Group B
The Abortion Debate
Group Members:
Eddie Hopely
Alexandra Carr
Susanna Chon
Rafael Harari
Juwita Chavez
The
on-going conflict over abortion in America has been a major social problem that
first emerged as an issue in our nation over two centuries ago. However, in the
1960's and 70's with the coinciding civil rights movement and women’s rights
movement, abortion became the new national issue we still see today between two
opposing ideologies, grouped into sides coined as pro-life and pro-choice. It
is this struggle over whose deep rooted morals and beliefs are adequate for our
society that make the abortion issue such a controversial and divisive one.
First it is important to understand each side, their beliefs, the organizations
tied to them, and their wishes for policies in our nation. Then it may be possible to take a course of
action that will benefit the American public as a whole. We must look at the
evolving nature of abortion throughout history, each significant issue in
conflict between each side, the profiles of the people within the group, as
well as relevant statistics that provide empirical evidence to the research. It
is then with this analysis that the foundation for a well-structured abortion
policy best suited for America can be enacted.
While
it may seem that abortion has always been an issue, it really only became one
in the middle of the 19th century. In the early1800s, abortions were
permitted in the United States if they were done before the mother could feel
fetal movement .
Abortions were for the most part morally accepted at the time, but a number of
state laws limiting abortion were soon passed due to an effort by medically
trained doctors to put “illegal doctors” out of business who practiced without
any formal training. By opposing abortions on moral and scientific grounds, the
formal doctors were lacking in what the untrained doctors provided, and
therefore, formal doctors had an incentive to attempt to ban abortion. Prior to
1847 though, the doctors were mostly unsuccessful in their ban as they could
not rally much support for their cause; even organized religion seemed
disinterested.
In
1847, the American Medical Association (AMA) was founded, and through this
group, the doctors were able to conduct a hard-hitting campaign. With the help
of the anti-obscenity movement and the Comstock Laws, which banned the
distribution of birth control related materials, as well as the fear of a
declination of the white population and increased birth rate of immigrants, the
anti-abortion campaign was successful. All states passed comprehensive criminal
abortion laws by the end of the 19th century.
Because
of the rise in illegal abortions during the Great depression, doctors, social
workers, and professionals alike made initial actions for reform of the
abortion laws in the 1950s. They believed that under certain circumstances
abortions were justified, and a doctor’s inability to perform them was seen as
a harp on their own medical jurisdiction. Doctors discussed abortion as “an act
of desperation by women who did not deserve to die in a back alley and who
should be dealt with more humanely.”
Further into the 1960s, as a response to incidents of a rubella measles
epidemic causing fetal deformity, and the consumption by one Sherri Finkbine of
a drug thalidomide which also caused fetal deformity, the abortion issue hit
the media spotlight. The Zero Population Growth Movement and the Women’s
Movement also raised abortion issues and generated greater action. The Women’s
Movement of the 1960s saw many reform and repeal groups form, including the
National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969, and the
rise of civil liberties groups and family planning activists. It was during the
revolutionary 1960’s when abortion’s definition was widely accepted among
“pro-choice” people as a “women’s right” necessary for women’s “control of
their own bodies.”
The
abortion issue continued to grow when in 1973, the Supreme Court overturned a
Texas interpretation of abortion laws and made abortion legal in the United
States in Roe v. Wade. Based primarily upon the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment
protecting a person’s right to privacy, the decision held that a woman has the
right to an unrestricted choice of abortion in the first trimester of
pregnancy, that the state has the right to regulate abortion in the second
trimester, and that in the third trimester, abortion should be performed only
to save the life of the woman.
From this point on, the fight between “pro-choice” activists, who seemed to
have “won” in the case of Roe V. Wade, and “pro-life” activists, who were more
rallied to action than ever before, exploded with passionate
and oftentimes violent enthusiasm that remains constant to this day.
PROFILES:
Taking a look at the demographic profiles of the women who
actually have abortions will give us an idea of who are these people are in the
nation, enabling us to make better judgments about what direction the nation is
heading in this issue.
1.) Pro-life Profile:
Pro-life advocates
vehemently oppose abortion. They believe
there is no justification for it and current laws should be changed to declare
it an illegal practice. Some pro-life
groups and organizations include the National Right to Life (NRL), Prolife America
and the Pro-Life Action League. All
these groups and their members share the same beliefs and goals, and they
usually utilize the same arguments to support their position.
