...Ethical Issues of Abortion “Abortion is termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior viability” (Wikipedia). Abortions can occur spontaneously which is called miscarriage, or it could be induced. When people talk about abortion, they mostly refer to the induced abortion. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, approximately forty- two million abortions occur in this world per year averaging to 115,000 abortions per day. Eighty-three percent of these abortions occur in underdeveloped countries. In United States of America, one third of the women before the age of forty-five, have abortions. The average abortion per day in United States of America is 3,700. Eighty-eight percent of abortions are found in first trimester; fifty-nine percent of abortion is done in first eight weeks of pregnancy. Non-Hispanic white women had the largest percentage of abortions rate of (37.1%), followed by non-Hispanic black women (34.4%), Hispanic women (22.1%) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Whenever it comes to abortion, people talk about Pro-Life vs. Pro Choice. Pro-life is when a person believes that the “government has an obligation to preserve all human life regardless of intent or quality of life” (Head). Pro Choice is when “individuals have unlimited autonomy with respect to their own reproductive systems as long as they do not breach the autonomy of others” (Head). Whatever side a person takes, it...
Words: 1945 - Pages: 8
...“Pro-choice Abortion” Abortion has been one of the biggest controversies of all time. Many people believe it is immoral and even consider it to be murder. 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.” 1 These pro-life believers do not support the idea of induced abortion and believe it should be illegal. Many of these supporters do not know that if abortion were illegal they would still be performed, unfortunately by an uneducated staffs. Over 70 thousand maternal deaths occur every year because of unsafe abortions1. These women die, so the idea of supporting pro-life is contradictory, this is why the nation should be pro-choice. Pro-choice believers support the right to privacy and the idea women should have the choice to do what she pleases with her own body. As an example; a woman is raped by a man and becomes pregnant with his child. She decides she doesn’t want to keep the baby; she has an abortion because the idea of raising a child of her rapist is too painful for her to cope with. Pro-choice defenders take sympathies to this woman while she then gets called a murderer by pro-life supporters. Abortions sometimes results in the woman being harassed because of the choice she has made about her own body. That’s what pro-life supports. Often time’s situations like this turns into harassment which can be considered to be part of anti-abortion violence1....
Words: 3628 - Pages: 15
...increasing number of abortion cases throughout the world. This scenario has been fuelled by among other factors social and economic factors. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. It is the removal of the foetus before it is viable. It is usually done before the foetus gets to 25 weeks old. It is either spontaneous or induced abortion. Abortion refers to the induced type (Malcolm 1977 page 12). In developed countries, abortion is legal whereas most developing countries do not encourage and permit abortion. This brings about the differences in safe and unsafe abortions. Abortion accounts for over 70,000 maternal deaths worldwide. Abortion has a long history. In the past, it was done using crude tools such as sharpened tools, physical trauma and other traditional methods. With advancement in the field of medicine, contemporary methods are now used and involve the use of medication and surgical procedures (Nada 1998 page 61). Each country in the world has different legality, cultural and religious statuses and prevalence of abortion. The ethical principles towards abortion and removal of pregnancies also vary. Countries such as the United States of America and Britain have heated politics surrounding the issue of abortion in pro-life and pro-choice campaigns (Ted 1995 page 66). These are based on the argument that for one group, it should be legalized and for the other, abortion should not. Most governments in the developed countries have legalized abortion. Many developing...
Words: 2367 - Pages: 10
...Abortion Abortion is the termination of pregnancy before the fetus is able to survive without depending on the mother. The loss of this is usually referred to as premature birth. Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures performed in many countries today. In some countries abortion is legalized while in others this is a criminal offence that can lead to prosecution. Globally, each year, 20 to 30 million legal abortions are performed while 10 to 20million illegal abortions do take place (Gnad, 2008). Abortions in most parts of the world are unsafe and, account for many deaths of women due to, many complication involved. In spite of modern, effective and readily available birth control methods, more than half of the pregnancies that happen in the world today are mostly unplanned. Many of these pregnancies end up in abortion. This has made abortion, a pertinent issue that this paper tries to discuss about. Firstly, abortion in the world today comes in many types. Abortion performed before the end of seven weeks from the time of conception is usually done surgically or by use of drugs. From nine weeks to fourteen weeks, abortion is usually performed by a procedure known as dilatation and suction curettage. After fourteen weeks, abortion is performed using a procedure referred to as dilatation and evacuation procedure (Michael, 2000). After expiry of 20 weeks after conception, abortion can only be performed by labor induction, saline infusion or hysterectomy. Medical...
