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Abortion Argumentative Essay: Definitive Guide

Academic writing

Abortion remains a debatable issue even today, especially in countries like the USA, where a controversial ban was upheld in 13 states at the point this article was written. That’s why an essay on abortion has become one of the most popular tasks in schools, colleges, and universities. When writing this kind of essay, students learn to express their opinion, find and draw arguments and examples, and conduct research.

It’s very easy to speculate on topics like this. However, this makes it harder to find credible and peer-reviewed information on the topic that isn’t merely someone’s opinion. If you were assigned this kind of academic task, do not lose heart. In this article, we will provide you with all the tips and tricks for writing about abortion.

Where to begin?

Conversations about abortion are always emotional. Complex stories, difficult decisions, bitter moments, and terrible diagnoses make this topic hard to cover. Some young people may be shocked by this assignment, while others would be happy to express their opinion on the matter.

One way or another, this topic doesn't leave anyone indifferent. However, it shouldn’t have an effect on the way you approach the research and writing process. What should you remember when working on an argumentative essay about abortion?

Don’t let your emotions take over. As this is an academic paper, you have to stay impartial and operate with facts. The topic is indeed sore and burning, causing thousands of scandals on the Internet, but you are writing it for school, not a Quora thread.
Try to balance your opinions. There are always two sides to one story, even if the story is so fragile. You need to present an issue from different angles. This is what your tutors seek to teach you.
Be tolerant and mind your language. It is very important not to hurt anybody with the choice of words in your essay. So make sure you avoid any possible rough words. It is important to respect people with polar opinions, especially when it comes to academic writing.
Use facts, not claims. Your essay cannot be based solely on your personal ideas – your conclusions should be derived from facts. Roe v. Wade case, WHO or Mayo Clinic information, and CDC are some of the sources you can rely on.

Speaking of Outline

An argumentative essay on abortion outline is a must-have even for experienced writers. In general, each essay, irrespective of its kind or topic, has a strict outline. It may be brief or extended, but the major parts are always the same:

Introduction. This is a relatively short paragraph that starts with a hook and presents the background information on the topic. It should end with a thesis statement telling your reader what your main goal or idea is.
Body. This section usually consists of 2-4 paragraphs. Each one has its own structure: main argument + facts to support it + small conclusion and transition into the next paragraph.
Conclusion. In this part, your task is to summarize all your thoughts and come to a general conclusive idea. You may have to restate some info from the body and your thesis statement and add a couple of conclusive statements without introducing new facts.

Why is it important to create an outline?

You will structure your ideas. We bet you’ve got lots on your mind. Writing them down and seeing how one can flow logically into the other will help you create a consistent paper. Naturally, you will have to abandon some of the ideas if they don’t fit the overall narrative you’re building.
You can get some inspiration. While creating your outline, which usually consists of some brief ideas, you can come up with many more to research. Some will add to your current ones or replace them with better options.
You will find the most suitable sources. Argumentative essay writing requires you to use solid facts and trustworthy arguments built on them. When the topic is as controversial as abortion, these arguments should be taken from up-to-date, reliable sources. With an outline, you will see if you have enough to back up your ideas.
You will write your text as professionals do. Most expert writers start with outlines to write the text faster and make it generally better. As you will have your ideas structured, the general flow of thoughts will be clear. And, of course, it will influence your overall grade positively.

Abortion Essay Introduction

The introduction is perhaps the most important part of the whole essay. In this relatively small part, you will have to present the issue under consideration and state your opinion on it. Here is a typical introduction outline:

The first sentence is a hook grabbing readers' attention.
A few sentences that go after elaborate on the hook. They give your readers some background and explain your research.
The last sentence is a thesis statement showing the key idea you are building your text around.

Before writing an abortion essay intro, first thing first, you will need to define your position. If you are in favor of this procedure, what exactly made you think so? If you are an opponent of abortion, determine how to argue your position. In both cases, you may research the point of view in medicine, history, ethics, and other fields.

When writing an introduction, remember:

Never repeat your title. First of all, it looks too obvious; secondly, it may be boring for your reader right from the start. Your first sentence should be a well-crafted hook. The topic of abortion worries many people, so it’s your chance to catch your audience’s attention with some facts or shocking figures.
Do not make it too long. Your task here is to engage your audience and let them know what they are about to learn. The rest of the information will be disclosed in the main part. Nobody likes long introductions, so keep it short but informative.
Pay due attention to the thesis statement. This is the central sentence of your introduction. A thesis statement in your abortion intro paragraph should show that you have a well-supported position and are ready to argue it. Therefore, it has to be strong and convey your idea as clearly as possible. We advise you to make several options for the thesis statement and choose the strongest one.

Hooks for an Abortion Essay

Writing a hook is a good way to catch the attention of your audience, as this is usually the first sentence in an essay. How to start an essay about abortion? You can begin with some shocking fact, question, statistics, or even a quote. However, always make sure that this piece is taken from a trusted resource.

Here are some examples of hooks you can use in your paper:

As of July 1, 2022, 13 states banned abortion, depriving millions of women of control of their bodies.
According to WHO, 125,000 abortions take place every day worldwide.
Is abortion a woman’s right or a crime?
Since 1994, more than 40 countries have liberalized their abortion laws.
Around 48% of all abortions are unsafe, and 8% of them lead to women’s death.
The right to an abortion is one of the reproductive and basic rights of a woman.
Abortion is as old as the world itself – women have resorted to this method since ancient times.
Only 60% of women in the world live in countries where pregnancy termination is allowed.

Body Paragraphs: Pros and Cons of Abortion

The body is the biggest part of your paper. Here, you have a chance to make your voice concerning the abortion issue heard. Not sure where to start? Facts about abortion pros and cons should give you a basic understanding of which direction to move in.

First things first, let’s review some brief tips for you on how to write the best essay body if you have already made up your mind.

