The Reasons for The Legalization of Abortions

“You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion”. Hillary Clinton. 

According to the World Health Organization, 25 million of women were exposed to unsafe abortion just in 2018. Family planning is fundamental for the improvement of society, and people should be free to make their own decisions about their own lives. The birth of a child needs total consent from both parents. That’s a feasible reason why abortion should be legal, but there’re some people who don’t agree.

To begin with, here are some counter arguments usually frequented: “Abortion is a crime, because life begins upon conception”. As Hillary Clinton said, the unborn “person” doesn’t have constitutional rights. As well, a fetus is considered a full-term since the 36th week of pregnancy, and medicinal abortions are effective until 12 weeks of gestation, and the interventions are just able until 26 or 27 weeks of gestation. Abortion is not assassination.

“Safe abortion doesn´t exist, because, in the act of going against of medicine rules, is not being studied, and has a very high risk for woman”. Safe abortion exists, proved WHO, which clearly says that there are people medically qualified and medically qualified places in which abortion can be safe. As well, the WHO establishes that, to prevent involuntary pregnancies and unsafe abortions, countries must formulate favorable laws and acquire financial commitments in order to provide a comprehensive sexual education; a wide range of contraceptive methods, including emergency contraception; advice on family planning; and access to a safe and legal abortion. 

According to the United Nations, legalizing abortion would prevent 47000 women deaths just in one year:

“Unsafe abortions cause the deaths of some 47,000 women each year and a further five million suffer some form of temporary or permanent disability,” said the UN Human Rights Council Working group, on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice. The group highlighted that the ability for a woman or girl to make her own decisions about pregnancy “is at the very core of her fundamental right to equality, privacy and physical and mental integrity and is a precondition for the enjoyment of other rights and freedoms”. 

Currently, an estimated 225 million women worldwide are deprived of access to modern contraception, often leading to unplanned pregnancies. For girls, issues arising from pregnancy and childbirth are some of the most common causes of death in developing countries. Girls under the age of 15 are five times more at risk. “Legal frameworks for abortion have typically been designed to control women's decision-making through the use of criminal law,” the experts said. Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) demonstrates that criminalizing the termination of pregnancy does not reduce the number of women who resort to abortion procedures. Rather, it is likely to increase the number who end up have unsafe “back street” procedures. In addition, “too many women are physically and verbally mistreated or simply denied emergency medical care after abortions”, which the experts said, “amounts to another means of punishment which violates international law and, in many instances, national laws and policies”. “Governments have a duty to ensure that women and girls who have abortions are treated humanely and without judgement or assumption of violating laws, in particular in cases of miscarriages,” they stressed. The experts added that they hoped that “important steps” already taken in some countries to “reclaim women’s reproductive rights through referendums, legislative and judicial action” can be followed by others. They called for “concerns about unsafe abortion” to be addressed through public health, relevant medical malpractice and civil law. “It is therefore crucial that countries demonstrate their commitment to eliminating discrimination against women in their legislation and to advancing women’s and adolescents’ sexual and reproductive rights, in accordance with international human rights standards.” 

As the information provided, the legalization of abortion is vital for gender equality, for woman to have a true choice over their body. The decision to continue or not the pregnancy, has to be a decision made by the pregnant woman. People have to start trying to see the future. Lots of woman who didn’t want to continue a pregnancy, and they were forced to, have given their kids into adoption. As well, kids who weren’t aborted, suffered of physical or psychological abuse from their parents. Legalizing abortion is not forcing anyone to practice it; but it’s making it safe, and it’s making woman to have choice over their body.

Moving on, the right to abortion should be part of a portfolio of pregnancy rights that enables women to make a truly free choice whether to end a pregnancy, as well, and in developed countries who have abortion legalized, the amount of deaths because of abortion has decreased.

To conclude, according to the essay, abortion needs to be legal for women health care, and to improve society levels. As well, to prevent abortions, countries need to give a more developed sexual education. “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body” Margaret Sanger.