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Abortion facts

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What are abortion facts that you should know? Abortion is not a subject to be taken lightly. Women who consider abortion as an option do so with a heavy heart. The reasons why women even consider abortion may be too varied and numerous but all of them are deeply personal and as such, they need all the information they can get in order to help them make the best and most educated decision they can.

What is abortion? To begin with, what do they know about abortion? Abortion is a medical procedure that terminates a woman’s pregnancy. It was in 1973, during the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade that abortion was legalized in the United States. It was then that the Supreme Court decided that women have the right to an abortion during the first 6 months of their pregnancy. Late-term abortions or abortions performed in the third trimester of pregnancy are considered illegal and from 1998, states have banned the procedure called "partial-birth abortion" or known medically as "intact dilatation and extraction". It was only in 2007 that the Supreme Court passed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, originally passed by President George Bush in 2003.

What is the demographic of the women who opt for abortion? Statistics are a good way of describing a general picture of the women who opt for adoption. The Guttmacher Institute provides the latest data and facts on Induced Abortion in the United States. These figures are from their August 2011 Fact Sheet.

  • •   18% of women who opt for adoption are teenagers, majority of which are in the 18-19 age bracket.
  • •   Women in their 20’s account for more than half of all the abortions.
  • •   45% of all abortions are obtained by women who are not married and not cohabiting with anyone.
  • •   61% of all abortions are obtained by women with one or more children.
  • •   42% of women who opt for abortion have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level. 27% have incomes between 100-199%.

When during their pregnancy do their abortions occur?

  • •   61.8% occur less than 9 weeks from their last menstrual period (LMP).
  • •   17.1% opts for abortion between their 9th and 10th week from their LMP..

Why do they opt for abortion? At present, the leading reason why women opt for abortion is because of unwanted pregnancies. 54% of women who have undergone abortion have used a contraceptive method (the pill or the condom) during the time they became pregnant. Other reasons why women opt for abortion are because (1) they have a responsibility to other individuals, (2) they cannot afford a child, (3) a baby will interfere with work or school; and, (4) they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their current partner/husband.

Is abortion safe? Abortions performed during the first trimester have been proven to pose no long-term risks to women. Though some women allude to wanting their abortion procedures to proceed earlier than what they had, it was mostly because they had to first raise money for the procedure which is why it took longer.