Make a draft

It’s always a good idea to have a rough draft of your writing. Follow the outline and don’t bother with the word choice, grammar, or sentence structure much at first. You can polish it all later, as the initial draft will not likely be your final. You may see some omissions in your arguments, lack of factual basis, or repetitiveness that can be eliminated in the next versions.

Trust only reliable sources

This part of an essay includes loads of factual information, and you should be very careful with it. Otherwise, your paper may look unprofessional and cost you precious points. Never rely on sources like Wikipedia or tabloids – they lack veracity and preciseness.

Edit rigorously

It’s best to do it the next day after you finish writing so that you can spot even the smallest mistakes. Remember, this is the most important part of your paper, so it has to be flawless. You can also use editing tools like Grammarly.

Determine your weak points

Since you are writing an argumentative essay, your ideas should be backed up by strong facts so that you sound convincing. Sometimes it happens that one argument looks weaker than the other. Your task is to find it and strengthen it with more or better facts.

Add an opposing view

Sometimes, it’s not enough to present only one side of the discussion. Showing one of the common views from the opposing side might actually help you strengthen your main idea. Besides, making an attempt at refuting it with alternative facts can show your teacher or professor that you’ve researched and analyzed all viewpoints, not just the one you stand by.

If you have chosen a side but are struggling to find the arguments for or against it, we have complied abortion pro and cons list for you. You can use both sets if you are writing an abortion summary essay covering all the stances.

Why Should Abortion Be Legal

If you stick to the opinion that abortion is just a medical procedure, which should be a basic health care need for each woman, you will definitely want to write the pros of abortion essay. Here is some important information and a list of pros about abortion for you to use:

Since the fetus is a set of cells – not an individual, it’s up to a pregnant woman to make a decision concerning her body. Only she can decide whether she wants to keep the pregnancy or have an abortion. The abortion ban is a violation of a woman’s right to have control over her own body.
The fact that women and girls do not have access to effective contraception and safe abortion services has serious consequences for their own health and the health of their families.
The criminalization of abortion usually leads to an increase in the number of clandestine abortions. Many years ago, fetuses were disposed of with improvised means, which included knitting needles and half-straightened metal hangers. 13% of women’s deaths are the result of unsafe abortions.
Many women live in a difficult financial situation and cannot support their children financially. Having access to safe abortion takes this burden off their shoulders. This will also not decrease their quality of life as the birth and childcare would.
In countries where abortion is prohibited, there is a phenomenon of abortion tourism to other countries where it can be done without obstacles. Giving access to this procedure can make the lives of women much easier.
Women should not put their lives or health in danger because of the laws that were adopted by other people.
Girls and women who do not have proper sex education may not understand pregnancy as a concept or determine that they are pregnant early on. Instead of educating them and giving them a choice, an abortion ban forces them to become mothers and expects them to be fit parents despite not knowing much about reproduction.
There are women who have genetic disorders or severe mental health issues that will affect their children if they're born. Giving them an option to terminate ensures that there won't be a child with a low quality of life and that the woman will not have to suffer through pregnancy, birth, and raising a child with her condition.
Being pro-choice is about the freedom to make decisions about your body so that women who are for termination can do it safely, and those who are against it can choose not to do it. It is an inclusive option that caters to everyone.
Women and girls who were raped or abused by their partner, caregiver, or stranger and chose to terminate the pregnancy can now be imprisoned for longer than their abusers. This implies that the system values the life of a fetus with no or primitive brain function over the life of a living woman.
People who lived in times when artificial termination of pregnancy was scarcely available remember clandestine abortions and how traumatic they were, not only for the physical but also for the mental health of women. Indeed, traditionally, in many countries, large families were a norm. However, the times have changed, and supervised abortion is a safe and accessible procedure these days. A ban on abortion will simply push humanity away from the achievements of the civilized world.

Types of abortion

There are 2 main types of abortions that can be performed at different pregnancy stages and for different reasons:

Medical abortion. It is performed by taking a specially prescribed pill. It does not require any special manipulations and can even be done at home (however, after a doctor’s visit and under supervision). It is considered very safe and is usually done during the very first weeks of pregnancy.
Surgical abortion. This is a medical operation that is done with the help of a suction tube. It then removes the fetus and any related material. Anesthesia is used for this procedure, and therefore, it can only be done in a hospital. The maximum time allowed for surgical abortion is determined in each country specifically.

Cases when abortion is needed

Center for Reproductive Rights singles out the following situations when abortion is required:

When there is a risk to the life or physical/mental health of a pregnant woman.
When a pregnant woman has social or economic reasons for it.
Upon the woman's request.
If a pregnant woman is mentally or cognitively disabled.
In case of rape and/or incest.
If there were congenital anomalies detected in the fetus.

Countries and their abortion laws

Countries where abortion is legalized in any case: Australia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.
Countries where abortion is completely prohibited: Angola, Venezuela, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Oman, Paraguay, Palau, Jamaica, Laos, Haiti, Honduras, Andorra, Aruba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, Senegal, etc.
Countries where abortion is allowed for medical reasons: Afghanistan, Israel, Argentina, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana, Israel, Morocco, Mexico, Bahamas, Central African Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Algeria, Monaco, Pakistan, Poland, etc.
Countries where abortion is allowed for both medical and socioeconomic reasons: England, India, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, Finland, Taiwan, Zambia, Iceland, Fiji, Cyprus, Barbados, Belize, etc.

Why Abortion Should Be Banned

Essays against abortions are popular in educational institutions since we all know that many people – many minds. So if you don’t want to support this procedure in your essay, here are some facts that may help you to argument why abortion is wrong:

Abortion at an early age is especially dangerous because a young woman with an unstable hormonal system may no longer be able to have children throughout her life. Termination of pregnancy disrupts the hormonal development of the body.
Health complications caused by abortion can occur many years after the procedure. Even if a woman feels fine in the short run, the situation may change in the future.
Abortion clearly has a negative effect on reproductive function. Artificial dilation of the cervix during an abortion leads to weak uterus tonus, which can cause a miscarriage during the next pregnancy.
Evidence shows that surgical termination of pregnancy significantly increases the risk of breast cancer.
In December 1996, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics concluded that a fetus is considered a human being on the 14th day after conception.