The average pro-life activist is a married woman in her mid
40s. She married early in her
teens-usually around 17- and has three or more children. Her father graduated from high school only,
and she probably never graduated college.
She is usually not employed, and is married to a small businessman or
lower income white-collar worker. Her
family income is less than 30000/yr.
Religion is an integral part of her life.
It is important to understand that the arguments pro-life
advocates use in defending their opinion are a cause of their deep rooted
beliefs. These arguments don’t simply
arise from people who hold extreme views on abortion and oppose it firmly
without prior thought. For pro-lifers, abortions pose a threat to their life
values and morals. Most pro-life
activists believe being a mother and a wife is a woman’s most important
job. In their minds, men and women share
separate roles in society that compliment each other, and while men should be
in the workforce, women should commit their time to their families.
2.) Pro-Choice Profile
According to a national Gallup poll taken this month, also
used by CNN and USA Today, approximately 53 percent of Americans regard
themselves as pro-choice.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute is a
nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research and
policy analysis. They regularly undertake demographic research and publish
their own and others’ scientifically collected data. According to this data,
taken most recently in 2002, the majority of women having abortions are in
their 20's (56 percent). The abortion rate among teenagers has declined in
recent years (19 percent between ages 15-19), with the Institute arguing it
being because of the use of long-acting hormonal contraceptives, mainly the
injectable. The largest group of women having abortions in America are non-Hispanic
white women at 41 percent, however, Black and Hispanic women together make up
more than half. This number is greater than their proportion in the population
because they have a “higher rate of unintended pregnancy, and, among black
women, because they are more likely to resolve an unintended pregnancy through
abortion.” In regards to religious affiliation most women are either Protestant
or Catholic. Additionally, more than half of women having abortions in 2000
were poor or low income. In summary, women having abortions are “predominately
young, single, from minority groups, and had low-income”
The pro-choice public in America are spearheaded by a few
main national interest groups. Among them are the National Abortion Rights
Action League, the National Abortion Federation, and Planned Parenthood. These
people hold very strong beliefs primarily rooted in what they call a
constitutional right for a woman to possess control over her own body. They
advocate sexual education programs in schools, access to contraceptives, and no
restrictions in obtaining abortions from qualified doctors. Currently they are
fighting against restrictions to abortions like mandatory parental
notifications, 24-hr waiting periods, a doctor’s right to deny contraceptives,
and heavily funded abstinence only programs that are criticized as giving
false, misleading or distorted information (Henry Waxman report, proponent of
sex ed).
ANALYSIS OF ISSUES
One of the key controversies of the issue of abortion is
centered around the question of when life begins. Pro-life advocates argue that the beginning
of life is not a moral, religious or personal debate, but a biological fact, as
they understand existence to begin at the moment of conception. If the right to
life, that is, the entitlement to exist and develop naturally on our planet, is
to be understood as a central privilege of human beings, abortion thus becomes
a decision to designate oneself as a higher form of life acting on the capacity
to take away this assumed ‘right.’
Pro-choice advocates’ stance on the question of when life
begins is often undermined as a religious question, as they adapt their
position to be that of a women’s rights issue, not a moral judgment call. Furthermore, pro-choice advocates believe
that the fetus is not a person, but rather a potential person, and as such it
is not entitled to the same rights under the law as everyone else is.
Regarding sex education and/or contraceptives, the pro-life
side argues that the most effective and appropriate contraceptive method is
abstinence, or in some cases family planning.
Generally, pro-life supporters argue that contraceptives encourage teens
to be sexually active in the first place, which in turn leads to a high rate of
teen pregnancies. Statistically, 20 percent
of abortions are performed on women under 20, and about all 48 percent of
pregnancies are unintended.
Pro-life advocates are aware that contraceptive methods are readily available
and that they could reduce the number of abortions, yet they reject them on
moral and social grounds.
The stance of the pro-choice side is vehemently against the
restriction of access to non-surgical abortions and emergency contraceptives to
women. In 2000, the FDA approved RU 486, also known as mifepristone, which
gives women the option to end an unintended pregnancy without surgery.
Proponents of the pill say it could transform abortion in the United States by
making it more accessible and more private.9 Anti-choice lawmakers have failed to outlaw
it, but are continuing efforts to make it difficult to obtain. Additionally,
what is called “perhaps the most controversial legislation proposed” is HB 16,
an Act that would give pharmacies the right to refuse to give out emergency
contraceptives, like Plan B, popularly referred to as the morning-after pill.
