Recent orders
Abortion Dilemma
Abortion Dilemma
Name
Institution
Abortion Dilemma
The abortion dilemma is one of the most sensitive and contentious issues in the moral, political, religious and cultural frameworks (West, 1999). The debate has dates has a very long history, and to-date, is still heavily debated across the globe; both in legality and morality terms. Some of the never ending questions include: Are there any legal and/or moral rights for the foetus? Is the justification of abortion morally? Is the foetus a human being, and therefore, need protection? What does it take to be a human being?
This debate is dominated by two camps with opposing views concerning abortion. They include the pro-life activists and the pro-choice with extreme conservative and extreme liberal views on abortion, respectively. The pro-life activists believe that the development of a unicellular zygote marks the beginning of a personhood of a human being. Therefore, as per the religion stand, abortion should remain illegal by virtue of the “imago dei” of human being; otherwise, it would be a homicide. On the other hand, the pro-choice activists through McDonagh argue abortion is a right for women so as to defend themselves “against the non-consensual invasion, appropriation, and use of her physical body by an unwelcomed foetus” (West, 1999).
The pro-life activists seem advantaged by defining human personhood from the very start of life. However, it may sound insane to refer a zygote as a human being. The abortionists view maybe also right because their major claim is reinforced by a popular philosophical usage of concept “personhood.” Yes, the offspring is more developed than the unicellular zygote. However, this does not imply that the pro-choice definition faces no hurdles. There is no morally relevant difference between a just-born baby and a foetus ten minutes prior to birth. This article will attempt to analyse the controversy surrounding abortion in utilitarian terms, and then contrast utilitarian against deontologists view on abortion (Ngwenya, 2013).
The utilitarianism can be an efficient way of handling the abortion controversy in the current world. Utilitarian believe that humans’ major aim is to achieve the greatest possible pleasure. Utility evades the aforementioned problems since it does not share the hypotheses. Utilitarianism argues that the abortion rights should be measured by their usefulness to the society. Therefore, this article presents analysis based on the pain and pleasure amount in cases where abortion is legal and illegal.
Many individuals would expect the argument to centre on foetus’ interest since it may be destined for a happy future life, and also abortion itself is agonizing, especially if carried-out in late-stages of the pregnancy. However, these are shoddy considerations because: any pain that can arise in the process of abortion can be prevented through a timely abortion or the use of painless approaches. Hence, the overall pain experienced by the foetus cannot offer a solid reason against abortion; only the ugly exercise of it. If one assumes the foetus’ future life comprises of a feasible balance of happiness over pain, then a crucial consideration arises against abortion (Ngwenya, 2013).
Secondly, this paper considers parents and family members if adoption exists as an alternative to abortion. Some researchers claim that having a baby, even in instances where pregnancy is intentional, might reduce the happiness in a relationship. Once again, this claim is insignificant; hence, no need to consider it. According to utilitarian theory, the wrongness or rightness of abortion do not depend either on the effects of abortion on the agent or the victims but lies on the less direct consequences of the overall society. The abortion controversy, assuming the existence “rights” and guilty conscience of “baby murders,” becomes desirability of either decreasing or increasing population (Utilitarian.org, 2000).
If there is a population size that is below the optimal number, it is obvious that the utility will advocates for new birth above this number. In this instance, utility provides positive duties. If the utilitarian agree that the baby’s future happiness, coupled with a calculated value of the consequences on others is in such way that utility opposes abortion, directly s/he implies that utility advocates for population increase. In utility terms, the authentic act of abortion is not a principally important one (Utilitarian.org, 2000).
In this analysis, the dominant issue is the comparative consequences on the overall society. First, nurturing a child in a contemporary developed country is very expensive in monetary terms. Secondly, the world faces an increasing pressure on the environment and other terrible inequalities; and hence people should not focus on the growing population (Poglitsh, 2012).
In case a utilitarian finds out that she is unexpectedly pregnant, then she has to abort because the utility opposes her reproduction. While if the utility is in favour of her pregnancy, means that should have been attempting to get pregnant; hence, it should not be a surprise (Utilitarian.org, 2000).
