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• Fact sheets /
• Six out of 10 unintended pregnancies end in induced abortion.
• Abortion is a common health intervention. It is very safe when carried out using a method recommended by WHO, appropriate to the pregnancy duration and by someone with the necessary skills.
• However, around 45% of abortions are unsafe.
• Unsafe abortion is an important preventable cause of maternal deaths and morbidities. It can lead to physical and mental health complications and social and financial burdens for women, communities and health systems.
• Lack of access to safe, timely, affordable and respectful abortion care is a critical public health and human rights issue.

Around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year. Six out of 10 (61%) of all unintended pregnancies, and 3 out of 10 (29%) of all pregnancies, end in induced abortion (1) .

Comprehensive abortion care is included in the list of essential health care services published by WHO in 2020. Abortion is a simple health care intervention that can be safely and effectively managed by a wide range of health workers using medication or a surgical procedure. In the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a medical abortion can also be safely self-managed by the pregnant person outside of a health care facility (e.g. at home), in whole or in part. This requires that the woman has access to accurate information, quality medicines and support from a trained health worker (if she needs or wants it during the process).

Comprehensive abortion care includes the provision of information, abortion management and post-abortion care. It encompasses care related to miscarriage (spontaneous abortion and missed abortion), induced abortion (the deliberate interruption of an ongoing pregnancy by medical or surgical means), incomplete abortion as well as intrauterine fetal demise.

The information in this fact sheet focuses on care related to induced abortion.

Scope of the problem

When carried out using a method recommended by WHO appropriate to the pregnancy duration, and by someone with the necessary skills, abortion is a safe health care intervention (5).

However, when people with unintended pregnancies face barriers to attaining safe, timely, affordable, geographically reachable, respectful and non-discriminatory abortion care, they often resort to unsafe abortion. 1

Global estimates from 2010–2014 demonstrate that 45% of all induced abortions are unsafe. Of all unsafe abortions, one third were performed under the least safe conditions, i.e. by untrained persons using dangerous and invasive methods.  More than half of all these unsafe abortions occurred in Asia, most of them in south and central Asia. In Latin American and Africa, the majority (approximately 3 out of 4) of all abortions were unsafe. In Africa, nearly half of all abortions occurred under the least safe circumstances (3) .

Consequences of inaccessible quality abortion care

Lack of access to safe, affordable, timely and respectful abortion care, and the stigma associated with abortion, pose risks to women’s physical and mental well-being throughout the life-course.

Inaccessibility of quality abortion care risks violating a range of human rights of women and girls, including the right to life; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right to benefit from scientific progress and its realization; the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing and timing of children; and the right to be free from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.

One review from 2003–12, found that 4.7-13% of maternal deaths were linked to abortive pregnancy outcomes (4) but noted that maternal deaths due to abortion, and more specifically unsafe abortion, are often misclassified and underreported given the stigma. 

Deaths from safe abortion are negligible, <1/100 000 (5). On the other hand, in regions where unsafe abortions are common, the death rates are high, at > 200/100 000 abortions. Estimates from 2012 indicate that in developing countries alone, 7 million women per year were treated in hospital facilities for complications of unsafe abortion (6) .

Physical health risks associated with unsafe abortion include:

• incomplete abortion (failure to remove or expel all pregnancy tissue from the uterus);
• haemorrhage (heavy bleeding);
• uterine perforation (caused when the uterus is pierced by a sharp object); and
• damage to the genital tract and internal organs as a consequence of inserting dangerous objects into the vagina or anus.

Restrictive abortion regulation can cause distress and stigma, and risk constituting a violation of human rights of women and girls, including the right to privacy and the right to non-discrimination and equality, while also imposing financial burdens on women and girls. Regulations that force women to travel to attain legal care, or require mandatory counselling or waiting periods, lead to loss of income and other financial costs, and can make abortion inaccessible to women with low resources (6,8) .

Estimates from 2006 show that complications of unsafe abortions cost health systems in developing countries US$ 553 million per year for post-abortion treatments. In addition, households experienced US$ 922 million in loss of income due to long-term disability related to unsafe abortion (10) . Countries and health systems could make substantial monetary savings by providing greater access to modern contraception and quality induced abortion (8,9) .

Expanding quality abortion care

Evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions (1) ; however, it does affect whether the abortions that women and girls attain are safe and dignified. The proportion of unsafe abortions are significantly higher in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws than in countries with less restrictive laws (2) .

Barriers to accessing safe and respectful abortion include high costs, stigma for those seeking abortions and health care workers, and the refusal of health workers to provide an abortion based on personal conscience or religious belief. Access is further impeded by restrictive laws and requirements that are not medically justified, including criminalization of abortion, mandatory waiting periods, provision of biased information or counselling, third-party authorization and restrictions regarding the type of health care providers or facilities that can provide abortion services.

Multiple actions are needed at the legal, health system and community levels so that everyone who needs abortion care has access to it. The three cornerstones of an enabling environment for quality comprehensive abortion care are:

• respect for human rights, including a supportive framework of law and policy;
• the availability and accessibility of information; and
• a supportive, universally accessible, affordable and well functioning health system.

A well-functioning health system implies many factors, including:

• evidence-based policies;
• universal health coverage;
• the reliable supply of quality, affordable medical products and equipment;
• that an adequate number of health workers, of different types, provide abortion care at a reachable distance to patients; 
• the delivery of abortion care through a variety of approaches, e.g. care in health facilities, digital interventions and self-care approaches, allowing for choices depending on the values and preferences of the pregnant person, available resources, and the national and local context;
• that health workers are trained to provide safe and respectful abortion care, to support informed decision-making and to interpret laws and policies regulating abortion;
• that health workers are supported and protected from stigma; and
• provision of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies.

Availability and accessibility of information implies:

• provision of evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education; and
• accurate, non-biased and evidence-based information on abortion and contraceptive methods.

WHO response

WHO provides global technical and policy guidance on the use of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy, provision of information on abortion care, abortion management (including miscarriage, induced abortion, incomplete abortion and fetal death) and post-abortion care. In 2022, WHO published an updated, consolidated guideline on abortion care, including all WHO recommendations and best practice statements across three domains essential to the provision of abortion care: law and policy, clinical services and service delivery. 

WHO also maintains the Global Abortion Policies Database . This interactive online database contains comprehensive information on the abortion laws, policies, health standards and guidelines for all countries. 

Upon request, WHO provides technical support to countries to adapt sexual and reproductive health guidelines to specific contexts and strengthen national policies and programmes related to contraception and safe abortion care. A quality abortion care monitoring and evaluation framework is also in development.

WHO is a cosponsor of the HRP (UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction) , which carries out research on clinical care, abortion regulation, abortion stigma, as well as implementation research on community and health systems approaches to quality abortion care. It also monitors the global burden of unsafe abortion and its consequences.

1 An “unsafe abortion” is defined as a procedure for terminating a pregnancy performed by persons lacking the necessary information or skills or in an environment not in conformity with minimal medical standards, or both. The persons, skills and medical standards considered safe in the provision of abortion are different for medical and surgical abortion and by pregnancy duration. In using this definition, what is considered ‘safe’ or unsafe needs to be interpreted in line with the most current WHO technical and policy guidance (2).

(1) Bearak J, Popinchalk A, Ganatra B, Moller A-B, Tunçalp Ö, Beavin C et al. Unintended pregnancy and abortion by income, region, and the legal status of abortion: estimates from a comprehensive model for 1990–2019. Lancet Glob Health. 2020 Sep; 8(9):e1152-e1161. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30315-6. 

(2) Ganatra B, Tunçalp Ö, Johnston H, Johnson BR, Gülmezoglu A, Temmerman M. From concept to measurement: Operationalizing WHO's definition of unsafe abortion. Bull World Health Organ 2014;92:155; 10.2471/BLT.14.136333.

(3) Ganatra B, Gerdts C, Rossier C, Johnson Jr B R, Tuncalp Ö, Assifi A et al. Global, regional, and subregional classification of abortions by safety, 2010–14: estimates from a Bayesian hierarchical model. The Lancet. 2017 Sep.

(4) Say L, Chou D, Gemmill A, Tunçalp Ö, Moller AB, Daniels J et al. Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis. Lancet Glob Health. 2014 Jun; 2(6):e323-33.

(5) Raymond EG, Grimes DA. The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States. Obstet Gynecol. 2012 Feb;119(2 Pt 1):215-9. doi: 10.1097/AOG.0b013e31823fe923. PMID: 22270271.

(6) Singh S, Maddow-Zimet I. Facility-based treatment for medical complications resulting from unsafe pregnancy termination in the developing world, 2012: a review of evidence from 26 countries. BJOG 2015; published online Aug 19. DOI:10.1111/1471-0528.13552.

(7) Coast E, Lattof SR, Meulen Rodgers YV, Moore B, Poss C. The microeconomics of abortion: A scoping review and analysis of the economic consequences for abortion care-seekers. PLoS One. 2021 Jun 9;16(6):e0252005. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0252005. PMID: 34106927; PMCID: PMC8189560.

(8) Lattof SR, Coast E, Rodgers YVM, Moore B, Poss C. The mesoeconomics of abortion: A scoping review and analysis of the economic effects of abortion on health systems. PLoS One. 2020 Nov 4;15(11):e0237227. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237227. PMID: 33147223; PMCID: PMC7641432.

(9) Rodgers YVM, Coast E, Lattof SR, Poss C, Moore B. The macroeconomics of abortion: A scoping review and analysis of the costs and outcomes. PLoS One. 2021 May 6;16(5):e0250692. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250692. PMID: 33956826; PMCID: PMC8101771.

(10). Vlassoff et al. Economic impact of unsafe abortion-related morbidity and mortality: evidence and estimation challenges. Brighton, Institute of Development Studies, 2008 (IDS Research Reports 59).

• Abortion care guideline
• Classification of abortions by safety: article in The Lancet
• Quality of care
• Maintaining essential health services during the COVID-19 outbreak
• Sexual and reproductive health and research including the Special Programme HRP

Global Abortion Policies Database

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• Rom J Morphol Embryol
• v.61(1); Jan-Mar 2020

A research on abortion: ethics, legislation and socio-medical outcomes. Case study: Romania

Andreea mihaela niţă.

1 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Craiova, Romania

Cristina Ilie Goga

This article presents a research study on abortion from a theoretical and empirical point of view. The theoretical part is based on the method of social documents analysis, and presents a complex perspective on abortion, highlighting items of medical, ethical, moral, religious, social, economic and legal elements. The empirical part presents the results of a sociological survey, based on the opinion survey method through the application of the enquiry technique, conducted in Romania, on a sample of 1260 women. The purpose of the survey is to identify Romanians perception on the decision to voluntary interrupt pregnancy, and to determine the core reasons in carrying out an abortion.

The analysis of abortion by means of medical and social documents

Abortion means a pregnancy interruption “before the fetus is viable” [ 1 ] or “before the fetus is able to live independently in the extrauterine environment, usually before the 20 th week of pregnancy” [ 2 ]. “Clinical miscarriage is both a common and distressing complication of early pregnancy with many etiological factors like genetic factors, immune factors, infection factors but also psychological factors” [ 3 ]. Induced abortion is a practice found in all countries, but the decision to interrupt the pregnancy involves a multitude of aspects of medical, ethical, moral, religious, social, economic, and legal order.

