Persuasive Essay Abortion

Persuasive Essay
TOK
Echo Xu
4/9/2016

Should Abortions be Legal?

In 2011, 1.06 million abortions took place in the U.S, and from 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred in the U.S. (Jones& Jerman, 2011) On the basis of Dictionary.com (2016): “Abortions are removal of an embryo or a fetus during the first six months from uterus in order to end a pregnancy.” It is a controversial debate in the world; some people are pro-life and others are pro-choice. Regardless of what some may think, people should respect all life and abortions should be illegal because of the moral implications and also the physical and psychological trauma that can result from this harmful practice.

To start off, an abortion could be defined as murder

It should be outlawed because it can lead to long-lasting biological suffering in some women as well as emotional pain which may cause suicide. According to a study from the Elliot Institute (2001), scientists found out that: “the average annual suicide rate per 100,000 women was 3.0 for delivering women, compared to 7.8 for aborting women. The national average suicide rate for women between the ages of 15 and 44 is 5.2 per 100,000 women.” The data shows that after abortion, women actually will have higher suicide rates due to psychological trauma. Moreover, abortions are related to other health concerns. From immediate side effect for abortion, women may feel nausea, headache and vomiting; from short-term, abortions will cause allergy, infection or even prolonged bleeding, many women will bleed 9-16 days, and 1 in 12 will bleed 30 days or more and in the long term, if any parts of the fetus or placenta are left in the womb, it will affect future fertility. (Contracept.org, 2016) The evidence presented by several studies indicates that even though an abortion might benefit a woman in the short-term, it actually has long-term negative consequences and can result in many future health