Women: The Pros And Cons Of Abortion

Women are the faced with myriad of choices on a daily basis. Whether they are superficial, like how she dresses herself or where she goes out to dinner, and others can be more life-altering, like career she pursues and the relationships she chooses to have. One choice that women should be able to make for herself is what she chooses to do with her reproductive organs. A woman should be able to choose for herself whether or not she will have an abortion, yet there are so many other people who think they know better, whether that be government or the overly-vocal Pro-Life protestors sticking their nose in someone else’s privates.

Abortion, by definition, is the intended termination of a pregnancy that results in the death of a fetus or embryo.

According to Planned Parenthood, Medical abortion, or the abortion pill, can occur up to 9 weeks into a pregnancy, and is performed over a two to three-day period. A woman would be given a hormone blocker called Mifepristone in order to block progesterone, a hormone that vital for pregnancy during the first trimester. A day or so after that, a woman would be given the drug Misoprostol, which is used to shut down the uterus to stop the pregnancy, which results in the woman bleeding heavily and passing tissue though her vagina. The actual abortion in this process would occur several hours after the Misoprostol is given. About a month after the initial visit, the woman would come back in to make sure that she is doing well. A Medical abortion is 97% effective,

In “When Did Abortion Begin?” by Tom Head, a civil liberties expert for About News, he states, “The earliest known description of abortion comes from the Ebers Papyrus (ca. 1550 BCE), an ancient Egyptian medical text drawn, ostensibly, from records dating as far back as the third millennium BCE. The Ebers Papyrus suggests that an abortion can be induced with the use of a plant-fiber tampon coated with a compound that included honey and crushed dates.” This practice and other herb-based medicinal practices were used amongst various cultures, such as the Romans, the Greeks and the Persians. Although abortions were permitted, there were some restrictions set in place. According to Head, “The earliest legal ban on abortion dates from the 11th-century BCE Code of Assura, and imposes the death penalty on married women who procure abortions without the permission of their husbands.” Medical abortions were the main way to procure a terminated pregnancy up until the end of the 19th century when surgical abortions slowly became more commonly practiced as more and more surgeries became safer and more sanitary to