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Abortion: Women
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Abortion is legal in every state, though some states make it hard for women, especially teens and low-income women, to get them. Some states let teens make their own abortion decisions, but others require permission from parents. Teens must have an option, such as judicial and medical bypass, whenever parental consent is required.
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A new study in France shows that an induced abortion can increase the risk of premature birth in subsequent pregnancies by as much as 70%. That is because abortions can damage the lining of the uterus where unborn children develop. The study was based on medical notes and interviews of 2837 French women who had experienced a premature birth during 1997‹representing about one-third of the total number of premature births that year. Those who gave birth between 28 and 32 weeks of pregnancy were 40% more likely to have had an abortion compared with mothers who gave birth within two weeks of the expected date. Mothers who gave birth to babies from 22 to 27 weeks into the pregnancy were 70% more likely to have had an abortion.
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Since women still found themselves confronted with unwanted pregnancies, access to abortion was necessary for reliable fertility control. But abortion has always been a more controversial issue than contraception. For many who consider fetuses persons, abortion is the equivalent of homicide. Even people who are not convinced that fetuses are full human beings may have difficulty accepting the idea of legal abortion. While both men and women use contraception, only women get pregnant and can abort. The idea that women have equal rights with men is a relatively new notion.
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With the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey,1 the constitutional right to abortion seems to have become secure, at least for the time being. Concurrently... exercise of the right has been under increasing threat. Clinic officials report bombings, arson, and vandalism. Their insurance costs have risen, and they must pay heavily for security guards. Doctors who perform abortions are subjected to threats of violence, and they and their families are harassed; a new tactic, the malpractice suit, increases their costs.2 The number of doctors who are willing to perform abortions is therefore decreasing, and women in rural areas have to travel long distances to obtain abortions. Indeed, the pool of doctors who are able to perform abortions is likely to shrink too, because, under anti-abortion pressure, many hospitals and medical schools no longer teach abortion procedures.
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Doctors in India have called for international support for a campaign to prevent the selective abortion of female children. There is a long-standing tradition in some circles in India of killing female babies just after birth, but new technology allows mothers to tell the sex of their children before birth and the Indian Medical Association has said that two million abortions are carried out each year as a result. Dr Parameshvara, former president of the Association, explained that a law specifically banning abortions because of the sex of an unborn child is widely ignored and almost impossible to uphold. The proportion of females to males in the Indian population has been declining throughout the twentieth century and there are now 50 million fewer women in the population than expected. [BBC News Online, 4th May]
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A representative of a woman's group that educates people about the link between abortion and breast cancer says that news of a lowering the number of cancer deaths would be better if women had been told about the link. The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer says there would be fewer deaths to report. The organization points to a new report from the American Cancer Society that cancer deaths declined slightly in 2003 and 2004. But Karen Malec, the head of the Coalition, told LifeNews.com "There would be fewer cancer cases and deaths if women had been told the truth in the 1980s when conclusive evidence became available" about the abortion-breast cancer link.
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