This research is to presents comparative evaluation concerning the advantages and disadvantages of abortion. The purpose of this report is abortion should be preferred if the mother or the baby are under threat of health problem or abortion may be happen if women have economic issues. Besides that, the number of teenage pregnancy is increasing day by day because of that abortion may be the solution although the disadvantages like after-abortion problems or social issues or religious causes. This report may be useful to understand that abortion is friendly not hostile.
II. INTRODUCTION
Abortion is the process of early ending of a pregnancy and it may happen on its own because of various reasons. However women may chose to end pregnancy with some operations. (University of Michigan Health Library, 2014.) Also, termination of pregnancy is the second meaning of abortion.
Abortion is kind of controversial issue, especially, when people start to think about human life. This issue is neither wrong nor right due to the fact that this matter is open for interpretation. Life is not always black and white it has some gray areas, also.
Some people refuse abortion owing to the fact that they blame women because they think that abortion is kind of murder. They think that mother killed the helpless baby who has not had to chance to live. Otherwise, according to opposite thoughts, people have rights, in this situation, it’s a woman’s right to choose, she can decide that what happens on her body as a human, if she does not want to have a baby, she can do it.
Is it necessary death or really murder? When rapes, health conditions of mother or incest were happened, abortion would be okay. However if mother does not want to have a baby, abortion would be murder. Abortion looks like a great dilemma.
There are some advantages of abortion like increasing family economy or decreasing unmarried and teenage mothers’ numbers or, as it was mentioned above, it may be necessary for the mother's health. However it has some disadvantages like occurring moral or social problems, different religious status, physical and psychological problems after abortion. This topic needs to be examined with every aspect to understand it.
III. ADVANTAGES OF ABORTION
In today’s world, abortion takes place almost every minute of every day. Abortion or “termination of pregnancy” is a huge topic, especially, in this age due to the fact that this generation have uncontrolled hormones and lack of responsibility. Abortion gives a chance to young or teenage people, for example, under the age of 20, to maintain their standard life or their education life owing to the fact that generally, she would change their life to take care of child.
2.1 The Effects of Economic Conditions
Raising a child is very expensive process, isn’t it ? Even if women have to raise their children without father or without any job, these expenses would be higher than ever. According to Wesley (2014), in United States, family expenditures would be 149,760 dollar for single parent and 160,410 dollar for married couples in 2009.
According to Massie (2010), when we look at the statistics of abortion from between 1960 and 2014, over 142 million babies are missing because of economic issues. Also according to economist Julian Simon (1998), “in the long term, very crucial economic effect of population size and expansion of population is the additive of additional people to our stock of beneficial knowledge.” It might be true in terms of lots of researches. In families with insufficient income, if a child is born, parent will be left behind. Lacks of education and inadequate life have influences on the child. Because of that, abortion has positive social benefits such as less crime, especially babies who would born in poverty. Stephen Levitt (1996) claims that the increase in abortions in 1990s caused decreasing the crime rate in the following years.
Moreover, married women have right to choose to have an abortion because of their family economy. In today’s world, in accordance with Hirsch (2012), %45 of families have one child because of the strength of the economy. Then, abortion may be a method of control family size.
2.2 Health Conditions
When rapes, health conditions of mother or incest were happened, abortion would be okay. However, if mother does not want to have a baby, abortion could be murder. In general, even in religions, there are some tolerances about abortion in the case of health issues. For example, Jewish laws says that “abortion is not look like wrong when health situation of mother on danger and health problem would be not just physical but also emotional.” ( Ohalot 7:6 )
The health condition of the mother means not just physical but also emotional health conditions. The main advantage of abortion about health situations is to prevent transfer of Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( HIV )from mother to baby due to the fact that it would be high possibility during pregnancy (Raymond, 2012).
Also, women may have some diseases such as high tension or heart attack and it will be very big problem during childbirth. Such health problems may lead to loss of life and both mother and child may die.
2.2.1 Rape / Incest Situations
As everybody knows, abortion is a very controversial problem in today’s world. Many people think that women have right to choose, however a lot of people think opposite. If rape or incest situations happen, it should be change. People believe that if a woman has been raped or if a woman is victim of incest, abortion may be used. Even most of opposites think like that.
