Should the Morning-After Pill be Available Over-the-Counter?

Abortion is never an easy decision, but women have been making the choice for thousands of years. It has become a large dilemma since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court passed a law making the procedure legal, and an even larger controversial issue. The controversy is divided into “Pro-Choice” and Pro-Life” views. Pro-Choice supporters believe that the woman should have to choice whether to abort or not. Pro-Life supporters believe that it should be illegal to abort and preformed. However, there are many ways for this procedure to be performed. Abortion still remains today a controversial issue, by who should determine if it is the right thing to terminate a pregnancy or not and by how the procedure should be preformed.

The subject of abortion has created some of the most controversial, social, and moral debates in United States history. On Jan. 22, 1973, in the case Roe Vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion during the first trimester of the pregnancy (The Ruling). Still other interest groups argue that human life begins at conception and having an abortion is murder to an unborn child. These opposing viewpoints create a delicate political and social debate in which the lives of unborn children are placed in the center. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the RU 486 “abortion pill”, citing that the “overall safety of the pill is excellent”(Food

In today’s society, there are many topics that cause a lot of uproar and controversy. Certain topics like politics, homosexuality, and climate change are just a few topics that are debated on a daily bases. One other topic that has been debated on for centuries is abortion. Abortion is the ending of pregnancy before birth; this results in the death of a fetus or an embryo. Abortion happens in different countries around the world, but it is commonly known in the United States. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world where abortion is legal in some states. Many people know about abortion and what it is, but what some people do not know is that there are several different types of it. Just a few types of abortion are early abortion, late-term abortion, and partial-birth abortion. There is early abortion, which is when the pregnancy is terminated before the fetus is available, and then there is late-term abortion, which is when an abortion is performed after the second trimester. The most crucial type of abortion, partial-birth abortion, is a form of late-term abortion that ends a pregnancy in which the fetus is removed intact and results in death. Although some people believe abortion is not the best decision to make and that it should be illegal, early abortion is a little better than late-term abortion. All in all, late-term abortion should be banned because it is similar to killing a fully developed child.

Debate and policy about when life begins has circulated the Unites States since at least the 1700s, and still the question remains the same; when does life begin. Anti-abortionists assert that science proves life begins at conception. Similarly, pro-choice advocates believe there is not enough evidence to say exactly when life begins. There is tension between the two groups, which leads to poor communication. Both sides refuse to give up any ground because the stakes are high, but it’s important to find a solution to an escalating problem. This literature review considers whether abortion should be outlawed by responding to the following questions:

A total of 730,322 abortions were reported from the Centers for Disease Control in 2011. This could easily be resolved with proper usage of birth control. But the fact of the matter is that only 62% of women are actually using proper birth control, now this may seem like a lot of women, but there is 158.6 million women in the United States alone so 58.5 million are currently not on any birth control which is a huge amount of women. Birth control needs to be free and accessible, because the benefits of having women on birth control easily outweigh any of the cons that may come. My goal for this paper is to talk about the pros of having free and accessible birth control, which would be lower abortion rate, lower teenage pregnancy rate, and the many health benefits. I will also touch on the opposing side of this argument, which will be that, it will be too expensive, that abstinence is key, and that if birth control became free and accessible women would no longer go the doctor.

----An abortion is a medical procedure the effectively terminates a pregnancy by destroying the fetus in the mother’s womb. Abortion had been previously banned in 30 of the USA’s states, however, in the 1970s, a major dispute in the Supreme Court ended with retracting the decision to ban it. The new ruling essentially made abortion legal in all of the US states, however, major controversy has still clouded the topic. All of the US states have to accept abortion in the early stages of a mother’s pregnancy, despite their personal viewpoints, But they are allowed to forbade an abortion if the choice is made in the later points of the fetus’ growth. The fetus begins to take shape after the first trimester, no longer an unidentifiable group of cells. The major discussion is whether abortion should be banned or allowed, each side having exceptions to their

Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy at any stage that does not result in birth. What a lot of people don’t realize is a miscarriage is also considered an abortion even though it is not medically induced; it is called a spontaneous abortion because it is not a medical procedure. Recently a study was done and it showed that the number of abortions worldwide have gone down considerably because of family planning, having reasonable birth control methods introduced, the prices for them lowered and the availability of them are accessible by the younger generation. More and more we are seeing young women using abortion as a birth control method, this is making the

