Why is abortion bad facts

Between and , the abortion rate in the United States dropped by about 26 percent. That was the lowest level recorded, the CDC reported. Health experts suspect easier access to birth control along with increased awareness about unwanted pregnancies are behind the drop. Mishaps are so rare, in fact, that a study from found that less than 1 percent of abortions done in the first trimester lead to complications. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists ACOG , the risk of death from childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than death associated with abortions.

Approximately 60 percent of people who receive abortions are in their 20s, 25 percent are in their 30s, and 12 percent are teens, according to the Guttmacher Institute. More than half of the women who get abortions already have children.

In poorer areas, access to birth control is extremely limited. In , for example, women below the federal poverty level accounted for nearly half of all abortions that year. There are different types of abortion , and which one you should get typically comes down to how far along in pregnancy you are.

Before any procedure, your doctor will first need to make sure the pregnancy is, in fact, in the uterus, according to Kramer. Once a doctor diagnoses that the pregnancy is in the uterus, then they can move forward with an abortion. There are also surgical — or in-clinic — abortions, where a healthcare professional uses medical instruments to surgically remove the pregnancy from the uterus. Surgical abortions have been shown to work 99 percent of the time.

In the first trimester, a vacuum aspiration, or suction curettage, is likely used. It's about how much they will risk and potentially suffer to get those abortions," says Dr. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists , "fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester," which starts in the 28th week. Only 1. This rumor sometimes stems from confusion, but it can also be used to dissuade people from getting the morning after pill out of fear that it causes an abortion.

It doesn't. The abortion pill consists of two medicines, mifepristone and misoprostol, according to Planned Parenthood. They work to block the hormone progesterone so the uterine lining breaks down and can't support a pregnancy. As such, the abortion pill is prescribed to end a pregnancy that has already started. The morning after pill is what you take after unprotected sex to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and it works by stopping ovulation.

It can't disrupt a pregnancy, prevent [a fertilized egg] from implanting, or take an implanted fertilized egg and make it exit the uterus," says Dr. Whether people seek abortions for physical or mental reasons, abortion is ultimately about public health. Being able to end a pregnancy safely and legally helps prevent the kind of illegal or botched at-home abortions that can kill someone desperate to no longer be pregnant. In the s and s, there were between , and 1. Around to women died per year when trying to end a pregnancy during that time.

Then Roe v. Wade passed in , and the numbers of abortion-related deaths dropped, as did the hospital admissions for women suffering complications of illegal abortions.

Proper health care is also crucial when it comes to helping people pursue their life plans. Even when starting on the same socioeconomic level as people who get abortions, people who are denied abortions are three times more likely to be below the poverty line just two years later, according to a report from the Reproductive Health Technologies Project , which drew data from the Turnaway study. Although the issue is complex, in the end it comes down to giving people the tools they need to be as healthy as possible, both physically and mentally.

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Contrary to popular belief, abortion is pretty common. You're extremely unlikely to die from getting one. Many people who get abortions don't regret their choices.

Childfree people aren't the only ones getting abortions. In fact, some people who get abortions desperately want children. You don't have to be "irresponsible" to need an abortion. Using abortion as birth control wouldn't make any sense. Not all pro-choice people would choose to get abortions themselves. Thus, reader, the FLO account explains why it was as wrong to kill you when you were an infant as it is to kill you now.

This account can be generalized to almost all infants. Notice that the wrongness of killing infants can be explained in the absence of an account of what makes the future of an individual sufficiently valuable so that it is wrong to kill that individual.

If the FLO account is the correct theory of the wrongness of killing, then because abortion involves killing fetuses and fetuses have FLOs for exactly the same reasons that infants have FLOs, abortion is presumptively seriously immoral.

This inference lays the necessary groundwork for a fourth argument. Why do we believe it is wrong to cause animals suffering? We believe that, in our own case and in the case of other adults and children, suffering is a misfortune. It would be as morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that animal suffering is wrong as it would be to refuse to acknowledge that the suffering of persons of another race is wrong.

It is, on reflection, suffering that is a misfortune, not the suffering of white males or the suffering of humans. Therefore, infliction of suffering is presumptively wrong no matter on whom it is inflicted and whether it is inflicted on persons or nonpersons.

Arbitrary restrictions on the wrongness of suffering count as racism or speciesism. Not only is this argument convincing on its own, but it is the only way of justifying the wrongness of animal cruelty. Cruelty toward animals is clearly wrong. This famous argument is due to Singer, The FLO account of the wrongness of abortion is analogous.

