Maria Loma Kristen Foster CO150.401 October 28, 2013 Should women be allowed to get an abortion?

An Exploratory Essay Imagine walking in a class room full of middle school students, no teacher around, only students. Then one student brings up the topic about abortion and everyone starts talking about. It goes from a peaceful conversation to an argument. After that day, whenever I go the chance, I would ask anyone their opinion on abortion. That is when I notice that no matter what year it is, abortion will always be a controversial topic. Seven years later, I get the chance to do research for a class and find answers to my own question. On the first day of my research, I used google and typed in abortion just to see what would come up. I found several websites with interesting statistics. In a website called lifesitenews.com, I found a blog by Peter Saunders which had some interesting statistics such as: 64% of women having abortions feel pressured by others 54% of women felt uncertain at the time of their abortions 67% of women received no counseling by the clinic (Saunders, par.5)

After reading the blog I started thinking, why would they decided to get an abortion in the first place? The next step in my research was to find out the answer to my new question. Once again I used google where I found a blog in WebMd that listed the different reasons why one decided to get an abortion. These reasons were due to the fact that birth control failed, they couldnt take care of the kid or it was an unwanted pregnancy.(WebMd, par. 3) Unwanted

pregnancy, these very words made me wonder if the women who had gotten an abortion , if they regret it after? Also, did they tell anyone or where they ashamed by it? The next day I took a trip to the library. As I was looking through the books, I noticed a book title Abortion and Life. The title seemed interesting so I took the book of the self and noticed the cover had two women. One who is pregnant and another one who had a shirt that said I had an abortion. I looked through the table of contents of the book and noticed that there was a section of actual women telling their stories about getting an abortion. After reading all the stories, I noticed that not one of them regretted the decision they made and only a few were able to tell someone after.(Baumgardner, 73-129) They all took a huge step in sending in their stories to Jennifer Baumgardner to add it in her book. The third question that I decided to research was: how far back does abortion go? Once again I decided to go to the library. I found a book title The Abortion Rights Controversy in America, and it had information that dated back to the 1800s. In 1845, both Massachusetts and New York passed a law about abortion. Massachusetts was the first state to pass a law that punished anyone who attempted to have an abortion by jail and fines. (Hull, 12) While in New York, it was known as a criminal offense. (Hull, 13) Then I started wondering how much would one pay for an abortion? In The Abortion Right Controversy in America, some women would pay 5 or 10 dollars. If they can afford it then it would be $100 or more. (Hull, 66) While I was reading this book, I also found out that 95% of medical professions will not do an abortion because they are afraid of legal consequences or from moral or ethical reasons.(Hull, 66) If most doctors wouldnt not conduct the surgery due to legal or moral reasons, was there also another reason, such as the patient dying? The same book also answered my question, in a different way. It never stated that the doctor would not do the

procedure due to the fact that the patient will die, but it did state that one can die depending on the method used.( Hull, __) Then I started to wonder, what race/ethnicity has the most abortions? To answer this question I decided to use the Academic Search Premier on the librarys database. The key words that I used was abortion and I narrowed it down so it would only date back no more than 4 years. Just as I was going to start a new search I noticed an article titled Abortions middle ground? Reducing them by Tom Krattenmaker. I wanted to know what they meant by Reducing them so I decided to read it. As I was reading it, there was a statistic that caught my attention. Krattenmaker states that African Americans have about 39% of the countrys abortions. This number is surprisingly high and unbelievable, but why was it so high? I kept reading hoping he would answer my new question, to my luck, he did. In Georgia, four out of 15 abortion providers are located in African- American areas. (Krattenmaker, par. 15) That is only in Georgia, imagine how much are located in African-American areas throughout the US. If most of these clinics are located in certain areas, what happens to the women who are far away from an abortion clinic? In a book title The Abortion Controversy, there is a chapter title Yes: Women Should Have Greater Access to Abortion by Marlene Gerber Fried. Fried works in the National Network of Abortion Funds where she receives many desperate stories from both women and young girls. These stories include drinking rubbing alcohol to cause a miscarriage or asking a boyfriend to kick them in the stomach. (Fried, 77) How can someone hurt themselves to kill someone else? But is it really murder? In The Abortion Controversy, there is a chapter titled Abortion is not murder by Miriam Claire. In this chapter Claire talks about the legal definition of murder.