Pills such as this do not disrupt existing pregnancies like the RU 486, but
prevent them by preventing ovulation, fertilization of an egg or implantation
in the uterus. (San Antonio News). Put simply, this drug is a concentrated dose
of the birth control pill, and can reduce a women’s chance of becoming pregnant
by 89 percent (NARAL).The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
estimate that “greater access to emergency contraceptives could cut the
unintended pregnancy and abortion rate in half.” Additionally, The Journal of
the American Medical Association published a study, finding that emergency
contraceptives do not increase unprotected sex or promiscuity in young women.
Pro-choice advocates call for age-appropriate, medically
accurate sexual education programs that promote both abstinence and information
on protection advice. NARAL’s research found that 99 percent of Americans
believe it is appropriate for young people to have information about sexually
transmitted infections and venereal diseases, and 94 percent think it is
appropriate to teach teens about birth control. This is further backed by a
Scripps Howard Texas Poll commissioned by the Texas Association of Planned
Parenthood Affiliates, which found that 90 percent of people polled favor sex
education in public schools that is age appropriate and provides accurate
information on abstinence, birth control, and sexually transmitted infections
and venereal diseases. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 61 percent of
12th graders and 35 percent of 9th graders in 2001 have
had sex. And Kaiser along with National Public Radio and Harvard’s Kennedy
School of Government “found Americans want broader sex education in the
schools. Only 15 percent say they want only abstinence-only taught in sex
education” (San Antonio News).
Another major argument pro-life supporters use is that even
though a woman has a right to control her own body, she doesn’t have the right
to kill her fetus via an abortion.
Pro-lifers argue there are many other ways a pregnant woman can handle a
difficult situation that don’t necessarily resort to abortion. Though pro-life supporters are quick to point
out the numerous options available to a woman in a difficult situation other
than abortion, they often ignore the nine months of mental and physical burden
necessary to bring a child to term. Essentially, the pro-life argument here is
based on moral claims since they offer no substantial evidence on why a woman’s
right to control her own body doesn’t include the right to decide whether she
wants an abortion or not.
The bottom line to all pro-choice organizations and
supporters is not only the notion that it is constitutional to have a “right to
privacy”, but also the issue that abortion is fundamentally a fight for a
woman’s right to govern her own body. Pro-choice advocates believe in this
right to privacy– freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into their
personal and private affairs. And they see it not as an ideological fight rooted
in religious beliefs, but a civil rights pursuit advocating a women’s “right to
choose”. Their studies show abortion to be one of the safest medical procedures
that exists today, and they make their point vividly clear by comparing the death rate from legal abortions as less
than from a shot of penicillin.
The next issue that flares the controversy is pregnancy in
cases of rape or incest. Pro-life
advocates argue it is humanly cruel to turn these tragic and horrible crimes
into a second more deliberate crime: the killing of the fetus. They also cite cases of mothers who have
decided to keep the baby claiming they turned something horrible into something
life-giving. Furthermore, the low
statistics involved (only 1 percent of abortions are cases or rape or incest),
can hardly justify the legalization of abortion for the other 99 percent.
Finally, the social implications and reasons behind
abortions generate another important point of disagreement between pro-life and
pro-choice sides. Prior to analyzing
these social issues, it is important to note that the beliefs of people are
usually closely associated with social markers such as race, age, religious
affiliation, and sex. Social issues that
relate to the abortion debate often include the following: poverty,
overpopulation, abuse, unwanted kids and the risks of illegal abortions.
We’ll briefly
present the argument pro-life advocates have regarding each of the above. Regarding poverty, pro-lifers argue that the
poor mother today, is just as poor tomorrow, regardless of whether she has an
abortion or carries the fetus to term.
Problems such as poverty and job security are not solved by killing a
fetus. Based solely on statistics, about
21.3 percent of women who got abortions couldn’t afford the baby. The other 78.7 percent got abortions for
other reasons unrelated to poverty.
Regarding overpopulation and unwanted kids, pro-life
advocates argue the problem is lack of development not overpopulation. They, however, offer no alternative solution
to the problem they introduce. Unwanted
children can always be put up for adoption or in foster care clinics, but
killing fetuses is not the answer.
STATISTICS
-Public’s opinion
• 61% believe abortion should not be banned completely
• 37% believe abortion should be banned except when
mother’s life is at stake.
• About 22% believe abortions should be legal in all
circumstances
• 41% want current laws to remain the same
-Abortion and Pregnancy Rates
• From 1973 to about 1978 abortion rates per 1000 women
steadily increased
• Starting around 1978 abortion rates per 1000 women
equilibrated until 1990, when they started to slightly decrease.