We believe that, in our own case and the cases of other adults and children, the loss of a future of value is a misfortune. It would be as morally arbitrary to refuse to acknowledge that the loss of a future of value to a fetus is wrong as to refuse to acknowledge that the loss of a future of value to Jews to take a relevant twentieth-century example is wrong.

To deprive someone of a future of value is wrong no matter on whom the deprivation is inflicted and no matter whether the deprivation is inflicted on persons or nonpersons. Arbitrary restrictions on the wrongness of this deprivation count as racism, genocide or ageism. This argument that abortion is wrong should be convincing because it has the same form as the argument for the claim that causing pain and suffering to non-human animals is wrong. Since the latter argument is convincing, the former argument should be also.

Thus, an analogy with animals supports the thesis that abortion is wrong. The four arguments in the previous section establish that abortion is, except in rare cases, seriously immoral.

Not surprisingly, there are objections to this view. There are replies to the four most important objections to the FLO argument for the immorality of abortion.

The FLO account of the wrongness of abortion is a potentiality argument. To claim that a fetus has an FLO is to claim that a fetus now has the potential to be in a state of a certain kind in the future.

It is not to claim that all ordinary fetuses will have FLOs. Fetuses who are aborted, of course, will not. To say that a standard fetus has an FLO is to say that a standard fetus either will have or would have a life it will or would value. To say that a standard fetus would have a life it would value is to say that it will have a life it will value if it does not die prematurely.

The truth of this conditional is based upon the nature of fetuses including the fact that they naturally age and this nature concerns their potential. Some appeals to potentiality in the abortion debate rest on unsound inferences. For example, one may try to generate an argument against abortion by arguing that because persons have the right to life, potential persons also have the right to life. Such an argument is plainly invalid as it stands. The premise one needs to add to make it valid would have to be something like: "If Xs have the right to Y, then potential Xs have the right to Y.

Potential presidents don't have the rights of the presidency; potential voters don't have the right to vote. In the FLO argument potentiality is not used in order to bridge the gap between adults and fetuses as is done in the argument in the above paragraph. The FLO theory of the wrongness of killing adults is. Potentiality is in the argument from the very beginning.

Thus, the plainly false premise is not required. Accordingly, the use of potentiality in the FLO theory is not a sign of an illegitimate inference.

A second objection to the FLO account of the immorality of abortion involves arguing that even though fetuses have FLOs, non sentient fetuses do not meet the minimum conditions for having any moral standing at all because they lack interests. Steinbock , p. Beings that have moral status must be capable of caring about what is done to them. They must be capable of being made, if only in a rudimentary sense, happy or miserable, comfortable or distressed. Whatever reasons we may have for preserving or protecting non sentient beings, these reasons do not refer to their own interests.

For without conscious awareness, beings cannot have interests. Without interests, they cannot have a welfare of their own. Without a welfare of their own, nothing can be done for their sake. Hence, they lack moral standing or status. Medical researchers have argued that fetuses do not become sentient until after 22 weeks of gestation Steinbock, , p.

If they are correct, and if Steinbock's argument is sound, then we have both an objection to the FLO account of the wrongness of abortion and a basis for a view on abortion minimally acceptable to most supporters of choice.

Steinbock's conclusion conflicts with our settled moral beliefs. Temporarily unconscious human beings are nonsentient, yet no one believes that they lack either interests or moral standing. Accordingly, neither conscious awareness nor the capacity for conscious awareness is a necessary condition for having interests. The counter-example of the temporarily unconscious human being shows that there is something internally wrong with Steinbock's argument.

The difficulty stems from an ambiguity. One cannot take an interest in something without being capable of caring about what is done to it. However, something can be in someone's interest without that individual being capable of caring about it, or about anything. Thus, life support can be in the interests of a temporarily unconscious patient even though the temporarily unconscious patient is incapable of taking an interest in that life support.

If this can be so for the temporarily unconscious patient, then it is hard to see why it cannot be so for the temporarily unconscious that is, non sentient fetus who requires placental life support. Thus the objection based on interests fails.

The FLO account of the wrongness of killing seems to imply that the degree of wrongness associated with each killing varies inversely with the victim's age. However, we believe that all persons have an equal right to life. Thus, it appears that the FLO account of the wrongness of killing entails an obviously false view Paske, However, the FLO account of the wrongness of killing does not, strictly speaking, imply that it is worse to kill younger people than older people.

