1.

Abortion Overview
Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures performed in the United States
each year.More than 40% of all women will end a pregnancy by abortion at some time in
their reproductive lives. While women of every social class seek terminations, the typical
woman who ends her pregnancy is either young, white, unmarried, poor, or over the age of
40.
In the United States and worldwide, abortion (known also as elective termination of
pregnancy) remains common. The US Supreme Court legalized abortion in the well-known
Roe v Wade decision in 1973; currently, there areabout 1.2 million abortions are performed
each year in the United States. Worldwide, some 20-30 million legal abortions are performed
each year, with another 10-20 million abortions performed illegally. Illegal abortions are
unsafe and account for 13% of all deaths of women because of serious complications. Death
from abortion is almost unknown in the United States or in other countries where abortion is
legally available.
In spite of the introduction of newer, more effective, and more widely available birth control
methods, more than half of the 6 million pregnancies occurring each year in the United States
are considered unplanned by the women who are pregnant. Of these unplanned pregnancies,
about half end in abortion.
2. Physiological Effects of Abortion
The effects of abortion could be either physical or emotional and they will range with each
woman who experienced this procedure. Right after an abortion, women may feel some
soreness and cramping.Unfortunately there are some rather serious physical problems that
may result from an abortion. There is a wide range of complications that can result from
abortions, such as, future miscarriages, infertility and ectopic pregnancies, and even breast
cancer. There are also emotional effects of abortion, which do exist and need to be noted and
looked for. Of these, the most significant is the development of postpartum depression.
Postpartum depression is a risk any time a pregnancy ends, at any stage and no matter how.
The body can respond by becoming deeply depressed as pregnancy hormones rapidly fall.
Other emotional effects of abortion exist. Some people feel guilt, while others feel relief.
Without full-blown post-partum depression, some women may still feel tearful, moody, or

simply endure a difficult emotional ride during the first few weeks to several months after
abortion. Again, not all wo men have this experience, but some do.
3. Determining life
When does "life" begin?That is one of the issues surrounding the controversy about abortion.
The legal issues are these:
Loosely defined, the term viability is the ability of the fetus to survive outside the mother's
womb without life support. A number of landmark US Supreme Court decisions dealt with
this question. In Webster v Reproductive Health Services (1989), the court upheld the state of
Missouri's requirement for preabortion viability testing after 20 weeks' gestation (gestation is
the period of time a fetus develops in the mother's uterus, usually 40 weeks). However, there
are no reliable or medically acceptable tests for viability prior to 28 weeks' gestation.
The preamble to this law states that life begins at conception, and the unborn are entitled to
the same constitutional rights as all others. By 1992, in a ruling controversial for its inclusion
of mandatory waiting periods, elaborate consent processes, and record-keeping regulations,
Planned Parenthood v Casey tried to address the issue of viability by inserting language
recognizing that some fetuses never attain viability (for example, a developing fetus with
certain brain disorders will never live on its own). In Colautti v Franklin, the court overturned
a Pennsylvania law requiring doctors to follow specific directives in certain medical cases
and recognized the judgment of the doctor in these matters.