In a more simplistic manner, Winston Nagan has classified opinions which have as central element “abortion”, in two major categories: the opinion that the priority element is represented by fetus and his entitlement to life and the second opinion, which focuses around women’s rights [ 4 ].

From the medical point of view, since ancient times there have been four moments, generally accepted, which determine the embryo’s life: ( i ) conception; ( ii ) period of formation; ( iii ) detection moment of fetal movement; ( iv ) time of birth [ 5 ]. Contemporary medicine found the following moments in the evolution of intrauterine fetal: “ 1 . At 18 days of pregnancy, the fetal heartbeat can be perceived and it starts running the circulatory system; 2 . At 5 weeks, they become more clear: the nose, cheeks and fingers of the fetus; 3 . At 6 weeks, they start to function: the nervous system, stomach, kidneys and liver of the fetus, and its skeleton is clearly distinguished; 4 . At 7 weeks (50 days), brain waves are felt. The fetus has all the internal and external organs definitively outlined. 5 . At 10 weeks (70 days), the unborn child has all the features clearly defined as a child after birth (9 months); 6 . At 12 weeks (92 days, 3 months), the fetus has all organs definitely shaped, managing to move, lacking only the breath” [ 6 ]. Even if most of the laws that allow abortion consider the period up to 12 weeks acceptable for such an intervention, according to the above-mentioned steps, there can be defined different moments, which can represent the beginning of life. Nowadays, “abortion is one of the most common gynecological experiences and perhaps the majority of women will undergo an abortion in their lifetimes” [ 7 ]. “Safe abortions carry few health risks, but « every year, close to 20 million women risk their lives and health by undergoing unsafe abortions » and 25% will face a complication with permanent consequences” [ 8 , 9 ].

From the ethical point of view, most of the times, the interruption of pregnancy is on the border between woman’s right over her own body and the child’s (fetus) entitlement to life. Judith Jarvis Thomson supported the supremacy of woman’s right over her own body as a premise of freedom, arguing that we cannot force a person to bear in her womb and give birth to an unwanted child, if for different circumstances, she does not want to do this [ 10 ]. To support his position, the author uses an imaginary experiment, that of a violinist to which we are connected for nine months, in order to save his life. However, Thomson debates the problem of the differentiation between the fetus and the human being, by carrying out a debate on the timing which makes this difference (period of conception, 10 weeks of pregnancy, etc.) and highlighting that for people who support abortion, the fetus is not an alive human being [ 10 ].

Carol Gilligan noted that women undergo a true “moral dilemma”, a “moral conflict” with regards to voluntary interruption of pregnancy, such a decision often takes into account the human relationships, the possibility of not hurting the others, the responsibility towards others [ 11 ]. Gilligan applied qualitative interviews to a number of 29 women from different social classes, which were put in a position to decide whether or not to commit abortion. The interview focused on the woman’s choice, on alternative options, on individuals and existing conflicts. The conclusion was that the central moral issue was the conflict between the self (the pregnant woman) and others who may be hurt as a result of the potential pregnancy [ 12 ].

From the religious point of view, abortion is unacceptable for all religions and a small number of abortions can be seen in deeply religious societies and families. Christianity considers the beginning of human life from conception, and abortion is considered to be a form of homicide [ 13 ]. For Christians, “at the same time, abortion is giving up their faith”, riot and murder, which means that by an abortion we attack Jesus Christ himself and God [ 14 ]. Islam does not approve abortion, relying on the sacral life belief as specified in Chapter 6, Verse 151 of the Koran: “Do not kill a soul which Allah has made sacred (inviolable)” [ 15 ]. Buddhism considers abortion as a negative act, but nevertheless supports for medical reasons [ 16 ]. Judaism disapproves abortion, Tanah considering it to be a mortal sin. Hinduism considers abortion as a crime and also the greatest sin [ 17 ].

From the socio-economic point of view, the decision to carry out an abortion is many times determined by the relations within the social, family or financial frame. Moreover, studies have been conducted, which have linked the legalization of abortions and the decrease of the crime rate: “legalized abortion may lead to reduced crime either through reductions in cohort sizes or through lower per capita offending rates for affected cohorts” [ 18 ].

Legal regulation on abortion establishes conditions of the abortion in every state. In Europe and America, only in the XVIIth century abortion was incriminated and was considered an insignificant misdemeanor or a felony, depending on when was happening. Due to the large number of illegal abortions and deaths, two centuries later, many states have changed legislation within the meaning of legalizing voluntary interruption of pregnancy [ 6 ]. In contemporary society, international organizations like the United Nations or the European Union consider sexual and reproductive rights as fundamental rights [ 19 , 20 ], and promotes the acceptance of abortion as part of those rights. However, not all states have developed permissive legislation in the field of voluntary interruption of pregnancy.

Currently, at national level were established four categories of legislation on pregnancy interruption area:

( i )  Prohibitive legislations , ones that do not allow abortion, most often outlining exceptions in abortion in cases where the pregnant woman’s life is endangered. In some countries, there is a prohibition of abortion in all circumstances, however, resorting to an abortion in the case of an imminent threat to the mother’s life. Same regulation is also found in some countries where abortion is allowed in cases like rape, incest, fetal problems, etc. In this category are 66 states, with 25.5% of world population [ 21 ].

( ii )  Restrictive legislation that allow abortion in cases of health preservation . Loosely, the term “health” should be interpreted according to the World Health Organization (WHO) definition as: “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” [ 22 ]. This type of legislation is adopted in 59 states populated by 13.8% of the world population [ 21 ].

( iii )  Legislation allowing abortion on a socio-economic motivation . This category includes items such as the woman’s age or ability to care for a child, fetal problems, cases of rape or incest, etc. In this category are 13 countries, where we have 21.3% of the world population [ 21 ].

( iv )  Legislation which do not impose restrictions on abortion . In the case of this legislation, abortion is permitted for any reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions (Romania – 14 weeks, Slovenia – 10 weeks, Sweden – 18 weeks), the interruption of pregnancy after this period has some restrictions. This type of legislation is adopted in 61 countries with 39.5% of the world population [21].

The Centre for Reproductive Rights has carried out from 1998 a map of the world’s states, based on the legislation typology of each country (Figure ​ (Figure1 1 ).

The analysis of states according to the legislation regarding abortion. Source: Centre for Reproductive Rights. The World’s Abortion Laws, 2018 [ 23 ]

An unplanned pregnancy, socio-economic context or various medical problems [ 24 ], lead many times to the decision of interrupting pregnancy, regardless the legislative restrictions. In the study “Unsafe abortion: global and regional estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality in 2008” issued in 2011 by the WHO , it was determined that within the states with restrictive legislation on abortion, we may also encounter a large number of illegal abortions. The illegal abortions may also be resulting in an increased risk of woman’s health and life considering that most of the times inappropriate techniques are being used, the hygienic conditions are precarious and the medical treatments are incorrectly administered [ 25 ]. Although abortions done according to medical guidelines carry very low risk of complications, 1–3 unsafe abortions contribute substantially to maternal morbidity and death worldwide [ 26 ].

WHO has estimated for the year 2008, the fact that worldwide women between the ages of 15 and 44 years carried out 21.6 million “unsafe” abortions, which involved a high degree of risk and were distributed as follows: 0.4 million in the developed regions and a number of 21.2 million in the states in course of development [ 25 ].

Case study: Romania

Legal perspective on abortion

In Romania, abortion was brought under regulation by the first Criminal Code of the United Principalities, from 1864.

The Criminal Code from 1864, provided the abortion infringement in Article 246, on which was regulated as follows: “Any person, who, using means such as food, drinks, pills or any other means, which will consciously help a pregnant woman to commit abortion, will be punished to a minimum reclusion (three years).

The woman who by herself shall use the means of abortion, or would accept to use means of abortion which were shown or given to her for this purpose, will be punished with imprisonment from six months to two years, if the result would be an abortion. In a situation where abortion was carried out on an illegitimate baby by his mother, the punishment will be imprisonment from six months to one year.

Doctors, surgeons, health officers, pharmacists (apothecary) and midwives who will indicate, will give or will facilitate these means, shall be punished with reclusion of at least four years, if the abortion took place. If abortion will cause the death of the mother, the punishment will be much austere of four years” (Art. 246) [ 27 ].

The Criminal Code from 1864, reissued in 1912, amended in part the Article 246 for the purposes of eliminating the abortion of an illegitimate baby case. Furthermore, it was no longer specified the minimum of four years of reclusion, in case of abortion carried out with the help of the medical staff, leaving the punishment to the discretion of the Court (Art. 246) [ 28 ].

The Criminal Code from 1936 regulated abortion in the Articles 482–485. Abortion was defined as an interruption of the normal course of pregnancy, being punished as follows:

“ 1 . When the crime is committed without the consent of the pregnant woman, the punishment was reformatory imprisonment from 2 to 5 years. If it caused the pregnant woman any health injury or a serious infirmity, the punishment was reformatory imprisonment from 3 to 6 years, and if it has caused her death, reformatory imprisonment from 7 to 10 years;

2 . When the crime was committed by the unmarried pregnant woman by herself, or when she agreed that someone else should provoke the abortion, the punishment is reformatory imprisonment from 3 to 6 months, and if the woman is married, the punishment is reformatory imprisonment from 6 months to one year. Same penalty applies also to the person who commits the crime with the woman’s consent. If abortion was committed for the purpose of obtaining a benefit, the punishment increases with another 2 years of reformatory imprisonment.

If it caused the pregnant woman any health injuries or a severe disablement, the punishment will be reformatory imprisonment from one to 3 years, and if it has caused her death, the punishment is reformatory imprisonment from 3 to 5 years” (Art. 482) [ 29 ].

The criminal legislation from 1936 specifies that it is not considered as an abortion the interruption from the normal course of pregnancy, if it was carried out by a doctor “when woman’s life was in imminent danger or when the pregnancy aggravates a woman’s disease, putting her life in danger, which could not be removed by other means and it is obvious that the intervention wasn’t performed with another purpose than that of saving the woman’s life” and “when one of the parents has reached a permanent alienation and it is certain that the child will bear serious mental flaws” (Art. 484, Par. 1 and Par. 2) [ 29 ].

In the event of an imminent danger, the doctor was obliged to notify prosecutor’s office in writing, within 48 hours after the intervention, on the performance of the abortion. “In the other cases, the doctor was able to intervene only with the authorization of the prosecutor’s office, given on the basis of a medical certificate from hospital or a notice given as a result of a consultation between the doctor who will intervene and at least a professor doctor in the disease which caused the intervention. General’s Office Prosecutor, in all cases provided by this Article, shall be obliged to maintain the confidentiality of all communications or authorizations, up to the intercession of any possible complaints” (Art. 484) [ 29 ].

The legislation of 1936 provided a reformatory injunction from one to three years for the abortions committed by doctors, sanitary agents, pharmacists, apothecary or midwives (Art. 485) [ 29 ].