• The decreasing trend in abortion rates seems to continue
nowadays.
• About 52% of pregnancies are intended, whereas the rest
are unintended
• 53% of women who have unintended pregnancies were using
contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant, although usually
not correctly every time
• Of all the unintended pregnancies, 47% resulted in
abortions and only 40% in births. The remaining 13% were miscarriages.
-Reasons for Abortions
• The two most popular reasons for getting abortions were
inadequate finances to raise a child and women/couple not being ready for the
responsibility of raising a child
• Other popular reasons for getting abortions included
woman’s life would be changed too much, problems with relationship/unmarried
and women being too young to have a child.
• Abortions obtained for reasons related to woman’s or
fetus’ health problems add up to about 4%
• Note: most women give more than one reasons for getting
an abortion.
• It is important to note that about 50% of women getting
an abortion have previously gotten at least one other abortion.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION
While implementing a policy that would solve the
controversial problem of abortion seems highly unreasonable we can nonetheless
elaborate one that will somehow reduce tension over the issue in the general
public. Based on our careful analysis of the history of the issue, its social and
political implications, data analysis and the elements that make it such a
divisive one, we advise adopting the following policy:
Based on public
opinion polls and sexual and reproductive health research we recommend that
abortion remain legal under certain circumstances. One restriction on abortion
should be parental notification and consent for minors under the age of 18. We
also suggest that women getting an abortion and the father of the fetus should
attend confidential classes where they would receive information about
contraceptive methods and how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Regarding sexual
education, we believe it should be implemented in the public educational
system, with objective, age-appropriate classes, in hopes that an informed
future generation will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies as a whole. As
previously noted, both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
and the Journal of American Medical Association stand by their findings which
indicate that increased access to contraceptives does not increase promiscuity
in women, but may be able to downsize the annual rate of abortions. The current
laws permitting contraceptive methods such as RU 486 and Plan B should remain,
while the act known as HB 16, which allows pharmacies to refuse access to these
contraceptives, should be repealed to allow greater availability, thus
potentially reducing the overall number of abortions. While some citizens may disagree with certain
aspects in the above policy, based on public opinion polls such as the
CNN/Gallop/USA Today surveys, we believe
that the majority of the American public is in favor of abortion remaining
legal in most cases, while simultaneously expanding government efforts to reduce
the need for abortion by implementing methods indicated in the aforementioned
policy recommendation
Works Cited
1.
Kristin, Luker, “The War Between the Women”, Family
Planning Perspective, Vol. 16, No. 3
2.
Alan Guttmacher Institute, “U.S. Institute of Medicine
Finds that Legalizing Abortion Greatly Reduces Deaths, Complications”,
International Family Planning Digest, Vol. 1, No. 3
3.
NRLC.org, “What is the Pro-Life Response to
Abortionist’s Arguments”, http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionresponses.html,
4. Staggenborg, Suzanne. "Abortion as a
Social Problem." Sociolgy: Social Foundations of Public Issues.
Rober Max Johnson. 40-53. McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1995.
5.
Hopeclinic.com "Abortion History" 25 January 2006. http://www.hopeclinic.com/abortionhistory.htm
6.
PRCH & Guttmacher Institute "An Overview of Abortion in the
United States". Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH) and
The Allan Guttmacher Institute. June 2005. February 2006. Powerpoint
Presentation
7.
CNN.com "Debate heats up with approval of abortion pill".
Associated Press. 28 September 2000. 10 February 2006. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/women/09/28/abortion.pill.reax/index.html
8.
Mears, William and Bob Branken. "30 years after ruling, ambiguity,
anxiety sourround abortion debate". CNN.com. 22 January 2003. CNN
Washington Bureau. 10 February 2006. http://cnn.law.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+30+years+after+ruling+ambiguity+anxiety+surround+abortion+debate.htm
9.
Womensissues.com "Abortion
Statistics-World-U.S.-Demographics-Reasons". 2006. 10 February 2006. http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm
10. Pisano, Marina. “Conservative
Judicial Forces Threaten Cause of
Abortion Advocates.” San Antonio News 23 Jan 2005
11. “Medical Definition of Conception”, The American
Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton
Mifflin Company
12.
“Life Issues: When Life Begins”, Fred
de Miranda, MD, FCP, American College of Pediatricians, 2004