You are free to use each of these arguments for essays against abortions. Remember that each claim should not be supported by emotions but by facts, figures, and so on.

Health complications after abortion

One way or another, abortion is extremely stressful for a woman’s body. Apart from that, it can even lead to various health problems in the future. You can also cover them in your cons of an abortion essay:

Continuation of pregnancy. If the dose of the drug is calculated by the doctor in the wrong way, the pregnancy will progress.
Uterine bleeding, which requires immediate surgical intervention.
Severe nausea or even vomiting occurs as a result of a sharp change in the hormonal background.
Severe stomach pain. Medical abortion causes miscarriage and, as a result, strong contractions of the uterus.
High blood pressure and allergic reactions to medicines.
Depression or other mental problems after a difficult procedure.

Abortion Essay Conclusion

After you have finished working on the previous sections of your paper, you will have to end it with a strong conclusion. The last impression is no less important than the first one. Here is how you can make it perfect in your conclusion paragraph on abortion:

It should be concise. The conclusion cannot be as long as your essay body and should not add anything that cannot be derived from the main section. Reiterate the key ideas, combine some of them, and end the paragraph with something for the readers to think about.
It cannot repeat already stated information. Restate your thesis statement in completely other words and summarize your main points. Do not repeat anything word for word – rephrase and shorten the information instead.
It should include a call to action or a cliffhanger. Writing experts believe that a rhetorical question works really great for an argumentative essay. Another good strategy is to leave your readers with some curious ideas to ponder upon.

Abortion Facts for Essay

Abortion is a topic that concerns most modern women. Thousands of books, research papers, and articles on abortion are written across the world. Even though pregnancy termination has become much safer and less stigmatized with time, it still worries millions. What can you cover in your paper so that it can really stand out among others? You may want to add some shocking abortion statistics and facts:

40-50 million abortions are done in the world every year (approximately 125,000 per day).
According to UN statistics, women have 25 million unsafe abortions each year. Most of them (97%) are performed in the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 14% of them are especially unsafe because they are done by people without any medical knowledge.
Since 2017, the United States has shown the highest abortion rate in the last 30 years.
The biggest number of abortion procedures happen in the countries where they are officially banned. The lowest rate is demonstrated in the countries with high income and free access to contraception.
Women in low-income regions are three times more susceptible to unplanned pregnancies than those in developed countries.
In Argentina, more than 38,000 women face dreadful health consequences after unsafe abortions.
The highest teen abortion rates in the world are seen in 3 countries: England, Wales, and Sweden.
Only 31% of teenagers decide to terminate their pregnancy. However, the rate of early pregnancies is getting lower each year.
Approximately 13 million children are born to mothers under the age of 20 each year.
5% of women of reproductive age live in countries where abortions are prohibited.

We hope that this abortion information was useful for you, and you can use some of these facts for your own argumentative essay. If you find some additional facts, make sure that they are not manipulative and are taken from official medical resources.

Abortion Essay Topics

Do you feel like you are lost in the abundance of information? Don’t know what topic to choose among the thousands available online? Check our short list of the best abortion argumentative essay topics:

Why should abortion be legalized essay
Abortion: a murder or a basic human right?
Why we should all support abortion rights
Is the abortion ban in the US a good initiative?
The moral aspect of teen abortions
Can the abortion ban solve birth control problems?
Should all countries allow abortion?
What consequences can abortion have in the long run?
Is denying abortion sexist?
Why is abortion a human right?
Are there any ethical implications of abortion?
Do you consider abortion a crime?
Should women face charges for terminating a pregnancy?

Want to come up with your own? Here is how to create good titles for abortion essays:

Write down the first associations. It can be something that swirls around in your head and comes to the surface when you think about the topic. These won’t necessarily be well-written headlines, but each word or phrase can be the first link in the chain of ideas that leads you to the best option.
Irony and puns are not always a good idea. Especially when it comes to such difficult topics as abortion. Therefore, in your efforts to be original, remain sensitive to the issue you want to discuss.
Never make a quote as your headline. First, a wordy quote makes the headline long. Secondly, readers do not understand whose words are given in the headline. Therefore, it may confuse them right from the start. If you have found a great quote, you can use it as your hook, but don’t forget to mention its author.
Try to briefly summarize what is said in the essay. What is the focus of your paper? If the essence of your argumentative essay can be reduced to one sentence, it can be used as a title, paraphrased, or shortened.
Write your title after you have finished your text. Before you just start writing, you might not yet have a catchy phrase in mind to use as a title. Don’t let it keep you from working on your essay – it might come along as you write.

Abortion Essay Example

We know that it is always easier to learn from a good example. For this reason, our writing experts have complied a detailed abortion essay outline for you. For your convenience, we have created two options with different opinions.

Topic: Why should abortion be legal?

Introduction – hook + thesis statement + short background information

Essay hook: More than 59% of women in the world do not have access to safe abortions, which leads to dreading health consequences or even death.

Thesis statement: Since banning abortions does not decrease their rates but only makes them unsafe, it is not logical to ban abortions.

Body – each paragraph should be devoted to one argument

Argument 1: Woman’s body – women’s rules. + example: basic human rights.

Argument 2: Banning abortion will only lead to more women’s death. + example: cases of Polish women.

Argument 3: Only women should decide on abortion. + example: many abortion laws are made by male politicians who lack knowledge and first-hand experience in pregnancies.

Conclusion – restated thesis statement + generalized conclusive statements + cliffhanger

Restated thesis: The abortion ban makes pregnancy terminations unsafe without decreasing the number of abortions, making it dangerous for women.

Cliffhanger: After all, who are we to decide a woman’s fate?

Topic: Why should abortion be banned?

Essay hook: Each year, over 40 million new babies are never born because their mothers decide to have an abortion.

Thesis statement: Abortions on request should be banned because we cannot decide for the baby whether it should live or die.

