk of infection following an abortion, particularly if the procedure is performed in an unsafe or unsanitary environment.

Damage to the cervix - In some cases, an abortion may cause damage to the cervix, which can increase the risk of premature delivery or cervical incompetence in future pregnancies.

Emotional and psychological effects - Abortion can have a profound impact on a woman's emotional and psychological well-being. The psychological effects of abortion can include depression, anxiety, guilt, and grief.

Psychological Effects:

The psychological effects of abortion can be just as significant as the physical effects. The decision to have an abortion can be a difficult and emotional one, and it can have a lasting impact on a woman's mental health.

Some of the psychological effects of abortion can include:

Depression - Many women experience feelings of sadness, grief, and depression following an abortion.

Anxiety - Some women may experience anxiety, panic attacks, or other forms of psychological distress following an abortion.

Guilt and Shame - Many women feel guilt and shame after having an abortion, which can have a significant impact on their mental health.

Relationship Issues - Abortion can have a significant impact on a woman's relationships, including with her partner, family, and friends.

Substance Abuse - Some women may turn to alcohol or drugs as a way of coping with the emotional and psychological effects of abortion.

In conclusion, abortion can have a significant impact on a woman's physical and mental health. While abortions performed during the first trimester are generally considered safe and have a low risk of complications, abortions performed during the second or third trimester can be more complicated and may have a higher risk of complications. 

Moreover, the psychological effects of abortion can be just as significant as the physical effects, including depression, anxiety, guilt, and grief. Therefore, women must have access to accurate information, counseling, and support before and after an abortion to ensure that they can make an informed decision and receive the appropriate care and support.

What should be the lowest age for abortion?

The issue of what should be the lowest age for abortion is a sensitive and controversial topic. It raises questions about young person's autonomy, their right to make decisions about their own body, and the role of parents and society in protecting their welfare. This essay will examine the current laws and regulations surrounding abortion for minors, as well as the ethical and practical considerations of setting a minimum age for abortion.

Current Laws and Regulations:

Abortion laws and regulations for minors differ widely across nations and states. In some of these countries, like the United States, children can get an abortion without their parent’s knowledge or permission, but in others, like Canada, they need their parents' permission beforehand.

Although the Supreme Court has established a constitutional right to abortion for minors in the United States, individual states retain the power to set limitations on this right, including parental approval and notification requirements. Presently, 37 states call for parental participation, while only 13 do not.

By Canadian law, a juvenile cannot legally get an abortion without the approval of one of their parents or a judge. Several jurisdictions, notably Quebec, do not require parental notification or consent for minors to access abortion services.

Ethical and Practical Considerations:

Setting a minimum age for abortion raises ethical and practical considerations. On the one hand, minors have a right to make decisions about their bodies, including whether or not to have an abortion. Moreover, many young people may face difficult or dangerous situations, such as rape or incest, and may need access to abortion services without parental involvement.

On the other hand, there are concerns about the welfare of minors and the role of parents and society in protecting their well-being. Some argue that minors are not mature enough to make such a significant decision and that parental involvement is necessary to ensure that they receive appropriate care and support.

Another practical consideration is the ability of minors to access abortion services. In some areas, there may be a lack of services or resources, which can make it difficult for minors to obtain an abortion, even if they are legally entitled to do so.

In conclusion, the issue of what should be the lowest age for abortion is a complex and sensitive topic. The laws and regulations surrounding abortion for minors vary widely, and there are ethical and practical considerations to be taken into account when setting a minimum age. 

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to have an abortion should be left to the individual, with appropriate care and support provided to ensure that they can make an informed decision and receive the appropriate care. However, it is important to ensure that minors are protected and supported and that they have access to the resources and services they need to make the best decision for themselves.

The attitude to abortion in different cultures

Abortion is a highly debated and controversial topic all around the world. Different cultures and religions have varying views on this topic, and these attitudes toward abortion are often influenced by social, ethical, and religious beliefs. While some cultures consider it a personal decision, others see it as a moral or ethical issue. This essay will examine the attitudes toward abortion in different cultures and highlight the various factors that influence these attitudes.

Attitudes to abortion in different cultures:

United States:

In the United States, the attitude toward abortion is highly polarized. The debate often centers around the right to life and the right to choose. Those who are pro-choice argue that women should have the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, while those who are pro-life believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is therefore tantamount to murder. These attitudes have been shaped by a variety of factors, including religious beliefs, political ideology, and personal experiences.

In China, the government has historically enforced a one-child policy, which prohibited couples from having more than one child. This policy was implemented to control population growth, and as a result, the attitude towards abortion in China is more accepting. Many couples have terminated pregnancies to comply with the policy, and abortion has become a socially accepted method of birth control.

In India, the attitude towards abortion is influenced by the religious beliefs of the population. While Hinduism does not have a specific stance on abortion, it is generally seen as unacceptable in traditional Hindu culture. However, in modern-day India, the attitudes towards abortion have become more accepting, and it is seen as a means of family planning. Additionally, India's government has implemented policies to promote family planning and reduce population growth, which has led to more widespread acceptance of abortion.