Rape or incest victims does not to want to maintain the pregnancy situation because of emotional and psychological trauma. Abortion would be the best way to stop this.
2.3 Teenage Abortions
Based on Holmes’s research in 1990, women who receive abortions are unmarried, and within the age range of 17 – 24 and also 18% of all abortions are done by teenagers a year. Abortion would be the key for the issue of an unwanted pregnancy.
According to Gans, abortion could be better option for teenage people in terms of their educational life. There are a lot of researches about this issue to better understand. The studies shows that %90 of the teenage women who had abortions had graduated from university or high school. However, %68 of the teenage women who had baby had not graduated even from high school ( Gans, 1990 ).
IV. DISADVANTAGES OF ABORTION
Abortion means that not just termination of pregnancy but also it means that killing due to the fact that abortion doesn’t give the baby a chance to live. This can cause hormonal imbalance and also abortion can cause problems of women body. Also, according to a lot of religions, abortion should be forbidden because of killing a baby.
Moreover, abortion includes guilt and depression and women may not get a child after abortion because of depression. It means that, the brain is very complex and it can reject pregnancy because of psychological reasons.
3.1 Social Problems
At the beginning of 1900s, in United States, abortion was meant that ”great crime” ( Linders, 1998 ). When we look at the 20st century, it was means that “social evil of the nature” ( Turner, 2002 ). An abortion looks like a crucial problem for national well-being in today’s world.
Abortion has not just personal effects but also many. Because, the society’s aspiration for ease has been an agent impressing the rates of abortion. After the abortion, women can be exclusion by their neighborhood due to the fact that people are looking at this issue like moral problem. Women may stop relationship with her parents or her family is not accept the children. Besides that, the husband of women would not want to baby when she is pregnant. If a baby is born, he left behind his family because of that women can choose to abortion.
3.2 Religious Status
Every country has different cultural, social and also religious status and perspective of abortion like women. A lot of women feel guilty themselves about abortion and they feel conflicted about pregnancy because of their religions.
For example, according to Islam, abortion is forbidden in holy book Quran. “Do not kill a human or take a human life which Allah has proclaimed to be holy.” (Al’Quran,17:31) Religions teach us the life is created by God, people are created by God and nobody should kill each other in any reason. According to Gandhi, abortion would be crime. However when we look at into religion, we can find some tolerances such as rape situations. Abortion may be social decision and it should not about religions.
3.3 Medical Problems
The last but not least disadvantage of abortion is the medical problems. The physical effects after an abortion can be different and women may be aware of it. Abortion considered as a low risk procedure however all medical operations has risks. According to American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists just one percent of women could have medical problems after abortion especially 14 weeks earlier. This risk could be two percent for later abortions (Harris L., 2012). Abortion can cause to cramping, pain, bleeding etc. Also, the hormones can change because of abortion and women may not get a baby after abortion even if she wants it.
Table 1
Death by Suicide
No-Pregnancy Birth Miscarriage Abortion
10% 6% 15% 69%
Note: According to Lee, E. (2003).
Moreover, abortion may damage her psychological situation such as guilt and depression. Women can feel very bad and depressed after losing a baby. According to study is called Sleep, women have sleep disorders after abortion. When we look at researches, there are a lot of psychological problems more than physical problems. 81 percent of women have emotional issues, depressions and psychological disorders however 2 percent of women have physical problems after abortion.
(Harris L., 2012)
V. CONCLUSION
Abortion is social and medical and religious problem however the findings of the report show that some disadvantages of abortion can be ignored so abortion has more advantages than its disadvantages. At least 100 million abortions were performed each year in the world. This operation is open for debate and it is controversial. Something may be good for someone however something may be bad for someone. Life is not always black or white, life has gray sides and abortion is the one of these gray sides.
This research implies that abortion has advantages such as financial and health situation and also it helps to decrease the number of teenage mothers. Abortion should be women’s choice. It looks like friendly not hostile and also it looks like the ideal method to help women. Abortion should be legal and safe. The government can tell women about the advantages of legal abortion and government try to support with all kinds of media.