Abortion on demand has been legalized for the first time in Romania in the year 1957 by the Decree No. 463, under the condition that it had to be carried out in a hospital and to be carried out in the first quarter of the pregnancy [ 30 ]. In the year 1966, demographic policy of Romania has dramatically changed by introducing the Decree No. 770 from September 29 th , which prohibited abortion. Thus, the voluntary interruption of pregnancy became a crime, with certain exceptions, namely: endangering the mother’s life, physical or mental serious disability; serious or heritable illness, mother’s age over 45 years, if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest or if the woman gave birth to at least four children who were still in her care (Art. 2) [ 31 ].

In the Criminal Code from 1968, the abortion crime was governed by Articles 185–188.

The Article 185, “the illegal induced abortion”, stipulated that “the interruption of pregnancy by any means, outside the conditions permitted by law, with the consent of the pregnant woman will be punished with imprisonment from one to 3 years”. The act referred to above, without the prior consent from the pregnant woman, was punished with prison from two to five years. If the abortion carried out with the consent of the pregnant woman caused any serious body injury, the punishment was imprisonment from two to five years, and when it caused the death of the woman, the prison sentence was from five to 10 years. When abortion was carried out without the prior consent of the woman, if it caused her a serious physical injury, the punishment was imprisonment from three to six years, and if it caused the woman’s death, the punishment was imprisonment from seven to 12 years (Art. 185) [ 32 ].

“When abortion was carried out in order to obtain a material benefit, the maximum punishment was increased by two years, and if the abortion was made by a doctor, in addition to the prison punishment could also be applied the prohibition to no longer practice the profession of doctor”.

Article 186, “abortion caused by the woman”, stipulated that “the interruption of the pregnancy course, committed by the pregnant woman, was punished with imprisonment from 6 months to 2 years”, quoting the fact that by the same punishment was also sanctioned “the pregnant woman’s act to consent in interrupting the pregnancy course made out by another person” (Art. 186) [ 26 ].

The Regulations of the Criminal Code in 1968, also provided the crime of “ownership of tools or materials that can cause abortion”, the conditions of this holding being met when these types of instruments were held outside the hospital’s specialized institutions, the infringement shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to one year (Art. 187) [ 32 ].

Furthermore, the doctors who performed an abortion in the event of extreme urgency, without prior legal authorization and if they did not announce the competent authority within the legal deadline, they were punished by imprisonment from one month to three months (Art. 188) [ 32 ].

In the year 1985, it has been issued the Decree No. 411 of December 26 th , by which the conditions imposed by the Decree No. 770 of 1966 have been hardened, meaning that it has increased the number of children, that a woman could have in order to request an abortion, from four to five children [ 33 ].

The Articles 185–188 of the Criminal Code and the Decree No. 770/1966 on the interruption of the pregnancy course have been abrogated by Decree-Law No. 1 from December 26 th , 1989, which was published in the Official Gazette No. 4 of December 27 th , 1989 (Par. 8 and Par. 12) [ 34 ].

The Criminal Code from 1968, reissued in 1997, maintained Article 185 about “the illegal induced abortion”, but drastically modified. Thus, in this case of the Criminal Code, we identify abortion as “the interruption of pregnancy course, by any means, committed in any of the following circumstances: ( a ) outside medical institutions or authorized medical practices for this purpose; ( b ) by a person who does not have the capacity of specialized doctor; ( c ) if age pregnancy has exceeded 14 weeks”, the punishment laid down was the imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years” (Art. 185, Par. 1) [ 35 ]. For the abortion committed without the prior consent of the pregnant woman, the punishment consisted in strict prison conditions from two to seven years and with the prohibition of certain rights (Art. 185, Par. 2) [ 35 ].

For the situation of causing serious physical injury to the pregnant woman, the punishment was strict prison from three to 10 years and the removal of certain rights, and if it had as a result the death of the pregnant woman, the punishment was strict prison from five to 15 years and the prohibition of certain rights (Art. 185, Par. 3) [ 35 ].

The attempt was punished for the crimes specified in the various cases of abortion.

Consideration should also be given in the Criminal Code reissued in 1997 for not punishing the interruption of the pregnancy course carried out by the doctor, if this interruption “was necessary to save the life, health or the physical integrity of the pregnant woman from a grave and imminent danger and that it could not be removed otherwise; in the case of a over fourteen weeks pregnancy, when the interruption of the pregnancy course should take place from therapeutic reasons” and even in a situation of a woman’s lack of consent, when it has not been given the opportunity to express her will, and abortion “was imposed by therapeutic reasons” (Art. 185, Par. 4) [ 35 ].

Criminal Code from 2004 covers abortion in Article 190, defined in the same way as in the prior Criminal Code, with the difference that it affects the limits of the punishment. So, in the event of pregnancy interruption, in accordance with the conditions specified in Paragraph 1, “the penalty provided was prison time from 6 months to one year or days-fine” (Art. 190, Par. 1) [ 36 ].

Nowadays, in Romania, abortion is governed by the criminal law of 2009, which entered into force in 2014, by the section called “aggression against an unborn child”. It should be specified that current criminal law does not punish the woman responsible for carrying out abortion, but only the person who is involved in carrying out the abortion. There is no punishment for the pregnant woman who injures her fetus during pregnancy.

In Article 201, we can find the details on the pregnancy interruption infringement. Thus, the pregnancy interruption can be performed in one of the following circumstances: “outside of medical institutions or medical practices authorized for this purpose; by a person who does not have the capacity of specialist doctor in Obstetrics and Gynecology and the right of free medical practice in this specialty; if gestational age has exceeded 14 weeks”, the punishment is the imprisonment for six months to three years, or fine and the prohibition to exercise certain rights (Art. 201, Par. 1) [ 37 ].

Article 201, Paragraph 2 specifies that “the interruption of the pregnancy committed under any circumstances, without the prior consent of the pregnant woman, can be punished with imprisonment from 2 to 7 years and with the prohibition to exercise some rights” (Art. 201, Par. 1) [ 37 ].

If by facts referred to above (Art. 201, Par. 1 and Par. 2) [ 37 ] “it has caused the pregnant woman’s physical injury, the punishment is the imprisonment from 3 to 10 years and the prohibition to exercise some rights, and if it has had as a result the pregnant woman’s death, the punishment is the imprisonment from 6 to 12 years and the prohibition to exercise some rights” (Art. 201, Par. 3) [ 37 ]. When the facts have been committed by a doctor, “in addition to the imprisonment punishment, it will also be applied the prohibition to exercise the profession of doctor (Art. 201, Par. 4) [ 37 ].

Criminal legislation specifies that “the interruption of pregnancy does not constitute an infringement with the purpose of a treatment carried out by a specialist doctor in Obstetrics and Gynecology, until the pregnancy age of twenty-four weeks is reached, or the subsequent pregnancy interruption, for the purpose of treatment, is in the interests of the mother or the fetus” (Art. 201, Par. 6) [ 37 ]. However, it can all be found in the phrases “therapeutic purposes” and “the interest of the mother and of the unborn child”, which predisposes the text of law to an interpretation, finally the doctors are the only ones in the position to decide what should be done in such cases, assuming direct responsibility [ 38 ].

Article 202 of the Criminal Code defines the crime of harming an unborn child, pointing out the punishments for the various types of injuries that can occur during pregnancy or in the childbirth period and which can be caused by the mother or by the persons who assist the birth, with the specification that the mother who harms her fetus during pregnancy is not punished and does not constitute an infringement if the injury has been committed during pregnancy or during childbirth period if the facts have been “committed by a doctor or by an authorized person to assist the birth or to follow the pregnancy, if they have been committed in the course of the medical act, complying with the specific provisions of his profession and have been made in the interest of the pregnant woman or fetus, as a result of the exercise of an inherent risk in the medical act” (Art. 202, Par. 6) [ 37 ].

The fact situation in Romania

During the period 1948–1955, called “the small baby boom” [ 39 ], Romania registered an average fertility rate of 3.23 children for a woman. Between 1955 and 1962, the fertility rate has been less than three children for a woman, and in 1962, fertility has reached an average of two children for a woman. This phenomenon occurred because of the Decree No. 463/1957 on liberalization of abortion. After the liberalization from 1957, the abortion rate has increased from 220 abortions per 100 born-alive children in the year 1960, to 400 abortions per 100 born-alive children, in the year 1965 [ 40 ].

The application of provisions of Decrees No. 770 of 1966 and No. 411 of 1985 has led to an increase of the birth rate in the first three years (an average of 3.7 children in 1967, and 3.6 children in 1968), followed by a regression until 1989, when it was recorded an average of 2.2 children, but also a maternal death rate caused by illegal abortions, raising up to 85 deaths of 100 000 births in the year of 1965, and 170 deaths in 1983. It was estimated that more than 80% of maternal deaths between 1980–1989 was caused by legal constraints [ 30 ].

After the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 and after the communism fall, with the abrogation of Articles 185–188 of the Criminal Code and of the Decree No. 770/1966, by the Decree of Law No. 1 of December 26 th , 1989, abortion has become legal in Romania and so, in the following years, it has reached the highest rate of abortion in Europe. Subsequently, the number of abortion has dropped gradually, with increasing use of birth control [ 41 ].

Statistical data issued by the Ministry of Health and by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) in Romania show corresponding figures to a legally carried out abortion. The abortion number is much higher, if it would take into account the number of illegal abortion, especially those carried out before 1989, and those carried out in private clinics, after the year 1990. Summing the declared abortions in the period 1958–2014, it is to be noted the number of them, 22 037 747 exceeds the current Romanian population. A detailed statistical research of abortion rate, in terms of years we have exposed in Table ​ Table1 1 .

The number of abortions declared in Romania in the period 1958–2016

Source: Pro Vita Association (Bucharest, Romania), National Institute of Statistics (INS – Romania), EUROSTAT [ 42 , 43 , 44 ]

Data issued by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in June 2016, for the period 1989–2014, in matters of reproductive behavior, indicates a fertility rate for Romania with a continuous decrease, in proportion to the decrease of the number of births, but also a lower number of abortion rate reported to 100 deliveries (Table ​ (Table2 2 ).

Reproductive behavior in Romania in 1989–2014

Source: United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Transformative Monitoring for Enhanced Equity (TransMonEE) Data. Country profiles: Romania, 1989–2015 [ 45 ].

By analyzing data issued for the period 1990–2015 by the International Organization of Health , UNICEF , United Nations Fund for Population Activity (UNFPA), The World Bank and the United Nations Population Division, it is noticed that maternal mortality rate has currently dropped as compared with 1990 (Table ​ (Table3 3 ).

Maternal mortality estimation in Romania in 1990–2015

Source: World Health Organization (WHO), Global Health Observatory Data. Maternal mortality country profiles: Romania, 2015 [ 46 ].

Opinion survey: women’s opinion on abortion

Argument for choosing the research theme

Although the problematic on abortion in Romania has been extensively investigated and debated, it has not been carried out in an ample sociological study, covering Romanian women’s perception on abortion. We have assumed making a study at national level, in order to identify the opinion on abortion, on the motivation to carry out an abortion, and to identify the correlation between religious convictions and the attitude toward abortion.

