Abortion is one of the most focused on topics in America at the moment. If you are up to date with the presidential elections, you’ll know Kamala Harris is the presidential candidate strongly advocating for abortion rights and healthcare.
We know all that, but what IS abortion and why is it so important to the female reproductive system? Why is Kamala Harris so adamant about this?
It’s easy to get misinformed or to not know about the details of abortion. So let’s debunk this!
Well.. How does the “baby” begin to grow?
There are three steps that are called the Prenatal Development Stages, these are sometimes mixed up as trimesters. They are not the same, but they both have three stages. Prenatal development is the actual development into what will become what you know as a baby.
The Germinal stage begins right at conception. It is when an egg gets fertilized by the male sperm in the fallopian tube. This fertilized egg, now called a zygote travels into the uterus and makes itself comfortable by splitting into two, an embryo and a placenta.
The embryonic stage begins and ends at around the 3rd to 8th week of pregnancy or 10 weeks after fertilization. During the embryonic stage, much begins to occur like:
- Organogenesis which is tissue growth and the separation or differentiation of different organs
- The organs actually beginning to form
- The development of a heart
- Arms and legs will begin to form
But don’t think they look like a full grown baby yet, it is described as a flat sheet of cells, with a tadpole like shape. Its spine looks very enlarged compared to its body and the head is still not differentiated from the neck yet.
Fun fact!
Because all embryo fetal genitalia is the same, every embryo is phenotypically female until around 6-7 weeks when the Y chromosome is introduced!
The Fetal Stage
The fetal stage lasts from around the 11th week till birth. It is the further growth and development of what is now a fetus. They will start to actually grow human-like traits. Though a fetus and a baby are extremely similar, they are not necessarily the same. Fetuses are Prenatal and only last when a woman is pregnant. They rely on a mother’s bodily resources. A baby is a young child just born or newly born, they don’t rely as much on a mother’s bodily resources but do need milk.
After 9 months or around 39 weeks, there is birth. In which the fetus is officially a newborn.
Abortion
So then, what is abortion? Abortion is the termination of an embryo or a fetus, it is ending a pregnancy. In order to ensure the safest and healthiest procedure and outcome, it is performed by medical professionals. But, this isn’t the case for almost half of the population looking for abortions. You may have heard of the term “Backstreet Abortions” or ‘Unsafe Abortions’ as a more medically accurate name. This is when a woman terminates her pregnancy herself, without a medical professional or a non-licensed person doing it for her.
On January 22, 1973, A supreme court case by the name Roe V Wade won, which made abortion rights protected by the federal government. All states followed the same laws about abortion. On June 24, 2022 the US Supreme court opened the court case back up and overturned it, taking away the federal protection of abortion. This made it up to the states on abortion restrictions and rules. Because of this, more unsafe abortions are being performed.
There are 13 states total with an almost total ban on abortion, with others having stricter restrictions, and some having little restrictions according to cnn.com
(cnn.com)
Colorado currently has little abortion restriction, it is currently completely legal to get an abortion before 22 weeks, but if needed or inspected by a medical professional and it is in the best interest of the woman to get an abortion after 22 weeks, it is still legal.
Worldwide Maternal Deaths
Unsurprisingly the issue of abortion and women’s rights to their body is still an ongoing thing not just in the US, but worldwide. Many countries still have restrictive policies on when and where a woman can get an abortion, and this contributes to the rates of unsafe abortion and maternal death. A worldwide estimate of the number of unsafe abortions is 45% of every abortion procedure performed. That’s almost half of abortions procedures being unprofessionally performed.
Worldwide every year around 42 million women choose to get an abortion because of accidental pregnancies, around 20 million of those are unsafe abortions. Out of this rate, 68,000 women die from unsafe abortion. That makes 13% of maternal deaths caused from unsafe abortion according to [ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] A study by ncbi.nlm.nih.gov showed that around 162 countries that had shown that there is a lower mortality rate for women that have access to more flexible laws on abortion.
Why is abortion such a debate?
The debate on abortion is so prominent because some view it as a natural right for women, while others view it as strictly murder. Religion also goes into this debate, because some people who are anti-abortion are opinionated from their religious beliefs. An example of this is when life begins, some think life starts right at conception which is also backed up often by the christian ideology of sex is strictly for reproduction. While others think it is when a fetus is fully developed, and sex is not strictly for reproduction. So, many times the debate about abortion healthcare isn’t just about if it’s murder or not, but it’s also sometimes about religious ideology versus scientific or moral ideology. But the fact is that abortion is a reproductive right, whether you think its ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is based on your logic and if you can back it up.
So the next time you hear this debate about abortion, hopefully it can open your eyes to how important abortion access is for women, and why it is such a talked about topic in politics.
Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321431/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/
https://www.cnn.com/us/abortion-access-restrictions-bans-us-dg/index.html
https://sph.tulane.edu/study-finds-higher-maternal-mortality-rates-states-more-abortion-restrictions
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion
https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-policies-abortion-bans