Argument 1: A fetus is considered a person almost as soon as it is conceived. Killing it should be regarded as murder. + example: Abortion bans in countries such as Poland, Egypt, etc.

Argument 2: Interrupting a baby’s life is morally wrong. + example: The Bible, the session of the Council of Europe on bioethics decision in 1996, etc.

Argument 3: Abortion may put the reproductive health of a woman at risk. + example: negative consequences of abortion.

Restated thesis: Women should not be allowed to have abortions without serious reason because a baby’s life is as priceless as their own.

Cliffhanger: Why is killing an adult considered a crime while killing an unborn baby is not?

Argumentative essay on pros and cons of abortion

Examples of Essays on Abortion

There are many great abortion essays examples on the Web. You can easily find an argumentative essay on abortion in pdf and save it as an example. Many students and scholars upload their pieces to specialized websites so that others can read them and continue the discussion in their own texts.

In a free argumentative essay on abortion, you can look at the structure of the paper, choice of the arguments, depth of research, and so on. Reading scientific papers on abortion or essays of famous activists is also a good idea. Here are the works of famous authors discussing abortion.

A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Published in 1971, this essay by an American philosopher considers the moral permissibility of abortion. It is considered the most debated and famous essay on this topic, and it’s definitely worth reading no matter what your stance is.

Abortion and Infanticide by Michael Tooley

It was written in 1972 by an American philosopher known for his work in the field of metaphysics. In this essay, the author considers whether fetuses and infants have the same rights. Even though this work is quite complex, it presents some really interesting ideas on the matter.

Some Biological Insights into Abortion by Garret Hardin

This article by American ecologist Garret Hardin, who had focused on the issue of overpopulation during his scholarly activities, presents some insights into abortion from a scientific point of view. He also touches on non-biological issues, such as moral and economic. This essay will be of great interest to those who support the pro-choice stance.

H4 Hidden in Plain View: An Overview of Abortion in Rural Illinois and Around the Globe by Heather McIlvaine-Newsad

In this study, McIlvaine-Newsad has researched the phenomenon of abortion since prehistoric times. She also finds an obvious link between the rate of abortions and the specifics of each individual country. Overall, this scientific work published in 2014 is extremely interesting and useful for those who want to base their essay on factual information.

H4 Reproduction, Politics, and John Irving’s The Cider House Rules: Women’s Rights or “Fetal Rights”? by Helena Wahlström

In her article of 2013, Wahlström considers John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules published in 1985 and is regarded as a revolutionary work for that time, as it acknowledges abortion mostly as a political problem. This article will be a great option for those who want to investigate the roots of the abortion debate.

FAQs On Abortion Argumentative Essay

Is abortion immoral?

This question is impossible to answer correctly because each person independently determines their own moral framework. One group of people will say that abortion is a woman’s right because only she has power over her body and can make decisions about it. Another group will argue that the embryo is also a person and has the right to birth and life.

In general, the attitude towards abortion is determined based on the political and religious views of each person. Religious people generally believe that abortion is immoral because it is murder, while secular people see it as a normal medical procedure. For example, in the US, the ban on abortion was introduced in red states where the vast majority have conservative views, while blue liberal states do not support this law. Overall, it’s up to a person to decide whether they consider abortion immoral based on their own values and beliefs.

Is abortion legal?

The answer to this question depends on the country in which you live. There are countries in which pregnancy termination is a common medical procedure and is performed at the woman's request. There are also states in which there must be a serious reason for abortion: medical, social, or economic. Finally, there are nations in which abortion is prohibited and criminalized. For example, in Jamaica, a woman can get life imprisonment for abortion, while in Kenya, a medical worker who volunteers to perform an abortion can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

Is abortion safe?

In general, modern medicine has reached such a level that abortion has become a common (albeit difficult from various points of view) medical procedure. There are several types of abortion, as well as many medical devices and means that ensure the maximum safety of the pregnancy termination. Like all other medical procedures, abortion can have various consequences and complications.

Abortions – whether safe or not - exist in all countries of the world. The thing is that more than half of them are dangerous because women have them in unsuitable conditions and without professional help. Only universal access to abortion in all parts of the world can make it absolutely safe. In such a case, it will be performed only after a thorough assessment and under the control of a medical professional who can mitigate the potential risks.

How safe is abortion?

If we do not talk about the ethical side of the issue related to abortion, it still has some risks. In fact, any medical procedure has them to a greater or lesser extent.

The effectiveness of the safe method in a medical setting is 80-99%. An illegal abortion (for example, the one without special indications after 12 weeks) can lead to a patient’s death, and the person who performed it will be criminally liable in this case.

Doctors do not have universal advice for all pregnant women on whether it is worth making this decision or not. However, many of them still tend to believe that any contraception - even one that may have negative side effects - is better than abortion. That’s why spreading awareness on means of contraception and free access to it is vital.

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Good Hook for Abortion Essay

Abortion is a highly controversial debate topic for discussion and consequently one of the most popular choices for argumentative essays. There are different points of view about abortion and its legality, of course. Some people support this operation unconditionally, while others feel it should be legal but restricted to certain circumstances, and other still believe it should be forbidden completely.

If you need to prepare a persuasive (argumentative) essay about abortion, there are a few academic writing tips that will help you organize your paper professionally. One key to a successful abortion essay is to start with a solid hook that can get your audience interested in your essay from the first line.

Start with Something to Interest Your Reader

It is important to start your essay with a thought-provoking question, such as one about the legality and morality of abortion. You might ask your audience to consider their opinions in light of a specific fact or a compelling anecdote about a real-life example. Your goal here should be to make the audience want to hear more from you.

In the introduction’s opening lines, you are less concerned with documenting sources for a persuasive argument than you are with setting up an emotional investment in the reader to make the want to see your essay through to the end.

Then, you ought to explain the meaning of abortion by providing a definition to establish your terms.

