Marc García Abortion Research Paper8(2)

The definition of abortion, discarding murder and homicide, 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.”(1). Even

the scientific definition includes the words death and expulsion, but an

abortion is that; an expulsion of the embryo’s life.

Before using treatments against abortion, there are some other

things you can do. Firstly, if you don’t want to have a baby, don’t have

sex, but if you want to have sex, use a condom and the anti-conceptive

pill and, for more security, include the morning-after pill. And if all these

methods don’t work, THEN you can start to think about abortion.

Abortion can happen like a “medical abortion” or a “surgical

abortion”. Medical abortions are abortions that use pharmaceutical drugs

and are only effective in the first trimester of the woman’s pregnancy.

Medical abortions are 10% of all abortions in United States and Europe.

(1) Surgical abortions are medical procedures that involve minor out-

patient surgery and can happen until the 20th or the 23rd week of gestation.

Teenagers and women abort because of two main problems; family

problems and social problems. Whithin the family problems there may be

these ones: the mother could not like the father of the baby, or she thinks

her parents can be mad at her (this last case may only be in the younger

teenagers) or maybe the father of the baby may force her, which is very

common, especially when the baby has been conceived by rape or the

mother is very young and can’t afford to have a baby.

Social problems may include that the people she knows may look

at her badly or in their religion they might be an order or something in

wich having a child in early ages might be catigated with severe

punishements.

A study in 1998 revealed that in 1987-1988 women reported the

following reasons for choosing an abortion: 25% wanted to postpone

childbearing, 21.3% could not afford a baby, 14.1% had a relationship

problem or her partner didn’t want thepregnancy, 12.2% were too young,

10.8% having a child will disrupt her education or job, 7.9% want no or

no more children, 3.3% had a risk to fetal health, 2.8% had a risk to

maternal health and the 2.1% had other reasons. (4)

People promoting a pro-life or anti-abortion position say that the

government should override a woman's decision to have an abortion in

some, many, or all cases, and require her to continue her pregnancy until

the baby is born. “Most pro-lifers base their stance on the belief that

human life, in the form of an ovum and spermatozoon, becomes a human

person at the moment of conception. Thus, a human pre-embryo, embryo

and foetus, are all persons entitled to fundamental human rights,

including the most basic right: to be allowed to live.”(2)

However people promoting a pro-choice position say that the

government should not interfere with the woman's decision, or should do

so only under very rare circumstances. The girl or woman should be able

to have an abortion in most or all of the cases. “Most pro-choicers base it

on the belief that human life becomes a human person when the embryo's

heart starts beating, or when the foetus first looks human, or is born, or is

severed from its mother and is functioning independently and the woman

should be allowed to have an abortion if it is done before her embryo or

foetus attains personhood.”(2)

I think abortion has to be the last resort to prevent someone from

having a baby. Each foetus that dies with an abortion doesn’t have any

method to stand up for themselves. but, in some extreme cases, abortion

is the only way for not having a baby , if we descart adoption.

“Abortion is a topic that can get out of hand” said Ms. Lemry in

page 117 because the opinions about this subject are widely dispersed. In

the book Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Jody Mueller has an aborion of

the baby she had with her boyfriend, Mark Brittain. Mark is very

religious and many catholic people are usually against abortion.

Neverhteless, Mark makes Jody abort because he said that life couldn’t

stop because an “error in judgement. Some boys make their girlfriends

abort because their friends, both the boy’s and the girl’s, would have

started to tell “jokes” about them or just alienate them because the

teenagers nowadays are like that.. Another case of abortion, and this one

is not so direct as the others, is Sarah Byrnes. Sarah Byrnes said that she

had wanted to be an aborted kid because, as Ellerby said (page. 130) “I

don’t fust think you can have this argument without talking about quality

of life. Not just life. Quality.”(Steve Ellerby) Sarah doesn’t feel she’s got

much quality of life, since she was scarred for the rest of her life because

of her father pushing her onto a stove.

Abortion, as many controversial issues, has a good side and a bad

side. And each of those sides has their reasons to think what they think.

That’s the reason why abortion is the most dispersed-thinking issue of all.

Abortion is still taking one’s life without letting them say anything, but it

is also necessary for some special cases.