Examining the literature field of study

In the conceptual register of the research, we have highlighted items, such as the specialized literature, legislation, statistical documents.

Formulation of hypotheses and objectives

The first hypothesis was that Romanian women accept abortion, having an open attitude towards this act. Thus, the first objective of the research was to identify Romanian women’s attitude towards abortion.

The second hypothesis, from which we started, was that high religious beliefs generate a lower tolerance towards abortion. Thus, the second objective of our research has been to identify the correlation between the religious beliefs and the attitude towards abortion.

The third hypothesis of the survey was that, the main motivation in carrying out an abortion is the fact that a woman does not want a baby, and the main motivation for keeping the pregnancy is that the person wants a baby. In this context, the third objective of the research was to identify main motivation in carrying out an abortion and in maintaining a pregnancy.

Another hypothesis was that modern Romanian legislation on the abortion is considered fair. Based on this hypothesis, we have assumed the fourth objective, which is to identify the degree of satisfaction towards the current regulatory provisions governing the abortion.

Research methodology

The research method is that of a sociological survey by the application of the questionnaire technique. We used the sampling by age and residence looking at representative numbers of population from more developed as well as underdeveloped areas.

Determination of the sample to be studied

Because abortion is a typical women’s experience, we have chosen to make the quantitative research only among women. We have constructed the sample by selecting a number of 1260 women between the ages of 15 and 44 years (the most frequently encountered age among women who give birth to a child). We also used the quota sampling techniques, taking into account the following variables: age group and the residence (urban/rural), so that the persons included in the sample could retain characteristic of the general population.

By the sample of 1260 women, we have made a percentage of investigation of 0.03% of the total population.

The Questionnaires number applied was distributed as follows (Table ​ (Table4 4 ).

The sampling rates based on the age, and the region of residence

Source: Sample built, based on the population data issued by the National Institute of Statistics (INS – Romania) based on population census conducted in 2011 [ 47 ].

Data collection

Data collection was carried out by questionnaires administered by 32 field operators between May 1 st –May 31 st , 2018.

The analysis of the research results

In the next section, we will present the main results of the quantitative research carried out at national level.

Almost three-quarters of women included in the sample agree with carrying out an abortion in certain circumstances (70%) and only 24% have chosen to support the answer “ No, never ”. In modern contemporary society, abortion is the first solution of women for which a pregnancy is not desired. Even if advanced medical techniques are a lot safer, an abortion still carries a health risk. However, 6% of respondents agree with carrying out abortion regardless of circumstances (Table ​ (Table5 5 ).

Opinion on the possibility of carrying out an abortion

Although abortions carried out after 14 weeks are illegal, except for medical reasons, more than half of the surveyed women stated they would agree with abortion in certain circumstances. At the opposite pole, 31% have mentioned they would never agree on abortions after 14 weeks. Five percent were totally accepting the idea of abortion made to a pregnancy that has exceeded 14 weeks (Table ​ (Table6 6 ).

Opinion on the possibility of carrying out an abortion after the period of 14 weeks of pregnancy

For 53% of respondents, abortion is considered a crime as well as the right of a women. On the other hand, 28% of the women considered abortion as a crime and 16% associate abortion with a woman’s right (Table ​ (Table7 7 ).

Opinion on abortion: at the border between crime and a woman’s right

Opinions on what women abort at the time of the voluntary pregnancy interruption are split in two: 59% consider that it depends on the time of the abortion, and more specifically on the pregnancy development stage, 24% consider that regardless of the period in which it is carried out, women abort a child, and 14% have opted a fetus (Table ​ (Table8 8 ).

Abortion of a child vs. abortion of a fetus

Among respondents who consider that women abort a child or a fetus related to the time of abortion, 37.5% have considered that the difference between a baby and a fetus appears after 14 weeks of pregnancy (the period legally accepted for abortion). Thirty-three percent of them have mentioned that the distinction should be performed at the first few heartbeats; 18.1% think it is about when the child has all the features definitively outlined and can move by himself; 2.8% consider that the difference appears when the first encephalopathy traces are being felt and the child has formed all internal and external organs. A percentage of 1.7% of respondents consider that this difference occurs at the beginning of the central nervous system, and 1.4% when the unborn child has all the features that we can clearly see to a newborn child (Table ​ (Table9 9 ).

The opinion on the moment that makes the difference between a fetus and a child

We noticed that highly religious people make a clear association between abortion and crime. They also consider that at the time of pregnancy interruption it is aborted a child and not a fetus. However, unexpectedly, we noticed that 27% of the women, who declare themselves to be very religious, have also stated that they see abortion as a crime but also as a woman’s right. Thirty-one percent of the women, who also claimed profound religious beliefs, consider that abortion may be associated with the abortion of a child but also of a fetus, this depending on the time of abortion (Tables ​ (Tables10 10 and ​ and11 11 ).

The correlation between the level of religious beliefs and the perspective on abortion seen as a crime or a right

The correlation between the level of religious beliefs and the perspective on abortion procedure conducted on a fetus or a child

More than half of the respondents have opted for the main reason for abortion the appearance of medical problems to the child. Baby’s health represents the main concern of future mothers, and of each parent, and the birth of a child with serious health issues, is a factor which frightens any future parent, being many times, at least theoretically, one good reason for opting for abortion. At the opposite side, 12% of respondents would not choose abortion under any circumstances. Other reasons for which women would opt for an abortion are: if the woman would have a medical problem (22%) or would not want the child (10%) (Table ​ (Table12 12 ).

Potential reasons for carrying out an abortion

Most of the women want to give birth to a child, 56% of the respondents, representing also the reason that would determine them to keep the child. Morality (26%), faith (10%) or legal restrictions (4%), are the three other reasons for which women would not interrupt a pregnancy. Only 2% of the respondents have mentioned other reasons such as health or age.

A percentage of 23% of the surveyed people said that they have done an abortion so far, and 77% did not opted for a surgical intervention either because there was no need, or because they have kept the pregnancy (Table ​ (Table13 13 ).

Rate of abortion among women in the sample

Most respondents, 87% specified that they have carried out an abortion during the first 14 weeks – legally accepted limit for abortion: 43.6% have made abortion in the first four weeks, 39.1% between weeks 4–8, and 4.3% between weeks 8–14. It should be noted that 8.7% could not appreciate the pregnancy period in which they carried out abortion, by opting to answer with the option “ I don’t know ”, and a percentage of 4.3% refused to answer to this question.

Performing an abortion is based on many reasons, but the fact that the women have not wanted a child is the main reason mentioned by 47.8% of people surveyed, who have done minimum an abortion so far. Among the reasons for the interruption of pregnancy, it is also included: women with medical problems (13.3%), not the right time to be a mother (10.7%), age motivation (8.7%), due to medical problems of the child (4.3%), the lack of money (4.3%), family pressure (4.3%), partner/spouse did not wanted. A percentage of 3.3% of women had different reasons for abortion, as follows: age difference too large between children, career, marital status, etc. Asked later whether they regretted the abortion, a rate of 69.6% of women who said they had at least one abortion regret it (34.8% opted for “ Yes ”, and 34.8% said “ Yes, partially ”). 26.1% of surveyed women do not regret the choice to interrupted the pregnancy, and 4.3% chose to not answer this question. We noted that, for women who have already experienced abortion, the causes were more diverse than the grounds on which the previous question was asked: “What are the reasons that determined you to have an abortion?” (Table ​ (Table14 14 ).

The reasons that led the women in the sample to have an abortion

The majority of the respondents (37.5%) considered that “nervous depression” is the main consequence of abortion, followed by “insomnia and nightmares” (24.6%), “disorders in alimentation” and “affective disorders” (each for 7.7% of respondents), “deterioration of interpersonal relationships” and “the feeling of guilt”(for 6.3% of the respondents), “sexual disorders” and “panic attacks” (for 6.3% of the respondents) (Table ​ (Table15 15 ).

Opinion on the consequences of abortion

Over half of the respondents believe that abortion should be legal in certain circumstances, as currently provided by law, 39% say it should be always legal, and only 6% opted for the illegal option (Table ​ (Table16 16 ).

Opinion on the legal regulation of abortion

Although the current legislation does not punish pregnant women who interrupt pregnancy or intentionally injured their fetus, survey results indicate that 61% of women surveyed believe that the national law should punish the woman and only 28% agree with the current legislation (Table ​ (Table17 17 ).

Opinion on the possibility of punishing the woman who interrupts the course of pregnancy or injures the fetus

For the majority of the respondents (40.6%), the penalty provided by the current legislation, the imprisonment between six months and three years or a fine and deprivation of certain rights for the illegal abortion is considered fair, for a percentage of 39.6% the punishment is too small for 9.5% of the respondents is too high. Imprisonment between two and seven years and deprivation of certain rights for an abortion performed without the consent of the pregnant woman is considered too small for 65% of interviewees. Fourteen percent of them think it is fair and only 19% of respondents consider that Romanian legislation is too severe with people who commit such an act considering the punishment as too much. The imprisonment from three to 10 years and deprivation of certain rights for the facts described above, if an injury was caused to the woman, is considered to be too small for more than half of those included in the survey, 64% and almost 22% for nearly a quarter of them. Only 9% of the respondents mentioned that this legislative measure is too severe for such actions (Table ​ (Table18 18 ).

Opinion on the regulation of abortion of the Romanian Criminal Code (Art. 201)

Conclusions

After analyzing the results of the sociological research regarding abortion undertaken at national level, we see that 76% of the Romanian women accept abortion, indicating that the majority accepts only certain circumstances (a certain period after conception, for medical reasons, etc.). A percentage of 64% of the respondents indicated that they accept the idea of abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy (for solid reasons or regardless the reason). This study shows that over 50% of Romanian women see abortion as a right of women but also a woman’s crime and believe that in the moment of interruption of a pregnancy, a fetus is aborted. Mostly, the association of abortion with crime and with the idea that a child is aborted is frequently found within very religious people. The main motivation for Romanian women in taking the decision not to perform an abortion is that they would want the child, and the main reason to perform an abortion is the child’s medical problems. However, it is noted that, in real situations, in which women have already done at least one abortion, most women resort to abortion because they did not want the child towards the hypothetical situation in which women felt that the main reason of abortion is a medical problem. Regarding the satisfaction with the current national legislation of the abortion, the situation is rather surprising. A significant percentage (61%) of respondents felt as necessary to punish the woman who performs an illegal abortion, although the legislation does not provide a punishment. On the other hand, satisfaction level to the penalties provided by law for various violations of the legal conditions for conducting abortion is low, on average only 25.5% of respondents are being satisfied with these, the majority (average 56.2%) considering the penalties as unsatisfactory. Understood as a social phenomenon, intensified by human vulnerabilities, of which the most obvious is accepting the comfort [ 48 ], abortion today is no longer, in Romanian society, from a legal or religious perspective, a problem. Perceptions on the legislative sanction, moral and religious will perpetual vary depending on beliefs, environment, education, etc. The only and the biggest social problem of Romania is truly represented by the steadily falling birth rate.