You can also focus on the psychological side of this problem to illustrate the emotions of the woman who has decided to undergo this operation. Finally, you can say a few words about the controversy over this issue that you will explore in the paper. You will enumerate and explain all the factors related to abortion further in the body of the essay.

Observe the Problem from the Side of Ethics and Religion.

Once you have hit the body of your paper, it would not be a mistake to say that abortion is murder from the perspective of some schools of ethics and many major religions. Religious organizations say that abortion is a sin because a woman kills her child. Of course, you can provide the reader with a solid counter-argument, such as the claim that a fetus is not a developed human being because it cannot survive outside of the womb. Consequently, you are not killing a person. You instead kill a certain type of undeveloped organism, which does not have a rationale mind, emotions, and independence.

Say about Women’s Rights.

One can say that abortion is a woman’s decision. If she is not ready to have a child, she does not have to bear it. Obviously, women have not had the right to choose abortion as the way out of an unwanted pregnancy until quite recently, when the procedure was legalized. In the past, when a woman was pregnant, she had to bear this problem to the end or else undergo a risky and illegal abortion procedure. But more often than not, she could not think about the interruption of pregnancy because the norms of her culture prohibited it. Of course, nowadays there are still many cultures that prohibit abortion or consider it as a sin.

It’s a good idea, however, to note that not all women are universally in favor of abortion rights. This is not simply a situation where men believe one things and women the other. Instead, the issues is highly complex, and women are influenced by family background, personal circumstances, and cultural pressures. Many women have an unfavorable financial background. They do not have money to support their children; therefore, an unexpected pregnancy can be devastating for such women.

Finally, many believe that a young lady should not be forced to bear a baby if she lacks a solid education or has not built her career in order to provide for that child. Every woman has the right to her private life and self-development. An unplanned pregnancy, abortion rights supporters say, ruins her expectations and hopes for a complete and self-actualized life on her own terms.

Mention the Health Risks.

There are cases when pregnancy causes harm to the woman’s health. In this instance, many argue that she should decide whether she wants to give birth to her child or die. This is the most commonly cited exception to even the strictest anti-abortion measures. Evidently, the first option is better, because the law views an adult woman’s life as more valuable than that of a fetus. Moreover, if this woman dies, her child will be an orphan. Fortunately, in the majority of countries, abortion is legal when pregnancy causes risks for a woman’s life.

Discuss the Problem of Rape.

The best argument for abortion rights, which can persuade nearly every reader, is connected with abuse. When a woman is raped and becomes pregnant, she has a substantial legal and moral right to interrupt her pregnancy. Naturally, a forced pregnancy is a problem which many believe requires radical solutions. In this case, abortion might be seen as the best way out because there is are relatively few women who want to have a child by the man who committed a terrible crime against them.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Crafting a Convincing Persuasive Essay About Abortion

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments.

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay .

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing.

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument.

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both?

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information.

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Step 3: Define Your Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and audience, it is time to craft your argument.

Start by defining what you believe and why, making sure to use evidence to support your claims. You also need to consider the opposing arguments and come up with counter arguments. This helps make your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of argumentative essay with introduction, body and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay.

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

Should abortion be legal in the United States?
Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values?

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you.

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

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Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban most forms of abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
In places where abortion is illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing.

Need the services of a professional essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com is a persuasive essay writing service that provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i talk about in an essay about abortion.

When writing an essay about abortion, it is important to cover all the aspects of the subject. This includes discussing both sides of the argument, providing facts and evidence to support your claims, and exploring potential solutions.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Abortion — Debates on Abortion: Arguments Against and For

Debates on Abortion: Arguments Against and for

Categories: Abortion

About this sample

Words: 487 |

Published: Dec 5, 2018

Words: 487 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Abortion Argumentative Essay: Hook Examples

A Controversial Crossroads: In the heart of one of the most polarizing debates in our nation’s history, the topic of abortion stands as a moral and ethical crossroads. As we delve into this complex issue, we’ll explore the perspectives, the consequences, and the underlying principles that shape the discourse on abortion.
The Choice That Divides: Abortion, the deliberate termination of pregnancy, has ignited impassioned arguments on both sides of the aisle. Whether you’re pro-choice, advocating for a woman’s right to choose, or anti-choice, emphasizing the sanctity of life, the abortion debate raises profound questions about human rights, autonomy, and responsibility.
Mind and Body: The Toll of Abortion: Beyond the legal and moral debate, abortion carries psychological and physical consequences. Join us as we explore the impact of abortion on mental health, the potential for regret, and the physical risks faced by women who choose this path.
The Unseen Pain of the Unborn: While the debate often centers on the rights of women, we must also consider the unborn child’s experience. Recent studies suggest that fetuses can feel pain, adding a layer of complexity to the abortion discussion. Let’s examine the evidence and its implications.
Medicine and Morality: Delving into the medical realm, we’ll explore the ethical dilemmas faced by doctors who perform abortions, the potential complications for women, and the broader implications for society as we navigate the contentious terrain of abortion rights.

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Abortion Essay Writing Guide

Abortion is a controversial issue that has been at the center of public debate for decades. It is a multifaceted problem that can be discussed from different aspects, including legal, ethical, philosophical, moral, religious and medical. Also, abortion is a highly sensitive subject that leaves no one untouched. Everyone has an opinion or a personal experience related to abortion. The debate on abortion can take various forms, and likewise, there are different types of essays that can be written on the subject. This article offers an overview of the most common types of essays on abortion. A detailed description is given for each particular type, including its structure, outline, basic information on its contents, and tips for successful writing. Examples of well-written sample essays are also provided.

Essays on abortion can be divided into several categories which will be discussed below. The types include argumentative essays, persuasive essays, research papers, cause and effect essays, satirical essays and expository essays.

ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY ON ABORTION

The argumentative essay is a type of writing which requires extensive investigation of a topic. The writer needs to collect and evaluate information and take a stand on the subject. Literature and previously published texts need to be researched with great scrutiny. This leads to a writer having in-depth knowledge on the subject and understanding different standpoints expressed by various authors. Based on that the writer can take his/her own position and then back it up with evidence. All argumentative essays involve stating a clear thesis and adhering to strict rules of reasoning. What argumentative essays are all about is establishing a position and then trying to convince the readers of the validity of one's points of view. Factual evidence is given to support one's opinion. To be able to do that, the writer should have explored the issue from various angles beforehand, collected facts, expert opinions, and statistics to support his/her claims.

Research and data collection are the first steps when writing an argumentative essay. After a topic and a position on it have been determined, the author goes on to develop an outline of the future essay. This allows for the basic structure of the essay to be established. The structure of the outline is as follows:

A thesis statement : the topic is reviewed in a general way setting the stage for the discussion that will ensue.
A smooth transition is made between the introduction and the body of the article, and later between the body and the conclusion.
Paragraphs forming the body of the article contain all relevant arguments, supported by different types of evidence, statistical, logical, factual, experiential, etc. Opposing views are also introduced with the evidence.
In the conclusion , the thesis is addressed once again and argued with regard to evidence presented.

When outlined in this way, the structure of an argumentative essay seems quite clear, but even so, when attempting to write an argumentative essay on abortion, you could have specific issues concerning that particular subject that need further explanation.

Abortion is a highly sensitive subject with people usually having strong feelings towards it and quite polarized opinions. A person is either strongly for abortion, therefore considering it as a question of personal freedom, or strongly against it, seeing it as a crime. Writing an argumentative essay is not about making statements but investigating them and finding supporting evidence for each of them. Before you can start doing that, it is important to choose and define the topic of the essay carefully. There is an almost indefinite number of possible topics you might choose, but they all come down to either looking at the problem from the pro-life perspective, which means being against abortion; or, from the pro-choice point of view, meaning being in favor of its legalization. When you decide on the perspective you would like to take, in-depth systematic research of the existing literature is needed to make an objective evaluation of the subject. No facts should be presented without backing evidence or testimonials given by recognized authorities on the subject. Since abortion is such an arguable topic, with two firmly opposed sides, both of them should be given careful consideration in your essay. But, as mentioned before, you are supposed to take a side and to give supporting evidence to your views, along with presenting the opposite opinion and arguments for it and then refuting it with evidence.

If, for example, you were to write an argumentative essay on why abortion should not be fully legalized, you would want to highlight four or five arguments supporting your opinion, backing them up with statistics, official standpoints of prominent figures and authorities, and other evidence. If you write your essay from a pro-life position, you could argue that a fetus is actually a human being from the point of conception, and, as such, has a right to live; it can feel pain, therefore, abortion causes suffering. These statements should be reinforced by medical evidence in the form of analysis of sonograms, which clearly show that after three months of gestation, human embryos are fully formed; they have a beating heart and a developed nervous system allowing them to feel the sensation of pain. By the time most abortions take place, the fetus can move his legs and arms, has fully developed fingers and toes and is a vibrant and thriving human being inside the mother's womb.

This would be the first argument in favor of the position you are taking when writing an argumentative essay. Another three or four solid arguments should follow. Next, you could look at the issue from the perspective of possible medical and psychological consequences for a woman. The procedure of an abortion potentially has significant health risks along with possible mental health issues following the psychological trauma of abortion. Another point is religion. The position of most major religious denominations has been made clear over the centuries and can be used as an argument here. A further point can be made with protection of human rights, rights of all humans including developing ones, which are usually referred to as fetuses.

When embarking on a journey of writing an argumentative essay, it is helpful to divide it into four or five sections beforehand and then simply add content to each section. This forms the outline of your essay and can make the process of composing your paper much easier. The outline starts with an introduction in which the topic is first addressed in a general manner. After that, the author should explain the importance of the subject, or why it is worth investigating. Finally, a thesis is formulated, with a short elaboration on it. So for example, if your subject is “Why abortion should not be legalized,” you would give a brief introduction of the problem and clarify your point of view by explaining why you believe that it should not be legalized. You could argue that it represents a murder because a fetus is already a human being from the moment of conception. You would point that out in the introduction section of your argumentative essay on abortion.

In the following section, which belongs to the body of the essay, you would start introducing arguments which favor your position and continue with disproving the opposing arguments. It is not ethical to only give evidence which proves your point. In the interest of objectivity, it is necessary to include evidence to the contrary. So, in this example, you would present the arguments of those who support the legalization of abortion, and then give evidence as to why they are mistaken. You could say that although a woman should not be coerced into raising an unwanted child, there are better options she can resort to instead of abortion. There are numerous couples whose desire for having children is denied by problems with infertility, and who would be willing and able to adopt a child and give it a loving home. By acknowledging the opposing views, you make your essay less arbitrary and more objective. You recognize, in part, the validity of views that are contrary to yours but go on to explain how they can be addressed without resorting to abortion. This makes an even more powerful point. The body of the essay usually has several paragraphs. In each paragraph, a single general idea is discussed, while keeping a logical link between the discussion of each idea and the thesis statement formulated in the introduction section.

The closing section of your essay is the conclusion. Since it is the part of your essay which would make the strongest impression on the reader, you should formulate it to be effective as well as logical. It should follow naturally the presented body of evidence, and make a synthesis of all the facts given in the body of the essay. No new information should be presented in this section. You restate your thesis, repeat the most important arguments and motivate your readers to continue thinking about the subject, suggesting an approach to abortion which would make the person considering it think more thoroughly about it, weigh all the options and only resort to it when absolutely necessary.