The FLO account provides an explanation of the wrongness of killing that is sufficient to account for the serious presumptive wrongness of killing. It does not follow that killings cannot be wrong in other ways. For example, one might hold, as does Feldman , p. Now the amount of admirability will presumably vary directly with age, whereas the amount of deprivation will vary inversely with age. This tends to equalize the wrongness of murder.

However, even if, ceteris paribus , it is worse to kill younger persons than older persons, there are. Suppose that we tried to estimate the seriousness of a crime of murder by appraising the value of the FLO of which the victim had been deprived. How would one go about doing this? In they first place, one would be confronted by the old problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility.

Second place, estimation of the value of a would involve putting oneself, not into the shoes of the victim at the time she was killed, but rather into the shoes the victim would have worn had the victim survived, and then estimating from that perspective the worth of that person's future.

This task difficult, if not impossible. Accordingly, there are reasons to adopt a convention that murders equally wrong. Furthermore, the FLO theory, in a way, explains why we do adopt the doctrine of the legal equity of murder. The FLO theory explains why we murder as one of the worst of crimes, since depriving someone of a future like ours deprives more than depriving her of anything else.

This gives us a reason for making the punishment for younger victims very harsh, as harsh as is compatible with civiliazed society. One should not make the punishment younger victims harsher than that. Thus, the doctrine of the equal legal right to life does not seem incompatible with the FLO theory. The strongest objection to the FLO argument immorality of abortion is based on the claim that, because contraception results in one less FLO, the FLO argument entails that contraception, indeed, abstention from sex when conception is possible, is immoral.

Because neither contraception nor abstention from sex when conception is possible is immoral, the FLO account is flawed. There is a cogent reply to this objection. If argument of the early part of this essay is correct, then the central issue concerning the morality of abortion is the problem of whether fetuses are individuals who are members of the class of individuals whom it is seriously presumptively wrong to kill.

The properties of being human and alive, of being a person, and of having an FLO are criteria that participants in the abortion debate have offered to mark off the relevant class of individuals. The central claim of this essay is that having an FLO marks off the relevant class of individuals.

A defender of the FLO view could, therefore, reply that since, at the time of contraception, there is no individual to have an FLO, the FLO account does not entail that contraception is wrong. The wrong of killing is primarily a wrong to the individual who is killed; at the time of contraception there is no individual to be wronged.

However, someone who presses the contraception objection might have an answer to this reply. She might say that the sperm and egg are the individuals deprived of an FLO at the time of contraception. Thus, there are individuals whom contraception deprives of an FLO and if depriving an individual of an FLO is what makes killing wrong, then the FLO theory entails that contraception is wrong. There is also a reply to this move. In the case of abortion, an objectively determinate individual is the subject of harm caused by the loss of an FLO.

This individual is a fetus. In the case of contraception, there are far more candidates see Norcross, Let us consider some possible candidates in order of the increasing number of individuals harmed: 1 The single harmed individual might be the combination of the particular sperm and the particular egg that would have united to form a zygote if contraception had not been used. This is modeled on the double homicide of two persons who would otherwise in a short time fuse.

Which should be chosen? Should we hold a lottery? There seems to be no non-arbitrarily determinate subject of harm in the case of successful contraception. But if there is no such subject of harm, then no determinate thing was harmed. If no determinate thing was harmed, then in the case of contraception no wrong has been done. Thus, the FLO account of the wrongness of abortion does not entail that contraception is wrong. This essay contains an argument for the view that, except in unusual circumstances, abortion is seriously wrong.

Deprivation of an FLO explains why killing adults and children is wrong. Abortion deprives fetuses of FLOs. This argument is based on an account of the wrongness of killing that is a result of our considered judgment of the nature of the misfortune of premature death.

It accounts for why we regard killing as one of the worst of crimes. It is superior to alternative accounts of the wrongness of killing that are intended to provide insight into the ethics of abortion. This account of the wrongness of killing is supported by the way it handles cases in which our moral judgments are settled.

This account has an analogue in the most plausible account of the wrongness of causing animals to suffer. This account makes no appeal to religion.

Therefore, the FLO account shows that abortion, except in rare instances, is seriously wrong. Beckwith, F. Benn, S.

Engelhardt, Jr, H.