The Pros and Cons of Abortion

The topic of abortion is one of the most controversial issues in today’s society. Thousands of abortions take place every single day, and yet public opinion remains at a standstill as to whether or not abortion is ethical or not. According to a poll in 2013, fifty-four percent of the American public believes that the practice of abortion should be legal in all or most cases (“Public Opinion on Abortion”) Abortion has been defined as “the act of removing a human embryo or fetus from the uterus of a pregnant woman prior to the completion of the full term of pregnancy”(Rich, Wagner, and Geraldine). There are very strong opinions for and against this issue, but no one can deny the vast gray area of abortion. A person’s stance on the situation is often determined by how he views the fetus: a part of the mother’s body or as a human being. Abortion continues to be a moral issue because people have various views on the rights of the fetus and mother, the circumstances of the pregnancy, and their own religious convictions concerning the issue.

In the most recent study, 1.21 million abortions took place in the United States in the year 2008 (“About Abortion”). According to a study performed by the Guttmacher Institue, twenty-one percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortions (“Induced Abortion”). Fifty percent of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned (“Induced Abortion”). Of those unplanned pregnancies, four out of ten result in abortions (“Induced Abortion”). When analyzing the statistics of women who receive abortions, one must become aware that outside circumstances might contribute to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. For instance, women who are one hundred percent below the federal poverty level ac...

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