Words: 699 - Pages: 3
...The argument over whether abortion should be legal is an ongoing debate. Although abortion has been legalized over the majority of the U.S., many people are still against it. Abortion should be legal because it gives the woman the right to choose. At times there may be several factors that affect the woman’s decision. Women that are pregnant due to rape may prefer to have an abortion. A woman may not be financially stable, or may be pregnant with a malformed fetus, or the pregnancy could cause them health issues and they may want to have an abortion. Making abortion illegal cannot stop illegal abortions which are very unsafe. Abortion should remain the decision of the mother. Women that are pregnant because they were raped should have the right to terminate their pregnancy. Rape victims may experience many mental problems which can interfere with their parenting. The baby will always be a reminder of what they went through. Some women may be able to handle this, while it could be too much for others. The victim may be exposed to harmful germs and diseases from the predator. The baby could possibly be born with diseases. The baby will also have to be raised without their real father, and one day possibly learns the truth. Women who have been diagnosed with a malformed fetus should have the right to choose abortion. The child could be born with a birth defect. This could cause the child to never have a normal life. The birth defect could possibly cause the...
Words: 906 - Pages: 4
...SHOULD ABORTION BE LEGAL? By MARY W. DOUGLAS FINAL PAPER PHL-103INFORMAL LOGIC ANTHONY BIDUCK-INSTRUCTOR SEPTEMBER 8, 2013 Final Paper DouglasM1 Thesis The definition of abortion is the induced termination of a pregnancy followed by the death of the embryo or fetus. The paper is presented on the moral issues of Abortion. Should abortion be legal? As today’s society becomes more open-minded to an issue normally handled behind closed doors being performed by persons with no medical degree whatsoever, the choice should be left to the individual whether or not to have an abortion. Abortion is an eight letter word that has become a label that society applies to the procedure in which a pregnancy is purposely ended for many reasons. Let us examine the subject of legalizing abortion. Argument Abortion has been a very controversial topic for many years. With women’s rights to vote, the right to burn their bras if they wanted to, and the right to eliminate a developing fetus from a woman’s body has become a great debate. Abortion is a subject that questions the morals of an individual and their decision as to whether to have one or not. Moral philosophy has always investigated the rules and principles...
Words: 2933 - Pages: 12
...Abortion: A Never Ending Controversy Approximately 205 million abortions occur each year worldwide. Over a third are unintended and about a fifth end in abortion. What is abortion? Abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus prior to viability. In other words, it is when a mother decides she doesn’t want to go through with her pregnancy. Abortion in today’s society has become very political. You are either pro-choice, pro-life, and there doesn’t seem to be a happy medium. As we look at abortion and research its history, should it remain legal in the United States, or should it be outlawed, we must consider both points of views. November 14, 1979, with the temperature outside at fifteen degrees, a two pound baby girl was found in a field wrapped up in a wet, dirty, old shirt. The umbilical cord was still attached, and the baby had been aborted twelve weeks prematurely. With little chance of survival, the baby was taken to a medical center. The little girl survived surgery and other efforts to save her. The baby was later adopted by Susan Morrison, one of the nurses who attended to her. The baby was named Christelle, and now she and her mother talk to thousands of people about abortion and the pro-life movement. There are 1,600,000 other abortion stories every year in the United States. “Abortion is the termination of pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by death of the embryo or fetus. Because...
Words: 2773 - Pages: 12
...Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior toviability.[note 1] An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced. The term abortion most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy. Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine.[1] However,unsafe abortions result in approximately 70 thousand maternal deaths and 5 million disabilities per year globally.[2] An estimated 44 million abortions are performed globally each year, with slightly under half of those performed unsafely.[3] The incidence of abortion has stabilized in recent years,[3] having previously spent decades declining as access to family planning education and contraceptiveservices increased.[4] Forty percent of the world's women have access to induced abortions (within gestational limits).[5] Induced abortion has a long history and has been facilitated by various methods including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical trauma, and other traditional methods. Contemporary medicine utilizes medications and surgical procedures to induce abortion. The legality, prevalence, cultural and religious status of abortion vary substantially around the world. In many parts of the world there is prominent and divisive public controversy over the ethical and legal issues of...