Deontology theory, on the other hand, claims that every human being has certain duties. While utilitarian is much concerned with the consequences, deontology focuses on ethical truths and norms that are universally acceptable by everyone. In other words, certain actions are immoral irrespective of their consequences. Consider, for example, a pregnant lady who in the course of her pregnancy develops health complications and the only way-out is either to abort, or she dies. Automatically, a utilitarian will advise the lady to abortion since it produces the highest happiness; however, a deontologist will advise her not to have an abortion because murdering an innocent foetus is wrong as per the universal moral truth.
According to utilitarian, existence of a “universal moral truth” is not logic: it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish. To them, the happiness and suffering of any doings are easily determined. Hence, people should stop basing on such unstructured and ambiguous moral truth, and instead embrace more concrete ways of ascertaining ethics of a given action (Physicsisphirst, 2004).
On the other hand, Deontologists view outcomes as illusory i.e. it is impossible foretell the consequences of an individual’s acts with total certainty. The only way for assurance is for one to gauge whether his/her actions are ethical or do not base on the categorical imperative. Deontologists also believe that each human being is individually responsible for his/her own actions and not actions of others. Therefore, the pregnant lady is responsible to either her decision to have an abortion or not. Lastly, deontologists accuse the utilitarian of entrusting perilous moral relativisms by allowing individuals to validate dreadful deeds in the name that its effects are beneficial (Physicsisphirst, 2004).
In conclusion, for one to think that the wrongness or the rightness of abortion is an issue that can be ascertained by considering the consequences on the parties, i.e. parents, foetus and doctors, who get directly involved in the action can be such a precarious short-sighted and naïve move.
Reference
Ngwenya, Z. (2013). Abortion is Intrinsically Evil. Times of Swaziland, November, 9. Retrieved from http://www.times.co.sz/letters/93067-abortion-is-intrinsically-evil.html.Physicsisphirst. (2004). Utilitarianism vs. Deontology. Physics forum, March, 3. Retrieved from http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=15622.Poglitsh, R. (2012).Letters to the Times of Swaziland. Times of Swaziland, November, 25. Retrieved from http://letterstothetos.blogspot.com/.Utilitarian.org. (2000). Abortion. Retrieved from http://www.utilitarian.org/abortion.html.West, R. (1999). Liberalism and abortion. Georgetown Law Journal, 87(6), 2117-2147. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/231486885?accountid=87314.
BST20220421(Without Track Changes)
Reflective Essay
Introduction
Due to continuous improvements in information technology, electronic limit order books have become very popular as a trading channel in financial markets. No designated market maker steps in to provide liquidity in a pure order-driven market such as the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) (Ahn et al. 2001). The participants are individuals trading with limit orders or market orders. Market orders are filled at the best price determined by a previously submitted limit order, and limit orders specify a specific price that participants are willing to pay or accept and fill when that condition is met. The electronic limit order market is characterized by continuous trading, order book visualization, and sequential priority rules. In this market microstructure, traders submitting limit orders provide liquidity, which is in turn consumed by traders placing market orders (Bloomfield et al. 2005). In this paper, I use TRETS for order-driven market simulation trading. Firstly, I trade with market and limit orders separately and analyze the characteristics of both orders. Secondly, trading is performed using large market orders. Finally, I trade as a proprietary trader using both market and limit orders to analyze my trading behavior and trading results.
Trading simulation and analysis
First, I traded with market orders and limit orders separately. I plan to purchase 30 shares. VWAP is used as a benchmark to measure the performance of buy order execution, which is the volume-weighted average price. Traders usually expect the average purchase price to be lower than VWAP and the average sell price to be higher than VWAP during trade execution (Madhavan, 2002). Table 1 below shows the trading results with market orders. Although the task of buying 30 shares of stock was completed before the stock market closed, the results show that the loss of the trade is 1.85 and the average buy price is slightly higher than the VWAP.
