abortion discursive essay introduction

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Untroubling abortion: A discourse analysis of women’s accounts

In this paper, I highlight key differences between a discourse analytic approach to women’s accounts of abortion and that taken by the growing body of research that seeks to explore and measure women’s experiences of abortion stigma. Drawing on critical analyses of the conceptualisation of stigma in other fields of healthcare, I suggest that research on abortion stigma often risks reifying it by failing to consider how identities are continually re-negotiated through language-use. In contrast, by attending to language as a form of social action, discursive psychology makes it possible to emphasise speakers’ capacity to construct “untroubled” (i.e. non-stigmatised) identities, while acknowledging that this process is constrained by the contexts in which talk takes place. My analysis applies these insights to interviews with women concerning their experiences of having an abortion in England. I highlight three forms of discursive work through which women navigate “trouble” in their accounts of abortion, and critically consider the resources available for meaning-making within this particular context of talk. In doing so, I aim to provoke reflection about the discursive frameworks through which women’s accounts of abortion are solicited and explored.

In recent years, stigma has become a central focus within research concerning women’s experiences of abortion ( Hoggart, 2015 ; Purcell, 2015 ). Drawing on Goffman’s (1963) analysis of the social construction of stigma, Kumar, Hessini and Mitchell (2009) define abortion stigma “as a negative attribute ascribed to women who seek to terminate a pregnancy that marks them, internally or externally, as inferior to ideals of womanhood” (p. 628). In connecting abortion stigma to gender norms, they emphasise that understandings of abortion are locally specific and open to deconstruction. Their analysis considers how abortion stigma is perpetuated, one route being through “framing discourses.” However, as Purcell (2015) highlights, although available discourses have clear implications for women who end their pregnancies, few studies have analysed the language that women themselves use to represent their experiences.

In this paper, I begin to address this issue, drawing on insights from discursive psychology (for example, Edley, 2001 ; Potter & Wetherell, 1987 ) to explore how women in England talk about having had an abortion during research interviews. In contrast to psychological approaches that treat language as a means to access a speaker’s “internal” identity, discursive psychology explores how identities are achieved through speakers’ language-use ( Edley, 2001 ). A key consequence of this conceptual move is that identities are not understood as static, but as variable and context-specific: They are articulated through socially available discourses or “interpretative repertoires.” Interpretative repertoires are routinised “ways of talking about objects and events” [which means] “when people talk (or think) about things they invariably do so in terms already provided for them by history” ( Edley, 2001 , p. 198). Interpretative repertoires “position” speakers in particular ways (i.e. they imply specific kinds of identity), but speakers also exercise agency by taking up or rejecting different “subject positions” through their discursive labour ( Edley, 2001 ).

Some subject positions are harder to claim than others because “departures from ‘what everybody knows to be appropriate’ require explanation and create ‘trouble’ in […] interaction” ( Wetherell & Edley, 1998 , p. 161). By exploring various forms of “trouble” that speakers encounter, discursive psychological research highlights the social norms that render particular identities problematic and individuals’ capacity to resist stigmatisation and construct “untroubled” subject positions ( Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003 ; Reynolds, Wetherell, & Taylor, 2007 ; Wetherell & Edley, 1998 ).

In the analysis that follows, I explore the discursive work through which women successfully navigate the “trouble” they encounter when describing themselves as someone who has had an abortion. In doing so, I critically explore the discursive resources available for meaning-making within a particular context of talk about abortion. I also contrast a discourse analytic approach to women’s accounts of abortion with the very different approach taken by the growing body of literature that explores women’s experiences of abortion stigma. By juxtaposing these approaches, I seek to provoke reflection about the implications of the discursive frameworks through which women’s accounts of abortion are solicited and explored.

Accounts of stigma

Several studies have used interview and survey data to explore how stigma features in women’s experiences of abortion ( Astbury-Ward, Parry, & Carnwell, 2012 ; Cockrill & Nack, 2013 ; Cockrill, Upadhyay, Turan, & Greene Foster, 2013 ; Hoggart, 2017 ; Major & Gramzow, 1999 ; Shellenberg et al., 2011 ; Shellenberg & Tsui, 2012 ). For example, Cockrill and Nack (2013) identify three “manifestations” of abortion stigma in women’s interview accounts of their experiences of abortion in the United States. “Internalised stigma results from a woman’s acceptance of negative cultural valuations of abortion” ( Cockrill & Nack, 2013 , p. 974). “Felt stigma” is a woman’s anticipation of “unsupportive reactions to disclosing an unplanned pregnancy, an abortion decision, or an abortion history” ( Cockrill & Nack, 2013 , p. 980). “Enacted stigma” is “a woman’s experiences of clear or subtle actions that reveal prejudice against those involved in abortion” ( Cockrill & Nack, 2013 , p. 974). Cockrill and Nack illustrate strategies women use to individually “manage” such stigma, for example, through non-disclosure, through constructing their reasons for abortion as “exceptional,” or through condemnation of anti-abortion perspectives. They argue such strategies often perpetuate abortion stigma by making abortion invisible, or by suggesting that it requires exceptional grounds. Drawing on these qualitative findings, Cockrill et al. (2013) develop a scale to quantitatively measure the extent of individual-level abortion stigma.

Such research provides a valuable means of representing the impact of the stigmatisation of abortion on women’s lives. For example, in a study conducted in England and Wales, Astbury-Ward et al. (2012) argue that “women’s perceptions of abortion as a deeply discreditable and personally stigmatising event” (p. 3144) prevent them from seeking crucial social support. However, it is important to reflect on the understandings of language, identity and stigma which this body of research works with and reproduces. Language is approached as a “transparent medium” ( Wetherell, 2001 , p. 16) through which aspects of identity, conceived of as internal to individuals (e.g. attitudes, experiences, values, and perceptions), can be accessed by researchers as opposed to an ongoing social practice through which identities are constructed ( Potter & Wetherell, 1987 ). Relatedly, stigma is conceptualised as a “negative attribute” and treated “as though it were a kind of thing […] a relatively static characteristic or feature, albeit one that is at some level culturally constructed” ( Parker & Aggleton, 2003 , p. 14 – emphasis in original), which can be measured using interview and survey accounts.

Writing in relation to other forms of stigma, Parker and Aggleton (2003) and Farrugia (2009) draw attention to the consequences of these kinds of conceptual formulation. Treating stigma as a “kind of thing” ( Parker & Aggleton, 2003 , p. 14) that can be measured through individual accounts of experience risks obscuring the social relations that produce stigmatisation, and make available particular responses to it. It also positions those who are subjected to stigmatisation in a particular and limiting way, as individuals who possess and have to “manage” a socially “spoiled” identity ( Farrugia, 2009 ; Parker & Aggleton, 2003 ). In contrast, post-structuralist accounts of subjectivity (for example, Butler, 1990 ; Foucault, 1978 ) offer a means to understand stigmatisation as reproducing social relations of power that depend on the differentiation of “normal” from “deviant” identities through discourse ( Farrugia, 2009 ; Parker & Aggleton, 2003 ). Crucially, this process of identity construction is conceptualised as ongoing and re-negotiable, making it possible to consider the capacity of those who are subjected to processes of stigmatisation to construct positive identities ( Farrugia, 2009 ; Parker & Aggleton, 2003 ). In this paper, I explore what it might mean to apply these insights to women’s interview accounts of abortion, drawing – as outlined above – on the particular approach to discourse analysis provided by discursive psychology.

Abortion in public discourse in Great Britain

In England and Wales, abortion is a criminal offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, unless two doctors agree that it is necessary on one of several grounds that concern risks to the pregnant woman’s (mental or physical) health, or the future health of her foetus. These grounds were introduced through the Abortion Act 1967, a piece of legislation that has enabled abortion to “become entrenched as a normal part of routine healthcare” ( Sheldon, 2016 , p. 344) in Great Britain. 1

Although it has facilitated liberal abortion provision, the Abortion Act constructs abortion as a “deviant” practice which requires regulation and positions women as incapable of reproductive decision-making ( Boyle, 1997 ; Fyfe, 1991 ; Jackson, 2001 ; Lee, 2003 , 2004 ; Sheldon, 1997 , 2016 ). Negative framings of abortion are also generated by an entrenched anti-abortion lobby that depicts foetuses as individual persons ( Franklin, 1991 ) and women who have abortions as the unwitting victims of a procedure which inevitably leaves them physically and psychologically damaged ( Amery, 2014 ; Hoggart, 2015 ; Hopkins, Reicher, & Saleem, 1996 ). These framings dominate the British print media, which constructs abortion as a moral “controversy” and portrays the transgression of the feminine norm of maternity as a risky decision, associated with regret and suffering ( Purcell, Hilton, & McDaid, 2014 ).

Women’s experiences with abortion in Great Britain

Qualitative research concerning women’s experiences with abortion in Great Britain has focussed primarily on processes of abortion decision-making and of using healthcare services. A consistent finding is that women reach decisions about their pregnancies based on the specific relational contexts of their own lives ( Hoggart, 2012 ; Lattimer, 1998 ; Lee, 2004 ; Lee, Clements, Inghan, & Stone, 2004 ; Purcell, Cameron, et al., 2014 ). In contrast with the law’s medicalised construction of abortion decision-making, this typically takes place before women approach healthcare professionals for help with accessing the procedure ( Allen, 1985 ; Brown, 2013 ; Kumar, Baraitser, Morton, & Massil, 2004 ; Lee, 2004 ). While women do not generally want input into their decision-making, their interactions with healthcare services are nonetheless central in their experiences of their decisions as either socially legitimate or as problematic ( Allen, 1985 ; Astbury-Ward et al., 2012 ; Harden & Ogden, 1999 ; Kumar et al., 2004 ; Lee, 2004 ; Purcell, Cameron, et al., 2014 ). This paper expands the focus of this existing literature by using discourse analysis to explore how women talk about having decided to have an abortion, and the subject positions available to them.

Ethical approval for this study was obtained from an NHS Research Ethics Committee and from the University of York’s Economics, Law, Management, Politics and Sociology Ethics Committee. Study information was made available to women attending abortion clinics and, when recruitment in this context proved difficult, I also placed advertisements in non-clinical settings such as newspapers and social media. Regardless of the site of initial contact, the recruitment process was effectively the same. In both cases, women were provided with information about the study that explained how to contact me if they were interested in taking part. Seventeen women were recruited through the clinic route, and 11 through the non-clinic route. A gift of £20 was offered to thank women for their time. All participants provided informed consent.

The majority of participants had, or were pursuing, an undergraduate degree or professional qualification (n = 21). Using British census categories, most of the participants identified as “White British/Other White background” (n = 25). Two participants identified as “Black/Black British–Caribbean,” and one identified as having a specific “Mixed background.” With the exception of one participant, who had an abortion while living overseas, their experiences of abortion all took place in England. At the time of interview, nine women had children and 19 did not. The length of time since abortion varied considerably, from approximately three weeks to 37 years (with a mode of three to four weeks since first experience of abortion). This meant participants had very different opportunities to formulate narratives concerning their experiences. However, length of time post-abortion did not seem to be associated with differences in women’s discursive work.

Women’s age at the time of their (first experience of) abortion ranged from approximately 14–36 years, and this variable did appear to shape participants’ positioning of themselves during interviews. Resonating with studies which highlight parental involvement in teenage women’s pregnancy outcomes ( Hoggart, 2012 ; Lee, 2004 ), women’s descriptions of ending a pregnancy under the age of 18 (n = 3) were distinguished by depictions of abortion as a decision that had been made by others. These accounts were so different from the rest of the data corpus that they are not explored in the analysis that follows, which focuses on how women negotiated the meaning of having decided to end a pregnancy.

Interviews took place by phone (n = 12) or face-to-face (n = 16). In recognition of the researcher’s role in making particular subject positions available to participants ( Taylor, 2001 ), I tried to produce a supportive research encounter that did not replicate the “troubling” of abortion. Recruitment materials highlighted the absence of women’s voices from discussion of abortion and described study participation as a way to address this problem by building research knowledge about “the issues important to women.” In interviews, I tried to avoid suggesting that abortion needed to be justified by asking women to tell me about their experiences rather than asking “why” they had decided on abortion. I began with a very open-ended question (Can you tell me a bit about what happened when you first thought you might be pregnant?) to give women the opportunity to shape the focus of the conversation. I also used a topic guide to explore some pre-defined issues with all participants if they did not arise spontaneously (for example, aspects of the abortion care pathway, or views about media coverage of abortion). Throughout the analysis that follows, I foreground my role in the production of data by indicating when a question directly preceded a participant’s stretch of talk and by reflecting on my framing of the research.