Words: 683 - Pages: 3
...Abortion Thou shall not murder is one of the Ten Commandments from the Bible. Is a mother's right to choose considered murder? Several states in our country still allow the capital punishment for criminals who have committed heinous crimes. We, as a nation however, have moved on to the innocent and the unborn. It seems that our culture in today's time is strictly based on convenience. So why shouldn't terminating pregnancies be the same as committing murder? First of all, I would like to provide some interesting facts on abortion. Abortion became legal in the United States in 1973 with the landmark decision in Roe versus Wade. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute (AGI), there were 1.21 million abortions in the United States in 2008, which is the most recent data available. Abortion is the most common outpatient surgical procedure currently performed as noted by the Abortion Clinic Services. The leading state in the nation in the number of abortions in 2008 was New York, followed by Florida and Texas. The annual number of legal abortions doubled between 1973 and 1978 and peaked in 1990. There was a slow but steady decline in the number of legal abortions in the 1990s. There was then a 3.7% decrease in the number of abortions from 2000 to 2008. Nearly half of the number of pregnancies in American women are unintended with approximately 40% of those ending in abortion. According to AGI, 22% of all United States pregnancies end in...
Words: 942 - Pages: 4
...ABORTION An abortion is when the pregnancy is ended so that it does not result in the birth of a child. Sometimes this is called ‘termination of pregnancy’. The pregnancy is removed from the womb, either by taking pills (medical abortion) which involves taking medicines to cause a miscarriage or by surgery (surgical abortion) where the pregnancy is removed from the womb. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of afetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced. The term abortionmost commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy. Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine. However, unsafe abortions result in approximately 70,000maternal deaths and 5 million hospital admissions per year globally. An estimated 44 million abortions are performed globally each year, with slightly under half of those performed unsafely. The incidence of abortion has stabilized in recent years, having previously spent decades declining as access to family planning education and contraceptive services increased. Forty percent of the world's women have access to legal induced abortions (within gestational limits). Induced abortion has a long history and has been performed by various methods, including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical...
Words: 1092 - Pages: 5
...ILLEGALIZE ABORTION By: Abirna Senthilkaruniyan “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is 'Abortion', because it is a war against the child... A direct killing of the innocent child, 'Murder' by the mother herself...”― Mother Teresa. In the twenty first century, laws have changed to establish equality to both men and women in developed nations. The act of abortion, ‘is the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.’ This act became legal in the United States of America in 1973 after the Supreme Court case of Roe vs. Wade. In North America, it is legal to abort a child twenty weeks after conception. The government will permit a woman to have a late-abortion for the following reasons: “(1) if the woman has a serious disease, (2) the pregnancy could endanger her physical/mental health, (3) the continuation of pregnancy could lead to substantial risk to the newborn, (4) if the pregnancy was the result of rape (5) if the socio-economic status of the mother hampers the progress of a healthy pregnancy, (6) if the contraceptive device irrespective of the method used failed.” However, other than the respectable mediums listed above abortion should be abolished. Due to the law, abortion is now a risk to the economy and its future, it also increases the rates of murder and can negatively impact a woman psychologically. If North American countries want to sustain humanity and to continue being economical contributors, influencers and advisors...
