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Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion" and occurs in approximately 30% to 40% of pregnancies. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion. Although it prevents the birth of a child, abortion is not generally considered birth control.
Abortion in Ireland is regulated by the Health Act 2018. Abortion is permitted in Ireland during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, and later in cases where the pregnant woman's life or health is at risk, or in the cases of a fatal foetal abnormality. Abortion services commenced on 1 January 2019, following its legalisation by the aforementioned Act, which became law on 20 December 2018. Previously, the 8th Constitutional Amendment had given the life of the unborn foetus the same value as that of its mother, but the 36th constitutional amendment, approved by referendum in May 2018, replaced this with a clause permitting the Oireachtas (parliament) to legislate for the termination of pregnancies.
Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.
Abortion laws vary widely among countries and territories, and have changed over time. Such laws range from abortion being freely available on request, to regulation or restrictions of various kinds, to outright prohibition in all circumstances. Many countries and territories that allow abortion have gestational limits for the procedure depending on the reason; with the majority being up to 12 weeks for abortion on request, up to 24 weeks for rape, incest, or socioeconomic reasons, and more for fetal impairment or risk to the woman's health or life. As of 2022, countries that legally allow abortion on request or for socioeconomic reasons comprise about 60% of the world's population.
Abortion in Sweden was first legislated by the Abortion Act of 1938. This stated that an abortion could be legally performed in Sweden upon medical, humanitarian, or eugenical grounds. That is, if the pregnancy constituted a serious threat to the woman's life, if she had been impregnated by rape, or if there was a considerable chance that any serious condition might be inherited by her child, she could request an abortion. The law was later augmented in 1946 to include socio-medical grounds and again in 1963 to include the risk of serious fetal damage. A committee investigated whether these conditions were met in each individual case and, as a result of this prolonged process, abortion was often not granted until the middle of the second trimester. As such, a new law was created in 1974, stating that the choice of an abortion is entirely up to the woman until the end of the 18th week.
A crisis pregnancy center (CPC), sometimes called a pregnancy resource center (PRC), is a type of nonprofit organization established to persuade pregnant women against having an abortion. In addition, CPCs generally provide peer counseling related to pregnancy and childbirth, and may also offer other non-medical services such as financial assistance, child-rearing resources, and adoption referrals. CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may also provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services. However, CPCs have frequently been found to disseminate false medical information about the supposed physical and mental health risks of abortion, and sometimes about the effectiveness of condoms and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections.
The United States anti-abortion movement contains elements opposing induced abortion on both moral and religious grounds and supports its legal prohibition or restriction. Advocates generally argue that human life begins at conception and that the human zygote, embryo or fetus is a person and therefore has a right to life. The anti-abortion movement includes a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body. There are diverse arguments and rationales for the anti-abortion stance. Some anti-abortion activists allow for some permissible abortions, including therapeutic abortions, in exceptional circumstances such as incest, rape, severe fetal defects or when the woman's health is at risk.
Abortion in Israel is permitted when determined by a termination committee, with the vast majority of cases being approved as of 2019. The rate of abortion in Israel has steadily declined since 1988, and compared to the rest of the world, abortion rates in Israel are moderate. According to government data, in Israel, abortion rates in 2016 dropped steadily to 9 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, lower than England (16.2) and the United States (13.2). 99% of abortions are carried out in the first trimester. Despite allegations of permitting abortion under limited circumstances, Haaretz noted in 2019 that this is not the case and abortion is almost always permitted in Israel.
Since 2021, Abortion in Mexico is no longer a crime, although its legalisation still varies by state. On 7 September 2021, the Mexican Supreme Court unanimously ruled that penalising abortion is unconstitutional, setting an important precedent across the whole country. The procedure is easily available on request to any woman up to twelve weeks into a pregnancy in Mexico City and the states of Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Colima, Baja California, Sinaloa, and Guerrero. Before 2021, abortion was severely restricted in the rest of the country. As of April 2015, 138,792 abortions have been carried out in the capital city since its legalisation in 2007.
This is a timeline of reproductive rights legislation, a chronological list of laws and legal decisions affecting human reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are a sub-set of human rights pertaining to issues of reproduction and reproductive health. These rights may include some or all of the following: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to birth control, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization, abortion, and contraception, and protection from gender-based practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and male genital mutilation (MGM).