Table 1 Trading Results with Market Orders
Time position price cost Profits/loss Average buy price VWAP
00:10.515 10 6.21 0.62 -1.85 6.219 6.2092
00:37.734 7 6.20 0.43 00:57.062 4 6.19 0.25 02:19.484 7 6.20 0.43 03:06.187 1 6.24 0.06 03:50.437 1 6.25 0.06 Table 2 and 3 below show the results of two trades with limit orders respectively. The average buy price of both simulated trades is lower than the VWAP.
Table 2 the First Trading Results with Limit Orders
Time position price cost Profits/loss Average buy price VWAP
02:00.063 1 5.78 0.06 -0.92 5.77 5.7975
02:10.063 7 5.78 0.40 03:20.031 5 5.76 0.29 04:30.109 3 5.76 0.17 Table 3 the Second Trading Results with Limit Orders
Time position price cost Profits/loss Average buy price VWAP
00:30.047 5 5.74 0.29 0.47 5.743 5.8000
01:30.219 5 5.74 0.29 01:40.047 3 5.74 0.17 02:10.062 2 5.74 0.11 04:11.359 1 5.79 0.06 The above results show that market orders can be executed immediately (Bae et al., 2003). However, limit orders do not have this feature. For example, I placed a limit order at 00:19.42, and this order was executed after two minutes. Second, the execution bid price of market order is higher than the limit order (Foucault et al., 2005). In the simulation, market orders are executed at 6.21, which is the best ask price, higher than the execution price of limit order (6.19). Third, limit orders carry both the risk of not being executed and of trading with better-informed traders (Handa and Schwartz, 1996). In my first trade with a limit order, I initially placed a limit order at 5.78.
However, after the limit order was executed, the price continued to fall, and the best bid and ask prices became 5.75 and 5.77, respectively. This indicates that the stock was already worth less than 5.78 which implies the risk of trading with better-informed traders. In my second demo trade, I placed a limit order at 5.74. However, the best buy price then rose to 5.78 and it did not fall back. My limit order at 5.74 was never executed. Fourth, although not all 30 shares were bought with limit orders, the limit orders performed better than market orders in terms of execution. This is also proved in the study of Harris and Hasbrouck (1996). Also, the results suggest that limit order traders benefit through mean reversion (Biais et al., 1995). In the second simulation, my limit order at 5.74 was executed and the price continued to fall, but then the price returned to its previous value and continued to rise.
Next, I traded with large market orders. I placed a 30-share market buy order which has a more significant effect on the price (Kyle’s, 1985). After a large market order is placed, the limit orders on the order book at 5.64, 5.65 and 5.66 are executed and the order book thinned. In the following period, an increasing number of sell limit orders are placed in the order book, while the price decreases and does not return to the initial level eventually. The average buy price for this trade was 5.649, slightly lower than 5.6589, but the final profit was -8.25. This indicates a greater loss than the trade that the 30 shares had been spread out.
Finally, I traded with both market and limit orders, and close positions before market close. The choice of market and limit orders is based on a trade-off between order price, execution probability, and selection risk (Harris, 1998). First, the size of the spread affects my trading choice. When the spread is small, I prefer to place a market order which can deplete liquidity and cause spreads to widen. I place a limit order when the spread was larger. For example, I place a buy limit order at 5.98 and a sell limit order at 6.02, if they are eventually executed, I get a profit of 0.04 per share. Second, my assessment of the execution probability also affects my trading. For example, when I found that many orders already existed at the best offer on the buy side of the order book, I believe that the probability of executing a limit order at that offer is low. Therefore, I prefer to place a market order or a limit order with a higher bid price. Finally, the remaining trading time affects my trading. I am more concerned about order execution than price. To close my position before the market closes, I usually ignore the price and choose a market order to trade all my remaining shares.
When considering trading performance, smaller spreads do not fully compensate for transaction costs. According to Table 4 below, although my buy and sell limit order were executed at 02:10.075, the round-trip profit of 0.02 per share could not compensate for the transaction cost of 0.11 per share, and the final profit was still negative.
