For what has seemed like eons, men and women have been arguing about whether or not abortions should be legal. One side argues that the woman is killing a life who hasn’t had the chance to experience anything, while the other argues that it is just a clump of cells and the women’s life is more important.

Abortion is an important part of women’s healthcare, there are so many circumstances where a woman is at risk of death or the death of her child because her body wasn’t ready for her pregnancy. Taking away legal abortion is a terrible idea and can put many women around the world at risk of not only dying from pregnancy but from performing illegal and unsafe abortions.

That’s correct; whether you like it or not, banning abortions will not stop abortions, it will stop safe ones.

26 countries still have a ban on abortion altogether. In these following states, a woman cannot legally receive an abortion under any circumstance, whether the pregnancy was a result of rape, incest, or if the pregnancy will force the women or unborn child to suffer:

Andorra; Malta; San Marino; Angola; Congo-Brazzaville; Congo-Kinshasa; Egypt; Gabon; Guinea-Bissau; Madagascar; Mauritania; Sao Tome & Principe; Sengel; Iraq; Laos; Marshall Islands; Micronesia; Palau; Philippines’ Tonga’ Dominican Republic; El Salvador; Haiti; Honduras; Nicaragua; and Suriname.

In 26 countries, women have been denied the right to have control over certain aspects of their bodies. Whether they were raped, had health complications, or simply are not ready, these 26 countries have taken their right to control these aspects of their life.

Women of all color, race, and identity deserve to have control over every aspect of their body, and yet, there are countries who want to prevent that. The United States of America, who prides themselves in having the freedom to do practically whatever they want, are taking measures to not only make abortion illegal but give women the death penalty for attempting illegal abortions.

So pro-life, they’ll kill you.

In Texas, a bill was recently introduced that would make it possible for women to receive the death penalty for receiving an abortion. The intention of this bill is to criminalize all abortions, with no exceptions, not even rape.

While this bill is highly unlikely to pass, it just goes to show how far anti-abortion activists are willing to go in order to save a clump of cells.

To repeat, the intention of this bill was to kill women who would get abortions. Kill a real human being so that a clump of cells could survive.

Should abortion be a method of birth control? Of course not. Many people who are pro-choice believe that women should take precautionary steps before having sex to ensure that they are protected and are able to protect a pregnancy from occurring as best as they can if needed. That is why there are methods such as birth control and condoms.

However, these methods do not always prevent pregnancy. A woman could wear a condom, be on the pill, and take a Plan B the morning after, and still end up pregnant. That is just how it works, pregnancy will never be 100% preventable unless both parties have taken drastic measures such as tube tying and vasectomies, even then, there is still a 1% chance that the women could get pregnant.

One thing that also must be understood is that sometimes, people just don’t want to use protection. Of course, one could argue that they are stupid for not wearing protection and that they should have expected this pregnancy and now should deal with it. This is an understandable argument. However, one must understand that the people who aren’t taking these precautionary steps are typically adolescents in high school who barely have an understanding of how their own body functions because of the lack of proper sexual education in schools. Many of these adolescents are just dumb and horny and can’t think about anything except for sex. One must also understand that people are naive, easily gullible, and easily manipulated. Women have been manipulated into not using a condom countless of times by being told: “Well, I can’t feel anything when we use one.” Or, “So you don’t trust me enough not to use a condom?” These women end up feeling guilty, so they decide not to use a condom.

This is also a result of poor sexual education.

So many young people get their sexual education from unreliable sources such as pornography, other people their age, and the media. When young people get their sexual education from these sources, they are not only inaccurate and misleading, but they also encourage risky behavior. If schools could provide proper sexual education to its students, not only could we prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but we could also lower the annual rate of abortions each year.

What a proper sexual education looks like is not using the “abstinence-only” type of sexual education. This is quite common among American education facilities. The United States ranks first among developed nations in rates of both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. So, in an effort to reduce these rates, the United States funded an abstinence-only sexual education program. An appropriate sexual education would contain a comprehensive sexual education that covers safe sexual practices for all sexualities, abortion, birth control, pregnancy, sex and relationships, and STDs.

Proper sexual education should not leave adolescents in situations where they feel unsafe.

To conclude, should abortions be illegal? No. But, should abortions be the only option a woman has in order to prevent their pregnancy? Also no. If one really wants to prevent abortions, we must educate our youth correctly and give them proper and affordable contraception so that they can practice safe sex at all times.

Women deserve the right to have control over their body, without legal abortions, countless women will continue to be put at risk of death or permanent health damage from pregnancy or unsafe abortion.