Words: 1495 - Pages: 6
...The Tragedy of Teenage Abortion In society today, teens are taught by the television and the media that pre-marital sex is not a bad thing. This problem is leading to many teenage pregnancies, that then lead to abortion. All over the world teens are faced with many challenges in their everyday lives. Sex is being portrayed as extremely appealing in the media, but what they don't show is the pregnancies and the unborn child that never asked to be created in the first place that is being discarded. Abortion is in no way acceptable, it is murder of an unborn child. Many doctors will say that abortion is not a bad thing, and it's not murder. They have argued that it is just an embryo, and is not yet a child. In the book The Terrible Choice: The Abortion Dilemma, Glanville Williams, a well-known English criminologist, was quoted saying abortion should be treated like a tonsillectomy. It's a minor operation to remove unwanted or harmful "tissue growth". Both tissues are alive, and contain material substances, chemical compounds, DNA and RNA molecules. They may vary a little, but they are mainly matter which is composed of cells which are composed of chemicals (1-2). The only difference between a tonsillectomy and an abortion is that the fetus can grow and develop into a human being much like ourselves. Joseph Farah wrote an article about abortion in The Human Life Review. In this, she quoted Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Words: 1532 - Pages: 7
...first point out the fact that abortion is one of the most controversial issues in the United States. The progressive left stands strong on the argument that women deserve the sole right to decide on abortion. As for the conservative right they base their judgment of abortion on religious aspects than on women’s rights. Whether your stance on abortion is pro or anti it is a legal operation in the United States. In the year 1973 abortion laws were decided by the states. Most of the states banned legal abortion unless the woman’s life was at risk. The controversial case Roe v. Wade changed the outlook on abortion. “In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the controversial case Roe v. Wade. The Roe decision acknowledged both a woman’s ‘fundamental right’ to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability and the state’s legitimate interest in protecting both the women’s health and the ‘potential’ of the fetus. It prohibited states from banning abortion to protect the fetus before the third trimester of a pregnancy, and it ruled that even during that final trimester, a woman could obtain an abortion if she could prove that her life or health would be endangered by carrying the term”(Gordon, 214). This ruling gave woman the ability to make a decision of aborting a child based on their own rights and beliefs. As of 1973 to the present year of 2003 abortion is a legal procedure but is unfortunately looked upon by some, as murder. My standpoint on abortion is developed by both the progressive...
Words: 768 - Pages: 4
...Abortion has been and still is a very controversial issue. The Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade in 1973 truly brought the issue of abortion to the public eye for the first time. For those who don’t know, abortion is defined as, “ the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy”. The most common types of in-clinic abortions are called aspiration and dilation and evacuation (D&E). Aspirations are when a small tube is inserted into the cervix and the fetus is gently vacuumed from the uterus. A D&E is almost the same procedure, except medical instruments are used alongside the vacuuming. In pregnancies late into the second trimester (6 months since conception), a shot may be given through the abdomen of the woman so the fetus’ heart is stopped before the procedure begins. Aspirations are typically performed up to the first 16 weeks of pregnancy, and D&E is usually performed after the first 16 weeks. Both types are very quick. Aspirations take about 5-10 minutes while D&E’s take about 10-20 minutes. Both methods are almost guaranteed to work. There are many reasons to get an abortion, and abortion should always be legal. The classic argument for those that are pro-abortion (pro-choice) is that it is the woman’s right to choose whether she has an abortion or not, hence why those that favor abortion are referred to being pro-choice. A woman should definitely have the option to have an abortion, and denying women the right to have an abortion would be a social injustice. It’s her body...
Words: 1004 - Pages: 5
...ABORTION The type of abortion procedure used in elective pregnancy termination is primarily determined by how far a woman is into pregnancy. During the first trimester, you will usually have the option of having a medical abortion procedure or a surgical abortion procedure. Before considering the options, it is recommended that you obtain a sonogram to determine if the pregnancy is viable and for accurate pregnancy dating.The Court established a right of personal privacy protected by the due process clause that includes the right of a woman to determine whether or not to bear a child. The Court dramatically increased judicial oversight of legislation under the privacy line of cases, striking down aspects of abortion-related laws in practically all the States, the District of Columbia, and the territories.The Court held that through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, only a pregnant woman and her doctor have the legal right to make the decision about an abortion. States can restrict second-trimester abortions only in the interest of the woman's safety. Protection of a "viable fetus'' (able to survive outside the womb) is allowed only during the third trimester. If a pregnant woman's life or health is endangered, she cannot be forced to continue the pregnancy. In the five years before Roe, 16 states with 41 percent of the nation's population had liberalized their abortion laws. When the decision was announced, almost every state legislature was beginning its session...
Words: 610 - Pages: 3