Table 4 the Trading Results with Limit Orders and Market Orders
Open time Open price Close time Close price position cost profit
01:00.075 5.43 02:10.075 5.45 1 0.11 -0.09
01:20.095 5.43 02:10.075 5.45 7 0.76 -0.62
01:20.095 5.43 03:00.065 5.45 2 0.22 -0.18
01:29.465 5.43 04:24.594 5.45 1 0.11 -0.09
02:33.435 5.43 04:24.594 5.45 5 0.54 -0.39
Conclusion
Simulated trading with TRETS clarifies the trading strategies and related trading issues in order-driven markets. In this paper, I first made comparative analysis of trading performance of market and limit orders. It is important to note that although using limit orders did not achieve the target number of trades during the trading day, trading with limit orders suggests a better performance. I am usually an impatient trader in the trading process, and I often place aggressive orders to increase the probability of execution to reach my target trade size. There are certain limitations in this paper: First, it does not consider order cancellation, which has a significant impact on order trading (Peterson and Sirri, 2002). Second, due to the short simulation trading time, the number of stocks traded during the simulation trading day is not large. Also, the effect of order submission time on trading (Easley and O’Hara, 1992) was not analyzed. Finally, this paper does not analyze in detail the impact of short-term market volatility on order trading (Handa and Schwartz, 1996).
Critical Review on Liquidity Risk
Introduction
Liquidity is an important characteristic of financial markets and is often considered to have no clear or universally accepted definition. One of the widely accepted definitions is the ability to trade a large number of transactions rapidly at low cost with little impact on the price (Liu 2006). In financial markets, liquidity varies over time, which indicates that liquidity is risky, and Morris and Shin (2004) point out that the variability and uncertainty of liquidity are major challenges for financial liquidity users such as traders and investors. Liquidity indicators tend to decline extremely during market downturns (Chordia et al. 2001), such as the stock market crashes of 1987 and 1989, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the LTCM crisis of 1998, which are considered to be systemic collapses of liquidity. In the research field, scholars have paid extensive attention to the relationship between liquidity and asset returns. To further enhance the understanding of the current state of liquidity risk research, this paper provides a systematic review of the studies on liquidity risk. This study first reviews the definitions of stock market liquidity and liquidity risk, and then this paper compares the literature on the level of liquidity and the relationship between liquidity risk and stock returns, respectively.
Definition
From a market perspective, liquidity is the presence of buy and sell prices always for investors who want to trade a small number of stocks immediately (Black, 1971). Kyle (1985) proposed three liquidity dimensions. Subsequently, Harris (1990) further enriched the liquidity measure dimensions by proposing the four dimensions of liquidity, namely immediacy, breadth, depth, and elasticity. The proposal of the four dimensions of liquidity has been widely accepted by the academic community.
Since liquidity has multiple dimensions, it is difficult to be measured by a single indicator. Previous studies have used multiple liquidity measures which include high frequency proxies such as quoted bid-ask spread, effective bid-ask spread, quote size, trading volume and trading frequency (Glosten and Harris, 1988; Brennan and Subrahmanyam, 1996; Chordia et al; Huberman and Halka, 2001, etc.) and low-frequency proxies such as Amihud illiquidity indicator (ILLIQ indicator) (Amihud, 2002).The liquidity of an asset is subject to constant changes in response to market environmental conditions. The risk arising from fluctuations in the liquidity of an asset or the risk arising from illiquidity or illiquidity of an asset is considered to be liquidity risk. And it is also defined as the risk arising from the cost of liquidation of assets in the process of liquidation.
Liquidity Risk and Returns
Early research focused on the impact of liquidity levels on stock returns, and most showed that liquidity impacts the stock returns significantly. The first to study this kind of relationship was Amihud and Mendelson (1986). They used bid-ask spreads to measure illiquidity. Their findings suggest that liquidity has a significant impact on stock returns, with higher spread assets generating higher expected returns. Since then, most studies have also found similar findings (such as Brennan & Subrahmanyam, 1996; Lam and Tam, 2011; Dinh, 2017). Their findings point to an impact of liquidity on stock returns.