Interviews were recorded and professionally transcribed verbatim. Owing to a recording device failure, one interview could not be included in the data corpus, but nonetheless informed the analysis. All participants’ identities have been anonymised using an interview number. As I have described elsewhere ( Beynon-Jones, 2015 ), the use of numbers rather than pseudonyms represents a (far from ideal) solution to concerns that some women expressed about the concealment of their identities.

My analysis of the data was supported by the qualitative data management software NVivo 10. I explored the different forms of interactional trouble which women encountered and coded the transcripts in terms of thematic patterns in the discursive work via which they navigated this. Below, I present three examples of this discursive work and explain how it enables women to take up, or reject, particular subject positions in specific moments of talk concerning abortion. I also highlight how the positions available to women are limited by available “interpretative repertoires” (routinised ways of speaking) about abortion.

As discourse analysis is itself a form of social action, its proponents do not typically seek to make truth claims. Nonetheless, there are criteria against which the legitimacy of a discourse analysis can be assessed. In analysing my data, I was particularly concerned with “participants’ orientation” ( Potter & Wetherell, 1987 , p. 170), i.e. whether the forms of discursive labour that I identified seemed significant for women themselves, and “fruitfulness” ( Potter & Wetherell, 1987 , p. 171), i.e. whether the discursive patterns identified provided new analytic insights.

Asserting certainty

In this section, I illustrate a key form of discursive labour in which women engaged, namely, the strategies via which they positioned themselves as “certain” that their decisions to end their pregnancies were correct. The articulation of abortion as the only possible and legitimate outcome of a particular pregnancy was central to most women’s accounts. However, what was notable about these accounts was that assertions of “certainty” were often constructed through the refutation of alternative, “troubled,” subject positions:

Extract 1: It was totally fine. It was kind of, you know, because I was 100 per cent sure about my decision I was fine. I really didn’t think about it. There was no trauma about it. And then this year, no last year […] I found out I was pregnant again because I was a week late with my period and I was [ abroad ] and when I came back immediately I called. Did again a Google, called up, set up an appointment immediately and dealt with it a lot earlier this time […] So and, again, I currently – I’m turning [ age in mid-30s ] next month, I have no plans to have children and I’m in a place in my career where I’m just, it would be impossible. And I feel very confidently about my decision and I have no regrets and it’s been fine. (Interview 27. Note on transcription: […] denotes omitted text, [ italicised text in brackets is my annotation ], [non-italicised text in brackets represents unclear word(s)].) Extract 2: So I went to the doctor’s the next day. And for me there was no doubt in my mind of what I was going to do. There was never any sort of question of, “Oh it’s a life, am I doing the right thing?” For me it was almost as if I was ill and I was going to the doctors to get better. It felt like that. It never felt like a big kind of dramatic soul-searching operation kind of thing. It just was kind of, “Oh gosh, I’ve got a problem and I need to get it solved.” I just – I think my doctor did as well. We both of us knew there was absolutely no way, the stage I was at in life, that I could possibly have gone through with it. I wanted to go to university. I was having a year out. As I explained I was - I had a lot going on at the time and for me there was just no doubt in my mind what I wanted to do. (Interview 20)

In both of these extracts, participants (implicitly or explicitly) navigate an anti-abortion repertoire of abortion as a dilemmatic decision linked to uncertainty and subsequent regret concerning the ending of foetal “life.” In the first, the word “fine” is used repeatedly to generate contrasts with subject positions of “trauma” and “regret.” In the second, the participant draws directly on the framing of abortion as a decision about “life,” but does not take up the subject position (of agonising decision-making about the morality of abortion, followed by subsequent regret) which is implied by this repertoire. In resisting this positioning, she repeatedly asserts her lack of “doubt,” drawing on the authority of medical opinion to reinforce the legitimacy of her decision.

Another way in which certainty is asserted in these accounts is through explanatory work around abortion decision-making. Such work would be anticipated by other studies that note the prevalence of justifications in women’s accounts of abortion (for example, Cockrill & Nack, 2013 ; Lattimer, 1998 ). However, an interesting feature of the explanations provided by participants in this study is that the desire not to have children, to pursue a career or to gain an education are depicted as legitimate goals which – far from requiring explanation or apology – are deployed as straightforward, untroubled, evidence of “certainty” about abortion. This resonates with Hoggart’s (2012) finding that, in spite of a UK policy discourse which constructs teenage pregnancy and abortion as problematic, teenage women are able to describe having an abortion as socially legitimate. In this study it was notable that participants across a wide range of ages at the time of abortion (18–36 years) constructed the pursuit of education, career, relationship or other life aspirations as valuable and, indeed, more legitimate alternatives to continuing with a particular pregnancy. Such accounts were provided by women with, and without, children.

Not all participants described abortion decision-making as non-dilemmatic. One participant, for example, spent nearly three hours discussing the difficult process of deciding to end her pregnancy following her partner’s decision not to support it. Nonetheless, while her account of the decision-making e xperience contrasts with those considered previously, she likewise engages in discursive labour to construct a subject position of retrospective “certainty”:

Extract 3: I don’t want to be one of these statistics that’s another young mum that’s single and on her own and has got all this baggage. And I want to be able to go back into education and do things and travel the world and go on holidays and things like that and not - Not that babies are a horrible thing, because they’re not, they’re the most wonderful gift in the world but it’s when you get them. […] I thought, “Oh my God I am the worst person in the world. I am going to be so ridiculously punished in some other life for this.” But at the end of the day, what’s worse? Is it worse to nip it in the bud, if you like, before it’s all come to fruition or to wait and have everything fall down around you, my relationship and everything, be on my own and not be able to cope and then get postnatal depression or something further along the line or resent that child or anything like that. And I think ultimately that’s worse than doing what I’ve done. So really, as much as I do feel sort of bad about it to a degree, I also feel that when the time comes it will be right and it will all be what it’s supposed to be.” (Interview 19)

This account provides a compelling illustration of the context-specific ways in which subject positions are achieved through talk, and the difficulties of treating language as a “transparent medium” ( Wetherell, 2001 , p. 16) through which to access an identity conceptualised as internal to individuals (such as “internalised stigma”). The participant’s suggestion that she thought she was “the worst person in the world” reads very differently when embedded in relation to the rest of her account. She invokes, and then resists, this stigmatised positioning to present herself as someone who has engaged morally with a difficult dilemma in order to reach the correct decision. Her assertion that she has made a legitimate choice is underscored through her juxtaposition of the catastrophic implications of continuing with her pregnancy vs. waiting for the “right time.” Similar depictions of the importance of “responsible” maternity are also highlighted by Hoggart (2017) , who employs a very different analytic framework through which to conceptualise their significance in women’s accounts of abortion (see also Lattimer, 1998 ).

Women who did not have children, such as the participant speaking in the previous extract, typically (although not exclusively – see Extract 1) emphasised their plans to pursue maternity in the future . In other words, it often seemed to be the temporariness of their rejections of maternity that enabled women to position themselves as “certain” about abortion:

Extract 4: I don’t like regret it at all because obviously – if I’d had been with someone and lived with them [ The participant had previously described difficulties in her relationship with her partner which made maternity “ impossible ”]. That’s what I think, I think if it affects me when I obviously do want to have children I’ll be absolutely devastated with the choice I made but. (Interview 21)

In this account, “regret” is temporally re-framed. Rather than applying to the decision to end a pregnancy (which is asserted as correct), it is constructed as a potential emotional state connected to the loss of future fertility in alternative circumstances. Such constructions draw on an enduring and incorrect ( Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), 2011 , p. 43) anti-abortion claim, namely, that abortion damages women’s fertility. Concern about future infertility was also central to the account of one of only two participants in the study who did not take up a subject position of “certainty,” instead framing abortion as a choice that she would not have made if given the opportunity to revisit it. As Hoggart (2012) notes, it is important that feminist discourse contains space to acknowledge regret about abortion. However, as all the extracts in this section illustrate, it is also vital to interrogate the discourses available to women in their attempts to negotiate the meaning of having ended a pregnancy ( Hoggart, 2012 , 2015 ; Kimport, 2012 ).

Emphasising individual agency

Another key form of discursive work via which women untroubled the meaning of having decided to have an abortion was to critique others’ negative judgements. In analysing women’s strategies of stigma management in relation to abortion, Cockrill and Nack (2013) argue that:

Through condemning the condemners , a woman can assign the greater sin to those who have judged abortion to be wrong and who work to limit women’s access to abortion. This neutralizes the act of abortion by socially constructing the anti-abortion value system as more unjust and immoral than having an abortion. (p. 985–emphasis in original)

Adopting a discourse analytic perspective, I approach women’s accounts of condemnation slightly differently. Rather than assuming that they are used to “neutralise” an automatically negative identity, I explore them as illustrative of the context-specific repertoires available for identity construction. On what basis is it possible for women to critique others’ problematisations of abortion and what are the implications of this for the subject positions available to them?

In this study, a cross-cutting feature of such accounts was participants’ deployments of a repertoire of “liberalism”:

Extract 5: … [ a friend ] told a lot of people so now I’m getting a lot of stick […] for it. That’s probably the only reason why I said I’m definitely doing this interview now is just because I’ve had so much stick for my decisions and it’s got to a point now where I’m getting so infuriated with how people react to abortion. It’s just like, it was my personal choice. It’s not anything that you had to do. I didn’t force you to have an abortion of your child or anything like that so there’s no reason I should get people’s hate. (Interview 10) Extract 6: My [ relative ] isn’t supportive of it [ abortion ] but at least he turned round and said, “If it’s the right decision for you then I will support you.” […] He’s done it the way that I’d want. He’s not said that he’s supportive of my decision but he’s supportive of me. Whereas she’s [ another relative ] done it in the way that, “No, this is wrong.” […] I will never speak to her again for what she said to me. (Interview 3)

In these extracts, women position themselves as making a personal choice/decision, which does not impact on the agency of other people. Conversely, those who express views that abortion is morally wrong to women who have ended their pregnancies are positioned as intruding harmfully into the individual experiences of others.

Women developed related critiques concerning their experiences of navigating anti-abortion protests outside of clinics:

Extract 7: Siân: And in terms of this research study was there a particular reason that you wanted to take part or not take part or? Participant: I just kind of like doing it I guess. I think it helps. And it’s like really annoying when those people stand outside the clinic all the time. At the [ clinic ] there was the people that are really against abortion. And I just don’t think – like obviously they’re Christian or religious - but I don’t think they really have the right to be there because obviously at the end of the day it’s your choice. I think that kind of made me do it because I was like you don’t really understand the reasons why people do it. It’s not like I got pregnant and then just decided, “Oh yeah, I’ll just have an abortion for fun sort of thing.” That kind of annoyed me which is why I also think I took part because I don’t think that you should give people who have terminations a bad name. I don’t think that’s really fair because you don’t understand other people’s circumstances. […] I think the worst thing is that obviously it’s going to be a hard decision for some people anyway. I just don’t think – like there should be, I don’t know, some rule against it and they shouldn’t – like obviously I don’t mind if they want to express their views but not outside the place where it’s going to happen. And especially if you’ve got the pictures like the [ inaudible ] weeks and everything, that doesn’t help either. They’re there constantly throughout the day and then they were there the next day as well and I was like I just don’t want to deal with this really. (Interview 17)

In this extract, the participant engages in complex discursive work to construct the protestors’ presence outside of abortion clinics as illegitimate. In order to reconcile a liberal repertoire concerning the importance of understanding and accepting others’ personal positions, with the threat that the protestors pose to her own reproductive choice, she argues that they should be able to “express their views,” but that it is not appropriate for them to do so outside abortion clinics. This echoes Extract 6, in which the participant differentiates between the behaviour of people who oppose abortion, and those who express these views to women who have decided to end their pregnancies.

