"Western philosophy's idea of the autonomous self: the pregnant woman is in fact both a person in her body and a vessel.  Rather than seeing both beings as alive and interdependent "seeing life within life "and acknowledging that sometimes, nonetheless, the woman must choose her life over the fetus's -.
            
	Few issues have fostered such controversy as the topic of abortion.  The participants in the abortion debate not only have firmly-fixed beliefs, but each group has a self-designated appellation that clearly reflects what they believe to be the essential issues.  On one side, the pro-choice supporters see individual choice as central to the debate:  If a woman cannot choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, a condition which affects her body and possibly her entire life, then she has lost one of her most basic human rights.  These proponents of abortion believe that while a fetus is a potential life, its life cannot be placed on the same level with that of a woman.  On the other side, the pro-life opponents of abortion argue that the fetus is human and therefore given the same human rights as the mother.  Stated simply, they believe that when a society legalizes abortion, it is sanctioning murder.
            
	Pro-life activists would argue that the taking of a human life is wrong no matter what the circumstances or in which trimester it is done.  The controversy over abortion has avoided the real issue facing today's woman-her need to grow beyond stereotypes.  Much emphasis is placed on pregnancy as a result of rape, even thought the statistics show only about 0.1% of all rapes actually result in conception.  That means that a large majority of pregnancies that resulted in abortion were the result of free choice.  The assumption is that a woman does not have control over her own body until after a male partner is finished with it.  Only then does she here talk of "rights.""  The term "pro-choice- evokes their sense of fairness, but what is really being considered is the killing of an innocent human life.