However, some literature finds opposite findings. Eleswarapu and Reinganum (1993) extend the study of Amihud and Mendelson (1986) and show that the effect of liquidity on stock returns is significant only in January. Lischewski and Voronkova (2012) choose the Polish stock market as an emerging market for their study and there is no significant evidence that illiquidity affects expected stock returns. They suggest that this may be related to the specific structure of the Polish stock market. Evidence for the absence of a liquidity premium for stocks was likewise found in a study of frontier markets (Stereńcza et al., 2020). Therefore, it is important to consider alternative views.
In the study of liquidity premiums, the focus has gradually shifted from the liquidity of individual assets to the commonality of liquidity. Chordia et al. (2000) show that liquidity indicators co-vary with market and industry-wide liquidity. This co-influence remains important even after accounting for individual stock liquidity determinants. Since then, studies such as Hasbrouck and Seppi (2001), Brockman et al. (2009) and Chuliá et al. (2020) also support liquidity commonality. The fact that liquidity commonality is time-varying makes it difficult to disperse liquidity risk, which means that this common liquidity risk may become a priced risk factor.
Pastor and Stambaugh (2003) investigate the relationship between stock returns and asset prices. They construct a single variable that measures market illiquidity and find a significant relationship between sensitivity to liquidity fluctuations and expected stock returns. Sadka (2006) finds similar evidence through their study. Subsequently, Acharya and Pedersen (2005) constructed the Liquidity Adjusted Capital Asset Pricing Model (LCAPM) which is proved to explain the data better than the traditional CAPM model. However, there is the same pricing of market risk and liquidity risk in the LCAPM model. Liu (2006) extends the traditional CAPM model to construct a two-factor model that includes both market and liquidity factors.
Subsequently, several studies using LCAPM model (Acharya and Pedersen, 2005) have found supporting evidence (Lee, 2011; Kim and Lee, 2014; Grillini et al. 2019). However, studies of the pricing power of other liquidity risk-based models have been found differently. The liquidity factor is not priced in the U.S. equity market when the PS liquidity factor is incorporated into the asset pricing model (Momani, 2018). Further, there is also no evidence that Sadka’s (2006) liquidity factors based on price effects generate significant liquidity risk premiums. But this does not mean that liquidity risk can be ignored in asset pricing models, and Ma et al. (2021) found that LCAPM models perform well in explaining average asset returns.
In recent years an increasing number of studies have focused on emerging markets, but the related research literature has found different results. A part of the research finds that liquidity cointegration is priced in emerging markets (Lee, 2011; Ho and Chang, 2015; Silva Júnior and Machado, 2020). However, Moshirian, 2017) assert that while liquidity commonality is priced in developed markets, such results are not found in emerging markets.
Conclusion
Liquidity is vital to traders and the financial markets. This study may help researchers comprehend the present level of research on liquidity risk, notably the link between liquidity risk and stock returns. First, the paper defines stock market liquidity and liquidity risk. Liquidity is the capacity to trade huge volumes of transactions swiftly and cheaply. Second, this research examines the literature on liquidity and liquidity risk. Currently, most research shows that liquidity and liquidity risk effect stock returns. Several studies build asset pricing models based on liquidity risk to examine its pricing power. Several research have shown it to be a major price component. However, several disagreements in this subject field need additional investigation. First, liquidity risk-based asset pricing models are continually evolving. More research is required to construct complete asset pricing models that consider liquidity risk.
Reference
Acharya, V. V. and Pedersen, L. H. 2005. Asset pricing with liquidity risk. Journal of Financial Economics 77(2), pp. 375-410.
ADDIN EN.REFLIST Ahn, H. J., Bae, K. H. and Chan, K. 2001. Limit orders, depth, and volatility: Evidence from the stock exchange of Hong Kong. The Journal of Finance 56(2), pp. 767-788.
Amihud, Y. and Mendelson, H. 1986. Asset pricing and the bid-ask spread. Journal of Financial Economics 17(2), pp. 223-249.
Amihud, Y. 2002. Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects. Journal of financial markets 5(1), pp. 31-56.
Bae, K.-H., Jang, H. and Park, K. S. 2003. Traders’ choice between limit and market orders: evidence from NYSE stocks. Journal of financial markets 6(4), pp. 517-538.