Islamic Countries:

In Islamic countries, the attitude towards abortion is generally negative. Islam places a high value on the sanctity of life, and therefore, abortion is considered a sin in most Islamic cultures. However, some Muslim scholars argue that abortion is permissible in certain circumstances, such as when the mother's life is in danger or when the fetus has a severe deformity. Overall, however, the attitude towards abortion in Islamic cultures is highly influenced by religious beliefs and the interpretation of Islamic law.

In conclusion, attitudes towards abortion vary greatly across cultures and are influenced by a wide range of factors, including religious beliefs, political ideology, and personal experiences. While some cultures have become more accepting of abortion as a means of family planning, others continue to view it as a moral or ethical issue. Ultimately, the decision to have an abortion should be a personal one, and individuals should have the right to choose what is best for themselves and their families. It is important for societies to respect the beliefs and values of others and to promote policies that ensure access to safe and legal abortion services for those who choose to pursue them.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, writing a compelling essay on the topic of abortion can be challenging, but it's also an opportunity to explore a complex and important issue in depth. By examining the different types of abortion and considering the various arguments for and against it, you can craft a nuanced and thought-provoking essay that engages readers and sheds new light on the topic.

 Of course, writing any essay can be a daunting task, but with the right tools and resources, you can make the process more manageable and even enjoyable. That's where Jenni.ai comes in. With our AI-enhanced writing tool, you can craft a powerful and persuasive essay on abortion or any other topic that matters to you. 

Our tool offers a range of features to enhance your writing, from AI autocomplete to in-text citations. With Jenni.ai, you'll have access to everything you need to produce essays that are well-researched, engaging, and impactful. 

So why wait? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and start writing your own outstanding essays on abortion or any other topic that inspires you. With our help, you can achieve your writing goals and make your voice heard in the world.

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Guest Essay

The Looming Decision That Could Get Pro-Choice Voters to the Polls

By Mary Ziegler

Ms. Ziegler is a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “Roe: The History of a National Obsession.”

If you had asked me at the start of this Supreme Court term what the blockbuster abortion case would be, I would have focused on the one that could limit access to mifepristone, a drug used in a majority of U.S. abortions . But oral arguments last month suggested strongly that the justices might not even think that case has standing — which is to say, that decision is likely not to make much of a difference.

But a decision in the second case, on access to emergency abortions, may have much more profound consequences, both for November’s election and the ongoing struggle over reproductive rights. The case centers on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, a federal law that was passed in the 1980s to prevent hospitals from turning away emergency-room patients who could not afford to pay. At issue is whether EMTALA requires physicians to offer emergency abortions even when state abortion bans — including those enacted after the overturning of Roe — do not permit them. The Biden administration brought suit against Idaho in federal court, arguing that federal law does pre-empt state policy on the matter.

Listening to Wednesday’s oral arguments, it was hard to say with certainty which side will prevail. But given the questions asked by the court’s conservative majority, and the fact that the court had allowed the state’s law to remain in effect during the litigation, the strongest possibility is that the court will side with Idaho. If that happens, pregnant women facing medical emergencies will be more likely to be refused care, and the Biden administration will face a searing reminder of the risks of litigating before the conservative Supreme Court supermajority. Such a loss for the Biden administration could, at the same time, provide a political opportunity for the Biden campaign — and that could matter deeply in the long term, given the high stakes of this election, not least for abortion access.

The decision will affect more than people seeking abortions. Just last week, The Associated Press detailed the stories of a wide range of patients experiencing pregnancy-related complications, including miscarriage, who were turned away by hospital emergency departments in states with criminal abortion laws. In such states, emergency rooms “are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone,” Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University, told The A.P.

The Biden administration tried to prevent incidents like these around the country from snowballing by looking to EMTALA, issuing guidance just weeks after Roe was overturned asserting that the federal law pre-empts state law on this matter. The administration then took Idaho to court, arguing that EMTALA’s mandate to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” required doctors to provide abortions to patients in medical emergencies — and that the federal statute trumps Idaho’s law, which makes it a crime to perform abortion except in cases of rape or incest or when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

This move was a gamble, and not one the administration takes very often: Sooner or later, the case was likely to land the administration before the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, with its demonstrated hostility to abortion rights. And indeed, if the court sides with Idaho, that will serve as a powerful reminder that until the Supreme Court’s composition changes, being in federal court may blow up in any pro-choice president’s face.

If Idaho does win this case, there’s a question of how broad that opinion would be — or on what foundation the court will rely. That was difficult to parse on Wednesday. At a few points, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch cited language in EMTALA that refers to the “unborn child” — seeming to suggest that EMTALA does not require access to abortion in emergencies because it treats both fetuses and pregnant people as patients deserving of stabilizing treatment. This was a nod toward fetal personhood — the anti-abortion movement’s ultimate goal , to secure full legal rights for fetuses. But it seems unlikely the court will issue a decision that significantly advances the personhood cause in this case.

More likely is that the court rules on whether EMTALA creates a standard of care that requires physicians to protect the health of pregnant patients, as the Biden administration argues — or whether the statute imposes no limit at all on states like Idaho.

What is certain is that there will be more uncertainty for physicians and patients until the court hands down a decision, most likely in June.

