The Right to Live or Not in Case of the Abortion

Claire, a 32-year old woman living in Malta, died because of a heart disease during her 6th month of pregnancy. According to her husband Joseph, she wanted to undergo abortion because she had some heart problems; but abortions are considered illegal in Malta. So she had to take the risk which ended in her being dead. Claire is one example of many women who wanted to undergo abortion but couldn’t because of their government’s abortion laws which lead to their death.

Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. The laws of abortion are different and diverse depending on where a person resides. Some countries like Malta, Iraq, and El Salvador and many others prohibit abortion completely. Moreover, women in those countries who have had an abortion may face a jail sentence up to 30 years. Second, there are some countries where abortion is legal only when the mother is in danger. Some of these countries are Iran, Lebanon, and Chile. Third, some countries allow abortion to save a mother’s life or to protect her from physical or mental harm. These countries include Argentina, Ecuador, and Malaysia. And finally, some countries allow abortion based on the mother’s request such as China, United Sates, and Germany. This paper will discuss why abortion should be legal up until 12-14 weeks of pregnancy. First, it’s safe and is safer than the process of pregnancy and giving birth. Second, a lot of women get impregnated due to rape cases. To avoid psychological traumas and depression because of these incidents, these women should perform abortion under their own consent to avoid such catastrophic effects on their lives. Finally, having a baby can be not just a threat to the mother’s physical health, but also to her career life and financial situation.

How Safe is Abortion?

Abortion has a bad reputation of being considered as life-threatening. But in fact, it’s actually safer than continuing the pregnancy and giving birth. This is mainly due to the development of the health care centers and equipment. Also, the application of clinical guidelines has reduced the possibility of having post abortion complications. The increase of access to health care standards and the restrictive application of the World Health Organization (WHO) have made it safer for women to perform abortion. Unsafe abortions mainly take place in developing countries due to the lack of medical attention and awareness of these guidelines. The article Abortion Worldwide 2017: Uneven Progress and Unequal Access, Guttmacher Institute stated that 55% of abortions are safe, 31% are less safe, and 14% the least safe. The least safe abortions took place in countries having restrictive laws towards abortion. This is mainly due to implementation of illegal abortion because of the country laws that prevent women from applying abortion based on their request. This kind of “cognitive” abortion is generally performed under less medically adequate situations thus increasing the risk of having post abortion complications.

In the journal Reuters: Abortion safer than giving birth: study written by Genevra Pittman, Pittman argues that abortion may have minor and treatable complications but it’s still safer than pregnancy and giving birth. “Researchers found that women were about 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die from complications of an abortion”, Pittman said. Studies conducted by Elizabeth Raymond, a doctor from Gynuity Health Projects in New York City, found out that between 1998 and 2005, one woman out of every 167,000 women died because of legal abortion. In contrast, one woman out of every 11,000 women died during childbirth.

In addition to that, giving birth to a baby carries more infection risks than having an abortion. Tara Haelle in her article 5 Reasons The Supreme Court Abortion Decision Benefits Women's Health, published on Forbes magazine, said “fewer than 0.05% of women getting abortions experience any kind of severe complication requiring hospital care, compared to about 1.6% of women who experience severe complications during delivery, according to the CDC.” She also compares the long term mental health consequences of giving birth and having an abortion. For example, the risk of having depression ranges from 7% to 30% among women who continue with their pregnancy. No such statistics exist among women who choose to have an abortion because there is no proof or evidence that relates abortion to depression. And most of women who experience sadness or grief are women with a history of mental health issues or they weren’t supported for their choice.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco wanted to know how safe abortion is. So they studied 55,000 abortions that women had during 2009-2010. The results were pretty shocking. The complication rate of having an abortion is 2.1% which is less than the complication rate of wisdom tooth removal which is 7%. According to the Comprehensive Women’s Health Center, abortion does not affect women’s fertility and overall health if a complication happened and is treated. Also, CWHC states that “a recent analysis of a national emergency department sample estimated that approximately 1 million abortion procedures take place in the United State each year, and the complication rate for those procedures is less than 1 in 100”.