If you decide to support the opposing position, that abortion should be fully legalized, the structure of the argumentative essay stays the same. You state your thesis, write about the subject from the perspective of pro-choice advocates, and give arguments that support your point of view backing them with factual evidence, statistics and information coming from reliable sources. You can use articles written on this topic, opinions from renowned experts; give a historical overview of the issue, etc. Make sure to include enough evidential support for your position, as well as substantial refuting arguments for the opposing standpoint. An essay outline is essential to give an organized structure to your writing. In the introduction section, you would state your thesis about fully legalizing abortion and then go on to discuss it in terms of every woman having the right to decide for herself with no interference from society or the legal system. The body of the essay would present evidence to larger numbers of illegal and unsafe procedures being performed in countries with restrictive law policies towards abortion. Statistical data on complications following illegal abortions should further advance your cause. Other pro-choice arguments should ensue, discussing the issue in the context of health, demography, personal liberties, legislation, religion, etc. You can mention the expert opinions that fetuses that are not yet viable outside the womb cannot be considered to be independent human beings and that it is wrong for the government to decide on issues pertaining to a woman's body on her behalf.

Your essay than continues with the presentation of opposing arguments on which your opponent's position relies upon. Abortion is really a matter of perspective: when you consider it from the perspective of a developing fetus, you can argue that it has every right to live and thrive inside the mother's womb and to be born and have a life of its own. Conversely, from the mother's perspective, she has the right to have her privacy protected and not to be intruded on by the government, as well as the right to make decisions about her own body. You can discuss issues of congenital diseases and birth defects, age and socioeconomic circumstances of a mother, maternal physical and mental illnesses that could affect the unborn child and so on.

All the issues you dealt with in the body of the essay should be summarized in the conclusion section. Once again, this is the place for you to make your argument even more effective by restating the most important facts given throughout your essay, perhaps with a punch line that would make your view of the matter stand out from all other possible points of considering the problem at hand. You could refer to unwanted pregnancies that are in fact consequences of rape or incest, or situations when a child is bound to be born with a serious and debilitating health condition.

To sum up what is said on writing an argumentative essay, it consists of stating your position and then giving a comprehensive list of supporting and contrasting arguments with those in favor of your point of view, prevailing over those opposed to it. What you are doing is essentially trying to convince the reader of the validity of your opinion, while simultaneously discrediting the opposing opinions. Covering the issue with strong arguments is crucial, while also giving an evidence-based presentation of the other side's arguments, and then invalidating them convincingly. In argumentative essays on abortion, you give arguments supporting both opposing opinions. Here is a plan you can implement when listing the pros and cons concerning the subject of abortion in an argumentative essay:

a) Introduction, followed by two pro-points supported by evidence, then a con-point which is refuted and conclusion;

b) Introduction, followed by a con-point which is disputed, then two pro-points with supporting evidence and conclusion;

c) Introduction, three con-points which are disputed and conclusion;

d) Introduction, body of the essay consisting of two parts – in the first part three counterclaims are presented accompanied by refuting evidence, and in the second part, three claims are given with evidence to support them. All this is followed by a conclusion.

e) A pattern in which claims and counterclaims are given in an alternating order: introduction, a claim followed by supporting evidence, a counterclaim with refuting evidence, another claim with evidence, another counterclaim, and so on. The conclusion is given at the end as always.

The patterns a) - c) are suitable for short argumentative essays on abortion while patterns d) and e) are more suited for advanced college essays .

Always bear in mind that your opinions should be well supported by factual evidence, rational justifications, and testimonials given by experts, if available. Also, some counterarguments would need to be proven incorrect, or refuted; and others - shown to be irrelevant to the subject, or rebutted. Both approaches can be valuable in discrediting the other side's argument.

These suggestions on how to write an argumentative essay on abortion cover all the basic elements required to be successful. Should you, however, need additional assistance you can turn to sample essays on abortion that are readily available online and can give you a starting point for your own writing. You can follow the structure of these essays to ensure that your composition has all the necessary components presented properly. If you would like to find arguments for the debate on abortion, there is a wide array of those in the already written material. All that is left for you to do is to decide on the position you would like to take in this matter, whether it is the pro-choice or the pro-life argument that makes more sense to you.

Samples of argumentative essays each discuss different aspects of the abortion issue, some of them take a historical perspective, some discuss the problem from the legal point of view, yet others focus on human rights or even medical issues. These samples can provide a good basis for your work, an example of how an argumentative essay is supposed to be structured and which content is the most suitable for this type of essay. Abortion is obviously a multifaceted subject, and these examples can be your guide leading you in the right direction after you have decided on the position you would like to support. They offer a comprehensive overview of the subject, covering all possible angles some of which could have never crossed your mind before but are certainly worth mentioning.

The abundance of material available on the internet sometimes makes it hard and time-consuming to find what you are looking for, and it is easy to become overwhelmed. Free argumentative essays on abortion that are now available online can be time saving and inspiring, thus, allowing you to compose a well-structured and convincing essay in just a margin of time you would need if you were to start from scratch. It can be helpful to review already existing work to refine one's own standpoint and come up with a strategy for writing the assigned essay. After you have checked the sources used in sample essays for authenticity and reliability, you can also use them in your own work, instead of going through tons of books and articles printed in scientific journals.

Samples of argumentative essays can be used throughout the process of writing an argumentative essay on abortion. Also, when you have completed your work, you can compare it against the example essays to check if an important issue had been left out or if a significant line of arguments had been omitted. For instance, the issue of abortion can be covered from the medical point of view, including mental and physical health issues of the mother, as well potential risks to the health of the fetus. Or, you could approach it from the legal point of view, with statistical data on numbers of illegal and unsafe procedures in countries with restrictive legislation compared to those registered in countries with more permissive laws concerning abortion. Or, focus on the demographic point, discussing the overpopulation problem and the one-child, or two-children per couple policy which exists in some countries. Regardless of the perspective you choose, the arguments should always be logical, well-established and supported by expert opinions, statistical data as well as originating from reliable sources.

