Types, Causes, Reasons, and Ethical Dilemma of Abortion

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Ethical Dilemma Abortion
The question where abortion should be legalized or not has been controversial among people and countries. Before answering the question, people need to understand the reason and the motive behind abortion to be determined as legal or illegal. Nevertheless, this paper will discuss permitting abortion in any given country because of its role in women's and unborn children's lives. (Pollitt, 4). Abortion is one of the most controversial topics for decades. The debate for or against abortion has been a topic in religious and political forums where a leader's stand on the matter will either make or break it. By definition, abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before full term by a doctor. Women always have a reason to end a pregnancy. These reasons are usually valid to the person procuring the procedure. It is the woman's right to decide what she wants to do with her body, including procuring an abortion.
Background
Firstly, different types of abortions constitute safe and unsafe abortions. The two types of abortions are critical in determining the legality of abortion. Performing safe abortions should be according to the WHO's international guidelines, and these types include therapeutic abortion, inevitable abortion, medical abortion, and surgical abortion (Cisne 453). Conversely, unsafe abortions have a habitual abortion and criminal abortion. Surprisingly, most of the performed abortions are usually are unsafe abortions making abortion illegal in most countries. The effects of unsafe abortions are usually fatal; therefore, most legislative organs tend to vie it illegal for them to save lives (McLachlan 177). However, if conducted properly and professionally, abortion and its effects are usually positive, thus showing the need for it to be unprohibited.
Benefits
A little explanation of the types of abortions highlights their effects; hence, it will show why abortion should be legal. Firstly, therapeutic abortion involves the lawful termination of the fetus after medical complications have been identified and proven to be fatal to both lives of the fetus and that of the mother by professional medical personnel. In this instance, the procedure ensures saving the mother's life if staying pregnant would have led to more mother risks. Secondly, surgical or medical abortion, which is often the scariest method of abortion, involves the fetus's decapitation using sharp blades by professional physicians (Pollitt 4). Surgical abortion is always discouraged by perpetrators of human rights as they consider it inhumane to the unborn fetus. However, its impacts are usually optimistic when done professionally with the best-stipulated procedure. Using the correct medical procedure ensures that women are not harmed and can still get pregnant in the future. Thirdly, inevitable abortion is what is even supposed to make abortion legal from time immemorial. This is because this type of abortion has to be conducted, or both lives are lost. As a law of life, not everything follows the normal scheme of life (McLachlan 177). Therefore, there are times fetal development undergoes complications leading to anomalies that make it even possible to survive in the mother's womb.
Consequently, it is imperative to remove the fetus as soon as possible. The fetus's removal might be method-specific; hence, the inevitable abortion method plays a key role despite how it is done. Sometimes it is better to choose abortion, which will prevent the child from suffering if they are born with physical problems.
On the other hand, unsafe abortions such as criminal abortion constitute reasons why most countries consider abortion illegal. Firstly, criminal or unlawful abortion involves the performance of abortion by quacks who pretend to be qualified medical practitioners in the utmost secrecy without even following the stipulated guidelines (Pollitt 4). The reason behind criminal abortion is due to the illicit nature of abortion. For instance, most girls who get impregnated at a tender age fear the risk of shuttering their dreams. Therefore, they look for ways to get rid of the pregnancy (McLachlan 178). Sometimes it could be risky to take the young girl to the hospital for the risk of the legal consequences, and the parents will choose unsafe abortion as long as the fetus is removed.
On the other hand, if the country's government has considered abortion illegal, the girl will fear getting help from qualified medical personnel, thus prompting her to look for individuals offering the same services unnoticed. Additionally, the invalidity nature of abortion creates fear for most girls and women, therefore deciding things independently without medical practitioners' proper help. If abortion were made legal, most women would openly disclose their reasons for abortion to doctors; thereby, the doctor would offer the best guidance. It might not necessarily be abortion (Cisne 453). Secondly, habitual abortion is a product of the illegal nature of abortion in any given country. The rising cases of abortion, which also lead to deaths, reveals the need to support the procedure. Even if it is illegal, many women prefer to take the risk of aborting. There are numerous reasons for choosing abortion rather than carrying the pregnancy to term. This fact necessitates the need for legislation to support the practice and ensure that women get proper health care when required rather than risking their lives by getting the services of quacks.
Habitual abortion refers to the occurrence of abortion for three or more consecutive times on a single lady's body. This type of abortion can either be natural or artificial self- perpetrated. Natural habitual abortion might happen under the doctor's advice, while self-perpetuated abortion occurs when it is the woman herself who decides to do the abortion more repeatedly. In a case where it is the woman's decision, the illegality of abortion comes into play (Pollitt 22). Maybe the woman lacks knowledge on the usage of contraceptives. Therefore, every time the woman ends up doing unprotected sex, that results in unplanned pregnancies that she ends up terminating. This behavior attributes to why abortion is illegal. If the abortion were legal, the woman would go to any health facility during her first pregnancy to have been advised on contraception usage, hence preventing unplanned pregnancies. Going with this idea, it is clear that making abortion illegal increases the number of abortions, incredibly unsafe abortions among women. If the practice is legal, then this would also mean that women would have the required resources and guidance to ensure that they get to abort safely and at the right time with minimal risks (McLachlan 179). Making abortion legal will protect more women, and it can also reduce the chances of getting an unplanned pregnancy since people will have the option to terminate the fetus if they believe it was not planned.
Despite the types of abortions, the causes of abortions are essential in determining whether an abortion can be conducted or not. Consequently, these causes have significant effects on the mother's body, depending on the abortion cause. The results of abortion are the determiners when it comes to legality. Suppose there is an increased number of adverse effects related to abortion. In that case, a state can declare it illegal to provide adequate medical care to other patients other than abortion-related patients. These causes are broadly divided into health and social reasons (Cisne 455). Health causes that generally constitute the more significant part of legal abortions include Rhesus incompatibility, blocked oviducts, a congenital malformation in the fetus and the fetus, and a weakened cervix that generally leads to habitual abortion. On the other side, social causes of abortion include shame and embarrassment, unwanted pregnancies, rape, and peer pressure.
Most of the social reasons, however, affect girls who accidentally get pregnant without their will. Most of these girls, especially the teens, lack knowledge on healthy abortion and the people who are supposed to offer it. Some teens can also make the mistake to google some of the home-based aborting approaches, leading to additional health risks or even death. Due to a lack of information, young teens who are pregnant face more risks (Pollit 66). Therefore, they end up getting lured by self-proclaimed physicians who conduct the procedure in unmetered ways that lead to further health complications. Thus, the legalization of abortion might help educate girls on the right that circumstances that might necessitate abortion, which, of course, might be after exhaustion of all the preventive measures against abortion.
Legalizing abortion can be possible for the following reasons: One is to eliminate deformed babies in the community. These babies include dwarfs, babies born lacking certain parts or with multiple parts, and imbeciles. These babies grow up with a lot of stigmatization from their friends, who consider them scary, leading to psychological effects. Sometimes they suffer stress that amounts to depression, forcing them to commit suicide (McLachlan 177). Their stigmatization affects not only them but also their parents, who usually feel them. To prevent all this, abortion can help terminate a pregnancy identified to have abnormal baby outcomes right when it is membranous. This saves the mother stress that m...