Critiquing particular expressions of opposition to abortion as oppressive encroachments into private choices and experiences enabled participants to depict their individual agency as morally important. It also allowed them to construct the problems they encountered as resolvable and to position themselves as potential agents in the process of addressing “ignorant” or “abusive” behaviour, by correcting misrepresentations of abortion. This positioning was, arguably, facilitated by the study’s explicit framing as a means of “giving voice” to women through building research knowledge about marginalised perspectives.

Nonetheless, liberalism also “dissolves entire areas of socio-political conflict into interpersonal problems” ( Kitzinger, 1987 , p. 196). Constructions of stigmatisation as the product of individually problematic behaviours (e.g. ignorance or abusiveness) render invisible – and make it harder to confront – the gendered social relations which construct abortion as a stigmatised course of action (this argument is outlined by Parker & Aggleton (2003) in the context of HIV/AIDS). Although the promotion of tolerance through education is widely advocated as a solution to multiple forms of stigmatisation, “tolerance and intolerance are […] very much the same thing – neither position requires those in power to give up power, rather these concepts reinforce power differentials by denoting who does and does not have the power to be tolerant” ( Clarke, 2005 , p. 4). Notably, in the extracts considered above, women position themselves as dependent upon others’ understanding and tolerance. However, it is important to note that a minority of participants also drew on an alternative repertoire to critique opposition to abortion. This located their experiences very differently, namely, as the result of gender inequalities:

Extract 8: I think women are demonised and it’s never anything to do with a man. As if like we just got pregnant by ourselves yeah, or immaculate conception. (Interview 12) Extract 9: I think it’s a feminist issue really. It’s like I’m sure if men were having abortions and stuff it wouldn’t be such a taboo. (Interview 15)

Explaining silence

While women regularly took up the position offered by the study’s framing, of voicing a missing perspective that should be central to discussion of abortion, many (although not all) constructed speaking as a “woman who has had an abortion” as difficult. As outlined in the introduction, existing research concerning abortion stigma has treated women’s accounts of silence as evidence of their attempts to manage a stigmatised identity, highlighting the harmful consequences of this strategy for women’s well-being. Below I suggest that, rather than simply using accounts of silence as evidence of stigma management, it might also be useful to explore women’s talk about silence. What discursive work do women engage in when they account for abortion non-disclosure? What subject positions does talk about silence make (im)possible? In adopting this approach, I draw on the work of Wigginton and Lafrance (2016) , who demonstrate how available discourses limit the possibilities of speaking as a pregnant smoker, constituting this as a subject position which is – necessarily – “untellable” (p. 33). Similarly, I suggest a discourse analytic approach to accounts of abortion non-disclosure illustrates (and makes it possible to critique) social norms about identifying as a woman who has had an abortion.

Central to the way in which women described talking about having an abortion was the notion that there is a taken-for-granted etiquette concerning the circumstances in which this is “appropriate,” or “reasonable”:

Extract 10: Siân: And is it something that you sort of talk about with other people, your experiences of it or? Participant: Yeah, I’ve talked about it with probably three of my closest friends but not - maybe four even – but not, not flippantly. But I have shared my experiences with friends, yeah. Siân: Yeah, ok. So when you say not flippantly do you mean sort of it’s something that you’d have a more of an in-depth conversation about as opposed to something you would mention in passing kind of thing? Participant: Yeah. No, “Oh yeah, I had one of those,” [ laughs ], “Oh I had two of them in fact!” [ parody ] More like I guess a couple of them – how did I talk about it actually? I think because I’m at an age where we talk about children and maybe in conversations I guess it came up where like, “Yes, I’ve been pregnant and I’ve had an abortion.” (Interview 27)

In this account, openness about abortion is positioned as entirely possible within the context of close friendships, but it is not something that can reasonably be mentioned in casual interaction. Indeed, my suggestion that abortion could be mentioned in this way is so “troubled” that it is constructed and dismissed as a joke.

Rules surrounding speech about abortion re-occurred in many of the interviews:

Extract 11: I wouldn’t talk about it at a dinner party but if I’m with some close girlfriends and it comes up then I’ll. Because it’s not something I’m embarrassed about, I think people understand the situation, but you obviously gauge your crowd and you know the reactions that you would want to, you know. (Interview 23) Extract 12: Interviewer: […] is it something you talk to other people about or? Participant: I think I told maybe sort of friends-wise only maybe one or two people. And if it comes up in conversation normally I just kind of say that we lost the baby. But then that kind of - I feel a bit ashamed to lie about it but I’m not lying it’s just, it’s such a big conversation to have and to try and explain that I just tend to say that we just lost the baby. But I think my gut instinct is that I would just say but it’s just that it’s such a big conversation. And then like we said, it’s the timing. If your friend is pregnant it’s not a conversation that you’re going to enter into. (Interview 5)

In these extracts (drawn from interviews in which the ending of a pregnancy held very different kinds of emotional meaning for participants), women’s positioning of themselves as “open” has to be carefully navigated in relation to admissions of non-disclosure in which they risk positioning themselves as “ashamed” or “embarrassed.” This trouble is resolved, I would argue, through the emphasis which women place on the “obviousness” of non-disclosure. Talking about abortion in particular contexts is described as an interactional impossibility, rather than a personal choice. Disclosing an abortion is not suitable at “dinner parties,” it cannot be discussed “flippantly,” it is a “big conversation” and there are clear circumstances in which this “is not a conversation you’re going to enter into.” However, while these constructions of “obvious non-disclosure” enable women to manage the rhetorical difficulties involved in accounting for silence, they also depict talking about having an abortion as intrinsically socially problematic.

Drawing on insights provided by critical approaches to the conceptualisation of stigma in other fields of healthcare ( Farrugia, 2009 ; Parker & Aggleton, 2003 ), this paper has highlighted the significance of the conceptual frameworks through which women’s accounts of abortion are explored. Treating such accounts as a “transparent medium” ( Wetherell, 2001 , p. 16) through which to access the “reality” of individual experiences of abortion stigma, I have suggested, risks reifying stigma as an a-social “kind of thing” ( Parker & Aggleton, 2003 , p. 14) and positioning women who have abortions as possessors of a “spoiled” identity. In contrast, discursive psychology treats identity construction as an unfolding social process, through which speakers position and re-position themselves in relation to particular contexts of talk.

In applying this approach to the analysis of women’s interview accounts of abortion in England, I have highlighted how the social contexts of talk about abortion shape women’s navigations of untroubled (i.e. non-stigmatised) identities. I have explored three examples of the discursive work in which women engage when talking about having decided to have an abortion. A central finding is the discursive labour in which women have to engage in order to negotiate an anti-abortion repertoire of (inevitable) regret and position themselves as “certain” about their decisions to end their pregnancies. Participants’ accounts illustrate that women do routinely articulate certainty about their decisions and that the desire to (albeit, often temporarily) pursue goals other than motherhood is often offered as a “common-sense” rationale for such certainty. Simultaneously, women’s accounts suggest that articulating certainty about abortion is difficult and requires the navigation of competing constructions of abortion.

In a country in which abortion is not a legal “choice” for women, it is striking that another key form of discursive work in which participants engaged was to emphasise the importance of non-interference with personal reproductive choices. Drawing on a repertoire of “liberalism,” women constructed abortion as a private decision and positioned others’ problematisations of abortion as individual failures of tolerance. While women’s capacity to prioritise their individual agency and autonomy is significant, I have suggested that it is important to reflect critically on the liberal repertoire through which this positioning is achieved. Constituting stigmatisation as “what some individuals do to other individuals” ( Parker & Aggleton, 2003 , p. 16) obscures, and makes it difficult to contest, the social relations through which particular subject positions become stigmatised.

I have argued that key insights into the social possibilities of meaning-making about abortion are also generated by attending to women’s talk about not talking about abortion. Most participants described not disclosing their abortion(s) in particular discursive contexts as an accepted, reasonable, taken-for-granted, social practice. De-constructing and challenging assumptions of “reasonableness” in relation to abortion non-disclosure (for example, that abortion cannot be easily mentioned in conversation, and that it is reasonable for women to take responsibility for censoring their speech in order to manage others’ reactions to their experiences) represents a potentially useful strategy for future feminist advocacy.

In comparison to conventional accounts of abortion stigma, addressing language as a form of social action both offers alternative insights into women’s accounts of abortion and underscores the significance of the discursive contexts in which these accounts are solicited. This study positioned “women’s voices” as marginalised but essential to understanding abortion, a framing which appeared to make particular positions available to participants. Women routinely asserted the legitimacy of abortion and highlighted the importance of their experiential knowledge. In terms of feminist research and abortion advocacy this illustrates the importance of attending not only to the production of spaces in which women can “voice experiences” but also the specific ways in which women are positioned through the framing of these spaces. What kinds of accounts of abortion do they make possible?

It is important to also highlight some of the silences produced through my discourse analysis of women’s stories. The relative demographic homogeneity of the sample (primarily White and/or highly educated) may have concealed social divisions in the discursive resources available for speaking about having an abortion in England. A focus on patterns that cut across women’s accounts also makes it easy to lose sight of other key differences, namely, participants’ very different emotional experiences of ending their pregnancies. Relatedly, while it offers important insights into the re-negotiable basis of identity, the analytic approach adopted in this paper arguably fails to consider what it is like to live through particular discursive positionings. It is because of my concerns about its inadequacy as a mode of engaging with the “painful lived experience of being stigmatised” ( Farrugia, 2009 , p. 1025) that I have not suggested discourse analysis should replace other approaches to the exploration of women’s accounts of abortion. Rather, because “writings, actions, practices and research on abortion are already carriers of political undertones” ( Macleod, 2008 , p. 67), I have argued that the frameworks through which we solicit and represent women’s accounts require greater reflexive interrogation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers and the Editors of this Special Issue for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I am enormously grateful to all the women who so generously took part in the study and to clinic staff for their support with recruitment.

Author Biography

Siân M Beynon-Jones is an Anniversary Research Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. She has a longstanding interest in the ways in which gendered subjectivities are produced and sustained through context-specific abortion practices, and she has published widely in this field. Situated at the intersection of feminist theory, Science and Technology Studies, and medical sociology, her research increasingly focuses on temporal aspects of subjectivity, and how these are shaped through healthcare practices and their regulation.

1 The Abortion Act applies in Scotland, England and Wales (Great Britain) but not in Northern Ireland. Abortion in Northern Ireland is criminalised in most circumstances, leaving most women without access to the procedure in this country ( Sheldon, 2016 ).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (095720/Z/11/Z).

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Persuasive Essay About Abortion

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Are you about to write a persuasive essay on abortion but wondering how to begin?

Writing an effective persuasive essay on the topic of abortion can be a difficult task for many students. 

It is important to understand both sides of the issue and form an argument based on facts and logical reasoning. This requires research and understanding, which takes time and effort.

In this blog, we will provide you with some easy steps to craft a persuasive essay about abortion that is compelling and convincing. Moreover, we have included some example essays and interesting facts to read and get inspired by. 

So let's start!

• 1. How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?
• 2. Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples
• 3. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion
• 4. Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics
• 5. Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments. 

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay .

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing. 

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument. 

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both? 

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information.

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Step 3: Define Your Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and audience, it is time to craft your argument. 

Start by defining what you believe and why, making sure to use evidence to support your claims. You also need to consider the opposing arguments and come up with counter arguments. This helps make your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. 

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of argumentative essay with introduction, body and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay. 

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

• Should abortion be legal in the United States?
• Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
• What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
• Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
• What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
• How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
• Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
• Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
• Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
• How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values? 

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you. 

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

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Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

• According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
• The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
• Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
• In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban most forms of abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
• Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
• In places where abortion is illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
• A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
• According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing. 

Need the services of a professional essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com is a persuasive essay writing service that provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i talk about in an essay about abortion.

When writing an essay about abortion, it is important to cover all the aspects of the subject. This includes discussing both sides of the argument, providing facts and evidence to support your claims, and exploring potential solutions.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

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6 Conclusion

For important issues, we need well-developed reasons or arguments to decide what to believe and do about the issues. Many people say they just “feel” that abortion is wrong or their “opinion” is that it’s not wrong. But complex issues require informed, fair and honest critical thinking, not just mere “feelings” or “opinions,” and we hope this essay has modeled this type of systematic and serious engagement with the arguments and evidence. We hope that readers’ reflective observations about how we have stated and evaluated arguments will help them improve their own skills at engaging arguments on this and other issues, on their own and in discussion with others.