Plan B is a extremely sensitive topic and very debated issue, both for advocates who believe emergency contraception will lower the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions, and for challengers who believe that using Plan B amounts to an abortion. Pro-life activists and politicians have been pushing to redefine pregnancy as beginning at fertilization, but the medical community considers a pregnancy to be established only after implantation of a fertilized egg has happened. Pro-life campaigners are trying to persuade women that Plan B causes abortions by creating a hostile setting within the uterus and averts implantation of an egg with the result being the termination of a pregnancy. “The use of Plan B has significantly reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies as well as the number of abortions that would have taken place if these pregnancies were not prevented through the use of emergency contraception.” (The Emergency Contraception Debate By Dawn Stacey, PhD,

The morning-after pill being sold over the counter to people under 17 poses many advantages. The pill should be sold over the counter because it can stop unwanted pregnancies, prevent future abortions, and can give privacy.

Of all the legal, ethical, and moral issues we Americans continuously fight for or against, abortion may very well be the issue that Americans are most passionate about. The abortion issue is in the forefront of political races. Most recently the “no taxpayer funding for abortion act”, has abortion advocates reeling. Even though abortion has been legal in every state in the United States since the monumental Supreme Court decision, “Roe v Wade”, on January 22, 1973; there are fewer physicians willing to perform abortions today than in 2008. (Kraft) At the heart of the ethical dilemma for many in the medical profession is the viability of the fetus. And just to make this whole dilemma more confusing, according to the United States

The idea of Emergency Contraception is not a new to society, however it is still igniting many debates just as it did when it was first introduced to the United States. Emergency contraception continues to be a highly emotional and controversial issue, both for advocates who believe EC will lower the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions, and for opponents who believe that using EC amounts to an abortion. The controversy fueling this debate centers around one of the ways that emergency contraception works. Emergency contraception can prevent or delay ovulation, affect the movement of the egg or sperm: making them less likely to meet, it can also interfere with the fertilization process and prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Partial-birth abortions in the third trimester, and the recent “day-after” or the RU-486 pill, now add a new attitude on the abortion issue. Partial-birth abortions and abortions in the third trimester are exceedingly controversial, because they involve the termination and/or expulsion of an actual fetus from the womb, whereas many early-prenatal abortions involve the expulsion of the embryo. In some countries, and for a while in America, partial-birth abortions meant that the baby was breached halfway through the womb, and then its neck was broken, which killed the baby instantly. Since then, the United States has banned it as a result of the many infuriated pro-life and even some pro-choice members who found it to be extremely inhumane. The RU-486 pill sends messages telling the brain that the woman that was inseminated, was already pregnant, and that the ovum that had been created, is removed because the body believes it is already impregnated. These operations raise many of the same problems as abortion itself.

Typically, the issue of abortion in the United States has been one that has courted controversy and created a public, political, and moral divide. While some feel that abortion should be illegal, others feel it should be restricted. Still others feel it should be legal and freely accessed. Although there are many ethical phases which originate from the application of reproduction control in women’s health, the main issues that raise ethical problems following the development of assisted reproduction techniques are: the right to procreate or reproduce. Induce abortion raises ethical issues related to the rights of women versus the rights

Abortion is a highly-debated topic of whether it is ethical for a woman to decide to have one. Abortion is any of various surgical methods for deliberately terminating a pregnancy. When we speak of abortion today, we mean induced abortion performed by trained doctors, not including miscarriage (MacKinnon & Fiala, 2015). Some current methods of abortion are morning-after pill, mifepristone, uterine or vacuum aspiration, dilation and curettage, saline solution, prostaglandin drugs, hysterotomy, and partial birth abortion. Abortion involves questions about rights, happiness, and well-being, as well as the status and value of human life. The people who think it is ethical to have an abortion stand on the Pro-choice side and the people who think it is unethical stand on the Pro-life side. The liberal view of abortion supports abortions and the conservative view opposes abortion. There are many legal, religious, and medical conflicts that are included in the debate over abortion. The arguments made from both sides help us better understand whether a woman should have an abortion.

As stated earlier, one of the main reason that the Natural Law does not support the use of contraception is because it may prevent implantation and subsequent development of a fertilized egg, which is unacceptable since this fertilized egg is a human life. But it does not necessarily follow that a microscopic bundle of cells requires the same rights as the fully grown adult whose body it is using. Judith Jarvis Thompson states