Restrictive laws do not lower the rate of abortions. In fact, they only make people refer to unsafe abortions to terminate the pregnancy. WHO states that in countries where restrictive laws have been set on abortion, one in every four abortions were safe due to the lack of safety measures and conditions. On the other hand, nine in every 10 abortions are considered safe in countries where abortion is legal. Also, there is no evidence that shows that restrictive laws have lowered the rate of abortions, according to WHO.

Some studies argued that abortion may lead to breast cancer or other serious illnesses in the primary pregnancy after the abortion. But the Comprehensive Women’s Health Center stated that abortion does not lead to breast cancer whatsoever. In the article Medical Abortion and the Risk of Subsequent Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes: NEJM, Virk, Zhang, and Olsen conducted a research including 30,349 women to study the relation abortion complications. They concluded that neither medical nor surgical abortions, which are performed according to WHO standards, may lead to ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, low birth weight, or preterm birth.

In countries where abortion is illegal, women still have abortions secretly so they don’t get imprisoned. These procedures take place under unsanitary conditions and by people who lack the necessary skills and knowledge. Such procedures may lead to terminal illnesses or even death sometimes. In a recent study done by WHO, 45% of all abortions done between 2010 and 2014 were considered unsafe; 97% of which were performed in developing countries where the laws concerning abortion are restrictive. Also, 4.7% to 13.2% of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortions each year (WHO,2019).

Unsafe abortions are performed using some really critical ways. On the 4th of march 2019, Médecins Sans Frontières stated that “the history of unsafe abortion is marked by dangerous methods such as: sharp sticks inserted up through the vagina and the cervix into the uterus; ingesting toxic substances such as bleach; inserting herbal preparations into the vagina; and inflicting trauma such as hitting the abdomen, or falling.” And that’s not the end of it. MSF also stated that in those methods are ineffective in most cases. So women have to go through all this pain and put their lives at risk to have an abortion because it’s not allowed in their countries. And the irony here is that a lot of people are against abortion in those countries not only because they are pro-life, but because it “harms” the mother. The laws are harming the mother, not the abortion. Those restrictive laws are driving the mother to have unsafe abortions under severe conditions because taking a pregnancy to term can be unbearable to some mothers. So why not legalizing abortion so they can have access to safe abortions and keep their life safe?

Rape Cases

“He wanted to have sex with me but I refused. He didn’t take it so well so he pushed himself on me and raped me while I was crying and screaming telling him to stop but he only kept going harder. I found out a while later that I was pregnant and it’s still haunts me till today because I was forced to continue with the pregnancy”, Amelia, a rape victim, told the Times Magazine in an interview. This is only one example of many women who get impregnated due to rape and continue their pregnancy forcefully. Forced pregnancies are mainly found in developing countries where laws allowing abortion are very restrictive or where abortion is prohibited completely.

What is more concerning is that incidents of rape and sexual assaults are pretty high in these developing countries. According to the Human Rights Watch (2018), only a few countries in the Caribbean and Latin America deny access to abortion for rape survivors, one of these countries is Ecuador. 2,000 girls give in birth in Ecuador under the age of 14. These pregnancies are considered pregnancies of rape because the age of sexual consent in Ecuador is 14. Those victims should have the right to decide whether they want to continue with the pregnancy or not. This is because in some cases, keeping the child will be a daily reminder for the victim of the rape incident and will sometimes lead to depression, anxiety, or even suicide.

Jessica, a rape victim survivor, was interviewed by the American Scientific magazine and shared her story about her child who was a result of rape. She explained her feelings towards John, her child, by saying that as he grew up, she despised and hated him. She added that she wasn’t a good mother to him and that the baby was just a reminder of the incident of rape. “I didn’t want to treat him this way, it would’ve been much easier if I just didn’t give birth to him”, she added.

A lot of people defend the idea of not having an abortion in rape cases by saying that the baby would be considered a beacon of hope for the mother. With her newborn baby, her life would have a meaning and she would have something that is worth living for; a purpose. This is true of course but is not applicable in all cases. When talking about legalizing abortion, it’s meant that women can actually have a say in it. They are not obliged to have an abortion or continue with the pregnancy; it’s totally up to them. Not all women are ready to have a child. Some women aren’t ready psychologically to have a child and can suffer from trauma later on. Sometimes a 12 year-old girl gets impregnated due to rape and she still doesn’t even know how to take care of herself, how about a newborn baby? Not only that, but also continuing with the pregnancy at such a young age threatens the girl’s life because her body isn’t fully developed (WHO).

