Abortion is the most debated procedure. In most religions is forbiden but is also allowed in most countries!
So let’s find out some specifics about abortion and its use!
- Abortion is the ending of pregnancy due to removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus
- An abortion that occurs spontaneously is also known as a miscarriage
- When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion
- Or less frequently an “induced miscarriage”
- The word abortion is often used to mean only induced abortions
- A similar procedure after the fetus could potentially survive outside the womb is known as a “late termination of pregnancy”
- Or less accurately as a “late term abortion”
- When allowed by law, abortion in the developed world is one of the safest procedures in medicine
- Modern methods use medication or surgery for abortions
- The drug mifepristone in combination with prostaglandin appears to be as safe and effective as surgery during the first and second trimester of pregnancy
- The most common surgical technique involves dilating the cervix and using a suction device
- Birth control, such as the pill or intrauterine devices, can be used immediately following abortion
- When performed legally and safely, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems
- In contrast, unsafe abortions cause 47,000 deaths and 5 million hospital admissions each year
- The World Health Organization recommends safe and legal abortions be available to all women
- Around 56 million abortions are performed each year in the world
- With only about 45% done unsafely
- Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008
- They decreased for at least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased
- As of 2008, 40% of the world’s women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason
- Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed
- Historically abortions have been attempted using herbal medicines, sharp tools, forceful massage, or through other traditional methods
- Abortion laws and cultural or religious views of abortions are different around the world
- In some areas abortion is legal only in specific cases such as rape, problems with the fetus, poverty, risk to a woman’s health, or incest
- In many places there is much debate over the moral, ethical, and legal issues of abortion
- Those who oppose abortion often maintain that an embryo or fetus is a human with a right to life, and so they may compare abortion to murder
- Those who favor the legality of abortion often hold that a woman has a right to make decisions about her own body
- Others favor legal and accessible abortion as a public health measure
- An induced abortion may be classified as therapeutic (done in response to a health condition of the women or fetus) or elective (chosen for other reasons)
- Spontaneous abortion, also known as miscarriage, is the unintentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus before the 24th week of gestation
- A pregnancy that ends before 37 weeks of gestation resulting in a live-born infant is known as a “premature birth” or a “preterm birth”
- When a fetus dies in utero after viability, or during delivery, it is usually termed “stillborn”
- Premature births and stillbirths are generally not considered to be miscarriages although usage of these terms can sometimes overlap
- Medical abortions are those induced by abortifacient pharmaceuticals
- Medical abortion became an alternative method of abortion with the availability of prostaglandin analogs in the 1970s and the antiprogestogen mifepristone (also known as RU-486) in the 1980s
- Up to 15 weeks’ gestation, suction-aspiration or vacuum aspiration are the most common surgical methods of induced abortion
- Manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) consists of removing the fetus or embryo, placenta, and membranes by suction using a manual syringe
- Electric vacuum aspiration (EVA) uses an electric pump
- These techniques differ in the mechanism used to apply suction, in how early in pregnancy they can be used, and in whether cervical dilation is necessary
- In places lacking the necessary medical skill for dilation and extraction, or where preferred by practitioners, an abortion can be induced by first inducing labor and then inducing fetal demise if necessary
- This is sometimes called “induced miscarriage”
- This procedure may be performed from 13 weeks gestation to the third trimester
- Although it is very uncommon in the United States
- More than 80% of induced abortions throughout the second trimester are labor-induced abortions in Sweden and other nearby countries
- Historically, a number of herbs reputed to possess abortifacient properties have been used in folk medicine
- Among these are: tansy, pennyroyal, black cohosh, and the now-extinct silphium
- The health risks of abortion depend principally upon whether the procedure is performed safely or unsafely
- The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortions as those performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities
- Legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine
- In the US, the risk of maternal death from abortion is 0.7 per 100,000 procedures,
- Making abortion about 13 times safer for women than childbirth (8.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births)
- In the United States from 2000 to 2009, abortion had a lower mortality rate than plastic surgery
- The risk of abortion-related mortality increases with gestational age
- It remains lower than that of childbirth through at least 21 weeks’ gestation
- Outpatient abortion is as safe and effective from 64 to 70 days’ gestation as it is from 57 to 63 days
- Medical abortion is safe and effective for pregnancies earlier than 6 weeks’ gestation
- Some purported risks of abortion are promoted primarily by anti-abortion groups
- But the lack scientific support
- Current evidence finds no relationship between most induced abortions and mental-health problems
- Other than those expected for any unwanted pregnancy
- A report by the American Psychological Association concluded that a woman’s first abortion is not a threat to mental health when carried out in the first trimester
- Some older reviews concluded that abortion was associated with an increased risk of psychological problems
- However, they did not use an appropriate control group
- Women seeking to terminate their pregnancies sometimes resort to unsafe methods, particularly when access to legal abortion is restricted
- They may attempt to self-abort or rely on another person who does not have proper medical training or access to proper facilities
- This has a tendency to lead to severe complications, such as incomplete abortion, sepsis, hemorrhage, and damage to internal organs
- The reasons why women have abortions are diverse and vary across the world
- Some abortions are undergone as the result of societal pressures
- These might include the preference for children of a specific sex or race, disapproval of single or early motherhood, stigmatization of people with disabilities, insufficient economic support for families, lack of access to or rejection of contraceptive methods, or efforts toward population control
- These factors can sometimes result in compulsory abortion or sex-selective abortion
- An additional factor is risk to maternal or fetal health
- Induced abortion has long been the source of considerable debate
- Ethical, moral, philosophical, biological, religious and legal issues surrounding abortion are related to value systems
- Opinions of abortion may be about fetal rights, governmental authority, and women’s rights
- Current laws pertaining to abortion are diverse
- Religious, moral, and cultural factors continue to influence abortion laws throughout the world
- The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to security of person, and the right to reproductive health are major issues of human rights that sometimes constitute the basis for the existence or absence of abortion laws
- In a number of cases, abortion providers and these facilities have been subjected to various forms of violence, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, stalking, assault, arson, and bombing
- Anti-abortion violence is classified by both governmental and scholarly sources as terrorism
- Only a small fraction of those opposed to abortion commit violence
Got anything to add?