We have focused on disagreements about abortion, but we want to end on an agreement. Everyone agrees there should be fewer abortions. Even people who believe abortions are generally not wrong don’t think that having an abortion is just a great way to spend time and resources. So everyone could agree that we, as a society, should do more to reduce the “demand” for abortions: we could address the many causes that lead women to seek abortions. [1] Some other countries don’t have as many abortions as the US does. In many cases this is because of deliberate choices they have made to make their countries more supportive of all of their citizens and make it easier for them to meet their economic, medical and familial needs. We too could be Good Samaritans, in these ways and more. This would be very good, not just for this issue but for who we are as people.

[1] For examples, see this 2012 Washington University Press release “ Access to free birth control reduces abortion rates ” and the Guttmacher Institute’s 2016 “ New Clarity for the U.S. Abortion Debate: A Steep Drop in Unintended Pregnancy Is Driving Recent Abortion Declines ,” and other proposals for what types of efforts would reduce the number of abortions.

Thinking Critically About Abortion Copyright © 2019 by nathannobis and Kristina Grob is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.22595/mc.ir.fac.pub:2019_nobis_book

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Abortion Essay Example

05 January, 2020

11 minutes read

Author:  Elizabeth Brown

Composing essays is a must during your college studies. Sometimes, you might get a topic that you aren’t fully aware of. Or, you can fail to grasp the idea of what a particular essay topic requires you to reveal in your essay. An abortion essay, for example, has become one of the very on-going issues these days. Professors believe that elaborating an essay on such a topic can help a student learn how to develop appropriate arguments and ideas, even in the most sensitive essays. If you experience any difficulty with the abortion essay writing, you just need to take a few points into account. Regardless of your title, which can be either why abortion should be supported or why abortion should be illegal essay, you can master your writing just by acknowledging several essential facts about it.

Abortion Essay: Definitions, Goals & Topics

An abortion argumentative essay reveals the arguments for or against pregnancy termination. The main peculiarity of such an essay is that one can write it from different points of view. While one may strongly feel like composing an abortion arguments essay and advancing their positioning in terms of healthcare and research, others may think of this essay in terms of psychology and sociology. Regardless of the stance, it is necessary to carry out some preliminary research and make sure you operate on both your arguments and data accurately. 

Abortion essays require the essay writer to stay tolerant and open-minded. The topic, the selection of arguments, vocabulary – all of these indicators should not offend people who are sensitive to the outlined topic. 

All in all, the ultimate goal of an argumentative essay on abortion is to present the topic and provide arguments for and against it. It is likewise essential to give an insight into the subject, reveal its current state, and include most recent findings. 

Abortion Essay Titles 

When composing a title for an abortion essay, the first critical thing to keep in mind is transparency. The title should not create confusion or offend the reader. To select a title you would like to develop in your essay, decide whether you know why abortion is wrong essay, or if you favor supporting the topic. Here are some of the topics that will be easy to elaborate on in your essay about abortion:

• Reasons why women in underdeveloped countries are inclined to abortions
• Potential health hazard as a consequence of abortion
• How different countries approach abortions 
• The reasons why calling abortion murder is inappropriate
• Depriving a woman of the right to make an abortion is equal to depriving a woman of her freedom

Abortion Essay Structure  

As you have already learned, a classical essay comprises three parts: an introduction, several body paragraphs (3-5), and concluding remarks. The abortion essay isn’t an exception. But a structure of an abortion essay should be very specific as it contains several fundamental points that differ from other essay types. 

Introduction 

First, you need to define abortion as soon as you start writing an abortion essay. Even though almost everyone in the world knows what abortion is, it is essential to state its interpretation. Later, you can mention recent findings or events that fairly make an abortion a topic of heated debate. At the end of an introduction, your primary task is to demonstrate your attitude to the topic. Namely, you need to write a short thesis statement that will mention your opinion. For instance, a thesis statement can be: “Should society decide for women what to do with their lives and bodies?”. 

If you decide to support abortion in the essay, you may write the body part in the following way: 2-3 paragraphs supporting abortion + one counter-argument against abortion. Remember to provide arguments and support them, not just admit that abortion is good or bad. 

Conclusion 

When writing a conclusion, briefly summarize everything you mentioned in the text. You should come back to the thesis you mentioned in the introduction while writing it. Don’t forget to mention your own vision and attitude to a problem. 

Best Tips For Writing Abortion Essay 

Research comes first.

First of all, explore what is already said and written on the topic of abortions. Namely, don’t just read what people say and don’t make conclusions based on what image abortion has in the media. Instead, you may refer to recent research, speeches, and scientific papers by people whose findings are objective and not based on their subjective, emotional perception. Afterward, try to figure out what your attitude on the topic of abortions is. Are you an opponent of the topic, or would you rather support it? 

Pay attention to introduction

An introduction is the most fundamental part of the whole paper. If writing an introduction seems to be too complicated, just refer to scientific papers. Find an attention-grabbing statement and feel free to use it in your paper. If possible, try to paraphrase it. 

Think of the implications

Suppose you decided to write an essay as an opponent of abortions. Think of some possible implications that termination of pregnancy may have. Also, consider the hazard of continuing an unwanted pregnancy. Doing so is essential if you want to strengthen your arguments. 

Be flexible

Since such a topic might be extremely sensitive, it is vital not to be critical. It isn’t a good idea to get emotional or, what is worse, judgemental in your paper. Demonstrate that even though you support a particular argument, you don’t exclude that the opposite argument may also hold true. 

Abortion Essay Examples  

Abortion implies a termination of pregnancy by removing the embryo from a woman’s uterus prior to its birth. Uncountable controversies and criticism have increasingly surrounded the topic of abortion. Even though most developed countries officially carry out a lot of abortions annually, this medical procedure is actively discussed in many countries. Today, a lot of people believe that pregnancies are terminated by women who are either underaged, poor, or promiscuous. A woman who terminates her pregnancy can also be mature, having kids already, married, happy, and wealthy. Women make this step due to multiple reasons. Should society take control over a female body and decide her and her kid’s fate, and does the prohibition of abortion indeed decrease the abortion rate?

Official prohibition of abortions isn’t likely to reduce the abortion rate. For example, gambling and prostitution have long ago been prohibited in many countries in the world. However, this doesn’t mean that the people don’t gamble and that particular women don’t make their living by engaging in prostitution. The same concerns abortions. Once abortions are prohibited on a state level, women will be left with nothing but a decision to find a person who will carry out an abortion illegally. Or, what is worse, women might induce a miscarriage on their own if they can’t find a specialist. While a medical abortion procedure is a safe way to terminate  pregnancy, the latter is not. The risk of terminating pregnancy elsewhere or even at home might be incompatible with life. A lot of women die because of an unsuccessful pregnancy termination, which is way worse than a safe abortion in a medical institution.  

A lot of infants in the US die during the first years, months, if not days of their life. This happens as a result of an inborn pathology. Pathology is usually diagnosed during pregnancy screenings. Since such screenings are performed at an early pregnancy phase, a woman can terminate pregnancy once such pathology is identified. The fact of the matter is that many pathologies are incompatible with life too. For each mother, watching her kid dying and knowing that she cannot help, even if she had all the money in the world, is devastating. And that’s even worse for a suffering child. This leads to the conclusion that terminating a pregnancy is the most humane decision in such a situation. 

Prohibiting abortions often equals to forcing a woman to give birth to a child she does not want. The reasons for such an unwillingness are uncountable. First, a woman might not be mature enough, she might have kids already and no money to afford this child. Besides, her pregnancy might be a mistake not because of her fault. Indeed, 2 in 1000 women in the US are raped annually. Why should a woman be judged by her decision to terminate pregnancy which is a result of a sexual assault? Even in cases when no sexual assault took place, it is still irrelevant to shame a woman and criticize her for knowing what will be better for her. It is better to terminate a pregnancy than to give life to a child who will never be loved and secure and be an unsuitable fit for a woman at the same time. 

Terminating pregnancy, on the other hand, is not just depriving an unborn child of a right to live a life he or she deserves. Regardless of the woman’s motives, she imposes risks on her health. First of all, an abortion undermines a woman’s emotional and mental health. Additionally, it might set risks for her physical health. Indeed, she might reduce her chances of getting pregnant again or increase further pregnancy complications. Besides, 7 in every 100 women face a risk of having parts of a fetus remaining in her womb. 

Overall, abortion is solely a woman’s issue. It should not have anything to do with politics, religion, and disgrace. Bringing a child to the world is the responsibility of a woman who has enough grounds for making an appropriate decision. Although terminating a pregnancy might bring severe health risks, it erases the problems that might be even more severe, such as watching a child suffer and not being able  to give them a childhood they deserve. 

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Introduction: The Politics of Abortion 50 Years after Roe

Katrina Kimport is a professor with the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and a medical sociologist with the ANSIRH program at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examines the (re)production of inequality in health and reproduction, with a topical focus on abortion, contraception, and pregnancy. She is the author of No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter for Reproductive Autonomy (2022) and Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States (2014) and co-author, with Jennifer Earl, of Digitally Enabled Social Change (2011). She has published more than 75 articles in sociology, health research, and interdisciplinary journals.

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Rebecca Kreitzer is an associate professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on gendered political representation and intersectional policy inequality in the US states. Much of her research focuses on the political dynamics of reproductive health care, especially surrounding contraception and abortion. She has published dozens of articles in political science, public policy, and law journals.

[email protected]

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Katrina Kimport , Rebecca Kreitzer; Introduction: The Politics of Abortion 50 Years after Roe . J Health Polit Policy Law 1 August 2023; 48 (4): 463–484. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10451382

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Abortion is central to the American political landscape and a common pregnancy outcome, yet research on abortion has been siloed and marginalized in the social sciences. In an empirical analysis, the authors found only 22 articles published in this century in the top economics, political science, and sociology journals. This special issue aims to bring abortion research into a more generalist space, challenging what the authors term “the abortion research paradox,” wherein abortion research is largely absent from prominent disciplinary social science journals but flourishes in interdisciplinary and specialized journals. After discussing the misconceptions that likely contribute to abortion research siloization and the implications of this siloization for abortion research as well as social science knowledge more generally, the authors introduce the articles in this special issue. Then, in a call for continued and expanded research on abortion, the introduction to this special issue closes by offering three guiding practices for abortion scholars—both those new to the topic and those deeply familiar with it—in the hopes of building an ever-richer body of literature on abortion politics, policy, and law. The need for such a robust literature is especially acute following the US Supreme Court's June 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.

Abortion has been both siloed and marginalized in social science research. But because abortion is a perennially politically and socially contested issue as well as vital health care that one in four women in the United States will experience in their lifetime (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), it is imperative that social scientists make a change. This special issue brings together insightful voices from across disciplines to do just that—and does so at a particularly important historical moment. Fifty years after the United States Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade (1973) decision set a national standard amid disparate state policies on abortion, we again find ourselves in a country with a patchwork of laws about abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion it had established in Roe , purportedly returning the question of legalization of abortion to the states. In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, state policies polarized, and public opinion shifted. This moment demands scholarly evaluation of where we have been, how we arrived at this moment, and what we should be attentive to in coming years. This special issue came about, in part, in response to the on-the-ground conditions of abortion in the United States.

As we argue below, the siloization of abortion research means that the social science literature broadly is not (yet) equipped to make sense of this moment, our history, and what the future holds. First, though, we make a case for the importance of political scientists, economists, and sociologists studying abortion. Then we describe the siloization of abortion research through what we call the “abortion research paradox,” wherein abortion research—despite its social and political import—is curiously absent from top disciplinary journals, even as it thrives in other publication venues that are often interdisciplinary and usually specialized. We theorize some reasons for this siloization and discuss the consequences, both for generalist knowledge and for scientific understanding of abortion. We then introduce the articles in this special issue, noting the breadth of methodological, topical, and theoretical approaches to abortion research they demonstrate. Finally, we offer three suggestions for scholars—both those new to abortion research and those already deeply familiar with it—embarking on abortion research in the hopes of building an ever-richer body of literature on abortion politics, policy, and law.