An irony is that the politics of a loss in the Supreme Court could ultimately swing in President Biden’s favor, even as it compounds the dangers facing pregnant patients in states across the country. Donald Trump’s campaign strategy has been to cast abortion as an issue that has largely been resolved, at least at the federal level. That strategy makes sense: Most Americans disagree with the strict abortion bans Republicans have championed, and Mr. Trump would prefer the electorate focus on anything but abortion. Losing the EMTALA case could help Mr. Biden remind voters that overturning Roe was not the end of the anti-abortion movement’s project. It will be made clear once again that the Right may be able to keep turning to the Supreme Court to further roll back reproductive rights.

Such a loss would also be a reminder of the stakes of this election. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are hoping that if he is re-elected, he will lean on the Comstock Act — a 150-year-old law that criminalizes the mailing or receiving of a wide range of items deemed to be obscene — to effectively ban abortions nationwide. (That’s because all abortions in the United States involve instruments and other items sent by mail or common carrier.) If the Supreme Court holds that the Comstock Act can indeed be used in such a way — ignoring nearly a century of precedent — Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice will decide whether to initiate prosecutions against drug companies, providers, or even women who mail or receive abortion-related items.

A second Biden administration may be more cautious about defending reproductive rights if it loses the EMTALA case. But the impact of losses like the one that seems to be coming in this case will sting less for reproductive rights supporters if Mr. Biden remains in office. In the case of the Comstock Act, for example, Mr. Biden’s Department of Justice would almost certainly not prosecute abortion providers and patients, regardless of how the court interprets the 1873 obscenity statute.

A loss in the EMTALA case may not convince some voters to overcome the skepticism with which they view Mr. Biden. But it will make abundantly clear that whatever Mr. Trump may suggest, the abortion struggle at the federal level is not over by a long shot.

Mary Ziegler is a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “Roe: The History of a National Obsession.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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This companion to last year's Magic Moscow is one of Pinkwater's trifles, not as far-out funny as its predecessor and...

READ REVIEW

ATTILA THE PUN: A Magic Moscow Story

by Daniel Pinkwater ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 1981

This companion to last year's Magic Moscow is one of Pinkwater's trifles, not as far-out funny as its predecessor and thinner altogether, but a little better than its title and still containing enough throwaway laugh lines to uphold the joke-butt status of Hoboken, New Jersey--where a real comic-book collector named Steve actually does run a soft-ice-cream parlor called the Magic something-or-other and dispenses health-junk combinations almost as bizarre as the Nuclear Meltdown featured here. It's one of the regular Meltdown buyers, a fake ""mystic seer"" named Lamont Penumbra, who sets the action (such as it is) in motion in his loft above Hoboken's Parthenon Puerto Rican Restaurant. Armed with some old magic books acquired by Steve, and using Steve's kid helper Norman Bleistift (the narrator) as a go-between, Lamont sets out to summon ""a famous person from the past"" and gets Attila the Hun's less famous brother Attila the Pun. The problem then is what to do with this stomping, singing, sword-whacking, never-sleeping, and endlessly pun-cracking ghost--and the solution, dreamed up by Norman and following close on the heels of the problem's formulation, is to make him night watchman and Friday night comic at the Magic Moscow. ""It turns out that fifth-century Hun humor really goes over well in Hoboken,"" and Attila's act becomes the biggest show in town. Readers are treated to a sampling, and no doubt kids will take more enthusiastically than reviewers to Attila's puns.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1981

Page Count: -

Publisher: Four Winds

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1981

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Hugo Dewar Archive    |    ETOL Main Page

The Moscow Trials

(march 1962).

This article was first published in Survey , No. 41, April 1962, pp. 87–95. Prepared for the MIA by Paul Flewers.

AT the twenty-second congress of the CPSU, N.S. Khrushchev once again raised the question of the “great purge”, this time in open session and with more detailed references to individual instances of Stalin’s persecution of his opponents. Khrushchev did not directly mention the three great Moscow trials, but the whole tenor of his reply to the discussion on the party programme made it clear that these trials were frame-ups. His remarks on the Kirov assassination alone were sufficient to demonstrate this, since the Kirov affair was the king-pin of the entire structure of these trials.

The assassination, 25 years ago, of Sergei Mironovich Kirov – Secretary of the Leningrad party organisation and member of the Politbureau – was the signal for the merciless repression of all Stalin’s known, suspected or potential opponents in the party. The range and thoroughness of this action was matched by the domestic and international propaganda campaign that accompanied it: for the Stalinist objective was not merely the physical destruction of all those who might conceivably constitute a rallying point for opposition within the party; not merely the creation in the USSR of an atmosphere of terror in which self-preservation should become the overriding consideration for each individual; it was also the complete moral annihilation of the leading figures of the Russian Revolution. Only Lenin would remain untouched, a great messianic figure; and by his side would rise the figure of Stalin, his sole true disciple. Consciousness of the past history of the Russian Revolution was to be erased from the mind of man and a new history was to take its place, the Stalin legend.

The campaign launched for this purpose – which may truly be termed a brain-washing campaign – was on a colossal scale. Its highlights were the three great Moscow trials in August 1936, January 1937 and March 1938, when almost the entire Bolshevik “old guard” was found guilty of organising the murder of Kirov, of wrecking, sabotage, treason, plotting the restoration of capitalism, etc. And it was precisely the defendants at these trials who, with their self-accusations, their abject penitence, their acceptance and praise of Stalin’s policies, showed themselves as eager as the Stalinists to support this campaign. Never before in history had there been a conspiracy of such dimensions, conspirators of such former eminence, and at the same time conspirators so uniformly anxious to attest the unrighteousness of their cause and the utter criminality of their actions.

