ehealthyland.com

Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo, resulting in or caused by its death. An abortion can occur spontaneously due to complications during pregnancy or can be induced, in humans and other species. In the context of human pregnancies, an abortion induced to preserve the health of the gravida (pregnant female) is termed a therapeutic abortion, while an abortion induced for any other reason is termed an elective abortion. The term abortion most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy, while spontaneous abortions are usually termed miscarriages.

Worldwide 42 million abortions are estimated to take place annually with 22 million of these occurring safely and 20 million unsafely. While maternal mortality seldom results from safe abortions, unsafe abortions result in 70,000 deaths and 5 million disabilities per year. One of the main determinants of the availability of safe abortions is the legality of the procedure. Forty percent of the world’s women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits. The frequency of abortions is, however, similar whether or not access is restricted.

Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures performed in the United States each year. More than 40% of all women will end a pregnancy by abortion at some time in their reproductive lives.

While women of every social class seek terminations, the typical woman who ends her pregnancy is either young, white, unmarried, poor, or over the age of 40.

In the United States and worldwide, abortion (known also as elective termination of pregnancy) remains common.

The US Supreme Court legalized abortion in the well-known Roe v Wade decision in 1973; currently, there are about 1.2 million abortions are performed each year in the United States.

Worldwide, some 20-30 million legal abortions are performed each year, with another 10-20 million abortions performed illegally. Illegal abortions are unsafe and account for 13% of all deaths of women because of serious complications. Death from abortion is almost unknown in the United States or in other countries where abortion is legally available.

In spite of the introduction of newer, more effective, and more widely available birth control methods, more than half of the 6 million pregnancies occurring each year in the United States are considered unplanned by the women who are pregnant. Of these unplanned pregnancies, about half end in abortion.

Abortion is an issue that evokes, on all sides, very strong feelings and judgments and very heated recriminations. The most radical formulation of the anti-abortion or “pro-life” side of the debate views abortion as the murder of unborn children, and so as the equivalent of out and out infanticide, making the legal use of abortion since Roe v. Wade, at a rate of around 1.5 million a year in the United States, into a holocaust of the innocent fully comparable to the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Radical “pro-life” activists who blockade abortion clinics (or who even commit terrorist acts of vandalism, arson, and murder) see what they do as what “good Germans” didn’t do in the face of Hitler’s atrocities, or what John Brown did do in his attempt at Harper’s Ferry to free the slaves through mass rebellion. While John Brown was regarded as a dangerous and treasonous fanatic during his lifetime, Union armies later marched through the South singing the song “John Brown’s Body,” whose tune Julia Ward Howe borrowed for the great “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Anti-abortionists thus feel that they would be similarly vindicated and honored by history.

On the other hand, the most radical formulation of the pro-abortion or “pro-choice” side views opposition to abortion as opposition to the freedom of women, as hatred of women, and as part of a historical effort to “subjugate” women as nothing more than baby-making machines or, failing that, to see that they die in botched abortions as part of, indeed, something comparable to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. They sometimes interpret the anti-abortion cause as so heinous that even non-violent anti-abortion protests are regarded as “hate crimes” which should be suppressed using the most draconian federal anti-racketeering and anti-terrorist laws. In general, “pro-choice” activists believe that the availability of abortion is absolutely necessary for the general alleviation of poverty and for the possibility of better and fulfilling lives for both women and children.