Conflict of interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

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How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

It will probably be months before the Supreme Court decides, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , whether to overturn Roe v. Wade. But, in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights.

In a legal brief, Mississippi described a fantasy land, where “many (largely post-dating Roe ) laws protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment,” where the law guarantees parental leave, and where there is “support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers.” The brief continued, “Sweeping policy advances now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family.” In an interview with a local television station, the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, added, as a flourish, “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.” These would be wild claims under normal circumstances, but, in the midst of the pandemic, when child-care costs have been rising dramatically and when intermittent and impromptu school closures have forced nearly two million women out of the workforce, they are ludicrous.

According to the legal regime in Mississippi, the ability to give up one’s child for adoption cinches the final loophole in the logic of banning abortion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett added her own gloss on this claim through her questioning of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s lawyers, suggesting that safe-haven laws, which allow women to relinquish their infants, mean that “the obligations of motherhood” no longer “flow from pregnancy.” She continued, “It doesn’t seem to follow that pregnancy and then parenthood are all part of the same burden. And so it seems to me that the choice, more focussed, would be between, say, the ability to get an abortion at twenty-three weeks, or the state requiring the woman to go fifteen, sixteen weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion.”

The powerful men and women championing an end to abortion seek to recast an unwanted pregnancy as an inconvenience for “professional women.” But rich women have always had a bounty of choices when deciding to end a pregnancy and when deciding to have children. Fitch, who likes to use her own story as a single mother of three as evidence that women can have it all, was able to afford day care and a nanny. It should go without saying that these are not options for poor and working-class women, who without access to abortion will lose their right and ability to control their own destiny. In 2014, three-quarters of abortion patients qualified as low-income or poor, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That year, Black and brown patients accounted for more than half of abortions performed.

That Dobbs originates in Mississippi, the poorest state in the country, twists this fairy tale into a cruel joke. In Mississippi, nearly half of women-led households live in poverty, almost twice the national average; twelve per cent of women in the state lack health insurance, compared with eight per cent nationally. Barrett’s blithe suggestion that pregnant women simply “go fifteen, sixteen weeks more” ignores, among many burdens, that pregnant women in Mississippi die at higher rates than their peers in most states, including Louisiana and Georgia. And because this case is no longer just about Mississippi, it also ignores the fact that Black women are three to four times more at risk of dying in childbirth than white women.

For poor and working-class women, a disproportionate number of whom are Black and brown, overturning Roe won’t mean that abortions will end. It will mean that safe and sound abortions in health-care facilities will move further out of reach. This dilemma has been a permanent feature of the modern movement for abortion rights. One study found that eighty per cent of deaths caused by septic abortions in New York City in the nineteen-sixties involved Black and Puerto Rican women. In Georgia, between 1965 and 1967, the Black maternal death rate was fourteen times that of white women. During this period, nurses reported that “sticks, rocks, chopsticks, rubber or plastic tubes, gauze or cotton packing, ballpoint pens, coat hangers, or knitting needles” were administered to terminate pregnancies. For these women, access to abortion was not abstract—it was a matter of life and death.

If the Roe decision had simply affirmed that access to abortion was elemental to the social equality of women, it would have become something closer to an incontrovertible right. Instead, the Justices explicitly disagreed with the appellant’s claim that “the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses.” The twenty-one-page decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, considers when life begins, the potential harm experienced by unwanted children, and the right to privacy between a physician and a patient, but there is nothing about the equality of women and the ways that forced pregnancy impairs its actualization.

Within a few years, new legislation began to restrict poor and working-class women’s right to an abortion. The passage of the Hyde Amendment, in 1976, eliminated Medicaid funding of abortion except in cases in which the mother’s life is at risk. The impact was immediate. The number of abortions financed by Medicaid dropped from three hundred thousand a year to a few thousand.

In Roe, the Supreme Court claimed to want to make a dispassionate decision, one not influenced by the larger debates concerning abortion. “Population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem,” Blackmun wrote. In this way, the Court’s decision reflected the narrowness of the mainstream women’s movement, which viewed abortion as the singular way to measure women’s right to control their reproductive lives. In both cases, the broad range of factors constraining women’s equality was ignored, because doing otherwise would open larger and more complicated issues involving pay, family structure, social provision, and a more capacious consideration of reproductive rights. It would also require accounting for the ways that women’s equality had different meanings for women who were not white or middle class. Black, Puerto Rican, and Chicana women had different constraints and burdens in their daily lives that meant they would have different approaches to achieving liberation.

When the National Organization for Women formed, in 1966, it patterned its mission after the civil-rights strategy of changing the legal framework of discrimination. Yet even as NOW demanded a dramatic expansion of rights for women, it largely overlooked the concerns of poor and working-class women of color. This was made plain in 1969, when NOW ’s president, Betty Friedan , gave an address at a conference that marked the formation of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. She said, “As the Negro was the invisible man, so women are the invisible people in America today: we must now become visible women who have a share in the decisions of the mainstream of government, of politics, of the church—who don’t just cook the church supper but preach the sermon; who don’t just look up the Zip Code and address the envelopes but make the political decisions; who don’t just do the housework of industry but make some of the executive decisions. Women, above all, who say what their own lives and personalities are going to be, and no longer listen to or even permit male experts to define what ‘feminine’ is or isn’t.” These were certainly examples and sites of sexism, but Friedan ignored the possibility that “woman” was not a universal category as she prioritized the problems of white and middle-class women as the most urgent. And if there was any confusion over whom she was addressing, Friedan went on to explain that NOW ’s purpose was to “break out of the confines of that sterile little suburban family to relate to each other in terms of all of the possible dimensions of our personalities.”

The chasm between middle-class white women’s demands and aspirations and those of poor and working-class women of color began to be addressed by the emergence of Black feminists in the late sixties. These women, who included Toni Cade Bambara, Frances Beal, Alice Walker, and Barbara Smith, argued that real equality could be achieved only by expanding the parameters of what constituted “reproductive justice” to include the entire context within which decisions about having or not having children were made. Organizations like NOW mobilized predominately white women to fight for abortion rights, but they often ignored or minimized the glaring issue of coerced or forced sterilizations, which was critical to women of color. According to a national study conducted by Princeton University in 1970, twenty-one per cent of married Black women had been sterilized. As the legal scholar Dorothy Roberts has observed, “The dominant women’s movement has focussed myopically on abortion rights at the expense of other aspects of reproductive freedom, including the right to bear children, and has misunderstood criticism of coercive birth-control policies.”

For Black feminists, many of whom had become radicalized through their involvement in the civil-rights movement, the persistent racism and sexism that they experienced compelled them to question the totality of American society, not just their place in it. In 1969, Beal penned one of the pioneering documents of Black feminism, a pamphlet titled “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Beal wrote, “it is idle dreaming to think of black women simply caring for their homes and children like the middle-class white model. Most black women have to work to help house, feed, and clothe their families. Black women make up a substantial percentage of the black working force and this is true for the poorest black family as well as the so-called ‘middle-class’ family.” This double burden, Beal continued, was ignored by many Black men, who may have seen the “System for what it really is” when it came to their own subjugation but, when it came to women, seemed to be reading “from the pages of the Ladies Home Journal .” This inattention compelled Black women to organize their own groups, set their own agendas, and develop their own strategies—what the Combahee River Collective would later describe as “identity politics.”

By the time Beal wrote “Double Jeopardy,” she and several other Black women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC ) were leaving the group because of increasingly divergent ideas about the role of women in the Black movement. Among Black men in the movement, there was a pervasive belief that Black women should follow the men’s political lead. As Beal wrote, “To assign women the role of housekeeper and mother while men go forth into battle is a highly questionable doctrine for a revolutionary to maintain. Each individual must develop a high political consciousness in order to understand how this System enslaves us all and what actions we must take to bring about its total destruction. Those who consider themselves to be revolutionary must begin to deal with other revolutionaries as equals. And, so far as I know, revolutionaries are not determined by sex.”

This was more than a debate over the women in radical politics. Beal and her women comrades were chafing against the influence of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on the state of the Black family, which included a thesis that the emasculation of Black men led them to retreat from their natural role as patriarchs, causing Black women to take leadership of their families. In his view, this gender confusion led to the collapse of Black family life, spawning criminality among men and producing unruly children. Moynihan wrote, “At the center of the tangle of pathology is the weakness of the family structure. Once or twice removed, it will be found to be the principal source of most of the aberrant, inadequate, or antisocial behavior that did not establish, but now serves to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and deprivation.”

Moynihan was criticized for essentially blaming Black women for the poverty and hardship that shaped the lives of their families. In a speech a year after the report was published, the SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael said, “To set the record straight, the reason we are in the bag we are in isn’t because of my mama, it’s because of what they did to my mama. . . . We have to put the blame where it belongs.” But, for many other Black men, Moynihan provided a framework in which they could understand their marginalization and attempt to repair the damage—by reasserting their rightful positions as patriarchs. Assuming this role meant denouncing birth control and abortion as tools of genocide that compromised the future and freedom of Black families. In 1971, the comedian and activist Dick Gregory wrote a cover story for Ebony that began, “My answer to genocide, quite simply, is eight kids—and another baby on the way.” Gregory, who never quotes his wife in the article or even mentions her name, goes on to claim that birth control and abortion both had been designed to “limit the black population,” describing them casually as methods of genocide. Speaking to the U.S. Commission on Population Control, in 1971, the Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “Virtually all the security we have is in the number of children we produce.”

For Beal, a single mother of two children, and other Black feminists, reproductive freedom, including access to birth control and abortion and the right to have children on their terms, was the most basic element of self-determination in a society where their choices were heavily circumscribed by racism, gender, and class position. As a result, Black women activists not only took up the immediate questions concerning reproduction but they also raised issues about child care, employment, welfare, and the other material necessities that could help women take care of their children and choose to bring them into the world. By focussing on the plight of poor women, they made it easier to see that the struggle for abortion and reproductive freedom was about equality, not just privacy or even “choice.” Their insights into the ways that poverty and other forms of oppression limited their life chances compelled them to demand reproductive justice—which also involved the right to raise children in healthy environments where their and their parents’ basic needs could be met. It is a standard that certainly was not achieved with Roe, but is needed now more than ever.

More on Abortion and Roe v. Wade

In the post-Roe era, letting pregnant patients get sicker— by design .

The study that debunks most anti-abortion arguments .

Of course the Constitution has nothing to say about abortion .

How the real Jane Roe shaped the abortion wars.

Recent data suggest that taking abortion pills at home is as safe as going to a clinic. 

When abortion is criminalized, women make desperate choices .

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2. Social and moral considerations on abortion

Table of contents.

• Abortion at various stages of pregnancy 
• Abortion and circumstances of pregnancy 
• Parental notification for minors seeking abortion
• Penalties for abortions performed illegally 
• Public views of what would change the number of abortions in the U.S.
• A majority of Americans say women should have more say in setting abortion policy in the U.S.
• How do certain arguments about abortion resonate with Americans?
• In their own words: How Americans feel about abortion 
• Personal connections to abortion 
• Religion’s impact on views about abortion
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms: Overall, just 7% of all U.S. adults say abortion is morally acceptable in all cases, and 13% say it is morally wrong in all cases. A third say that abortion is morally wrong in  most  cases, while about a quarter (24%) say it is morally acceptable most of the time. About an additional one-in-five do not consider abortion a moral issue.