At once sordid and deeply tragic, combining the grim reality of apparently normal juridical procedure with the lack of any evidence against the accused other than their own nightmarishly unreal confessions, these trials shocked the liberal conscience of the entire world. Yet it was, strangely enough, in Great Britain, a country proud of its tradition of liberal thought and action, that the most influential voices were raised in their defence.

Thus A.J. Cummings, then a political columnist of considerable standing, although admitting to some difficulty in accepting the guilt of all the accused, wrote of the first trial that “the evidence and the confessions are so circumstantial that to reject both as hocus-pocus would be to reduce the trial almost to complete unintelligibility”. (News Chronicle , 25 August 1936) The Moscow correspondent of the Observer also wrote (23 August 1936) that: “It is futile to think that the trial was staged and the charges trumped up. The government’s case against the defendants is genuine.” Sir Bernard Pares ( Spectator , 18 September 1936) likewise expressed the view that:

As to the trial generally, I was in Moscow while it was in progress and followed the daily reports in the press. Since then I have made a careful study of the verbatim report. Having done that I must give it as my considered judgement that if the report had been issued in a country (that is, other than the USSR) without any of the antecedents I have referred to, the trial would be regarded as one which could not fail to carry conviction ... The examination of the 16 accused by the State Prosecutor is a close work of dispassionate reasoning, in which, in spite of some denials and more evasions, the guilt of the accused is completely brought home.

These statements were made use of by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee in presenting to the public its summarised version of the official report (itself not verbatim) of the first Moscow trial. Its account of the second trial (compiled by W.P. and Zelda K. Coates) was introduced by Neil Maclean, MP, with a preface by the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald , R.T. Miller, and contained two speeches by Stalin, “in that simple and clear style of which Mr Stalin is such a master”, as Maclean put it. Maclean in his introductory foreword asserted that:

... practically every foreign correspondent present at the trial with the exception, of course, of the Japanese and German – have expressed themselves as very much impressed by the weight of evidence presented by the prosecution and the sincerity of the confessions of the accused.

In the course of his preface Miller wrote that “the prisoners appeared healthy, well-fed, well-dressed and unintimidated”; that “Mr Dudley Collard, the English barrister ... considered it perfectly sound from the legal point of view”; and that the accused “confessed because the state’s collection of evidence forced them to. No other explanation fits the facts.” [1]

Leaving aside Mr Collard, whose well-known political sympathies might explain his easy acceptance of surface appearances, it is clear that none of these commentators had the slightest understanding of the political struggle raging in the Soviet Union; a struggle of which these trials and those that had preceded them from 1928 onwards (which these gentlemen had apparently totally forgotten) were a reflection. Nor could any of them have really made a serious study of the official report. The circumstances of the time made many politically conscious people desire above all to think the best of the Soviet Government, and the views quoted above, deriving in part from this very desire, in part from sheer ignorance, were very welcome to the Stalinists. If they did not wholly convince, they at least helped to lull suspicion.

*  *  *

The most outstanding and the most influential supporter of the Stalinist campaign in the country was D.N. Pritt, an MP, a KC, and formerly president of the enquiry set up to investigate the proceedings of the Reichstag fire trial. Pritt entered the campaign with an article in the News Chronicle (27 August 1936), later reprinted in pamphlet form, The Moscow Trial was Fair (with additional material by Pat Sloan). He then expanded his analysis and argument in a booklet of 39 pages entitled The Zinoviev Trial (Gollancz, 1936). In this he first of all suggests that the bulk of the criticism of the trial emanated from the extreme right-wing opponents of the Soviet government. Still, he admits that much of it was made in good faith and came from “newspapers and individuals of very high reputation for fairness”. However, he goes on to imply that these critics had not, as he had, really studied the whole of the available evidence, but had relied upon incomplete reports. Moreover, they had not his advantage of being an eyewitness of the trial and a lawyer into the bargain. Having established in the reader’s mind that all criticism coming from sources hostile to the Soviet regime is ipso facto baseless, and having made plain his own geographical and professional superiority to the “fair-minded” critics, he argues that:

It should be realised at the outset, of course, that the critics who refuse to believe that Zinoviev and Kamenev could possibly have conspired to murder Kirov, Stalin, Voroshilov and others, even when they say themselves that they did, are in a grave logical difficulty. For if they thus dismiss the whole case for the prosecution as a “frame-up”, it follows inescapably that Stalin and a substantial number of other high officials, including presumably the judges and the prosecutor, were themselves guilty of a foul conspiracy to procure the judicial murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev and a fair number of other persons. (pp. 3–4)