• Why Abortion?

Abortion has arguably shaped the American political landscape more than any other domestic policy issue in the last 50 years. Since the Supreme Court initially established a nationwide right to abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), debate over this right has influenced elections at just about every level of office (Abramowitz 1995 ; Cook, Hartwig, and Wilcox 1993 ; Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1994 ; Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1992 ; Paolino 1995 ; Roh and Haider-Markel 2003 ), inspired political activism (Carmines and Woods 2002 ; Killian and Wilcox 2008 ; Maxwell 2002 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ) and social movements (Kretschmer 2014 ; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996 , 2008 ; Munson 2010a , Munson 2010b ; Rohlinger 2006 ; Staggenborg 1991 ), and fundamentally structured partisan politics (Adams 1997; Carsey and Layman 2006 ; Killian and Wilcox 2008 ). Position on abortion is frequently used as the litmus test for those seeking political office (Flaten 2010 ; Kreitzer and Osborn 2019 ). Opponents to legal abortion have transformed the federal judiciary (Hollis-Brusky and Parry 2021 ; Hollis-Brusky and Wilson 2020 ). Indeed, abortion is often called the quintessential “morality policy” issue (Kreitzer 2015 ; Kreitzer, Kane, and Mooney 2019 ; Mooney 2001 ; Mucciaroni, Ferraiolo, and Rubado 2019 ) and “ground zero” in the prominent culture wars that have polarized Americans (Adams 1997 ; Lewis 2017 ; Mouw and Sobel 2001 ; Wilson 2013 ). Almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade , in June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, ushering in a new chapter of political engagement on abortion.

But abortion is not simply an abstract political issue; it is an extremely common pregnancy outcome. Indeed, as noted above, about one in four US women will get an abortion in her lifetime (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), although the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion vary substantially across racial and socioeconomic groups (Dehlendorf, Harris, and Weitz 2013 ; Jones and Jerman 2022 ). Despite rampant misinformation claiming otherwise, abortion is a safe procedure (Raymond and Grimes 2012 ; Upadhyay et al. 2015 ), reduces physical health consequences and mortality (Gerdts et al. 2016 ), and does not cause mental health issues (Charles et al. 2008 ; Major et al. 2009 ) or regret (Rocca et al. 2013 , 2015 , 2020 ). Abortion also has a significant impact on people's lives beyond health outcomes. Legal abortion is associated with educational attainment (Everett et al. 2019 ; Ralph et al. 2019 ; Mølland 2016 ) as well as higher female labor force participation, and it affects men's and women's long-term earning potential (Bernstein and Jones 2019 ; Bloom et al. 2009 ; Everett et al. 2019 ; Kalist 2004 ). Access to abortion also shapes relationship satisfaction and stability (Biggs et al. 2014 ; Mauldon, Foster, and Roberts 2015 ). The preponderance of evidence, in other words, demonstrates substantial benefits and no harms to allowing pregnant people to choose abortion.

Yet access to abortion in the United States has been rapidly declining for years. Most abortion care in the United States takes place in stand-alone outpatient facilities that primarily provide reproductive health care (Jones, Witwer, and Jerman 2019 ). As antiabortion legislators in some states have advanced policies that target these facilities, the number of abortion clinics has decreased (Gerdts et al. 2022 ; Venator and Fletcher 2021 ), leaving large geographical areas lacking an abortion facility (Cartwright et al. 2018 ; Cohen and Joffe 2020 ) and thus diminishing pregnant people's ability to obtain abortion care when and where they need it.

The effects of policies regulating abortion, including those that target facilities, have been unevenly experienced, with people of color (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), people in rural areas (Bearak, Burke, and Jones 2017 ), and those who are financially struggling (Cook et al. 1999 ; Roberts et al. 2019 ) disproportionately affected. Even before the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion, the American landscape was characterized by ever-broadening contraception deserts (Axelson, Sealy, and McDonald-Mosley 2022 ; Barber et al. 2019 ; Kreitzer et al. 2021 ; Smith et al. 2022 ), maternity care deserts (Simpson 2020 ; Taporco et al. 2021 ; Wallace et al. 2021 ), and abortion deserts (Cartwright et al. 2018 ; Cohen and Joffe 2020 ; Engle and Freeman 2022 ; McNamara et al. 2022 ; Pleasants, Cartwright, and Upadhyay 2022 ). After Dobbs , access to abortion around the country changed in a matter of weeks. In the 100 days after Roe was overturned, at least 66 clinics closed in 15 states, with 14 of those states no longer having any abortion facilities (Kirstein et al. 2022 ). In this moment of heightened contention about an issue with a long history of social and political contestation, social scientists have a rich opportunity to contribute to scientific knowledge as well as policy and practice that affect millions of lives. This special issue steps into that opportunity.

• The Abortion Research Paradox

This special issue is also motivated by what we call the abortion research paradox. As established above, abortion fundamentally shapes politics in a myriad of ways and is a very common pregnancy outcome, with research consistently demonstrating that access to abortion is consequential and beneficial to people's lives. However, social science research on abortion is rarely published in top disciplinary journals. Abortion is a topic of clear social science interest and is well suited for social science inquiry, but it is relatively underrepresented as a topic in generalist social science journals. To measure this underrepresentation empirically, we searched for original research articles about abortion in the United Sates in the top journals of political science, sociology, and economics. We identified the top three journals for each discipline by considering journal reputation within their respective discipline as well as impact factors and Google Scholar rankings. (There is room for debate about what makes a journal a “top” general interest journal, but that is beyond our scope. Whether these journals are exactly the top three is debatable; nonetheless, these are undoubtedly among the top general-interest or “flagship” disciplinary journals and thus representative of what the respective disciplines value as top scholarship.) Then we searched specified journal databases for the keyword “abortion” for articles published in this century (i.e., 2000–2021), excluding commentaries and book reviews. We found few articles about abortion: just seven in economics journals, eight in political science journals, and seven in sociology journals. We read the articles and classified each into one of three categories: articles primarily about abortion; articles about more than one aspect of reproductive health, inclusive of abortion; or articles about several policy issues, among which abortion is one ( table 1 ).

In the three top economics journals, articles about abortion focused on the relationships between abortion and crime or educational attainment, or on the impact of abortion policies on trends in the timing of first births of women (Bitler and Zavodny 2002 ; Donohue III and Levitt 2001 ; Myers 2017 ). Articles that studied abortion as one among several topics also studied “morally controversial” issues (Elías et al. 2017 ), the electoral implications of abortion (Glaeser, Ponzetto, and Shapiro 2005 ; Washington 2008 ), or contraception (Bailey 2010 ). Articles published in the three top political science journals that focused primarily on abortion evaluated judicial decision-making and legitimacy (Caldarone, Canes-Wrone, and Clark 2009 ; Zink, Spriggs, and Scott 2009 ) or public opinion (Kalla, Levine, and Broockman 2022 ; Rosenfeld, Imai, and Shapiro 2016 ). More commonly, abortion was one of several (or many) different issues analyzed, including government spending and provision of services, government help for African Americans, law enforcement, health care, education, free speech, Hatch Act restrictions, and the Clinton impeachment. The degree to which these articles are “about abortion” varies considerably. In the three top sociology journals, articles represented a slightly broader range of topics, including policy diffusion (Boyle, Kim, and Longhofer 2015 ), public opinion (Mouw and Sobel 2001 ), social movements (Ferree 2003 ), and crisis pregnancy centers (McVeigh, Crubaugh, and Estep 2017 ). Unlike in economics and political science, articles in sociology on abortion mostly focused directly on abortion.

The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law ( JHPPL ) would seem well positioned to publish research on abortion. Yet, even in JHPPL , abortion research is not very common. In the same time period (2000–2021), JHPPL published five articles on reproductive health: two articles on abortion (Daniels et al. 2016 ; Kimport, Johns, and Upadhyay 2018 ), one on contraception (Kreitzer et al. 2021 ), one on forced interventions on pregnant people (Paltrow and Flavin 2013 ), and one about how states could respond to the passage of the Affordable Care Act mandate regarding reproductive health (Stulberg 2013 ).

This is not to say that there is no extensive, rigorous published research on abortion in the social science literature. Interdisciplinary journals that are focused on reproductive health, such as Contraception and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health , as well as health research journals, such as the American Journal of Public Health and Social Science & Medicine , regularly published high-quality social science research on abortion during the focal time period. Research on abortion can also be found in disciplinary subfield journals. In the same time period addressed above, the Journal of Women, Politics, and Public Policy and Politics & Gender— two subfield journals focused on gender and politics—each published around 20 articles that mentioned abortion in the abstract. In practice, while this means excellent research on abortion is published, the net effect is that abortion research is siloed from other research areas in the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. This special issue aims to redress some of this siloization and to inspire future scholarship on abortion. Our motivation is not simply premised on quantitative counts, however. As we assert below, abortion research siloization has significant consequences for knowledge—and especially for real people's lives. First, though, we consider some of the possible reasons for this siloization.

• The Origins of Siloization

We do not know why abortion research is not more commonly published in top disciplinary journals, given the topic's clear importance in key areas of focus for these disciplines, including public discourse, politics, law, family life, and health. The siloing and marginalization of abortion is likely related to several misconceptions. For one, because of social contention on the issue, peer reviewers may not have a deep understanding of abortion as a research topic, may express hostility to the topic, or may believe that abortion is exceptional in some way—a niche or ungeneralizable research topic better published in a subfield journal. Scholars themselves may share this mischaracterization of abortion. As Borgman ( 2014 ) argues about the legal arena, and as Roberts, Schroeder, and Joffe ( 2020 ) provide evidence of in medicine, abortion is regularly treated as exceptional, making it both definitional and reasonable that abortion be treated differently in the law and in health care from other medical experiences. Scholars are not immune to social patterns that exceptionalize abortion. In their peer and editor reviews, they may inappropriately—and perhaps inadvertently—draw on their social, rather than academic, knowledge. For scholars of abortion, reviews premised on social knowledge may not be constructive to strengthening the research, and additional labor may be required to educate reviewers and editors on the academic parameters of the topic, including which social assumptions about abortion are scientifically inaccurate. Comments from authors educating editors and peer reviewers on abortion research may then counterintuitively reinforce the (mis)perception that abortion research is niche and not of general interest.

Second, authors' negative experiences while trying to publish about abortion or reproductive health in top disciplinary journals may compound as scholars share information about journals. This is the case for research on gender; evidence from political science suggests that certain journals are perceived as more or less likely to publish research on gender (Brown et al. 2020 ). Such reputations, especially for venues that do not publish abortion research, may not even be rooted in negative experiences. The absence of published articles on abortion may itself dissuade scholars from submitting to a journal based on an educated guess that the journal does not welcome abortion research. Regardless of the veracity of these perceptions, certain journals may get a reputation for publishing on abortion (or not), which then may make future submissions of abortion research to those outlets more (or less) likely. After all, authors seek publication venues where they believe their research will get a robust review and is likely to be published. This pattern may be more common for some author groups than others. Research from political science suggests women are more risk averse than men when it comes to publishing strategies and less likely to submit manuscripts to journals where the perceived likelihood of successful publication is lower (Key and Sumner 2019 ). Special issues like this one are an important way for journals without a substantial track record of publishing abortion research to establish their willingness to do so.

Third, there might be a methodological bias, which unevenly intersects with some author groups. Top disciplinary journals are more likely to publish quantitative approaches rather than qualitative ones, which can result in the exclusion of women and minority scholars who are more likely to utilize mixed or qualitative methods (Teele and Thelen 2017 ). To the extent that investigations of abortion in the social sciences have utilized qualitative rather than quantitative methods, that might contribute to the underrepresentation of abortion-focused scholarship in top disciplinary journals.