Christianity and abortion have a long and complex history, and there are a variety of positions taken by contemporary Christian denominations on the topic. There is only one reference to abortion as a procedure in either the Old Testament or the New Testament books of the Christian Bible; however, certain other passages in the Bible have been interpreted by anti-abortion Christians to mean that abortion is not morally acceptable. While some writers say that early Christians held different beliefs at different times about abortion, others say that they condemned abortion at any point of pregnancy as a grave sin, a condemnation that they maintained even when some early Christians did not view as homicide the elimination of a fetus not yet "formed" and animated by a human soul. Some authors, such as ethicist Benjamin Wiker, have contrasted the prohibition of abortion in later Christian societies with the availability of abortion that was present in earlier Roman society, arguing that this reflects a wider condemnation of pagan practices.
In Judaism, views on abortion draw primarily upon the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the case-by-case decisions of responsa, and other rabbinic literature. While all major Jewish religious movements allow abortion in order to save the life or health of a pregnant woman, authorities differ on when and whether it is permitted in other cases.
Abortion in India has been legal under various circumstances for the last 50 years with the introduction of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act in 1971. The Act was amended in 2003 to enable women's accessibility to safe and legal abortion services.
Abortion in Austria has been fully legalized since 1 January 1975. Abortions can be performed on demand in hospitals for women during the first three months from the beginning of the pregnancy. Abortions can be performed later if there is a physical or mental health threat to the pregnant woman, if there is an incurable problem with the development of the fetus, or if the patient is under the age of 14.
Abortion in Costa Rica is severely restricted by criminal law. Currently, abortions are allowed in Costa Rica only in order to preserve the life or physical health of the woman. Abortions are illegal in almost all cases, including when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest and when the fetus suffers from medical problems or birth defects. Both social and economic factors have led to this legal status. It remains unclear whether abortions are legal to preserve the mental health of the woman, though the 2013 United Nations abortion report says Costa Rica does allow abortions concerning the mental health of a woman.
Pregnancy is a potential result of rape. It has been studied in the context of war, particularly as a tool for genocide, as well as other unrelated contexts, such as rape by a stranger, statutory rape, incest, and underage pregnancy. The current scientific consensus is that rape is at least as likely to lead to pregnancy as consensual sexual intercourse, with some studies suggesting rape may actually result in higher rates of pregnancy than consensual intercourse.
Abortion-rights movements, also referred to as pro-choice movements, advocate for legal access to induced abortion services including elective abortion. It is the argument against the anti-abortion movement. The abortion rights movement seeks out to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pregnancy at any point. This movement attempts to establish a right for women to make the choice to have an abortion without fear of legal and/or social backlash. The issue of induced abortion remains divisive in public life, with recurring arguments to liberalize or to restrict access to legal abortion services. Abortion-rights supporters themselves are divided as to the types of abortion services that should be available and to the circumstances, for example different periods in the pregnancy such as late term abortions, in which access may be restricted.
Abortion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is legal on request during the first ten weeks of pregnancy. Between ten and twenty weeks, an abortion must be approved by a committee, and is permitted when the woman's life or health is threatened, when the fetus is severely impaired, when the pregnancy results from a crime, or for psychosocial reasons. In all cases, women must undergo counseling first. After 20 weeks, abortion is only permitted to save the woman's life or health. Only persons who perform illegal abortions are criminally punishable, never the women who undergo them.
Abortion in Malaysia is mostly illegal except in cases when a medical practitioner deems that continuing the pregnancy poses a danger to the mother's life, physical health, and mental well-being. Abortion in Malaysia is regulated under Sections 312–316 of the Penal Code. Access to abortion has been hampered by religious, cultural, and social stigmas against abortion, poor awareness of abortion legislation among health professionals, and the high cost of abortion services in the private health sector.
Abortion in Singapore was legalised in 1969, being one of the first countries in the Asia-Pacific to do so. Prior to this, it was only legal when a woman's health was endangered by the pregnancy. Abortions are legal for Singaporean citizens, individuals with an issued work pass under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act (EFMA), or individuals who have been a resident of Singapore for a minimum of four months. Abortions can also be received by any woman whose life is endangered by the pregnancy.
References
- 1 2 Abortion Policies: Oman to Zimbabwe. United Nations Publications. 2001.
- ↑ "When abortion is legal". The Fiji Times Online. Fiji Times. 4 February 2010. Archived from the original on 4 December 2014. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
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