The most general and important criticism of the trial, Pritt says, is that it was impossible to believe that “men should confess openly and fully to crimes of the gravity of those in question here”. (p. 5) In fact, of course, the critics” difficulty was not to believe that “men” should confess to “grave crimes”, but that these particular men should confess in that particular manner to crimes so contrary to everything known of their very public political pasts, so contrary to their known political philosophy, and so manifestly incapable of achieving their alleged objectives. For among those 16 accused there were, as Khrushchev has now obliquely reminded us, “prominent representatives of the old guard who, together with Lenin, founded “the world’s first proletarian state”. ( Report on the Programme of the CPSU , Soviet Booklet No. 81, 1961, p. 108) These were now transformed, in the words of the indictment, into “unprincipled political adventurers and assassins striving at only one thing, namely, to make their way to power even through terrorism”. ( Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre , People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow 1936, p. 18)

Pritt himself, however, does not appear to be wholly at ease about the lack of evidence adduced other than the confessions, for he suggests that the Soviet government would have preferred all or most of the accused to have pleaded not guilty, for then the “full strength of the case” would have been apparent. As it was, “all the available proof did not require to be brought forward”. (p. 9) He assumes the existence of this proof; he writes that we cannot possibly know “what further facts there were in the record that were not adduced at all”. Not, that is, whether further facts were available, but what facts.

Although there is constant mention of facts, Pritt never gets down to a consideration of verifiable factual evidence adduced in alleged corroboration of the confessions. The closest he gets to giving an example of this is when he refers to an alleged conversation between two of the accused in which “a highly incriminating phrase was used”. Each of the accused denied using it, but each said that the other had. Pritt found this highly significant. He does not explain why the accused should have shied at admitting the use of “incriminating phrases” when they had already confessed to capital crimes.

Pritt claims to have reached his conclusion on the basis of a careful study of the official report of the trial. Surely, then, he must have been aware that, when it was not simply a question of “incriminating phrases”, conversations about conversations, but of concrete facts, some very glaring discrepancies were exposed, such as, for example, the flatly contradictory evidence of two of the accused, Olberg and Holtzmann, and the alleged meeting at a non-existent hotel.

It hardly seems possible that a man of Pritt’s professional training could have failed to see that the whole structure of the confessions simply did not hang together. He did not even notice anything strange in the tale of those two desperadoes Fritz David and Bermin-Yurin, who, after spending two and a half years preparing a plan to kill Stalin at the Congress of the Communist International, decided, when it came to the point, that they could not shoot “because there were too many people”!

For Pritt “anything in the nature of forced confessions is intrinsically impossible”; it was “obvious to anyone who watched the proceedings in court that the confessions as made orally in court could not possibly have been concocted or rehearsed”; and not even the keenest critic had been able to find a false note (pp. 12–14). The picture he gives of himself is that of an utterly credulous bumpkin. Any reasonably objective student of Soviet politics must have been aware at the time that this trial and those that followed were frame-ups. It did not require Khrushchev to admit that “thousands of absolutely innocent people perished ... Many party leaders, statesmen and military leaders lost their lives”; that “they were ‘persuaded’, persuaded in certain ways, that they were German, British or some other spies. And some of them ‘confessed’.”

For the Moscow trials were all of a piece with those that had preceded them: the Shakhty trial in 1928; the Industrial Party trial in 1930; the Menshevik trial in 1931; and the Metro-Vickers trial in 1933. [2] No student of these trials would fail to see that they served a definite political purpose and that justice had been perverted to this end. The very occurrence, previous to the Moscow trials, of exactly similar confession trials – with all their “technical” failures (attempted retraction of confessions; an accused going insane; long dead men named as conspirators, etc) – should have been enough to raise doubts in the mind of the most prejudiced. But the supporters of Stalin clearly did not want to see the truth. [3]

Here, as elsewhere, it was the paramount task of the Communist Party to “sell” the trials. For this purpose, in addition to public meetings throughout the country and articles in the Daily Worker and other periodicals, a stream of pamphlets was published. The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Worker , W.D. Shepherd, wrote two pamphlets in 1936: The Truth About the Murder of Kirov (31 pages) and The Moscow Trial (15 pages). In 1937, two leading English communists, Harry Pollitt and R. Palme Dutt, wrote The Truth about Trotskyism: The Moscow Trial (36 pages), and in 1938 R. Page Arnot and Tim Buck dealt with the third trial in Fascist Agents Exposed (22 pages). Supplementing all this there were the so-called verbatim Reports of the Court Proceedings (published in English by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR), and the abridged version of the official report of the August 1936 trial, published by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee. This does not, of course, exhaust the list of published matter issued directly or indirectly by the Communist Party in defence at the trials. Party contributors to the Left Book Club publications naturally also supported the campaign. In this respect JR Campbell’s Soviet Policy and its Critics (Gollancz, 1938, 374 pages) and Soviet Democracy (Gollancz, 1937, 288 pages) by Pat Sloan, are notable.

The bulk of this material eschews any attempt at reasoning and concentrates on invective in the verbal knuckleduster style typical of the Stalinist school. Campbell’s book is a much more ambitious effort in that he admits knowledge of the Dewey Commission [4] , quotes from its proceedings, and also uses quotations from Trotsky’s writings, albeit within strict limits. Thus he quotes Trotsky’s words:

Why, then, did the accused, after 25, 30 or more years of revolutionary work, agree to take upon themselves such monstrous and degrading accusations? How did the GPU achieve this? Why did not a single one of the accused cry out openly before the court against the frame-up? Etc, etc. In the nature of the case I am not obliged to answer these questions.