Stepping back from the idiosyncrasies of peer review and methodologies, a fourth explanation for why abortion research is not more prominent in generalist social science journals may arise far earlier than the publishing process. PhD-granting departments in the social sciences may have an undersupply of scholars with expertise in reproductive health who can mentor junior scholars interested in studying abortion. (We firmly believe one need not be an expert in reproductive health to mentor junior scholars studying reproductive health, so this explanation only goes so far.) Anecdotally, we have experienced and heard many accounts of scholars who were discouraged from focusing on abortion in dissertation research because of advisors', mentors', and senior scholars' misconceptions about the topic and about the viability of a career in abortion research. In data provided to us by Key and Sumner from their analysis of the “leaky pipeline” in the publication of research on gender at top disciplinary journals in political science (Key and Sumner 2019 ), there were only nine dissertations written between 2000 and 2013 that mention abortion in the abstract, most of which are focused on judicial behavior or political party dynamics rather than focusing on abortion policy itself. If few junior scholars focus on abortion, it makes sense there may be an undersupply of cutting-edge social science research on abortion submitted to top disciplinary journals.

• The Implications of Siloization

The relative lack of scholarly attention to abortion as a social phenomenon in generalist journals has implications for general scholarship. Most concerningly, it limits our ability to understand other social phenomena for which the case of abortion is a useful entry point. For example, the case of abortion as a common, highly safe medical procedure is useful for examining medical innovations and technologies, such as telemedicine. Similarly, given the disparities in who seeks and obtains abortion care in the United States, abortion is an excellent case study for scholars interested in race, class, and gender inequality. It also holds great potential as an opportunity for exploration of public opinion and attitudes, particularly as a case of an issue whose ties to partisan politics have solidified over time and that is often—but not always—“moralized” in policy engagement (Kreitzer, Kane, and Mooney 2019 ). Additionally, there are missed opportunities to generate theory from the specifics of abortion. For example, there is ample evidence of abortion stigma and stigmatization (Hanschmidt et al. 2016 ) and of their effects on people who obtain abortions (Sorhaindo and Lavelanet 2022 ). This research is often unmoored from existing theorization on stigmatization, however, because the bulk of the stigma literature focuses on identities; and having had an abortion is not an identity the same way as, for example, being queer is. (For a notable exception to this trend, see Beynon-Jones 2017 .)

There is, it must be noted, at least one benefit of abortion research being regularly siloed within social science disciplines. The small but growing number of researchers engaged in abortion research has often had to seek mentorship and collaborations outside their disciplines. Indeed, several of the articles included in this special issue come from multidisciplinary author teams, building bridges between disciplinary literatures and pushing knowledge forward. Social scientists studying abortion regularly engage with research by clinicians and clinician-researchers, which is somewhat rare in the academy. The interdisciplinary journals noted above that regularly publish social science abortion research ( Contraception and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ) also regularly publish clinical articles and are read by advocates and policy makers. In other words, social scientists studying abortion frequently reach audiences that include clinicians, advocates, and policy makers, marking an opportunity for social science research to influence practice.

The siloization of abortion research in the social sciences affects more than broad social science knowledge; it also dramatically shapes our understanding of abortion. When abortion researchers are largely relegated to their own spaces, they risk missing opportunities to learn from other areas of scholarship that are not related to abortion. Lacking context from other topics, abortion scholars may inaccurately understand an aspect of abortion as exceptional that is not, or they may reinvent the proverbial theoretical wheel to describe an abortion-related phenomenon that is not actually unique to abortion. For example, scholars have studied criminalized behavior for decades, offering theoretical insights and methodological best practices for research on illegal activities. With abortion now illegal in many states, abortion researchers can benefit from drawing on that extant literature to examine the implications of illegality, identifying which aspects of abortion illegality are unique and which are common to other illegal activities. Likewise, methodologically, abortion researchers can learn from other researchers of illegal activities about how to protect participants' confidentiality.

The ontological and epistemological implications for the siloization of abortion research extend beyond reproductive health. When abortion research is not part of the central discussions in economics, political science, and sociology, our understanding of health policy, politics, and law is impoverished. We thus miss opportunities to identify and address chronic health disparities and health inequities, with both conceptual and practical consequences. These oversights matter for people's lives. Following the June 2022 Dobbs decision, millions of people with the capacity of pregnancy are now barred from one key way to control fertility: abortion. The implications of scholars' failure to comprehensively grapple with the place of abortion in health policy, politics, and law are playing out in those people's lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Articles in this Special Issue

In this landscape, we offer this special issue on “The Politics of Abortion 50 Years After Roe .” We seek in this issue to illustrate some of the many ways abortion can and should be studied, with benefits not only for scholarly knowledge about abortion and its role in policy, politics, and law but also for general knowledge about health policy, politics, and law themselves.

The issue's articles represent multiple disciplines, including several articles by multidisciplinary teams. Although public health has long been a welcoming home for abortion research, authors in this special issue point to opportunities in anthropology, sociology, and political science, among other disciplines, for the study of abortion. We do not see the differences and variations among disciplinary approaches as a competition. Rather, we believe that the more diverse the body of researchers grappling with questions about abortion, abortion provision, and abortion patients, the better our collective knowledge about abortion and its role in the social landscape.

The same goes for diversity of methodological approaches. Authors in this issue employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, showcasing compelling methodological variation. There is no singular or best methodology for answering research questions about abortion. Instead, the impressive variation in methodological approaches in this special issue highlights the vast methodological opportunities for future research. A diversity of methodologies enables a diversity of research questions. Indeed, different methods can identify, generate, and respond to different research questions, enriching the literature on abortion. The methodologies represented in this issue are certainly not exhaustive, but we believe they are suggestive of future opportunities for scholarly exploration and investigation. We hope these articles will provide a road map for rich expansions of the research literature on abortion.

By way of brief introduction, we offer short summaries of the included articles. Baker traces the history of medication abortion in the United States, cataloging the initial approval of the two-part regimen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), subsequent policy debates over FDA-imposed restrictions on how medication abortion is dispensed, and the work of abortion access advocates to get medication abortion to people who need it. Weaving together accounts of health care policy, abortion advocacy, and on-the-ground activism, Baker illustrates both the unique contentions specific to abortion policy and how the history of medication abortion can be seen as a case of health care advocacy.

Two of the issue's articles focus on state-level legislative policy on abortion. Roth and Lee generate an original data set cataloging the introduction and implementation of statutes on abortion and other aspects of reproductive health at the state level in the United States monthly, from 1994 to 2022. In their descriptive analysis, the authors highlight trends in abortion legislation and the emergent pattern of state polarization around abortion. Their examination adds rich longitudinal context to contemporary analyses of reproductive health legislation, providing a valuable resource for future scholarship. Carson and Carter similarly attend to state-level legislation, zeroing in on the case of abortion policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to show how legislation unrelated to abortion has been opportunistically used to restrict abortion access. The authors also examine how abortion is discursively constructed as a risk to public health. This latter move, they argue, builds on previous constructions of abortion as a risk to individual health and points to a new horizon of antiabortion constructions of the meaning of abortion access.

Kim et al. and Kumar examine the implementation of US abortion policies. Kim et al. use an original data set of 20 years of state supreme court decisions to investigate factors that affect state supreme court decision-making on abortion. Their regression analysis uncovers the complex relationship between state legislatures, state supreme courts, and the voting public for the case of abortion. Kumar charts how 50 years of US abortion policy have affected global access to abortion, offering insights into the underexamined international implications of US abortion policy and into social movement advocacy that has expanded abortion access around the world.

Karlin and Joffe and Heymann et al. draw on data collected when Roe was still the law of the land to investigate phenomena that are likely to become far more common now that Roe has been overturned. Karlin and Joffe utilize interviews with 40 physicians who provide abortions to examine their perspectives on people who terminate their pregnancies outside the formal health care system—an abortion pathway whose popularity increases when abortion access constricts (Aiken et al. 2022 ). By contextualizing their findings on the contradictions physicians voiced—desiring to support reproductive autonomy but invested in physician authority—in a historical overview of how mainstream medicine has marginalized abortion provision since the early days after Roe , the authors add nuance to understandings of the “formal health care system,” its members, and the stakes faced by people bypassing this system to obtain their desired health outcome. Heymann et al. investigate a process also likely to increase in the wake of the Dobbs decision: the implementation of restrictive state-level abortion policy by unelected bureaucrats. Using the case of variances for a written transfer agreement requirement in Ohio—a requirement with no medical merit that is designed to add administrative burden to stand-alone abortion clinics—Heymann et al. demonstrate how bureaucratic discretion by political appointees can increase the administrative burden of restrictive abortion laws and thus further constrain abortion access. Together, these two articles demonstrate how pre- Roe data can point scholars to areas that merit investigation after Roe has been overturned.

Finally, using mixed methods, Buyuker et al. analyze attitudes about abortion acceptability and the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, distinguishing what people think about abortion from what they know about abortion policy. In addition to providing methodological insights about survey items related to abortion attitudes, the authors expose a disconnect between how people think about abortion acceptability and their support for the Roe decision. In other words, as polarized as abortion attitudes are said to be, there is unacknowledged and largely unmeasured complexity in how the general public thinks about abortion.

Future Research on Abortion

We hope that a desire to engage in abortion research prompts scholars to read the excellent articles in this special issue. We also hope that reading these pieces inspires at least some readers to engage in abortion research. Having researched abortion for nearly three decades between us, we are delighted by the emerging interest in studying abortion, whether as a focal topic or alongside a different focus. This research is essential to our collective understanding of abortion politics, policy, and law and the many millions of people whose lives are affected by US abortion politics, policy, and law annually. In light of the limitations of the current field of abortion research, we have several suggestions for scholars of abortion, regardless of their level of familiarity with the topic.

First, know and cite the existing literature on abortion. To address the siloization of abortion research, and particularly the scarcity of abortion research published in generalist journals, scholars must be sure to build on the impressive work that has been published on the topic in specialized spaces. Moreover, becoming familiar with existing research can help scholars avoid several common pitfalls in abortion research. For example, being immersed in existing literature can help scholars avoid outdated, imprecise, or inappropriate language and terminology. Smith et al. ( 2018 ), for instance, illuminate the implications of clinicians deploying seemingly everday language around “elective” abortion. They find that it muddies the distinction between the use of “elective” colloquially and in clinical settings, contributing to the stigmatization of abortion and abortion patients. Examinations like theirs advance understanding of abortion stigmatization while highlighting for scholars the importance of being sensitive to and reflective about language. Familiarity with existing research can help scholars avoid methodological pitfalls as well, such as incomplete understanding of the organization of abortion provision. Although Planned Parenthood has brand recognition for providing abortion care, the majority of abortions in the United States are performed at independent abortion clinics. Misunderstanding the provision landscape can have consequences for some study designs.

Second, we encourage scholars of abortion to think critically about the ideological underpinnings of how their research questions and findings are framed. Academic research of all kinds, including abortion, is better when it is critical of ideologically informed premises. Abortion scholars must be careful to avoid uncritically accepting both antiabortion premises and abortion-supportive premises, especially as those premises unconsciously guide much of the public discourse on abortion. Scholars have the opportunity to use methodological tools not to find an objective truth per se but to challenge the uncontested common sense claims that frequently guide public thinking on abortion. One strategy for avoiding common framing pitfalls is to construct research and analysis to center the people most affected by abortion politics, policy, and law (Kimport and McLemore 2022 ). Another strategy is to critique what Baird and Millar ( 2019 , 2020 ) have termed the performative nature of abortion scholarship. Abortion scholarship, they note, has predominantly focused on negative aspects and effects of abortion care. Research that finds and explores affirmatively positive aspects—for instance, the joy in abortion—can crucially thicken scholarly understanding.

Third, related to our discussion above, scholars of abortion face an interesting challenge regarding how abortion is and is not exceptional. Research on abortion must attend to how abortion has been exceptionalized—and marginalized—in policy and practices. But there are also numerous instances where abortion is only one example of many. In these cases, investigation of abortion under the assumption that it is exceptional is an unnecessary limitation on the work's contribution. Scholars of abortion benefit from mastery of the literature on abortion, yet knowing this literature is not sufficient. There are important bridges from scholarship on abortion to scholarship in other areas, important conversations across and within literatures, that can yield insights both about abortion and about other topical foci.

As guest coeditors of this special issue, we are delighted by the rich and growing body of scholarship on abortion, to which the articles in this special issue represent an important addition. There is still much more work to be done. Going forward, we are eager to see future scholarship on abortion build on this work and tackle new questions.

• Acknowledgments

The authors thank Krystale Littlejohn, Jon Oberlander, Ellen Key, and Jane Sumner for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Both authors contributed equally to this article and are listed alphabetically.

