Abortion why it should be legal

There are around , abortions a year. One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It is bizarre that it should be governed by criminal law rather than regulated in the same way as any other healthcare procedure. The fact that unlike any other medical procedure and for no clinical reason whatsoever 2 doctors must authorise every request for an abortion inevitably causes needless delays.

Women undergoing miscarriage treatment are able to take the pills they need to pass an early pregnancy in the comfort of their own home. The law prevents women undergoing early abortion from doing this.

Abortion procedures today are safe and straightforward, and do not need to be performed by doctors. However the law currently denies nurses and midwives a larger role in the provision of care. One of the aims of the Abortion Act was to protect doctors from prosecution when performing legal abortions. Other jurisdictions, in Australia and Canada, have successfully removed abortion from the criminal statute, in order to regulate it with laws more appropriate to a mainstream healthcare procedure.

This has not caused an increase in the rates of abortion, or the proportion which take place at later gestations, and has provided a more constructive platform to consider how abortion can best be provided in the 21st Century. Home Contact Us. Book an appointment Call Find a clinic. Book appointment. Toggle main menu. Touch to call us on 30 40 Toggle main menu Abortion care Abortion care Considering abortion?

As a matter of fact, no one knows what the laws which permit abortion to save the life of the mother mean. Is it enough that the pregnancy if it comes to term will seriously damage the mother's health? Or will result in the birth of defective offspring? Clearly, a number of doctors think the answer to these questions is yes, since abortions, especially on white women with good incomes, are routinely and openly performed in some hospitals in most states and the prosecuting authorities do nothing about it.

So why do the abortion laws stay on the books? One reason is the apparent inability or unwillingness of those who advocate population limitation to see the connection. This does not apply to Planned Parenthood-World Population, which in November, , passed resolutions calling for repeal of the abortion laws in support of its declared policy of voluntary parenthood. By , almost all the major religious groups in the United States except the Roman Catholic Church were on record in favor of abortion-law reform or repeal.

And public opinion polls demonstrated that a majority of people, including a majority of the Catholics asked about the issue, favored at least some liberalization of the laws. But the opposition of the Catholic Church is potent and well organized. May all responsible public authorities—as some are already doing so laudably—generously revive their efforts.

They must choose, for example, when it comes to abortion for the therapeutic reason even of saving the life of the woman between their obligations to their church and their obligations to their state. This leads to the question whether as a matter of law Catholic doctors and Catholic hospitals which follow the teachings of the Pope are practicing sectarian medicine. If I am right that they are, then they are infringing the American Medical Association's canons of ethics, which prohibit the practice of sectarian medicine:.

In order that a physician may best serve his patients he is expected to exalt the standards of his profession and to extend its sphere of usefulness. They claim that since to Catholics all abortions are unacceptable, the state should keep hands off the subject rather than decreeing that some abortions are legal and some not.

The House of Representatives rejected a stronger draft that would have permitted legal abortion up until 24 weeks of pregnancy. The proposed law, if enacted, will continue to deny many pregnant people the right to make their own choices about whether to continue a pregnancy.

When governments restrict abortion, women still have abortions — they just have more dangerous ones. United Nations figures from suggested that the unsafe abortion rate was more than four times greater in countries with restrictive abortion policies than in countries with liberal ones. The Constitutional Court ruling in Thailand was important, and part of a global move toward greater respect for reproductive rights.

In December , Argentina legalized abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy. Instead of putting women on trial for exercising their reproductive rights, the Thai government should fully decriminalize abortion. In reality, these laws are part of a strategy to restrict abortion access and stigmatize abortion decisions, particularly for women of color. They allow politicians to interfere with health decisions that should be made between a pregnant person and their provider, while doing nothing to advance equity or justice.

So-called born-alive laws require medical care for a fetus after the rare instance of an unsuccessful abortion. Such legislation is unnecessary, as denying care to fetuses is already illegal. These laws intentionally perpetuate false narratives about abortion later in pregnancy and seek to stigmatize abortion and interfere with evidence-based patient care.

Targeted restriction of abortion provider TRAP laws place medically unnecessary requirements on clinics and providers that are designed to force them to stop providing abortion care. Trigger bans put laws on the state books to ban abortion if Roe is overturned.

Dobbs v. In some states where abortion is recognized as essential health care, some providers are already experiencing an influx of patients as a result of the six-week ban in Texas. These centers often provide misleading information about abortion, such as claims that they can provide abortion reversals, which are medically impossible. Jackson , U. Devlin Barrett and Ann E.

Texas , No. PDF last accessed August Dobbs , U. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, No. Elyssa Spitzer Policy Analyst. You Might Also Like. Moving Backward Article Moving Backward. May 11, Heidi Williamson.