Here Campbell stops and comments: “But if there is no answer then a most important element in the case of the Soviet government is upheld.” (p. 252) He does not follow the quotation further, which runs:

We could not here question Yagoda (he is now being questioned himself by Yezhov), or Yezhov, or Vyshinsky, or Stalin, or, above all, their victims, the majority of whom, indeed, have already been shot. That is why the Commission cannot fully uncover the inquisitorial technique of the Moscow trials. But the mainsprings are already apparent. ( The Case of Leon Trotsky , pp. 482–83)

A very striking illustration of the Stalinist technique – low cunning, contempt for the truth, contempt for the reader’s intelligence – is to be seen on page 213 of Campbell’s book in his quotation from Trotsky’s The Soviet Union and the Fourth International . He begins in the middle of a paragraph:

The first social shock, external or internal, may throw the atomised Soviet society into civil war. The workers, having lost control over the state and economy, may resort to mass strikes as weapons of self-defence. The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken down [5] under the onslaught of the workers and because of the pressure of economic difficulties the trusts would be forced to disrupt the planned beginnings and enter into competition with one another. The dissolution of the regime would naturally be thrown over into the army. The socialist state would collapse, giving place to the capitalist regime, or, more correctly, to capitalist chaos.

And on this, Campbell writes: “This was more than a prophecy. It was the objective of the conspirators.” The very next paragraph in Trotsky’s essay begins: “The Stalinist press, of course, will reprint our warning analysis as a counter-revolutionary prophecy, or even as the expressed ‘desire’ of the Trotskyites.”

Campbell’s book is a long diatribe against “Trotskyism” and of its 374 pages there is hardly one on which the name Trotsky does not appear. Since this was written after the third Moscow trial, he has caught up with the Soviet scenario, successively developed with each trial. The crimes of the accused are now “only a culminating point in the struggle which Trotsky and his followers have been waging against the Bolshevik party since 1903”.

One of the curiosities of this period is the book written by Maurice Edelman from the notes of a Peter Kleist, entitled GPU Justice (1938). [6] According to Edelman, Kleist was “by no means a communist”. Efforts to convey an impression of objectivity are evident. The book dispenses with the usual Stalinist bludgeoning invective and affects a dispassionate, disengaged attitude, but its phraseology and tone are unmistakably pro-Stalinist. The Soviet Union is a classless society; the GPU is simply a police force like any other (only superior, of course); it is a misconception to consider it a secret police; if you are innocent no one can make you guilty; talk of GPU torture is Polish fascist slander; he, Kleist, is treated considerately, without brutality, and, therefore, so is every other suspect. There are many little touches designed to bring out the humanity of Kleist’s captors. The Lubyanka and Butyrki prisons are depicted as rest-homes, where lengthy discussions (reproduced apparently verbatim) permit Stalinists to defend Stalin and Trotskyites to expose themselves as avowed wreckers and saboteurs in collaboration with the White Guards. The book could obviously only have been written by someone with a very clear idea of the party line, and at the same time someone anxious to appear non-partisan. The cloak of non-partisanship is worn pretty thin, however, by the author’s efforts to defend and extol, not merely “GPU justice”, but almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the forced labour camps. Finally, in an appendix, Kleist on the Moscow Trials , all pretence of impartiality is dropped. There one reads: “Why do they confess? was the typical journalistic question, and no one, except the communist papers, supplied the obvious answer: ‘Because they were guilty.’” (p. 211) In this section the stock Stalinist arguments are put forward by Kleist himself and not, as in the main narrative, through the mouths of others.

To these arguments he adds one of his very own. It gives the appearance of having been inserted to show that in spite of his total agreement with the party line, he is nevertheless by no means a communist. For he says that, the GPU having established the guilt of the accused, they were “at this point quite conceivably offered remission of the death sentence”. This, he argues, “would account for the fluency of the confession and for the calm with which the majority of the prisoners heard the sentence of death” (p. 217). Apparently, Kleist regards this kind of double-crossing as a mark of the humanity of GPU justice.

His final sentence is worth noting:

In the years which have passed since this my release , the bursting into flames of the Spanish-Fascist rebellion, the risings and intervention of the Nazis in Austria and the promise of intervention in Czechoslovakia, have convinced me that whatever bewilderment is felt outside the Soviet Union at the unearthing of these Fascist conspirators, Fascist conspiracy in conjunction with Trotskyist conspiracy does exist and that its extirpation, so far from endangering the USSR, marks another peril avoided. (p. 218)

Leaving aside the peculiar logic of this passage, attention is drawn to the words emphasised. The book was published in 1938. Kleist was released in April 1937. Thus, no “years” could have passed since his release. The reader may work out for himself the chronology of the events to which he refers, all of which he says took place after his release.

The verdict of the British press was in general unfavourable to the Moscow trials. Among the dailies the Manchester Guardian stood out as their sharpest critic. In addition to its own editorial comment, it published cables from Trotsky rebutting the evidence and attacking Stalin’s policy, earning what is probably the rarest praise ever bestowed by a revolutionary on a “bourgeois” newspaper. “I know full well”, Trotsky telegraphed from Mexico (25 January 1937), “that the Manchester Guardian will be one of the first to serve the truth and humanity.” Typical of the Manchester Guardian ’s attitude was its statement of 28 August 1936: “He [Stalin] surrounds himself with men of his own making [7] and devotes all the power of the state to removing those who, however remotely, might become rival centres of authority.”