Biais, B., Hillion, P. and Spatt, C. 1995. An empirical analysis of the limit order book and the order flow in the Paris Bourse. The Journal of Finance 50(5), pp. 1655-1689.
Bloomfield, R., O’hara, M. and Saar, G. 2005. The “make or take” decision in an electronic market: Evidence on the evolution of liquidity. Journal of Financial Economics 75(1), pp. 165-199.
Brennan, M. J. and Subrahmanyam, A. 1996. Market microstructure and asset pricing: On the compensation for illiquidity in stock returns. Journal of Financial Economics 41(3), pp. 441-464.
Brockman, P., Chung, D. Y. and Pérignon, C. 2009. Commonality in liquidity: A global perspective. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 44(4), pp. 851-882.
Cao, C., Hansch, O. and Wang, X. 2009. The information content of an open limit‐order book. Journal of Futures Markets: Futures, Options, and Other Derivative Products 29(1), pp. 16-41.
Chordia, T., Roll, R. and Subrahmanyam, A. 2000. Commonality in liquidity. Journal of Financial Economics 56(1), pp. 3-28.
Chordia, T., Roll, R. and Subrahmanyam, A. 2001. Market liquidity and trading activity. The Journal of Finance 56(2), pp. 501-530.
Chuliá, H., Koser, C. and Uribe, J. M. 2020. Uncovering the time-varying relationship between commonality in liquidity and volatility. International Review of Financial Analysis 69, p. 101466.
Dinh, M. T. H. 2017. The returns, risk and liquidity relationship in high frequency trading: Evidence from the Oslo stock market. Research in International Business and Finance 39, pp. 30-40.
Eleswarapu, V. R. and Reinganum, M. R. 1993. The seasonal behavior of the liquidity premium in asset pricing. Journal of Financial Economics 34(3), pp. 373-386.
Fong, K. Y., Holden, C. W. and Trzcinka, C. A. 2017. What are the best liquidity proxies for global research? Review of Finance 21(4), pp. 1355-1401.
Glosten, L. R. and Harris, L. E. 1988. Estimating the components of the bid/ask spread. Journal of Financial Economics 21(1), pp. 123-142.
Grillini, S., Ozkan, A., Sharma, A. and Al Janabi, M. A. 2019. Pricing of time-varying illiquidity within the Eurozone: Evidence using a Markov switching liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model. International Review of Financial Analysis 64, pp. 145-158.
Handa, P. and Schwartz, R. A. 1996. Limit order trading. The Journal of Finance 51(5), pp. 1835-1861.
Harris, L. 1990. Liquidity, trading rules and electronic trading systems. (No. 91-8)
Harris, L. and Hasbrouck, J. 1996. Market vs. limit orders: the SuperDOT evidence on order submission strategy. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 31(2), pp. 213-231.
Harris, L. 1998. Optimal dynamic order submission strategies in some stylized trading problems. Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments 7(2), pp. 1-76.
Hasbrouck, J. and Seppi, D. J. 2001. Common factors in prices, order flows, and liquidity. Journal of Financial Economics 59(3), pp. 383-411.
Ho, T.-w. and Chang, S.-H. 2015. The pricing of liquidity risk on the Shanghai stock market. International Review of Economics & Finance 38, pp. 112-130.
Huberman, G. and Halka, D. 2001. Systematic liquidity. Journal of Financial Research 24(2), pp. 161-178.
Kyle, A. S. 1985. Continuous auctions and insider trading. Econometrica: Journal of the econometric society, pp. 1315-1335.
Lee, K.-H. 2011. The world price of liquidity risk. Journal of Financial Economics 99(1), pp. 136-161.
Liu, W. 2006. A liquidity-augmented capital asset pricing model. Journal of Financial Economics 82(3), pp. 631-671.
Ma, X., Zhang, X. and Liu, W. 2021. Further tests of asset pricing models: Liquidity risk matters. Economic Modelling 95, pp. 255-273.
Momani, M. Q. 2018. Revisiting Pastor–Stambaugh liquidity factor. Economics Letters 163, pp. 190-192.
