Abortion In America Essay

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Abortion in America Abortion and Infanticide have long been considered a matter of family planning, population control, and gender selection. The mother and the child’s rights were rarely taken into consideration. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, surgical abortion (aka suction curettage or vacuum curettage) is the most common type of abortion procedure. These procedures involve using a suction device to remove the contents of a pregnant woman's uterus. The second most common abortion procedure, a medical abortion (aka an "abortion pill"), involves taking medications, usually mifepristone and misoprostol (aka RU-486), within the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy to induce an abortion. (2008) People who believe that abortion should be legal argue that it is a woman’s right to choose, that it is safe, and that it is better for a baby not to grow up knowing it is unwanted. Those who believe that abortion should be illegal believe that abortion is killing a human being, that it increases the likelihood of future miscarriages, and that in the case of abortions due to gender or birth abnormalities, it is discriminatory. While birth control, adoption and abortion are still common practice in the United States, the morality of abortion is under fierce debate. There are two major sides to the abortion debate; Pro-Life, and Pro-Choice. Pro-Life advocates are often called Anti-Choice, or Pro-Coercion advocates by the Pro-Choice side, and Pro-Choice advocates are often called anti-Life or Pro-Murder advocates by the Pro-Life movement. Pro-Life debaters believe that abortion is murder, and that it should be illegal, whereas the Pro-Choice side of the debate believes that it is no one’s business what a woman does with her body, and that she should be allowed to decide on her own if she should get an abortion or not. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, abortion is defined as the expulsion or extraction of all or any part of the placenta or membranes before the 20th week of pregnancy. They determined this because that is the date at which an infant cannot survive outside of the womb. (2008) The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists write that in the early 1900’s, it was a criminal act for a woman to participate in her own abortion. One of the strongest forces for criminalization of abortion was doctors, who wanted to ensure that they would have exclusive rights to practice medicine. At the time midwives, apothecaries, and homeopaths were all in competition, and the harm caused by unpracticed abortions was enough to cause it to be outlawed. (National Abortion Federation 2014) By 1965, all 50 states had outlawed abortion with few exceptions. (2008) This continued until 1976, when most states anti-abortion laws were declared unconstitutional. Pro-Life advocates immediately began pushing for legislation that would restrict abortion. RU-486, a drug that can induce a miscarriage within the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy, increased in use between 1990 and 2005, a trend which Rob Stein of the Washington Post believes caused the decrease in abortion rates within that same time frame. By November of 2003, President George W Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 into law, which prohibited doctors from preforming intact dilation and extraction. In this procedure, the mother vaginally delivers a living fetus, which is then disposed of. (2003) While Pro-Life advocates argue that personhood begins at the moment of conception, Pro-Choice advocates believe that a baby only becomes a person when it can live separately from the mother. Pro-Choice advocates argue that Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, not a baby. They argue that Personhood at conception is not a proven biological fact, and therefore cannot be used as an argument. Pro-Life advocates believe that unborn babies are human
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