I am pro-life, but I believe there are circumstances where a woman should be allowed a legal therapeutic abortion:
To save the life of a pregnant woman.
To preserve a woman’s physical and mental health (such as rape).
To terminate a pregnancy that would result in a child being born with a congenital disorder that would be fatal or result in a severe disability.
But I will never be in favor of elective abortion when it is being used merely as a means of birth control. Such women should have used birth control before conception.
Abortion is defined as the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus resulting in its death. I have never read any material from the Pro-Life Movement or the Pro-Choice Movement. This is just the way I personally believe. To get statistics for this article, I went to a U.S. government agency.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 857,475 legal abortions in the United States in 2000. After a gradual rise, abortions peaked at 1,429,247 in 1990. Abortions then dropped to a low in 2000.
According to the CDC, race plays a role. In 2000, 57% of all legal abortions were from white women, while black women accounted for only 36%. As far as ethnicity is concerned, Hispanics accounted for only 17%.
According to the CDC, unmarried women had a whopping 81% of all legal abortions in 2000.
According to the CDC, the type of procedure used in U.S. legal abortions was Suction Curettage at 97% and Sharp Curettage at 2% in 2000.
According to the CDC, about 58% of all abortions occurred at 8 weeks or less in 2000. About 40% occurred at 9 to 20 weeks. Only 2% occurred at 21 weeks or more.
What do all these numbers mean? For one thing, 40% less women got a legal abortion in 2000 as compared to 1990. White women were in the majority of those who got an abortion. Could it be that black and Hispanic women are more Pro-Life, with more support from family? A number that really jumps out at you is that 81% of all women who got an abortion were unmarried. Perhaps they did not want to get tied down by a baby or perhaps they worried about a lack of support and a good home for the baby. It appears that women lose interest in an abortion as the pregnancy progresses.
As you can see, there is more to this debate than is offered by both sides. There is the human element. One woman may want an abortion for birth control. Another may want an abortion because she is unmarried and is afraid for her unborn baby’s future. Do non-whites give more family support to a pregnant woman? Laws and court decisions do nothing but take away the human element. The human element where a woman is more than a statistic. She is someone’s daughter. She is someone’s wife. She is someone’s mother.