Moshirian, F., Qian, X., Wee, C. K. G. and Zhang, B. 2017. The determinants and pricing of liquidity commonality around the world. Journal of financial markets 33, pp. 22-41.
Pástor, Ľ. and Stambaugh, R. F. 2003. Liquidity risk and expected stock returns. Journal of Political economy 111(3), pp. 642-685.
Peterson, M. and Sirri, E. 2002. Order submission strategy and the curious case of marketable limit orders. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 37(2), pp. 221-241.
Sadka, R. 2006. Momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift anomalies: The role of liquidity risk. Journal of Financial Economics 80(2), pp. 309-349.
Stereńczak, S., Zaremba, A. and Umar, Z. 2020. Is there an illiquidity premium in frontier markets? Emerging Markets Review 42, p. 100673.
Sueshige, T., Kanazawa, K., Takayasu, H., & Takayasu, M. (2018). Ecology of trading strategies in a forex market for limit and market orders. PloS one, 13(12), e0208332.
Abortion Controversy
Name
Institution
Abortion Controversy
The on-going controversy over abortion in US excites like no other topic for over two centuries. The issue continues to dominate the media and public, and; therefore, abortion has divided the country, society, families, religions and politics. This is evident with the emergence of two opposing groups (pro-choice and pro-life) with different ideologies. The controversy seems to arise from the struggle over whose deep-rooted morals and beliefs are good for society.
The pro-life strongly condemn the act of abortion, and they want abortion to be declared as an illegal act. Some pro-life organizations and groups include the Pro-Life Action League, National Right to Life and Prolife America. They view abortion as a vulnerability to their life morals and values. On the other hand, the pro-choice advocate for legalization of abortion i.e. women should have constitutional rights to have control over their body. They call for sexual awareness programs, access to contraceptives and trained doctors to provide abortion. The proponents like National Abortion Rights Action League, Planned Parenthood and the national Abortion Federation are fighting against restrictions to abortion such as 24-hours waiting periods, mandatory parental notification, right of doctors to deny contraceptive and abstinence. They believe that such initiatives are spreading misleading, false and distorted information to the public (Hopely, Carr, Chon, Harari, & Chavez, 2006).
One of the major debates about abortion arises from the question of when life begins. The pro-life debate that the commencement of life is a biological fact, given their understanding that existence begins at the moment of conception; hence, the commencement of life is not a moral, personal or religious debate. Therefore, if the right to life, i.e. the right to live and develop naturally on earth, is to be taken as the key privilege of a human being, then abortion should be regarded as one way of violating this assumed right. Pro-choice on the other side, argue that the question of when life starts, is frequently undermined as a spiritual question. Hence, their position is not a moral judgment call but the right of a woman. Also, the proponents assume that the fetus is rather a potential person and not a person. Hence, its right should not be same to an actual person (Hopely, Carr, Chon, Harari, & Chavez, 2006).
About contraceptives, or sexual awareness, the pro-life believe that the most desirable and appropriate contraceptive is abstinence or family planning (least option). They believe contraceptive can accelerate juveniles’ desire for sex in the first place, resulting to early pregnancies. It is clear that pro-life followers are aware that contraceptives means are readily available and can lead to reduction in the abortion rate. Therefore, this implies that they reject the method on social and religious grounds. The position of the pro-choice is to legalize emergency contraceptive to ladies and non-surgical abortions. They believe this will transform abortion in US by making it more available and confidential. This is more fueled by the proposed HB 16, an act that will allow pharmacies to refuse to issue out emergency contraceptive like plan B. a pill bars egg fertilization, implantation in the Uterus or even ovulation. The drug can also reduce the chances of a lady becoming pregnant by 89% since it is a concentrated dose of birth control pill (Hopely, Carr, Chon, Harari, & Chavez, 2006).