Nothing as bluntly condemnatory as this came, however, from The Times . Indeed, in 1936 and 1937, its attitude might justly be construed as favourable to Stalin. The trials, it thought, reflected the triumph of Stalin’s “nationalist” policy over that of the revolutionary die-hards. The conservative forces, with the overwhelming support of the nation, had now demonstrably gained the day. On this single point it was curiously at one with Trotsky himself, who wrote in an article in the Sunday Express (6 March 1938) that: “From beginning to end his [Stalin’s] programme was that of the formation of a bourgeois republic.” It was only with the 1938 trial that The Times expressed doubts as to the general trend of affairs in the Soviet Union. On balance one cannot say that The Times saw very clearly in this matter. [8]

The labour press was naturally in agreement with the views expressed by the Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions (Louis de Brouckère and F. Adler on behalf of the LSI, and Sir W. Citrine and Walter Schevenels on behalf of the IFTU sent telegrams of protest on the occasion of each of the trials). Writing on the second trial in Reynolds News (7 February 1937), H.N. Brailsford said that it left him “bewildered, doubtful, miserable”; pointed however to the confessions – “If they had been coerced, surely some of them ... would have blurted out the truth”; referred then to the conflict of the evidence with known facts, and concluded: “In one Judas among 12 apostles it is easy to believe. But when there are 11 Judases and only one loyal apostle, the Church is unlikely to thrive.” In the Scottish Forward , Emrys Hughes” witty, ironic articles bluntly exposed the trials as “frame-ups”.

On the other hand, however, it was the communists alone who maintained a campaign consonant with their objectives. There can be little doubt that they did finally succeed in diverting the attention of left-wing opinion and those others whom they courted from the essential issues raised by the trials, and in persuading a very large body of public opinion that Stalin’s policy was right.

In this task they received powerful support from the New Statesman and Nation , which reached an audience not in general susceptible to direct communist approach. This journal gave an exhibition of dithering evasiveness and moral obtuseness rarely displayed by a reputedly responsible publication. The 1936 trial, “if one may trust the available reports, was wholly unconvincing” (28 August 1936). At the same time:

We do not deny ... that the confessions may have contained a substance of truth. We complain because, in the absence of independent witnesses, there is no way of knowing ... When we hear that so close and trusted a friend of Stalin as Radek, is suspected ... we are compelled to wonder that there may not be more serious discontent in the Soviet Union than was generally believed.” (5 September 1936)

An article on the second trial, Will Stalin Explain? (30 January 1937), stated that “the various parts of the plot do not seem to hang together”; but the confessions could not be doubted because that would mean doubting Soviet justice; on the other hand, “to accept them as they stand is to draw a picture of a regime divided against itself”. If there was an escape from this dilemma, would Stalin please tell them what it was?

In the absence of any answer from Stalin to this complaint, the journal had to be, and apparently was, satisfied with matters as they stood. For after the verdict it asserted that: “Few would now maintain that all or any of them were completely innocent.” (6 February 1937) Reference is made to a letter from Mr Dudley Collard (the letter noted earlier in this article) and the comment made: “If he is right, we may hope that the present round-up and the forthcoming trial will mean the final liquidation of ‘Trotskyism’ in the USSR, or at least of the infamous projects to which that word is now applied.”

The third trial again demonstrated the New Statesman and Nation ’s remoteness from reality and indifference to the moral issues raised: “The Soviet trial is undoubtedly very popular in the USSR. The exposure of Yagoda ... pleases everyone and seems to explain a great deal of treachery and inefficiency in the past.” But: “the confessions remain baffling whether we regard them as true or false, and the prisoners as innocent or guilty. There has undoubtedly been much plotting in the USSR.” (12 March 1938)

True or false; innocent or guilty: one could take one’s choice – what was important was that the confessions were baffling. Even more baffling were the mental processes by which an otherwise humane and intelligent man could write in a manner at once so callous and so superficial.

This type of confusion and refusal to face facts dominated the thinking of many left-wing intellectuals and the left wing of the labour movement during the 1930s. The experience of the great Russian purge destroyed no illusions, taught them nothing. And even today it is doubtful if there is a full appreciation of the profound effect those events had on Russian society and the men who lead it.

1. A member of the Fabian Society, Mr Collard performed the same service for the second Moscow trial as Pritt had done for the first (see D. Collard, Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek , 1937). In 1936 he sent from Moscow a long telegram of protest against the appeal for mercy addressed to the court by Adler and Citrine. Yet in the New Statesman of 6 February 1937 he stated that “English reports of previous trials induced in me certain misgivings as to the genuineness of the charges”.

2. There were 53 accused at the 1928 trial – far too many for its proper staging. Right at the beginning it was announced that one, Nekrasov, had gone mad. Two other accused tried to withdraw their confessions during the course of the trial, giving a sickening glimpse of the preliminary investigation’s “rehearsal” horrors. At the next trial, in 1930, one Osadchy was brought into court under guard to give evidence as a member of the “conspiracy”. Osadchy had been one of the state prosecutors in the 1928 trial. With each trial the staging “improved”, but in the very nature of such trials perfection was impossible. Even at their “best” they could only deceive those suffering from what Ignazio Silone called the disease of juridical cretinism. It is worth noting that at the third Moscow trial the State Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, himself called attention to the connection between all these trials. ( Report of the Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists , Moscow 1938, pp. 636–37)

3. It is worth recording that Moscow University recently conferred on D.N. Pritt the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. During the ceremony Academician Ivan Petrovsky, Rector of the University, praised Pritt as an “outstanding lawyer and selfless defender of the common people”.

