AT ISSUE:

• What types of abortion are acceptable and under what circumstances?
• Federal and local funding for abortion procedures
• Long-term health care effects of abortion
• Late-term abortions
• Abortion clinic protests
• Legalization of abortion drugs
• Is abortion a medical procedure or murder?
• When does life begin in utero?
• Who should have say-so or control over a pregnancy/woman's body/fetus?
• Does a fetus have rights?
• What are the social implications of abortion?
• At what stage of development does a fetus become a human being with rights?
• Would banning legal abortions lead to a return of illegal, "back-alley" abortion?

In the Far Corners:

LEFT

• Abortion should be available on demand and easy to access in all locales.
• A woman should have full reproductive rights and freedom of choice.
• A fetus is a part of a woman's body, not a living person -a fetus is NOT a baby until it is born.
• There is no known way of determining when "life" begins.
• Abortion is a very individual decision to be arrived at between a woman and her doctor and which no one else is qualified to make.
• Parental/spousal consent should not be a condition for obtaining an abortion.
• Federal funding for abortion reduces long term social economic costs to society.
• The abortion drug RU286 should be made widely available as an option.
• Second trimester abortions should be obtainable even when there are no other health issues involved.
• Legal abortion drastically reduces death rates seen with illegal abortions.
• The legalization of abortion has resulted in a reduced crime rate in some areas.

RIGHT

• Life begins at conception.
• A fetus, at any stage of development, is a living being.
• Abortion is murder.
• A fetus is an individual, not just a part of it's mother's body.
• Access to abortion encourages extra-marital and teenage sexual activity.
• Pregnant women should be given counseling that diverts them away from abortion and informs them of their other options.
• Parental/spousal consent should be required.

OVERVIEW

This is one of those issues where there is almost no middle ground: one is either for abortion or against it. However, over the past couple of years, a number of moderate politicians have attempted to create a kind of middle by saying: "Abortion should be available if a woman wants one, however it's a bad idea and we should discourage her from wanting one." If they are on the left side of middle, that discouragement takes the form of more education, availability of resources and funding for social programs. If they are on the right of middle, abortion is discouraged by making them costlier and more carefully regulated and by encouraging sexual abstinance as a preventative measure.

In addition, there is strong debate regarding the practice of late-term abortions and the procedures used therein. Even many moderate politicians and parties, while supporting a general pro-choice agenda, oppose late term abortion as a drastic procedure that skirts dangerously close to a gray area. The progress of medical science in pushing back fetal viability (ability to survive outside the womb) to the 21st or 22nd week of pregnancy, has caused renewed debate about both the moral and medical adviseability of second trimester abortion.

Under Roe v. Wade, first trimester abortion is considered to be constitutionally protected at this time and the issue is divided strictly along moral or philisophical rather than medical grounds.

Definitions:

• Abortion is the removal of a fetus from the uterus before it is mature enough to live on its own.
• Induced abortion is brought about deliberately by a medical procedure that ends pregnancy.
• Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion occurs when the body aborts without introduction of an outside agent.
• A medical abortion is brought about by taking medications that will end a pregnancy.
• A surgical abortion ends a pregnancy by emptying the uterus with special instruments.

• Roe v. Wade: In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court ruled that women, in consultation with their physician, have a constitutionally protected right to have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.

STATISTICS

• 49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; 1/2 of these are terminated by abortion.
• In 1996, 1.37 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.61 million in 1990.
• From 1973 through 1996, more than 34 million legal abortions occurred.
• Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 55% have had a previous birth.
• An estimated 43% of women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old.
• Each year, an estimated 50 million abortions occur worldwide. Of these, 30 million procedures are obtained legally, 20 million illegally.
• 52% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 20%.
• While white women obtain 60% of all abortions Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely.
• Women who report no religious affiliation are about 4 times as likely as women who report some affiliation to have an abortion.
• 2/3 of all abortions are obtained by never-married women.
• About 14,000 women have abortions each year because they became pregnant after rape or incest.
• Complications resulting from legal surgical abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy >1% The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from 1 death for every 530,000 abortions at 8 or fewer weeks to 1 per 17,000 at 16-20 weeks and 1 per 6,000 at 21 or more weeks. 1 death occurs in every 150,000 legal abortions, compared with 1 in every 34,000 in 1974.
• About 14% of all abortions in the United States are paid for with public funds, virtually all of which are state funds.
• More than half (56%) of the 905,000 teenage pregnancies in 1996 ended in births (2/3 of which were unplanned).

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; The Alan Guttmacher Institute

ANALYSIS

Because the fight on abortion so often boils down to religious belief, the most vigorous opponents will always be those willing to stand on a platform of faith. Although there are religious groups advocating and supporting a pro-choice position, the vast bulk of media coverage goes to the hard-core abortion-is-murder believers on one hand and to the chaos resulting from abortion clinic bombings on the other. It becomes a life and death drama complete with bloody photographs of aborted fetuses and weeping women obsessed with guilt and remorse. Since, at present, the only politicians who take a hard-line stand against abortion are those willing to be identified with a religious platform, abortion battles will continue to be fought primarily on a moral ground.

Financial and socio-political effects, which are harder to translate into moral and emotional appeal, will continue to play a lesser role in creating party platforms. Those same effects, however, will be used as leverage to draft legislation defining who, how, when and where abortions will be permitted. While legal abortion is here to stay for the foreseeable future, so is the battle over right and wrong and it will continue to be used as a benchmark to assess candidate's leanings on both women's issues and role of religion in government.

For an interesting commentary on the Abortion issue,
read Will Pitt's article, The Duality of Abolition and Abortion