• Previous Issue
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Data & Figures

Number of Articles about Abortion in Top Disciplinary Journals, 2000–2021

Note : AER  =  American Economic Review ; QJE  =  Quarterly Journal of Economics ; JPE  =  Journal of Political Economy ; APSR  =  American Political Science Review ; AJPS  =  American Journal of Political Science ; JOP  =  Journal of Politics ; ASR  =  American Sociological Review ; AJS  =  American Journal of Sociology ; ARS  =  Annual Review of Sociology.

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Abortion Argumentative Essay: Definitive Guide

Academic writing

Abortion remains a debatable issue even today, especially in countries like the USA, where a controversial ban was upheld in 13 states at the point this article was written. That’s why an essay on abortion has become one of the most popular tasks in schools, colleges, and universities. When writing this kind of essay, students learn to express their opinion, find and draw arguments and examples, and conduct research.

It’s very easy to speculate on topics like this. However, this makes it harder to find credible and peer-reviewed information on the topic that isn’t merely someone’s opinion. If you were assigned this kind of academic task, do not lose heart. In this article, we will provide you with all the tips and tricks for writing about abortion.

Where to begin?

Conversations about abortion are always emotional. Complex stories, difficult decisions, bitter moments, and terrible diagnoses make this topic hard to cover. Some young people may be shocked by this assignment, while others would be happy to express their opinion on the matter.

One way or another, this topic doesn't leave anyone indifferent. However, it shouldn’t have an effect on the way you approach the research and writing process. What should you remember when working on an argumentative essay about abortion?

• Don’t let your emotions take over. As this is an academic paper, you have to stay impartial and operate with facts. The topic is indeed sore and burning, causing thousands of scandals on the Internet, but you are writing it for school, not a Quora thread.
• Try to balance your opinions. There are always two sides to one story, even if the story is so fragile. You need to present an issue from different angles. This is what your tutors seek to teach you.
• Be tolerant and mind your language. It is very important not to hurt anybody with the choice of words in your essay. So make sure you avoid any possible rough words. It is important to respect people with polar opinions, especially when it comes to academic writing. 
• Use facts, not claims. Your essay cannot be based solely on your personal ideas – your conclusions should be derived from facts. Roe v. Wade case, WHO or Mayo Clinic information, and CDC are some of the sources you can rely on.

Speaking of Outline

An argumentative essay on abortion outline is a must-have even for experienced writers. In general, each essay, irrespective of its kind or topic, has a strict outline. It may be brief or extended, but the major parts are always the same:

• Introduction. This is a relatively short paragraph that starts with a hook and presents the background information on the topic. It should end with a thesis statement telling your reader what your main goal or idea is.
• Body. This section usually consists of 2-4 paragraphs. Each one has its own structure: main argument + facts to support it + small conclusion and transition into the next paragraph.
• Conclusion. In this part, your task is to summarize all your thoughts and come to a general conclusive idea. You may have to restate some info from the body and your thesis statement and add a couple of conclusive statements without introducing new facts.

Why is it important to create an outline?

• You will structure your ideas. We bet you’ve got lots on your mind. Writing them down and seeing how one can flow logically into the other will help you create a consistent paper. Naturally, you will have to abandon some of the ideas if they don’t fit the overall narrative you’re building.
• You can get some inspiration. While creating your outline, which usually consists of some brief ideas, you can come up with many more to research. Some will add to your current ones or replace them with better options.
• You will find the most suitable sources. Argumentative essay writing requires you to use solid facts and trustworthy arguments built on them. When the topic is as controversial as abortion, these arguments should be taken from up-to-date, reliable sources. With an outline, you will see if you have enough to back up your ideas.
• You will write your text as professionals do. Most expert writers start with outlines to write the text faster and make it generally better. As you will have your ideas structured, the general flow of thoughts will be clear. And, of course, it will influence your overall grade positively.

Abortion Essay Introduction

The introduction is perhaps the most important part of the whole essay. In this relatively small part, you will have to present the issue under consideration and state your opinion on it. Here is a typical introduction outline:

• The first sentence is a hook grabbing readers' attention.
• A few sentences that go after elaborate on the hook. They give your readers some background and explain your research.
• The last sentence is a thesis statement showing the key idea you are building your text around.

Before writing an abortion essay intro, first thing first, you will need to define your position. If you are in favor of this procedure, what exactly made you think so? If you are an opponent of abortion, determine how to argue your position. In both cases, you may research the point of view in medicine, history, ethics, and other fields.

When writing an introduction, remember:

• Never repeat your title. First of all, it looks too obvious; secondly, it may be boring for your reader right from the start. Your first sentence should be a well-crafted hook. The topic of abortion worries many people, so it’s your chance to catch your audience’s attention with some facts or shocking figures.
• Do not make it too long. Your task here is to engage your audience and let them know what they are about to learn. The rest of the information will be disclosed in the main part. Nobody likes long introductions, so keep it short but informative.
• Pay due attention to the thesis statement. This is the central sentence of your introduction. A thesis statement in your abortion intro paragraph should show that you have a well-supported position and are ready to argue it. Therefore, it has to be strong and convey your idea as clearly as possible. We advise you to make several options for the thesis statement and choose the strongest one.

Hooks for an Abortion Essay

Writing a hook is a good way to catch the attention of your audience, as this is usually the first sentence in an essay. How to start an essay about abortion? You can begin with some shocking fact, question, statistics, or even a quote. However, always make sure that this piece is taken from a trusted resource.

Here are some examples of hooks you can use in your paper:

• As of July 1, 2022, 13 states banned abortion, depriving millions of women of control of their bodies.
• According to WHO, 125,000 abortions take place every day worldwide.
• Is abortion a woman’s right or a crime?
• Since 1994, more than 40 countries have liberalized their abortion laws.
• Around 48% of all abortions are unsafe, and 8% of them lead to women’s death.
• The right to an abortion is one of the reproductive and basic rights of a woman.
• Abortion is as old as the world itself – women have resorted to this method since ancient times.
• Only 60% of women in the world live in countries where pregnancy termination is allowed.

Body Paragraphs: Pros and Cons of Abortion

The body is the biggest part of your paper. Here, you have a chance to make your voice concerning the abortion issue heard. Not sure where to start? Facts about abortion pros and cons should give you a basic understanding of which direction to move in.

First things first, let’s review some brief tips for you on how to write the best essay body if you have already made up your mind.

Make a draft

It’s always a good idea to have a rough draft of your writing. Follow the outline and don’t bother with the word choice, grammar, or sentence structure much at first. You can polish it all later, as the initial draft will not likely be your final. You may see some omissions in your arguments, lack of factual basis, or repetitiveness that can be eliminated in the next versions.

Trust only reliable sources

This part of an essay includes loads of factual information, and you should be very careful with it. Otherwise, your paper may look unprofessional and cost you precious points. Never rely on sources like Wikipedia or tabloids – they lack veracity and preciseness.

Edit rigorously

It’s best to do it the next day after you finish writing so that you can spot even the smallest mistakes. Remember, this is the most important part of your paper, so it has to be flawless. You can also use editing tools like Grammarly.

Determine your weak points

Since you are writing an argumentative essay, your ideas should be backed up by strong facts so that you sound convincing. Sometimes it happens that one argument looks weaker than the other. Your task is to find it and strengthen it with more or better facts.

Add an opposing view

Sometimes, it’s not enough to present only one side of the discussion. Showing one of the common views from the opposing side might actually help you strengthen your main idea. Besides, making an attempt at refuting it with alternative facts can show your teacher or professor that you’ve researched and analyzed all viewpoints, not just the one you stand by.

If you have chosen a side but are struggling to find the arguments for or against it, we have complied abortion pro and cons list for you. You can use both sets if you are writing an abortion summary essay covering all the stances.

Why Should Abortion Be Legal

If you stick to the opinion that abortion is just a medical procedure, which should be a basic health care need for each woman, you will definitely want to write the pros of abortion essay. Here is some important information and a list of pros about abortion for you to use:

• Since the fetus is a set of cells – not an individual, it’s up to a pregnant woman to make a decision concerning her body. Only she can decide whether she wants to keep the pregnancy or have an abortion. The abortion ban is a violation of a woman’s right to have control over her own body.
• The fact that women and girls do not have access to effective contraception and safe abortion services has serious consequences for their own health and the health of their families.
• The criminalization of abortion usually leads to an increase in the number of clandestine abortions. Many years ago, fetuses were disposed of with improvised means, which included knitting needles and half-straightened metal hangers. 13% of women’s deaths are the result of unsafe abortions.
• Many women live in a difficult financial situation and cannot support their children financially. Having access to safe abortion takes this burden off their shoulders. This will also not decrease their quality of life as the birth and childcare would.
• In countries where abortion is prohibited, there is a phenomenon of abortion tourism to other countries where it can be done without obstacles. Giving access to this procedure can make the lives of women much easier.
• Women should not put their lives or health in danger because of the laws that were adopted by other people.
• Girls and women who do not have proper sex education may not understand pregnancy as a concept or determine that they are pregnant early on. Instead of educating them and giving them a choice, an abortion ban forces them to become mothers and expects them to be fit parents despite not knowing much about reproduction.
• There are women who have genetic disorders or severe mental health issues that will affect their children if they're born. Giving them an option to terminate ensures that there won't be a child with a low quality of life and that the woman will not have to suffer through pregnancy, birth, and raising a child with her condition.
• Being pro-choice is about the freedom to make decisions about your body so that women who are for termination can do it safely, and those who are against it can choose not to do it. It is an inclusive option that caters to everyone.
• Women and girls who were raped or abused by their partner, caregiver, or stranger and chose to terminate the pregnancy can now be imprisoned for longer than their abusers. This implies that the system values the life of a fetus with no or primitive brain function over the life of a living woman.
• People who lived in times when artificial termination of pregnancy was scarcely available remember clandestine abortions and how traumatic they were, not only for the physical but also for the mental health of women. Indeed, traditionally, in many countries, large families were a norm. However, the times have changed, and supervised abortion is a safe and accessible procedure these days. A ban on abortion will simply push humanity away from the achievements of the civilized world.

Types of abortion

There are 2 main types of abortions that can be performed at different pregnancy stages and for different reasons:

• Medical abortion. It is performed by taking a specially prescribed pill. It does not require any special manipulations and can even be done at home (however, after a doctor’s visit and under supervision). It is considered very safe and is usually done during the very first weeks of pregnancy.
• Surgical abortion. This is a medical operation that is done with the help of a suction tube. It then removes the fetus and any related material. Anesthesia is used for this procedure, and therefore, it can only be done in a hospital. The maximum time allowed for surgical abortion is determined in each country specifically.

Cases when abortion is needed

Center for Reproductive Rights singles out the following situations when abortion is required:

• When there is a risk to the life or physical/mental health of a pregnant woman.
• When a pregnant woman has social or economic reasons for it.
• Upon the woman's request.
• If a pregnant woman is mentally or cognitively disabled.
• In case of rape and/or incest.
• If there were congenital anomalies detected in the fetus.

Countries and their abortion laws

• Countries where abortion is legalized in any case: Australia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.
• Countries where abortion is completely prohibited: Angola, Venezuela, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Oman, Paraguay, Palau, Jamaica, Laos, Haiti, Honduras, Andorra, Aruba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, Senegal, etc.
• Countries where abortion is allowed for medical reasons: Afghanistan, Israel, Argentina, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana, Israel, Morocco, Mexico, Bahamas, Central African Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Algeria, Monaco, Pakistan, Poland, etc. 
• Countries where abortion is allowed for both medical and socioeconomic reasons: England, India, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, Finland, Taiwan, Zambia, Iceland, Fiji, Cyprus, Barbados, Belize, etc.

Why Abortion Should Be Banned

Essays against abortions are popular in educational institutions since we all know that many people – many minds. So if you don’t want to support this procedure in your essay, here are some facts that may help you to argument why abortion is wrong:

• Abortion at an early age is especially dangerous because a young woman with an unstable hormonal system may no longer be able to have children throughout her life. Termination of pregnancy disrupts the hormonal development of the body.
• Health complications caused by abortion can occur many years after the procedure. Even if a woman feels fine in the short run, the situation may change in the future.
• Abortion clearly has a negative effect on reproductive function. Artificial dilation of the cervix during an abortion leads to weak uterus tonus, which can cause a miscarriage during the next pregnancy.
• Evidence shows that surgical termination of pregnancy significantly increases the risk of breast cancer.
• In December 1996, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics concluded that a fetus is considered a human being on the 14th day after conception.

