Tina McCray
Professor Williams
English 111-800
November 14, 2013
The Need to Address Social Issues Affecting Abortion
Abortion discussion in the public domain has most often centered on the policy and failed to address the major causes, which are the social issues. There is minimal focus on social reasons why 1.3 million women abort each year in the United States (Finer and Benshaw 15). Most of the reasons for carrying out abortion are addressed on two pillars alone: health complications and rape or incest. A third and a much bigger pillar, social reasons, have been ignored. Statistics show that a whopping 93% of abortions are due to social reasons (Finer and Benshaw 13). More attention should be focused on addressing the social aspects affecting abortion in contemporary society. The social reasons that make women want to abort include poverty, fear of heavy emotional and financial responsibility, and Incrimination of Teen pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy.
Poverty trims down a mother’s capability to provide for a child, increasing the incentive to abort. As much as this may be reduced by existing social or welfare aid programs, abortion is still stigmatized as the problem of the poor. The less money one has, the less likely one will be able to afford bringing up a child, making abortion the only plausible option. This is made worse by the heavy emotional and financial responsibility to provide for children with little resources that poor people possess. Statistics show that over 750,000 teenagers become pregnant yearly and 80 % of the pregnancies end up in abortion (Phillips 65).
Additionally, unlike rich women who may have better access to other contraception techniques, for instance condoms, surgical sterilization, and birth control pills, if a woman is not financially stable or does not have the resources to give the best for an additional baby, then