Ladies And Abortion

By: Esther Chiamaka Onyedinma

Thousands of women shared their stories of abortion on social media last month andit compelled others to talk about their own experience in a bid to end the stigma and misinformation that still surrounds the procedure. Even in countries where abortion has been legalised for decades, it often remains a controversial subject with those against the procedure giving moral, social, ethical and religious reasons.

The fact that even progressive, outspoken pro-choice feminists feel the pressure to keep abortion under wraps, to speak about them only in corners, in murmurs, in private with our close confidants, means that opponents get to define it however suits them best.

The truth is that life is unfathomably complex. Individuals with uterus own their bodies unconditionally and every abortion story is a unique as the person who lives in it. Some are traumatic, some are regretted and even some are good.

The decision to continue your pregnancy or to end it, is very personal. Each year clearly about 4.8million women or more have an abortion to end pregnancy which translates to over 4.8million lives of young and innocent unborn babies cut short.

The most common reasons, women consider abortion are:

• Birth Control (Contraceptive) Failure: Over half of all women who have had an abortion used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.

• Inability to support and care for a child.

• To end an unwanted pregnancy.

• To prevent the birth of a child with birth defects or severe medical problems. Such defects are often unknown until routine second trimester tests are done.

• Pregnancy resulting from rape or incest.

• Physical or mental conditions that endangers the woman's health if the pregnancy is continued.

About 47% of women will have one or occasionally more abortions during their lifetime. Women centres and hospitals perform more than a million abortions every year. Abortions are obviously in great demand. But why?

Women have many reasons for not wanting to be pregnant and thus to seek an abortion many are related to.

Age: Most abortions are done on ladies under the ages of 25.

Marital Status: Most Women seeking abortion are unmarried, many others are separated from their spouse.

The vast majority (in excess of 90%) of abortions are sought for personal reasons.

• 21% feel they do not have financial to resources to bring up a child.

• 21% feel that they are not ready for the responsibility of raising a child.

• 16% feel that their lives would be changed too much. She might have a plan for her future (educational pursuit, developing a career, etc) that does not allow for having a child at the present time. She might be looking after an elderly parent and does not have sufficient time or energy to commit to a baby.

• 12% feel that her relationship with her partner is in difficulty.

• 11% feel that they are too young and are not sufficiently matured to become a mother.

• 9% is as a result of external factors which most times are immense pressure from her partner, family or society.

• In 8% of the cases, her children are grown and she does not want to start another family or she has all the children that she wants.

Some of these reasons may be influenced by:

• She feels she lacks the emotional and physical strength to go through another pregnancy and raise the child.

• She believes that raising an additional child would short-change her existing children.

• She is a student and or without a partner, she feels that raising a child would be too difficult and disruptive at her time of life.

• About 6% of all abortions are sought because either the woman or foetus has medical reasons.

• Some girls become pregnant at a very young age when pregnancy can be dangerous.

• The foetus might have been hurt by exposure to high level of toxic chemicals, medications that might be harmful to the foetus, alcohol, drugs etc. They may cause the foetus to be genetically damaged.

• In the case of a mutiple pregnancy quintuplets, sextuplets etc some or all of the foetuses will end up with various long term health problems, some may not even survive. Physicians will sometimes recommend a selective reduction process where one or more foetus are killed in order for the remaining foetuses to be born normal.

About 1% of all abortions are sought because of abusive sexual act. While about 10-15,000 abortions (approximately 1%) annually are sought because the conception occurred after rape and the woman does not want to bear a child who was conceived in violence.

Abortion been good or bad is totally what your personal conviction or religious believe entails. As a child is a gift of inestimable value and deserves a right to live and be nurtured. Nevertheless some individuals personal reasons might outweigh the relevance of that "inestimable gift".