4. See The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty (Secker and Warburg, 1937 and 1938).

5. The original reads: “The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken. Under the ...”, etc.

6. Recommended in Philip Grierson’s Books on Soviet Russia, 1917–1942 (1943) as “sober and matter-of-fact narrative; an admirable corrective to more sensational writings” (p. 125).

7. Among them, of course, N. Khrushchev, who, speaking from the roof of Lenin’s tomb to a parade of 200,000 workers after the 1937 trial, said: “By lifting their hands against Comrade Stalin they lifted them against everything that is best in humanity, because Stalin is the hope, Stalin is the expectation, Stalin is the lighthouse of all progressive humanity. Stalin, our banner! Stalin, our will! Stalin, our victory!” ( Daily Telegraph , 1 February 1937)

8. “Stalin’s policy of nationalism has been amply vindicated. Russia has made much industrial progress, social conditions are improving.” ( The Times , 20 August 1936) “Today the Russian dictatorship stages what is evidently meant to be the most impressive and terrifying of its many exhibitions of despotic power ... The customary overture has already been played by the Soviet press ... howling for the blood of those whom it denounces, in the grimly proleptic phrase, as “this Trotskyist carrion”.” ( The Times , 2 March 1938).

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Last updated: 17 February 2023

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• Anatoly Gladilin's Moscow Racetrack Is a Powerful Book Report

Anatoly Gladilin's Moscow Racetrack Is A Powerful Book Report

50) who cared little for the ideals of Marxism. Motivated by greed and egotism, this proletariat now seized power. The Civil War finalized their "apolitical" victory and left the Soviet Union in the state of false communism that existed until the 1990s. Anatoly Gladilin uses the horse races and gambling as a political metaphor: just as there are no winners at the track, "there are no winners in socialist revolutions," (p. 48). The struggle to ensure a healthy economy and to eliminate class distinctions became as futile, arbitrary, and fixed as a horse race. The metaphor extends on page 77: "And then 1918 arrived -- a glorious time for those who stayed firm in the saddle." The Teacher informs us about the origins of the Moscow Racetrack, which was a product of a Red Army hero with a passion for horses. By now the narrator sets the stage to expose the corruption extant both at the base of the government and at the track. The author does always rely upon subtle metaphors to describe the bribery and fraud in both institutions. His essay, "So Just Who Was Victorious After The Revolution?" caught the attention of the KGB and one random bet at the track would change the Teacher's life. With a healthy dose of facetiousness, Gladilin places the protagonist on the toilet when his horse wins the race. Having just had a falling-out with one of his racing buddies, the Professional, the Teacher ran off disgusted with his friend's unwillingness to share his bets. The Teacher had just blown money on numerous losing horses and was shocked to see a flock of people swarm him after exiting the bathrooms. It turns out that the Teacher had the only winning ticket in the house. This not only went unnoticed in the Moscow Racetrack; the government immediately paid heed to the winner. Instead of picking up their money at the track cashier, the Teacher was taken on a mysterious car ride. The Professional is grabbed too. Part two begins with the Teacher and the Professional (who henceforth is referred to by his first name, Zhenya, to emphasize the friendship) waking up in a sort of luxurious prison. They are accused of fixing the race and are blackmailed into helping the government with a twisted scheme: to win hard currency at foreign racetracks. The KGB uses the teacher's anti-Soviet essays as further leverage and the two friends have no choice but to relent. They are whisked off to a training camp where they are given a crash course in French and French racehorses. With another dose of hilarity, Anatoly Gladilin places the two friends in a camp designated for bridge builders and illustrates the farce of the whole situation. After four months, the Teacher and Zhenya are ready to fly to Paris and win some money for the Communist coffers. All their expenses are paid for; they will only have to apply their knowledge and luck in the service of their government. The political commentary heats up after the Teacher meets Georgi Ivanovich Pankratov, Colonel of State Security (KGB). Georgi Ivanovich and the Teacher engage in a creepy discussion about the role of the government as the agent spins situations to his convenience. Ironically, Georgi Ivanovich detects that the racetrack is an "escape" for the Teacher; he has pegged him well, chosen his target skilfully. The KGB isn't perfect, maintains the colonel, but what else is better? Chillingly, Georgi Ivanovich states: "So you know that we buy grain and many other food products abroad. Why everything in our country is overgrown with grass is another question. You could write a little article about it sometime. But for now, the people want to eat," (p. 143). The people are starving but the government is too busy puffing up its own pockets to care. Gladilin contrasts the cultures of France and Russia with aplomb; we see Paris through the eyes of two men who have never stepped foot in a capitalist nation. After hearing so many rumors, the Teacher and Zhenya hold plenty of stereotypes and prejudices about the West. They are amazed at the prices and at the plethora of material goods available for purchase. The Teacher fantasizes about…

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