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Abortion Essay

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Imagine being in a sack of amniotic fluid and feeling a long plastic tube that is connected to a suction tube device beginning to suction out. Abortion, the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo before viability during the first 12 weeks. Abortion has and will probably always be a very controversial topic which have caused people to either be pro-life or pro-choice. Before delving deeper into the history or current debates over an issue like abortion, it is important to look simply at the fact of its existence in the United States. According to studies released in 2005 by the Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH) and The Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.29 million abortions performed in this country. Research by the same group shows that in 1994, approximately half of all pregnancies in the United States were unintended, with only about half of those actually ending in abortion. In comparison to other countries, the U.S. accounted for three percent of worldwide abortions in 1995 (PRCH and Guttmacher).
Abortion has been performed for thousands of years. The practice of abortion has been legal in the United States from the time the earliest settlers arrived (NAF). In the mid-to-late 1800’s states begin passing laws that made abortion illegal. One of the main reasons that states were banning legal was due to fear that the population would be dominated by the children of newly arriving immigrants, whose birth rates were higher than those “native” Anglo-Saxon women (NAF). During this time in the 1800’s, most surgical procedure’s which included abortion were said to be extremely risky. Surgical procedures were risky because hospitals were uncommon, antiseptics have not been discovered and most known doctors were specialized in primary care which didn’t include surgical procedures. As scientific methods

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