Also, the pro-life proponents agree that women possess the right to control their own bodies; however, this does not substantiate the right to end a fetus’ life through abortion. They believe that there are several ways an expectant woman can deal with a problematic situation that do not necessarily resort to abortion. They assume the nine months of mental and physical burden required to raise a child to terms. Here, their reference bases on moral claims due to lack of evidence to why a lady should have a say over her body and not the right to decide whether she needs an abortion or not. On the other hand, the pro-choice followers not only champion for constitutional rights of a lady to have privacy, but also abortion primarily a struggle for a lady’s right to manage her body. They condemn unjustifiable government infringement in to women’s private and personal affairs. Their supportive evidence includes the comparison of the death-rates from legal abortion as least than from a shot of penicillin (Hopely, Carr, Chon, Harari, & Chavez, 2006).
Another controversy arises from pregnancy due to incest or rape. The pro-life argue that it is not good to turn this evil in to second crime (killing of a fetus). They also citing evidence from testimonies by mothers who decided not to abort the fetus and in the end, they transformed something horrible into something worth. Also, there are low statistics indicating cases of abortion due to incest or rape; hence, this can not justify the legalization of abortion. If abortion is to be removed, there will many cases of illegal abortion, unplanned families, and a population boom just to mention a few which can lead in to economic tragedy.
There are numerous articles with different topics about abortion. For instance, an article from “Take the red pill!” presents a story of a lady who was raped, during her teen age, by her father at 15. When her father learnt that she was pregnant, he forced her to abort the fetus. Her parent told her that abortion would solve the issues, when it was never truly a crisis in the first place. She argues that her baby and she were not given a choice, and the incident still haunts her (Kalasky, 2012). An article by “Adoption.com” (2012), provides reasons to why ladies choose to abort. They include failed contraceptive that lead to unplanned pregnancy, teens pregnancy, medical reasons i.e. when there are chances of birth defects abortion may be encouraged for the safety and wellbeing of the expectant mother, incest, rape and other forms of crimes. Lastly, another article from “AbortionFacts.com” has information about psychological and physical effects of abortion on the victims. Physical effects are excessive bleeding, infection (sterility), perforation of the Uterus, cervical injury among others. While psychological effects include a sense of relief, nervous disorder, sleep disturbance, sexual dysfunction i.e. loss of pleasure from intercourse, trauma and other serious psychiatric complications (Monahan, 2006).
New communication technologies like evolving mobile technology and online publishing software have accelerated the debate on abortion than traditional methods. Therefore, the public (recipients) is increasingly turning to online source of news, where they can post supplementary information to give context, respond online, and counterpoints about abortion. This has forced traditional news outlets to adopt open publishing features to their online versions. The media environment is now moving to a more inclusive model in which the public and audiences possess voices, from a broadcast method where few communicate to many. Despite the longtime debate between the two parties, the controversy over rights remains unsolved, and the emerging trends in media seem to escalate the issue rather than to offer the solution. The Medias run different and conflicting views on abortion, thereby leaving the public divided on the issue (AIMS, 2008).
From the discussion, it is evident that people beliefs are closely affected by social makers like race, religious, sex, age and affiliation. Controversies on abortion abases on social issues like unwanted kids, poverty, risks of illegal abortion, abuse and overpopulation. Hence, with the changing trends in media, expect the abortion controversy to worsen even more.
Adoption.com. (2012). Common Reasons People Choose Abortion. Retrieved from http://pregnancy.adoption.com/pregnant/common-reasons-people-choose-abortion.htmlAdvisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS). (2008). // engaging new media / / challenging old assumptions. Retrieved from http://app.mica.gov.sg/Data/0/AIMS%20Report%20%28Dec%2008%29%20-%20Engaging%20New%20Media,%20Challenging%20Old%20Assumptions.pdfHopely, E. Carr, A. Chon, S. Harari, F. & Chavez, J. (n.d). The Abortion Debate. Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/social.issues/papers/AbortGrB.htmlKalasky, D. (2012). “Take the Red Pill.” Abortion: The Great Incest Cover-Up … A Young Mother’s Story. Retrieved from http://www.truthusa.org/articles/life/incest.htmMonahan, M. (2006). AbortionFacts.com: The After Effects of Abortion. Retrieved from http://www.abortionfacts.com/reardon/after_effects_of_abortion.asp