You are free to use each of these arguments for essays against abortions. Remember that each claim should not be supported by emotions but by facts, figures, and so on.

Health complications after abortion

One way or another, abortion is extremely stressful for a woman’s body. Apart from that, it can even lead to various health problems in the future. You can also cover them in your cons of an abortion essay:

• Continuation of pregnancy. If the dose of the drug is calculated by the doctor in the wrong way, the pregnancy will progress.
• Uterine bleeding, which requires immediate surgical intervention.
• Severe nausea or even vomiting occurs as a result of a sharp change in the hormonal background.
• Severe stomach pain. Medical abortion causes miscarriage and, as a result, strong contractions of the uterus.
• High blood pressure and allergic reactions to medicines.
• Depression or other mental problems after a difficult procedure.

Abortion Essay Conclusion

After you have finished working on the previous sections of your paper, you will have to end it with a strong conclusion. The last impression is no less important than the first one. Here is how you can make it perfect in your conclusion paragraph on abortion:

• It should be concise. The conclusion cannot be as long as your essay body and should not add anything that cannot be derived from the main section. Reiterate the key ideas, combine some of them, and end the paragraph with something for the readers to think about.
• It cannot repeat already stated information. Restate your thesis statement in completely other words and summarize your main points. Do not repeat anything word for word – rephrase and shorten the information instead.
• It should include a call to action or a cliffhanger. Writing experts believe that a rhetorical question works really great for an argumentative essay. Another good strategy is to leave your readers with some curious ideas to ponder upon.

Abortion Facts for Essay

Abortion is a topic that concerns most modern women. Thousands of books, research papers, and articles on abortion are written across the world. Even though pregnancy termination has become much safer and less stigmatized with time, it still worries millions. What can you cover in your paper so that it can really stand out among others? You may want to add some shocking abortion statistics and facts:

• 40-50 million abortions are done in the world every year (approximately 125,000 per day).
• According to UN statistics, women have 25 million unsafe abortions each year. Most of them (97%) are performed in the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 14% of them are especially unsafe because they are done by people without any medical knowledge.
• Since 2017, the United States has shown the highest abortion rate in the last 30 years.
• The biggest number of abortion procedures happen in the countries where they are officially banned. The lowest rate is demonstrated in the countries with high income and free access to contraception.
• Women in low-income regions are three times more susceptible to unplanned pregnancies than those in developed countries.
• In Argentina, more than 38,000 women face dreadful health consequences after unsafe abortions.
• The highest teen abortion rates in the world are seen in 3 countries: England, Wales, and Sweden.
• Only 31% of teenagers decide to terminate their pregnancy. However, the rate of early pregnancies is getting lower each year.
• Approximately 13 million children are born to mothers under the age of 20 each year.
• 5% of women of reproductive age live in countries where abortions are prohibited.

We hope that this abortion information was useful for you, and you can use some of these facts for your own argumentative essay. If you find some additional facts, make sure that they are not manipulative and are taken from official medical resources.

Abortion Essay Topics

Do you feel like you are lost in the abundance of information? Don’t know what topic to choose among the thousands available online? Check our short list of the best abortion argumentative essay topics:

• Why should abortion be legalized essay
• Abortion: a murder or a basic human right?
• Why we should all support abortion rights
• Is the abortion ban in the US a good initiative?
• The moral aspect of teen abortions
• Can the abortion ban solve birth control problems?
• Should all countries allow abortion?
• What consequences can abortion have in the long run?
• Is denying abortion sexist?
• Why is abortion a human right?
• Are there any ethical implications of abortion?
• Do you consider abortion a crime?
• Should women face charges for terminating a pregnancy?

Want to come up with your own? Here is how to create good titles for abortion essays:

• Write down the first associations. It can be something that swirls around in your head and comes to the surface when you think about the topic. These won’t necessarily be well-written headlines, but each word or phrase can be the first link in the chain of ideas that leads you to the best option.
• Irony and puns are not always a good idea. Especially when it comes to such difficult topics as abortion. Therefore, in your efforts to be original, remain sensitive to the issue you want to discuss.
• Never make a quote as your headline. First, a wordy quote makes the headline long. Secondly, readers do not understand whose words are given in the headline. Therefore, it may confuse them right from the start. If you have found a great quote, you can use it as your hook, but don’t forget to mention its author.
• Try to briefly summarize what is said in the essay. What is the focus of your paper? If the essence of your argumentative essay can be reduced to one sentence, it can be used as a title, paraphrased, or shortened.
• Write your title after you have finished your text. Before you just start writing, you might not yet have a catchy phrase in mind to use as a title. Don’t let it keep you from working on your essay – it might come along as you write.

Abortion Essay Example

We know that it is always easier to learn from a good example. For this reason, our writing experts have complied a detailed abortion essay outline for you. For your convenience, we have created two options with different opinions.

Topic: Why should abortion be legal?

Introduction – hook + thesis statement + short background information

Essay hook: More than 59% of women in the world do not have access to safe abortions, which leads to dreading health consequences or even death.

Thesis statement: Since banning abortions does not decrease their rates but only makes them unsafe, it is not logical to ban abortions.

Body – each paragraph should be devoted to one argument

Argument 1: Woman’s body – women’s rules. + example: basic human rights.

Argument 2: Banning abortion will only lead to more women’s death. + example: cases of Polish women.

Argument 3: Only women should decide on abortion. + example: many abortion laws are made by male politicians who lack knowledge and first-hand experience in pregnancies.

Conclusion – restated thesis statement + generalized conclusive statements + cliffhanger

Restated thesis: The abortion ban makes pregnancy terminations unsafe without decreasing the number of abortions, making it dangerous for women.

Cliffhanger: After all, who are we to decide a woman’s fate?

Topic: Why should abortion be banned?

Essay hook: Each year, over 40 million new babies are never born because their mothers decide to have an abortion.

Thesis statement: Abortions on request should be banned because we cannot decide for the baby whether it should live or die.

Argument 1: A fetus is considered a person almost as soon as it is conceived. Killing it should be regarded as murder. + example: Abortion bans in countries such as Poland, Egypt, etc.

Argument 2: Interrupting a baby’s life is morally wrong. + example: The Bible, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics decision in 1996, etc.

Argument 3: Abortion may put the reproductive health of a woman at risk. + example: negative consequences of abortion.

Restated thesis: Women should not be allowed to have abortions without serious reason because a baby’s life is as priceless as their own.

Cliffhanger: Why is killing an adult considered a crime while killing an unborn baby is not?

Examples of Essays on Abortion

There are many great abortion essays examples on the Web. You can easily find an argumentative essay on abortion in pdf and save it as an example. Many students and scholars upload their pieces to specialized websites so that others can read them and continue the discussion in their own texts.

In a free argumentative essay on abortion, you can look at the structure of the paper, choice of the arguments, depth of research, and so on. Reading scientific papers on abortion or essays of famous activists is also a good idea. Here are the works of famous authors discussing abortion.

A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Published in 1971, this essay by an American philosopher considers the moral permissibility of abortion. It is considered the most debated and famous essay on this topic, and it’s definitely worth reading no matter what your stance is.

Abortion and Infanticide by Michael Tooley

It was written in 1972 by an American philosopher known for his work in the field of metaphysics. In this essay, the author considers whether fetuses and infants have the same rights. Even though this work is quite complex, it presents some really interesting ideas on the matter.

Some Biological Insights into Abortion by Garret Hardin

This article by American ecologist Garret Hardin, who had focused on the issue of overpopulation during his scholarly activities, presents some insights into abortion from a scientific point of view. He also touches on non-biological issues, such as moral and economic. This essay will be of great interest to those who support the pro-choice stance.

H4 Hidden in Plain View: An Overview of Abortion in Rural Illinois and Around the Globe by Heather McIlvaine-Newsad 

In this study, McIlvaine-Newsad has researched the phenomenon of abortion since prehistoric times. She also finds an obvious link between the rate of abortions and the specifics of each individual country. Overall, this scientific work published in 2014 is extremely interesting and useful for those who want to base their essay on factual information.

H4 Reproduction, Politics, and John Irving’s The Cider House Rules: Women’s Rights or “Fetal Rights”? by Helena Wahlström

In her article of 2013, Wahlström considers John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules published in 1985 and is regarded as a revolutionary work for that time, as it acknowledges abortion mostly as a political problem. This article will be a great option for those who want to investigate the roots of the abortion debate.

FAQs On Abortion Argumentative Essay

• Is abortion immoral?

This question is impossible to answer correctly because each person independently determines their own moral framework. One group of people will say that abortion is a woman’s right because only she has power over her body and can make decisions about it. Another group will argue that the embryo is also a person and has the right to birth and life.

In general, the attitude towards abortion is determined based on the political and religious views of each person. Religious people generally believe that abortion is immoral because it is murder, while secular people see it as a normal medical procedure. For example, in the US, the ban on abortion was introduced in red states where the vast majority have conservative views, while blue liberal states do not support this law. Overall, it’s up to a person to decide whether they consider abortion immoral based on their own values and beliefs.

• Is abortion legal?

The answer to this question depends on the country in which you live. There are countries in which pregnancy termination is a common medical procedure and is performed at the woman's request. There are also states in which there must be a serious reason for abortion: medical, social, or economic. Finally, there are nations in which abortion is prohibited and criminalized. For example, in Jamaica, a woman can get life imprisonment for abortion, while in Kenya, a medical worker who volunteers to perform an abortion can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

• Is abortion safe?

In general, modern medicine has reached such a level that abortion has become a common (albeit difficult from various points of view) medical procedure. There are several types of abortion, as well as many medical devices and means that ensure the maximum safety of the pregnancy termination. Like all other medical procedures, abortion can have various consequences and complications.

Abortions – whether safe or not - exist in all countries of the world. The thing is that more than half of them are dangerous because women have them in unsuitable conditions and without professional help. Only universal access to abortion in all parts of the world can make it absolutely safe. In such a case, it will be performed only after a thorough assessment and under the control of a medical professional who can mitigate the potential risks.

• How safe is abortion?

If we do not talk about the ethical side of the issue related to abortion, it still has some risks. In fact, any medical procedure has them to a greater or lesser extent.

The effectiveness of the safe method in a medical setting is 80-99%. An illegal abortion (for example, the one without special indications after 12 weeks) can lead to a patient’s death, and the person who performed it will be criminally liable in this case.

Doctors do not have universal advice for all pregnant women on whether it is worth making this decision or not. However, many of them still tend to believe that any contraception - even one that may have negative side effects - is better than abortion. That’s why spreading awareness on means of contraception and free access to it is vital.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Abortion — Why Abortion Should Be Legalized

Why Abortion Should Be Legalized

• Categories: Abortion Pro Choice (Abortion) Women's Health

About this sample

Words: 1331 |

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 1331 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, why abortion should be legal.

• Gipson, J. D., Hirz, A. E., & Avila, J. L. (2011). Perceptions and practices of illegal abortion among urban young adults in the Philippines: a qualitative study. Studies in family planning, 42(4), 261-272. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1728-4465.2011.00289.x)
• Finer, L. B., & Hussain, R. (2013). Unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion in the Philippines: context and consequences. (https://www.guttmacher.org/report/unintended-pregnancy-and-unsafe-abortion-philippines-context-and-consequences?ref=vidupdatez.com/image)
• Flavier, J. M., & Chen, C. H. (1980). Induced abortion in rural villages of Cavite, the Philippines: Knowledge, attitudes, and practice. Studies in family planning, 65-71. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1965798)
• Gallen, M. (1979). Abortion choices in the Philippines. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/abortion-choices-in-the-philippines/853B8B71F95FEBDD0D88AB65E8364509 Journal of Biosocial Science, 11(3), 281-288.
• Holgersson, K. (2012). Is There Anybody Out There?: Illegal Abortion, Social Work, Advocacy and Interventions in the Philippines. (https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A574793&dswid=4931)

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