Should Abortion Be Legalized?

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Medicine - Other, grade: 1, Egerton University, language: English, abstract: This argument paper will give an overview over the issue of abortion and attempt to provide a justification for the legalization of abortion. Abortion is seemingly becoming an enormous public health challenge in the United States. It has also emerged to be one of the most contentious social issues among the U.S population, leading to an unprecedented debate over its legalization. This debate can be attributed to the current situation whereby the prevalence rates of abortion seem to have assumed upward trends. It is quite surprising to learn that almost half of pregnancies among women, in the United States are unintended; thus, termination of the pregnancies serves as the most appropriate alternative. It has been found out that half of the women experiences at least one unintended pregnancy before the age of 45 years, and a third of these pregnancies are terminated. In the past decade, cases of abortion have increased significantly and this change in prevalence trends is believed to have been caused by an array of social, medical and economic factors. Currently, epidemiological reports indicate that four women out of ten pregnant women carry out abortion, in the U.S. However, it is worth noting that the prevalence of abortion among different social classes of people with different socioeconomic status are relatively variant, owing to the differences in conception rates. In the past two decades, unintended pregnancy rates among women with low socioeconomic status increased by 50%, whereas the rates decreased by 29% among women with high socioeconomic status. These epidemiological trends have caused uproar in the society, leading to the current abortion debate. Despite the controversy overshadowing the issue, abortion appears to be a personal issue because; it influences one's health and social life.