Work and Finance

Some employees turn down promotions because the new salary doesn’t add up with the new responsibilities or because the new position would stress them out. But in case of women, some would turn down a promotion because they’re having a baby. Moreover, some women would have to take other measures to take care of the baby. According to Pew Research Center, 42% of women say that they have reduced work hours, 39% take significant amount of time off, 27% quit their jobs, and 13% turn down a promotion to take care for a child (2017).

A lot of couples lack the financial stability to care for a child. The expenses of a newborn baby is about 12,000$ per year, said the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2010. For example, Jeanne Myers was an unemployed and an unmarried when she was pregnant, stated that she wasn’t ready financially to take care of her child. “I didn't know what I would do with a baby, I was horrified. I had no job. I would have been in no financial position to care for a kid”, she said.

The American Journal of Public Health made a study including 800 women to study the reasons behind wanting an abortion. Most of women said that they weren’t able to support for a child financially. Not only that, but researchers also kept studying the next few years after continuing with the pregnancy or having an abortion. It turned out that women who had an abortion were right about their decision because their low income wouldn’t have allowed them to support their child properly. And those who continued with the pregnancy and gave birth were poor for years after. In addition to that, 10% of women who took their pregnancy to term put their babies up for adoption. And in a lot of cases, women who first have an abortion give birth later on to baby after they have improved their financial situation such as Myer’s case. After three years of having an abortion, she gave birth to new baby daughter saying that she and her husband were employed.

Having an abortion may be a vital solution for the couple to live their lives without any financial problems. Raising a baby comes with great financial responsibilities that some families or couples aren’t able to handle. So it’s better for the mother to have an abortion in such cases in order for her to focus on her life and not deny herself from big opportunities later on

Her Body, Her Choice

Abortion is a woman’s right. She’s the one who’s gonna carry the baby for nine months. Her body would start to change and she would suffer a lot. So why should the government take her right to decide whether to continue with the pregnancy or not? It’s her body after all, not the governments’. Women have been fighting for equity and equality for quite a while now, and this fight includes the right to have an abortion. So a woman can’t be considered completely free unless she has the right to have an abortion and control her body. Katha Pollitt, a feminist author, says that women should have equal opportunities as men to achieve their goals and acquire freedom. She also argues that pregnancy and giving birth have restricted women’s participation in the society. The US Supreme Court legalized abortion for the sake of the mother’s life and health. The court argued that forcing women to continue with their pregnancy would harm the mother’s psychological state, have negative effects on her mental health, and that she would be forced to raise an unwanted child.

Conclusion

To sum up, abortion is an important procedure that should be legalized in all countries. In terms of safety, it’s one of the safest procedures in medicine with very small rates of complications. It’s considered safer than continuing the pregnancy and giving birth. In the U.S., women are 14 less likely to die from an abortion that giving birth. And the majority of complications due to abortion happen in developing countries where abortion is illegal. It’s due to criminalization of abortion that women tend to seek unsafe abortions under unsanitary conditions by unqualified doctors.

Second, abortion is of vital necessity in cases of rape. Pregnancy through violence shouldn’t be forced on women. It should completely be the woman’s decision whether or not to continue with the pregnancy. Some mothers would be severely affected psychologically because of such heinous incident so they would choose to have an abortion. Others would see salvation in their newborn baby. It’s all up to the mother and her mental health and psychological state. Third, taking a pregnancy to term would harm the couple’s financial situation or the mother’s career life. Sometimes having a baby would be a real problem for the family financially and they wouldn’t be able to support it as they should. And some mother’s would have to take severe actions to take care of the child such taking some time off, turning down promotions, or even quitting their jobs.

Finally, abortion is a woman’s choice. She’s the one carrying the child for nine months. She’s the one suffering from nausea. It’s her body that’s changing. And gender equality can’t be achieved without legalizing abortion and giving women their right of having one. Nonetheless, some countries are starting to legalize abortions or decrease the restrictiveness of abortions. But still there are countries that aren’t showing a slight of change regarding this issue such as Ecuador and the Caribbean. Thus, sex education must be introduced into schools from young ages so they can avoid unintended pregnancies, understand the important of abortion in different cases, and avoid unintentional pregnancies. And remember, her body, her choice.