There are wide differences on this question by political party and religious affiliation. Among Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party, most say that abortion is morally wrong either in most (48%) or all cases (20%). Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, meanwhile, only about three-in-ten (29%) hold a similar view. About four-in-ten Democrats say abortion is morally  acceptable  in most (32%) or all (11%) cases, while an additional 28% say abortion is not a moral issue. 

White evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly say abortion is morally wrong in most (51%) or all cases (30%). A slim majority of Catholics (53%) also view abortion as morally wrong, but many also say it is morally acceptable in most (24%) or all cases (4%), or that it is not a moral issue (17%). And among religiously unaffiliated Americans, about three-quarters see abortion as morally acceptable (45%) or not a moral issue (32%).

There is strong alignment between people’s views of whether abortion is morally wrong and whether it should be illegal. For example, among U.S. adults who take the view that abortion should be illegal in all cases without exception, fully 86% also say abortion is always morally wrong. The prevailing view among adults who say abortion should be legal in all circumstances is that abortion is not a moral issue (44%), though notable shares of this group also say it is morally acceptable in all (27%) or most (22%) cases. 

Most Americans who say abortion should be illegal with some exceptions take the view that abortion is morally wrong in  most  cases (69%). Those who say abortion should be legal with some exceptions are somewhat more conflicted, with 43% deeming abortion morally acceptable in most cases and 26% saying it is morally wrong in most cases; an additional 24% say it is not a moral issue. 

The survey also asked respondents who said abortion is morally wrong in at least some cases whether there are situations where abortion should still be legal  despite  being morally wrong. Roughly half of U.S. adults (48%) say that there are, in fact, situations where abortion is morally wrong but should still be legal, while just 22% say that whenever abortion is morally wrong, it should also be illegal. An additional 28% either said abortion is morally acceptable in all cases or not a moral issue, and thus did not receive the follow-up question.

Across both political parties and all major Christian subgroups – including Republicans and White evangelicals – there are substantially more people who say that there are situations where abortion should still be  legal  despite being morally wrong than there are who say that abortion should always be  illegal  when it is morally wrong.

Asked about the impact a number of policy changes would have on the number of abortions in the U.S., nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say “more support for women during pregnancy, such as financial assistance or employment protections” would reduce the number of abortions in the U.S. Six-in-ten say the same about expanding sex education and similar shares say more support for parents (58%), making it easier to place children for adoption in good homes (57%) and passing stricter abortion laws (57%) would have this effect. 

While about three-quarters of White evangelical Protestants (74%) say passing stricter abortion laws would reduce the number of abortions in the U.S., about half of religiously unaffiliated Americans (48%) hold this view. Similarly, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say this (67% vs. 49%, respectively). By contrast, while about seven-in-ten unaffiliated adults (69%) say expanding sex education would reduce the number of abortions in the U.S., only about half of White evangelicals (48%) say this. Democrats also are substantially more likely than Republicans to hold this view (70% vs. 50%). 

Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans to say support for parents – such as paid family leave or more child care options – would reduce the number of abortions in the country (64% vs. 53%, respectively), while Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say making adoption into good homes easier would reduce abortions (64% vs. 52%).

Majorities across both parties and other subgroups analyzed in this report say that more support for women during pregnancy would reduce the number of abortions in America.

More than half of U.S. adults (56%) say women should have more say than men when it comes to setting policies around abortion in this country – including 42% who say women should have “a lot” more say. About four-in-ten (39%) say men and women should have equal say in abortion policies, and 3% say men should have more say than women. 

Six-in-ten women and about half of men (51%) say that women should have more say on this policy issue. 

Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say women should have more say than men in setting abortion policy (70% vs. 41%). Similar shares of Protestants (48%) and Catholics (51%) say women should have more say than men on this issue, while the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans who say this is much higher (70%).

Seeking to gauge Americans’ reactions to several common arguments related to abortion, the survey presented respondents with six statements and asked them to rate how well each statement reflects their views on a five-point scale ranging from “extremely well” to “not at all well.” 

The list included three statements sometimes cited by individuals wishing to protect a right to abortion: “The decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman,” “If legal abortions are too hard to get, then women will seek out unsafe abortions from unlicensed providers,” and “If legal abortions are too hard to get, then it will be more difficult for women to get ahead in society.” The first two of these resonate with the greatest number of Americans, with about half (53%) saying each describes their views “extremely” or “very” well. In other words, among the statements presented in the survey, U.S. adults are most likely to say that women alone should decide whether to have an abortion, and that making abortion illegal will lead women into unsafe situations.

The three other statements are similar to arguments sometimes made by those who wish to restrict access to abortions: “Human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights,” “If legal abortions are too easy to get, then people won’t be as careful with sex and contraception,” and “If legal abortions are too easy to get, then some pregnant women will be pressured into having an abortion even when they don’t want to.” 

Fewer than half of Americans say each of these statements describes their views extremely or very well. Nearly four-in-ten endorse the notion that “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” (26% say this describes their views extremely well, 12% very well), while about a third say that “if legal abortions are too easy to get, then people won’t be as careful with sex and contraception” (20% extremely well, 15% very well).

When it comes to statements cited by proponents of abortion rights, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to identify with all three of these statements, as are religiously unaffiliated Americans compared with Catholics and Protestants. Women also are more likely than men to express these views – and especially more likely to say that decisions about abortion should fall solely to pregnant women and that restrictions on abortion will put women in unsafe situations. Younger adults under 30 are particularly likely to express the view that if legal abortions are too hard to get, then it will be difficult for women to get ahead in society.

In the case of the three statements sometimes cited by opponents of abortion, the patterns generally go in the opposite direction. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say each statement reflects their views “extremely” or “very” well, as are Protestants (especially White evangelical Protestants) and Catholics compared with the religiously unaffiliated. In addition, older Americans are more likely than young adults to say that human life begins at conception and that easy access to abortion encourages unsafe sex.

Gender differences on these questions, however, are muted. In fact, women are just as likely as men to say that human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights (39% and 38%, respectively).

Analyzing certain statements together allows for an examination of the extent to which individuals can simultaneously hold two views that may seem to some as in conflict. For instance, overall, one-in-three U.S. adults say that  both  the statement “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman” and the statement “human life begins at conception, so the fetus is a person with rights” reflect their own views at least somewhat well. This includes 12% of adults who say both statements reflect their views “extremely” or “very” well. 

Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say both statements reflect their own views at least somewhat well (36% vs. 30%), although Republicans are much more likely to say  only  the statement about the fetus being a person with rights reflects their views at least somewhat well (39% vs. 9%) and Democrats are much more likely to say  only  the statement about the decision to have an abortion belonging solely to the pregnant woman reflects their views at least somewhat well (55% vs. 19%).

Additionally, those who take the stance that abortion should be legal in all cases with no exceptions are overwhelmingly likely (76%) to say only the statement about the decision belonging solely to the pregnant woman reflects their views extremely, very or somewhat well, while a nearly identical share (73%) of those who say abortion should be  illegal  in all cases with no exceptions say only the statement about human life beginning at conception reflects their views at least somewhat well.

When asked to describe whether they had any other additional views or feelings about abortion, adults shared a range of strong or complex views about the topic. In many cases, Americans reiterated their strong support – or opposition to – abortion in the U.S. Others reflected on how difficult or nuanced the issue was, offering emotional responses or personal experiences to one of two open-ended questions asked on the survey. 

One open-ended question asked respondents if they wanted to share any other views or feelings about abortion overall. The other open-ended question asked respondents about their feelings or views regarding abortion restrictions. The responses to both questions were similar. 

Overall, about three-in-ten adults offered a response to either of the open-ended questions. There was little difference in the likelihood to respond by party, religion or gender, though people who say they have given a “lot” of thought to the issue were more likely to respond than people who have not. 

Of those who did offer additional comments, about a third of respondents said something in support of legal abortion. By far the most common sentiment expressed was that the decision to have an abortion should be solely a personal decision, or a decision made jointly with a woman and her health care provider, with some saying simply that it “should be between a woman and her doctor.” Others made a more general point, such as one woman who said, “A woman’s body and health should not be subject to legislation.” 

About one-in-five of the people who responded to the question expressed disapproval of abortion – the most common reason being a belief that a fetus is a person or that abortion is murder. As one woman said, “It is my belief that life begins at conception and as much as is humanly possible, we as a society need to support, protect and defend each one of those little lives.” Others in this group pointed to the fact that they felt abortion was too often used as a form of birth control. For example, one man said, “Abortions are too easy to obtain these days. It seems more women are using it as a way of birth control.” 

About a quarter of respondents who opted to answer one of the open-ended questions said that their views about abortion were complex; many described having mixed feelings about the issue or otherwise expressed sympathy for both sides of the issue. One woman said, “I am personally opposed to abortion in most cases, but I think it would be detrimental to society to make it illegal. I was alive before the pill and before legal abortions. Many women died.” And one man said, “While I might feel abortion may be wrong in some cases, it is never my place as a man to tell a woman what to do with her body.” 

The remaining responses were either not related to the topic or were difficult to interpret.

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abortion summary

Learn about the causes and effects of an abortion procedure in the u.s., europe, and the world.

abortion , Expulsion of a fetus from the uterus before it can survive on its own. Spontaneous abortion at earlier stages of pregnancy is called miscarriage. Induced abortions often occur through intentional medical intervention and are performed to preserve the woman’s life or health, to prevent the completion of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, to prevent the birth of a child with serious medical problems, or because the woman does not believe she is in a position to rear a child properly. The drug RU-486, if taken within a few weeks of conception, will trigger a miscarriage. Up to about 19 weeks of pregnancy, injections of saline solutions or hormones may be used to stimulate uterine contractions that will expel the fetus. Surgical removal of the contents of the uterus may be performed in the second trimester or later. Intact dilation and extraction procedures may occur in the third trimester; sometimes critically referred to as “partial-birth abortions,” they have been very controversial. Other abortion procedures include manual vacuum aspiration (extraction by manual syringe) and dilation and suction curettage (extraction by machine-operated suction), both of which can be performed in early pregnancy. The social acceptability of abortion as a means of population control has varied from time to time and place to place throughout history. It was apparently a common method of family limitation in the Greco-Roman world, but Christian theologians early and vehemently condemned it. It became widely accepted in Europe in the Middle Ages. Severe criminal sanctions to deter abortion became common in the 19th century, but in the 20th century those sanctions were gradually modified in many countries. In the U.S. the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had the effect of legalizing abortion during the first three months of pregnancy; states were able to implement restrictions on access to abortion after the first trimester, though within constraints set by the courts. Since that decision, there has been a fierce debate between supporters and opponents of a liberalized abortion policy.

There’s a Better Way to Debate Abortion

Caution and epistemic humility can guide our approach.

If Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization becomes law, we will enter a post– Roe v. Wade world in which the laws governing abortion will be legislatively decided in 50 states.

In the short term, at least, the abortion debate will become even more inflamed than it has been. Overturning Roe , after all, would be a profound change not just in the law but in many people’s lives, shattering the assumption of millions of Americans that they have a constitutional right to an abortion.

This doesn’t mean Roe was correct. For the reasons Alito lays out, I believe that Roe was a terribly misguided decision, and that a wiser course would have been for the issue of abortion to have been given a democratic outlet, allowing even the losers “the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight,” in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, for nearly half a century, Roe has been the law of the land. But even those who would welcome its undoing should acknowledge that its reversal could convulse the nation.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

If we are going to debate abortion in every state, given how fractured and angry America is today, we need caution and epistemic humility to guide our approach.

We can start by acknowledging the inescapable ambiguities in this staggeringly complicated moral question. No matter one’s position on abortion, each of us should recognize that those who hold views different from our own have some valid points, and that the positions we embrace raise complicated issues. That realization alone should lead us to engage in this debate with a little more tolerance and a bit less certitude.

Many of those on the pro-life side exhibit a gap between the rhetoric they employ and the conclusions they actually seem to draw. In the 1990s, I had an exchange, via fax, with a pro-life thinker. During our dialogue, I pressed him on what he believed, morally speaking , should be the legal penalty for a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs one.

My point was a simple one: If he believed, as he claimed, that an abortion even moments after conception is the killing of an innocent child—that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being deserving of all the moral and political rights granted to your neighbor next door—then the act ought to be treated, if not as murder, at least as manslaughter. Surely, given what my interlocutor considered to be the gravity of the offense, fining the doctor and taking no action against the mother would be morally incongruent. He was understandably uncomfortable with this line of questioning, unwilling to go to the places his premises led. When it comes to abortion, few people are.

Humane pro-life advocates respond that while an abortion is the taking of a human life, the woman having the abortion has been misled by our degraded culture into denying the humanity of the child. She is a victim of misinformation; she can’t be held accountable for what she doesn’t know. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument, but I think it ultimately falls short. In other contexts, insisting that people who committed atrocities because they truly believed the people against whom they were committing atrocities were less than human should be let off the hook doesn’t carry the day. I’m struggling to understand why it would in this context.

There are other complicating matters. For example, about half of all fertilized eggs are aborted spontaneously —that is, result in miscarriage—usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Focus on the Family, an influential Christian ministry, is emphatic : “Human life begins at fertilization.” Does this mean that when a fertilized egg is spontaneously aborted, it is comparable—biologically, morally, ethically, or in any other way—to when a 2-year-old child dies? If not, why not? There’s also the matter of those who are pro-life and contend that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being but allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. That is an understandable impulse but I don’t think it’s a logically sustainable one.

The pro-choice side, for its part, seldom focuses on late-term abortions. Let’s grant that late-term abortions are very rare. But the question remains: Is there any point during gestation when pro-choice advocates would say “slow down” or “stop”—and if so, on what grounds? Or do they believe, in principle, that aborting a child up to the point of delivery is a defensible and justifiable act; that an abortion procedure is, ethically speaking, the same as removing an appendix? If not, are those who are pro-choice willing to say, as do most Americans, that the procedure gets more ethically problematic the further along in a pregnancy?

Read: When a right becomes a privilege

Plenty of people who consider themselves pro-choice have over the years put on their refrigerator door sonograms of the baby they are expecting. That tells us something. So does biology. The human embryo is a human organism, with the genetic makeup of a human being. “The argument, in which thoughtful people differ, is about the moral significance and hence the proper legal status of life in its early stages,” as the columnist George Will put it.

These are not “gotcha questions”; they are ones I have struggled with for as long as I’ve thought through where I stand on abortion, and I’ve tried to remain open to corrections in my thinking. I’m not comfortable with those who are unwilling to grant any concessions to the other side or acknowledge difficulties inherent in their own position. But I’m not comfortable with my own position, either—thinking about abortion taking place on a continuum, and troubled by abortions, particularly later in pregnancy, as the child develops.

The question I can’t answer is where the moral inflection point is, when the fetus starts to have claims of its own, including the right to life. Does it depend on fetal development? If so, what aspect of fetal development? Brain waves? Feeling pain? Dreaming? The development of the spine? Viability outside the womb? Something else? Any line I might draw seems to me entirely arbitrary and capricious.

Because of that, I consider myself pro-life, but with caveats. My inability to identify a clear demarcation point—when a fetus becomes a person—argues for erring on the side of protecting the unborn. But it’s a prudential judgment, hardly a certain one.

At the same time, even if one believes that the moral needle ought to lean in the direction of protecting the unborn from abortion, that doesn’t mean one should be indifferent to the enormous burden on the woman who is carrying the child and seeks an abortion, including women who discover that their unborn child has severe birth defects. Nor does it mean that all of us who are disturbed by abortion believe it is the equivalent of killing a child after birth. In this respect, my view is similar to that of some Jewish authorities , who hold that until delivery, a fetus is considered a part of the mother’s body, although it does possess certain characteristics of a person and has value. But an early-term abortion is not equivalent to killing a young child. (Many of those who hold this position base their views in part on Exodus 21, in which a miscarriage that results from men fighting and pushing a pregnant woman is punished by a fine, but the person responsible for the miscarriage is not tried for murder.)

“There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?”

That strikes me as right; with abortion, we’re dealing with an awesome mystery and insoluble empirical questions. Which means that rather than hurling invective at one another and caricaturing those with whom we disagree, we should try to understand their views, acknowledge our limitations, and even show a touch of grace and empathy. In this nation, riven and pulsating with hate, that’s not the direction the debate is most likely to take. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying.

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Definition of abortion

• abandonment
• calling off
• cancellation
• cancelation

Examples of abortion in a Sentence

Word history.

borrowed from Latin abortiōn-, abortiō , from aborīrī "to miscarry, abort entry 1 " + -tiōn-, tiō , suffix of action nouns

circa 1537, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing abortion

• abortion pill
• contagious abortion
• partial - birth abortion

Articles Related to abortion

Word of the Year 2022

Our Word of the Year 'gaslighting,' plus 8 more

Dictionary Entries Near abortion

abortionist

Cite this Entry

“Abortion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion. Accessed 5 Jul. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of abortion, medical definition, medical definition of abortion, legal definition, legal definition of abortion, more from merriam-webster on abortion.

Nglish: Translation of abortion for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of abortion for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about abortion

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Biden’s Most Important Misstep Was One of Substance

The way that he struggled to answer questions about abortion was telling—and revealed the problems of the whole debate in a nutshell..

The Thursday evening debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was one of the most painful two hours of television in living memory. It was so bad, especially for the sitting president, that an idea that was largely marginal as late as last week is now coming into the mainstream: Maybe the Democratic Party needs to replace Joe Biden on the 2024 ticket .

Whether Biden would actually agree to step aside, especially this late in the game, is a separate question; so is the wisdom of such a plan, which would be hugely disruptive and almost certainly result in mass Democratic infighting. But whatever happens in public, this debate was a pivotal moment, almost surely, for Biden and his campaign, in private. He is, by nearly all accounts, a thoroughly honest, decent person who, like any politician, doesn’t always make the right policy calls but moves through the world with empathy and treats those around him with kindness. One has to imagine that he walked off that debate stage devastated and disappointed in himself—or perhaps, that will be his reaction in the coming days.

The debate was so catastrophic that it’s hard to pinpoint one worst moment, but Biden’s answer on abortion rights—which should have been an easy win for him, given that it’s one issue where Democrats have a huge advantage—may have been his most egregious. Trump told a series of outright lies, including that the Supreme Court “approved the abortion pill” (it did not), that “the country is now coming together on this issue” (it is not, except insofar that it’s coming together in favor of abortion rights), and that Democrats support abortion not only up until the moment of birth, but afterward (they do not, and “abortion” after the moment of birth is already a crime called “murder”). Biden should have been able to efficiently knock those lies down, and then turn the terms of the debate back to where they actually sit: Republican-run states passing hugely unpopular abortion bans that have left pregnant women bleeding out and losing internal organs; Republicans trying to block voters from actually deciding for themselves whether abortions should be legal in their states; Republicans in Congress refusing to protect contraception or IVF when given the chance to vote on both; and Republicans pledging to pass a national abortion ban, which they are confident President Donald Trump will sign if he gets back into office.

Americans are incredibly receptive to the argument that abortion rights are about personal freedoms, and that abortion bans have disastrous consequences. But Biden was unable to articulate any of that. He gave a rambling answer about supporting Roe v. Wade ’s three-trimester framework, which he then failed to actually articulate. His long-standing allergy to saying the word abortion tripped him up; as the already-digressive president tried to steer himself away from the A-word, he wound up not saying much at all. He also repeatedly emphasized that abortion should be a doctor’s decision, a stunningly condescending and patriarchal argument about an issue that almost entirely affects women, in a moment when it’s female voters who are largely driving pro-choice support to Biden’s campaign. And later, he bizarrely brought up the issue of undocumented immigrants murdering young women, something Trump has used again and again in his campaign to paint the Biden presidency as dangerously soft on the border—turning a question that should have been an easy victory into an opening for his opponent to rant about his favorite pet issue.

Biden’s struggles to answer the abortion questions were, in many ways, part of his struggles to answer many different questions throughout the evening: the result of inarticulateness that may be from being ill, or being tired, or age-related physical or even cognitive decline. But his struggles to answer the abortion question also seemed to reflect a general disengagement on the issue, and a genuine lack of knowledge. When Biden answered questions about foreign policy, for example, his responses were not exactly eloquent, but their lack of coherence stemmed from the fact that he seemed to be stringing a series of deep-in-the-weeds factual observations together, interrupting each thought partway through to add a new one; it was too much all mashed together, a sign that a lot of information on these issues is living in his brain, but he delivered it extremely poorly. On abortion, he just didn’t really seem to know his stuff—which made him unable to smack down Trump’s most egregious lies.

Biden has been a very good president. But he has never been particularly good on abortion rights. He is a pretty bad campaigner and has gotten much worse this time around. He has a tough race against Trump, and abortion rights are uniquely helpful to Democrats at a moment when voters are angry about immigration, the economy, and a host of other issues. That Biden bungled even his party’s strongest issue should be a moment of reckoning—not just for his supporters, of which I am one, but for the man himself.

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• What to make of the US Supreme Court’s latest abortion ruling

The justices’ rulings sometimes seem deliberately hard to follow

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Editor’s update: On June 27th the Supreme Court released its ruling in  Moyle v United States . The published opinions match those in the document that was briefly posted in error on the court’s website the day before.

T HE SUPREME COURT loves to keep America guessing. The justices say which days they “may announce opinions” but offer no whisper of which rulings are coming on a given day. On June 26th the court managed to raise the intrigue to new heights. After just two of a dozen pending decisions were released, Moyle v United States fleetingly appeared on the Supreme Court’s website.

