Running Head: ABORTION OBSTACLES AND RESOLUTIONS
Abortion Obstacles and Resolutions
Abstract
[pic]Despite the fact that abortion is a legal medical practice, various barriers exist and prevent women who attempt to exercise their right to choose. Barriers also prevent educators and healthcare providers who attempt to help women facing this difficult and stressful decision. This paper will examine these barriers in detail. It will also provide information that is unbiased in an attempt to understand both pro choice and pro-life individuals. This paper will address attempts that have been made to correct
this problem and will suggest solutions that are currently being used to address the issue. However abortion is viewed, it is a legal practice in this country and as citizens, we have the right to know and understand why some women feel they are misunderstood.
Over 42 million women in America have had an abortion since the Supreme Court legalized it in 1973. 1.29 million abortions took place in 2002, which was down five percent from 1996, and twenty-seven percent from 1980. Over half of abortions happen in women younger than 25. One third of all abortions happening in women who are 20-24. Statistics show that forty-nine of all pregnancies are unplanned. Thirty percent of these happen in women who are married. The number of these women who were using some type of birth control is fifty four percent. The average female will have had 1.4 unplanned pregnancies by the age of 45 and forty three percent will have had a planned abortion.
Physicians claim that having an abortion is safer than most medical procedures. They also claim more danger lies in carrying a fetus to full term than undergoing abortion before twenty-one weeks. It is also noted that physicians state the risk of dying in childbirth is eleven times greater. Substantially, delaying an abortion 15 weeks after pregnancy...