Every year in America, approximately 1.21 million abortions take place. This number may seem very high, but it's actually been declining since the 1980's. Abortion was very popular around this time because of the infamous "Roe vs. Wade" trial. The argument in this court case was that antiabortion laws violated women's constitutional rights of privacy. You can see the movement of feminism with this case as well. It made women feel very powerful in the sense that they wouldn't have to take on the role of the typical house wife. If they didn't want a child, they could get rid of it and get on with their lives. The opposing side to this case of course is that abortion is murder. Many people believe that as soon as conception takes place, life has begun, and for doctors or other means of medicine to end that life is considered killing the child. Ronald Reagan, a man who opposed abortion said, "I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born." Weather you're pro life or pro choice, this quote makes you stop and think about what is really going on with abortion.
There are reasons for the steady decline of abortions taking place in the United States. One is the steady decline of teenage pregnancies. The rate of teen pregnancies has declined by 42% between the years of 1990 and 2008. This could be do to the availability and prevalent use of contraceptives. Since the number of teen pregnancies has dropped, so has the number of abortions among the adolescent age group. According to numbers that were taken in 2008, 26% of all teen pregnancies end with abortion, which is almost 60% lower than when it was at its peak in 1988.
Figure 1: Birth rates per 1,000 females ages 15-19, by race/ethnicity, 1990-2012
Another reason for the decline in abortion rates is that there are more reliable forms of contraceptives than there were 20-30 years ago. The intrauterine device (IUD), for example, was a good alternative for women who did not want to get pregnant, but didn't want to take pills or have surgery done. This would obviously help because less women are having "unwanted" pregnancies, and therefore have no need to get an abortion. In general, the accessibility to get abortions has decreased recently as well. According to the National Abortion Federation, 87% of counties in the US have no identifiable abortion provider. To someone who is pro choice, this would be appalling because it's becoming very difficult for a woman to have a medically "safe" abortion. If a woman doesn't have an abortion clinic nearby, wouldn't she be more likely to take matters into her own hands and try to eliminate her pregnancy by some other means? Or would the unavailability of a clinic make her go through with the pregnancy, and therefore force her to have a child that she didn't want in the first place? The Access Initiative Project was started by the National Abortion Federation in order to improve some of these set backs for women who wish to get abortions.
A sociologist would have a field day discussing abortion. So many questions can be asked. Why do women even consider abortion? What social forces influence and shape their decision making? There is a picture that enters every woman's head at least once in her lifetime. She will grow up, fall in love with Prince Charming, get married to him and have beautiful children. Women envision their lives going a particular way, and when things don't go that way, it can get messy. It's the most messy when you're a teenager and still trying to figure out who you want to be and how you want your life to turn out. That's the reason why most abortions take place in the teen/adolescent age group. When teenage girls get pregnant, an enormous amount of fear swoops in. What will their parents think? How will she provide for this child? Will the father stick around to help out? Or did he bail already? You had your whole life ahead of you and it all comes to a halt because you are now responsible for bringing a child into the world. And it's not just delivering a baby. Your body needs to undergo some serious changes in order to carry a baby for nine months. It is a sacrifice and a huge commitment. It doesn't quite seem fair for the girl. If a boy gets a girl pregnant, he doesn't have to worry about anything. If he's a responsible person, he'll support the girl and help her. But there's really nothing stopping him from pretending like the whole thing never happened. There's so much pressure. How would a girl who didn't think she was ready to have a child handle that pressure? Most would handle it by aborting the pregnancy.
What many people fail to realize is the psychological components that accompany a woman who has an abortion. A study in Finland showed that women who aborted their pregnancy were six times more likely to commit suicide than women who did not have abortions. Other studies have shown that when a women carries her baby full term, she is much less likely to have suicidal thoughts or commit suicide than if she were to abort the pregnancy. Some might think that if an unexpectedly pregnant woman did not have an abortion, she would be more likely to have suicidal thoughts because of all the stress and uncertainty that comes along with pregnancy; however, as the baby develops inside the mother, an emotional bond begins to grow that actually diminishes the risk of suicide. It is statistically proven that women who have abortions are more likely to experience depression, drug abuse, and post traumatic stress disorder. There are other stories, though, of women who feel that having an abortion was the best decision they could have made. They feel as if having the child at that certain time in their life would've prevented them from living the life they were meant for.
No matter how much research is done, no matter what statistics are showing, I don't think as a nation we will ever agree on what is best. Pro life? Pro choice? People are too divided and too set in their own opinions. What we can do as a nation is to educate people about abortion because it's important. We can educate young people to be aware of what is happening when they decide to have sex. Sex leads to pregnancy, and if that pregnancy is unwanted, it can lead to abortion, which can potentially lead to suicide and other issues. It's more than just, "Oh, I don't want a baby." It's more than just, "That girl was dumb and got herself knocked up." It's human life. And that is nothing to joke about.