The document vanished as unceremoniously as it arrived, but not before Bloomberg News grabbed a copy. Moyle addresses a stand-off between the Idaho Defence of Life Act—which bans abortion unless the fetus is conceived through rape or incest, or if the woman’s life is at stake—and then only in the first trimester—and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labour Act ( EMTALA ), a law requiring hospitals that receive federal funding to provide “stabilising treatment”. The Biden administration says that includes abortion when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health.

The court seemed split in the April 24th hearing. The inadvertently posted document reveals rifts, too. But it suggests that women in Idaho facing pregnancy-related health emergencies—including possible loss of reproductive organs—may soon have access to abortion. An amicus brief filed by the National Women’s Law Center stated that there are about 70 documented cases of pregnant women almost dying when they were denied care following state abortion bans enacted after the court overturned Roe v Wade .

The apparent ruling’s method for averting the madness is curious. Five justices appear set to dismiss the case as “improvidently granted”, leaving in place a lower court’s injunction curtailing the full force of Idaho’s ban. This off-ramp is ordinarily a sign that after oral argument, a majority concludes the case never should have been taken up in the first place.

Three conservatives (Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the chief, John Roberts) say both Idaho and the federal government have offered shifting arguments. Since “the parties’ positions are still evolving”, Justice Barrett wrote, it would be best to let the proceedings “run their course in the courts below”. Meanwhile, the two liberal justices agreed, but emphasised that the federal law trumps Idaho’s ban.

The document includes a dissent by Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and, in part, by Justice Neil Gorsuch) that calls this analysis “plainly unsound”. EMTALA , Justice Alito writes, “does not require hospitals to perform abortions” at all. There is no need to dismiss the case; his colleagues have “simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicised question that the case presents”.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson rejects many of Justice Alito’s premises but agrees that dismissing the case is the wrong path. The same problem plagues women in Texas, where a court order allows the state to “flout” EMTALA . Moyle may afford Idahoans “a few months…during which doctors may no longer need to airlift pregnant patients out of Idaho”. But the court “had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation”, she wrote, “and we have squandered it.” ■

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “SCOTUS snafu”

United States June 29th 2024

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From the June 29th 2024 edition

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Supreme Court acknowledges accidentally posting Idaho abortion case document that may preview narrow Biden admin win

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court acknowledged Wednesday that it inadvertently posted online a document related to a pending abortion case, which Bloomberg Law obtained before it was removed from the website.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe confirmed that a document was “inadvertently and briefly uploaded” to the court website but added that the ruling “has not been released.”

Bloomberg also posted a copy of the document . NBC News could not independently verify the document. It is not known whether it was a draft decision, the actual decision or neither.

The court appears set to allow emergency room doctors in Idaho to perform abortions in certain situations, according to a copy of the decision, Bloomberg reported . The court is likely to dismiss the appeal brought by Idaho officials, Bloomberg said.

In doing so the court would allow a lower court ruling in favor of the Biden administration to go back into effect.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion joined by two other conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, saying the court should not have dismissed the case.

The Supreme Court in January blocked the lower court ruling and allowed Idaho to enforce its abortion law in full while agreeing to hear oral arguments. Other provisions of the ban are already in effect and would not be affected by the ruling.

The case concerns whether a federal law that regulates emergency room treatment overrides Idaho's strict abortion ban. If the court dismisses the appeal, it would leave the legal question unresolved.

According to the document posted by Bloomberg, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say the court should have gone ahead and decided the bigger issue, which is likely to come up in another case in due course and would have an impact on other states with abortion restrictions similar to Idaho’s.

"Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote, according to the document. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires."

In a separate opinion, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett explained why she would vote to dismiss the case, saying the court had made a "miscalculation" in taking it up before an appeals court had a chance to weigh in. Part of the confusion was caused by both sides’ altering their legal arguments once the case got to the high court, she added.

Idaho’s law says anyone who performs an abortion is subject to criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison. Health care professionals found to have violated the law can lose their professional licenses.

The federal government sued, leading a federal judge in August 2022 to block the state from enforcing provisions concerning medical care that is required under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

The 1986 law mandates that patients receive appropriate emergency room care. The Biden administration argued that care should include abortions in certain situations when a woman’s health is imperiled even if death is not imminent.

The Supreme Court is due to issue rulings Thursday and Friday as it reaches the end of its current term. The abortion case is one of 12 argued cases yet to be decided.

Lawrence Hurley covers the Supreme Court for NBC News.

During debate, Trump and Biden make clear where they stand on abortion

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Abortion took center stage during Thursday’s debate between President Biden and former President Trump.

CNN anchor Dana Bash opened the conversation by asking Trump whether he’d block abortion medication.

“The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it,” Trump responded, referring to the recent Supreme Court decision that dismissed a conservative Christian group’s claim that the abortion medication used by more than 5 million American women is unsafe and should be withdrawn from the market.

Trump then pivoted to something he touts in his usual campaign speech — that he put three justices on the Supreme Court, which ultimately overturned Roe vs. Wade.

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The Dobbs case in 2022 returned decision-making power on the issue of abortion to the states, where a patchwork of laws has played out in the last two years. Now, women have access to abortion care in places such as California but not in states such as Texas. At least 10 states are expected to have abortion-related measures on the ballot in November, which polls show motivate Democrats to go to the polls. Several states, including California , have added abortion access protections to their constitutions.

“We brought it back to the states and the country is now getting back together,” Trump said. Repeatedly, he said that “everyone” supported repealing Roe.

Biden pounced on the Roe ruling and Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court.

“It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” Biden retorted. “The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, but each state have a different role.”

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Biden promised that if he won, he would restore the rights under Roe.

The two candidates sparred over how late in a pregnancy a person can get an abortion. Trump repeated false claims that abortions would be allowed “even after birth.” The law under Roe vs. Wade would allow for abortions in the third trimester under extremely rare circumstances, usually because of serious fetal issues or the risk to a mother’s health, according to Politifact.

“We are not for late-term abortion period, period, under Roe v. Wade,” Biden said.

Trump said he believes in having exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. “Some people don’t, follow your heart,” he said of the exceptions.

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Biden stumbles amid fierce attacks from Trump

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Faith E. Pinho is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, covering national and political news, including the 2024 election.

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David French

The Supreme Court Puts the Pro-Life Movement to the Test

By David French

Opinion Columnist

Rarely has a Supreme Court case had less legal meaning and greater moral weight than the decision Thursday morning in Moyle v. United States .

The case was of such little legal consequence that you might have already forgotten about it; you’ve lost it in the haze of a shocking presidential debate and a host of far more consequential Supreme Court decisions. But Moyle illuminates a deep conflict within the anti-abortion movement and the way the pro-life movement resolves that conflict will affect American life and politics for decades to come.

The court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted.” In plain English, it means that it never should have taken the case in the first place. Even though Justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito wrote their own opinions, those opinions do not bind the lower courts the way a true Supreme Court majority opinion binds every federal court.

But they’re important nonetheless.

The question at issue in Moyle was simple: “Whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) pre-empts a provision of Idaho law that prohibits abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother.” The act is a Reagan-era law that requires hospitals that participate in Medicare to provide stabilizing treatment for people with emergency medical conditions, regardless of their ability to pay.

The conflict with Idaho’s law is obvious. What if a pregnant woman suffers from an emergency medical condition that requires an abortion to stave off serious injury but the condition isn’t life-threatening? After all, people go to emergency rooms for serious but non-life-threatening conditions all the time. If a pregnant woman goes to an emergency room and she faces serious physical peril — but not an imminent mortal threat — should she be treated fundamentally differently because she is carrying a child?

My answer is yes and no. Yes, of course a doctor should consider the safety of the unborn child when considering a course of treatment. Many pregnant women facing medical emergencies are desperate to protect their child. But the answer becomes no the instant that the choice becomes binary — when the best course of treatment to protect the mother from serious physical harm requires an abortion. In that awful circumstance, if a woman chooses to endure great harm to protect her child, then that is her choice. But the state must not require it.

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Sotomayor’s dissent: A president should not be a ‘king above the law’

FILE - Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor attends a panel discussion, Feb. 23, 2024 in Washington. The Supreme Court allowed a president to become a “king above the law,” in the use of official power, Sotomayor said in a biting dissent Monday, July 1, that called the majority opinion on immunity for former President Donald Trump “utterly indefensible.” Joined by the court’s two other liberals, Sotomayor said the opinion would have disastrous consequences for the presidency and the nation’s democracy by creating a “law-free zone around the president.” (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Supreme Court justices will take the bench Monday, July 1, 2024, to release their last few opinions of the term, including their most closely watched case: whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People protest outside the Supreme Court Monday, July 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

FILE - The Supreme Court building is seen on June 27, 2024, in Washington. Supreme Court justices will take the bench Monday, July 1, to release their last few opinions of the term, including their most closely watched case: whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

The Supreme Court opinion in former President Donald Trump’s immunity case is photographed Monday, July 1, 2024. In a historic ruling the justices said for the first time former presidents can be shielded from prosecution for at least some of what they do in the Oval Office. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Chesapeake, Va., Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In an unsparing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Supreme Court allowed a president to become a “king above the law” in its ruling that limited the scope of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the election.

She called the decision, which likely ended the prospect of a trial for Trump before the November election , “utterly indefensible.”

“The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding,” she wrote. She was joined by liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote another dissent referring to the ruling’s consequences as a “five alarm fire.”

Sotomayor read her dissent aloud in the courtroom, with a weighty delivery that underscored her criticism of the majority. She strongly pronounced each word, pausing at certain moments and gritting her teeth at others.

“Ironic isn’t it? The man in charge of enforcing laws can now just break them,” Sotomayor said.

Chief Justice John Roberts accused the liberal justices of fearmongering in the 6-3 majority opinion. It found that presidents aren’t above the law but must be entitled to presumptive immunity to allow them to forcefully exercise the office’s far-reaching powers and avoid a vicious cycle of politically motivated prosecutions.

While the opinion allows for the possibility of prosecutions for private acts, Sotomayor said it “deprives these prosecutions of any teeth” by excluding any evidence that related to official acts where the president is immune.

“This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the presidency and for our democracy,” she said. She ended by saying, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Trump, for his part, has denied doing anything wrong and has said this prosecution and three others are politically motivated to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

The other justices looked on in silence and largely remained still as Sotomayor spoke, with Justice Samuel Alito shuffling through papers and appearing to study them.

Sotomayor pointed to historical evidence, from the founding fathers to Watergate, that presidents could potentially face prosecution. She took a jab at the conservative majority that has made the nation’s history a guiding principle on issues like guns and abortion. “Interesting, history matters, right?”

Then she looked at the courtroom audience and concluded, “Except here.”

The majority feared that the threat of potential prosecution could constrain a president or create a “cycle of factional strife,” that the founders intended to avoid.

Sotomayor, on the other handed, pointed out that presidents have access to extensive legal advice about their actions and that criminal cases typically face high bars in court to proceed.

“It is a far greater danger if the president feels empowered to violate federal criminal law, buoyed by the knowledge of future immunity,” she said. “I am deeply troubled by the idea ... that our nation loses something valuable when the president is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.”

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this story.