Abortion

Definition

The word “abortion” describes ending a pregnancy artificially using medical methods. The morality of permitting legal termination has been the focus of often fierce debate.

Explanation

Abortion is terminating a pregnancy via medical intervention, which results in the death of the developing fetus. While abortion is officially forbidden in specific communities, even if this is unusual, it is accepted as a legal method of ending unwanted pregnancies in many civilizations, including the majority of contemporary societies.

Recent abortion discussions have focused on the rights of mothers and the rights of the unborn child. In this manner, abortion is linked to broader political conflicts in contemporary democracies.

Social issue

Since the early 1970s, abortion has been legal in the US, practically all of Western Europe, Belgium, and Ireland.

In the US, legal and political measures to change the US Supreme Court’s recognition (Roe v. Wade, 1973) of a woman’s legal right to abortion is among the most discussed issues.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, Roe and Casey were overturned, terminating the protection of abortion rights by the US Constitution and enabling individual states to control any element of abortion that was not already covered by federal law. Currently, certain states in the United States forbid abortion while others permit it.

Although it is legalized in the Soviet Union for several years before its collapse, abortion politics have since emerged in various Eastern European nations as a consequence of efforts by the government to impose restrictions on it.

Numerous religious and secular groups engage in pro-abortion advocacy, and the issue often comes up in discussions about judicial nominations and presidential and legislative elections. However, some orthodox Christian religious groups are against abortion and consider it against biblical values.

Although some observers contend that the aging and dwindling frequency of abortion providers is a social issue in flux, many Americans believe that the sheer quantity of abortions alone is a societal problem.

Numerous factors, many of which overlap, contribute to women seeking abortions, such as insufficient income, marital issues, worries about their preparedness for motherhood, and mental and physical health issues.

Abortion is more common among women who are unmarried, impoverished, and non-white throughout all age categories, not only among teens. 

Pro-choice advocates contend that rather than abortion, the economic and social circumstances of many women’s lives are what constitutes a societal issue. They specifically draw attention to the fact that women’s lack of resources, such as health insurance, access to and usage of effective contraception, and a lack of sexual education programs in schools, all lead to unintended pregnancies.

Supporters of abortion also stress that restrictions on abortion, such as those required by spousal and parental notification laws, fail to acknowledge the high prevalence of intimate partner and family violence in society and the valid concerns that many women and teenagers may have about telling their parents they are pregnant.