Abortion

Abortion is defined as the premature expulsion of a fetus so that it does not live. Abortions can happen as a result of natural occurrences, but the interest of this paper is abortion that is induced. Abortion has been the topic of heated debates in many places. Nicole Miller went through an abortion at the age of 18, now 20 and is attempting to talk about the experance that it put her through. The government has had long difficult battles over the aspects of abortion. Legal cases have set benchmarks that are somewhat vulnerable. The church has had to analyze doctrines to decide whether abortion is right or wrong. There has also been violence in the way of abortion clinic bombings, assassinations, and political protest.

For over two hundred years, abortion has been apart of the United States culture. During the 1700’s, Americans viewed abortion merely as a means of ridding women of pregnancies that resulted from illicit relationships. Birthrates in the U.S. were extremely high at the end of the eighteenth century, so consequently the Americans wanted to lower birth rates. This social trend is best cited as “induced abortions became such a popular method of fertility control that it becomes a kind of epidemic” (qtd in Omran). Abortion went from a marginal practice of the desperate few to being a significant factor in the effort of American women to regulate their own fertility. In the 1830’s the use of new contraceptive techniques became available, but for a short while, the abortion rate increases with the new introduction to contraceptives. This is due to the idea that people thought that they could have more sex, which they did, but most of the general public did not master the use of contraceptives, so many “mistakes” occurred. Even when contraceptives were used correctly, the quality of contraceptive devices was not very good. After contraception devices became more mainstream, the abortion rate lowered(Sachdev 150-151).

There are two important factors in the 19th centuries that are underlying the increased practice of abortion. The first is the common law notion of quickening. Most women in America at this time did not consider a pre-quickened fetus a “distinct human being with a separate existence of its own.” Quicken means a fetus show signs of life. The second was the legal status of abortion in the U.S. It was never ...

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...at the Boston Pop concert. In Atlanta five hundred people marched to the capital to deliver a stack of hanger, which symbolized the back-alley abortion era. Each of these demonstrations was a warning to the government was becoming to close to denying women the right to abortion through minor changes in the law. Gloria Steinem basically summed up the pro-choice movement by saying, “Reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right.”

In conclusion, abortion is possible one of the most controversial topics in the world today. The aspects of abortion spread from religion, to ethics, to medical, to legal, and so on. I believe that there will never be any one correct or decisive answer to abortion. I assume it will change with the changing times as it has in the past, and as it will in the future. My opinion is what some would call “Riding the fence.” I believe that a woman does have control of her body to a certain extent, that extent is the beginning of the third trimester. If a child is carried for six months and beyond, I think abortion is considered murder, and anything before that is up to the person carrying that fetus.