Here are some pointers on how you can successfully write an argumentative essay on abortion:

Research the subject thoroughly . You could be keen on starting your essay immediately, or you could feel it is a waste of time to investigate the topic extensively. It is actually never a waste of time. If you do not have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the subject, you will not be able to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information on the Internet and to reject those that are complete fiction or a matter of an author's personal biased opinion, which is not based on evidence.
Take your time . Never skip steps in a rush to get the work done. Your urge to get on with it is perfectly understandable, but you should try not to start writing until you have made extensive notes, covering all the major sides of the topic you wish to discuss. Go through your notes once again; check if there is anything you would like to add or if there are any unnecessary repetitions. Scrutinizing the material another time could produce more ideas or even induce you to continue your research if you find that your notes are not covering all the angles.
The introduction is crucial . Beginnings are always the hardest. You may even feel as if you were not up to the task, not competent enough or that the work that lies ahead of you exceeds your abilities. Forcing yourself to come up with ideas while staring at an empty piece of paper is never helpful. For starters, you can use one of the introductory sentences from existing papers. Once you get started, and your own work starts to flow, you can go back and change the opening line into something original. The introduction could contain some political or moral views, but avoid opening your essay with religious aspects of the subject as your readers could be easily upset or offended by those. There is no need to avoid the issue completely. You are free to discuss it in the following segments of your paper. Assure your readers that you have considered the topic in a serious and meticulous manner, which you can achieve by providing statistical data, references to reliable and well-trusted sources and by paying attention to the counterarguments as well as to arguments supporting your position.
Base your essay on facts . There are two sides to any story, and both of them must be portrayed impartially. You are writing an argumentative essay, so you need to set aside all prejudice and use only factual evidence to reinforce your claims. Being professional in presenting the evidence is imperative, because any attempt to bend the truth is bound to end in disaster, and only make you look unprofessional. Use the information you gathered. You have already learned how to write an argumentative essay from two opposing perspectives, so you are ready to start working on the main part of your essay – the body. This is where the bulk of advice for writing an argumentative essay lies, so pay close attention to the following:

If you decided to address the abortion issue from the pro-choice perspective, you would examine the problem from the angle of a pregnant woman. Perhaps the best policy is to avoid starting the essay with the issue of human rights since you can easily be trapped into the debate of whose rights are more important, those of a mother or those of a fetus. It is much safer to open with some medical information on pregnancy and abortion, as well as on safe ways to end a pregnancy before full term. This can be accompanied by statistical data but beware of boring your reader with tons of statistics. Try to apply just the right dose of statistical information to prove your point, but then use examples or personal stories to make the reading more lifelike and enjoyable. Here are some of the reasons a pregnant woman might want to induce miscarriage and not bring her pregnancy to term:

The continuation of pregnancy poses a great risk for the mother due to complications of the pregnancy or illnesses that might be exacerbated by pregnancy.
The risk of death during childbirth is significant for either the mother or the child or both.
There is a genetic abnormality in the fetus which will make it not viable after birth or condemn it to a life of suffering.
The pregnancy might be a result of rape or incest and bringing it to term, and raising the child afterward would pose a tremendous strain on an already traumatized woman.
The woman is too young for motherhood, both from the health perspective (given that such an early pregnancy might cause reproductive problems later on and put a young woman's health at serious risk), and from the socioeconomic perspective, because a teenage mother is not capable of providing for her child, and they would both most probably be living in poverty without financial means to provide them with opportunity for education.
The mother is mentally ill and cannot be expected to take good care of her child. Also, some mental illnesses are highly hereditary, so there is a strong possibility that the child would be affected.

There is also the controversial argument that the world is already overpopulated and that bringing an unwanted child to life is irresponsible since resources in some parts of the globe are getting scarce. You should be very careful if you choose to use this argument and expect to find some strong opposition.

You could also argue that fetus is not considered to be an independent person before birth, and therefore ending a pregnancy cannot be considered a murder. If the pregnancy is terminated early enough, the fetus is still not capable of experiencing pain, especially if nonaggressive methods of abortion are used. Therefore, it is up to the mother to make a choice. She should not be punished for conceiving an unwanted child since this can happen even with regular use of contraceptives.

The above-mentioned arguments are some of the most common claims you could make when writing an argumentative essay from the pro-choice perspective. Of course, you can think of other examples and add to the list.

If you decided to write your argumentative essay on abortion from the pro-life perspective, you should look at the issue from exactly the opposite angle, considering abortion murder and substantiating your claims with some of the following evidence:

Abortion is a medical procedure that can have serious consequences, both immediate and long-term, including heavy bleeding, damage to the woman's reproductive or other organs, sterility and even death.
Abortion is physically and psychologically traumatizing. A woman can regret having an abortion for the rest of her life. She is at great risk of mental health problems, depression or even suicide.
Since so many couples struggle with infertility, a woman carrying an unwanted child can easily find loving parents for her baby and avoid having an abortion.
Most major religions are opposed to abortions and consider them a sin. Of course, not everyone is religious, but still it is an argument worth mentioning.
The unborn child, like any other human being has rights but is unable to stand up for him/herself, so he/she needs protection from legal institutions.
Philosophically speaking, if abortion is easily accessible and done without giving it a lot of thought, what does that tell us about the value of human life? Here you can call upon your readers to think for themselves and perhaps to consider the issue more deeply than before.

Bottom line, take a side. If you did not have strong feelings before starting to investigate the issue of abortion more thoroughly, this is the point when you have gathered enough information to decide which side to take. You might have even changed the opinion you previously had in light of all the evidence you had never seen before. But now you really have to pick a side and to either write from the pro-choice or the pro-life perspective. You need to be sure why you have chosen a particular point of view, and believe in it yourself if you want to convince your readers of its legitimacy. In the closing part of your essay, you will recap some of the arguments given throughout the body of the text, possibly adding a personal touch to the concluding section allowing your readers to understand exactly why you decided to support this particular viewpoint.

PERSUASIVE ESSAY ON ABORTION

A persuasive essay is an essay in which the writer takes a stand for or against something and tries to convince the readers to accept it as true or compel them to do something. A persuasive essay can be created on the basis of any idea that you strongly believe in. There is no room for the opposing point of view; if you are ambivalent yourself, there is no way you will be able to convince anybody else. You should be very well informed on the subject. If not, you should try to expand your knowledge using multiple sources, all legitimate ones, such as expert opinions, statistical facts, logical reasons, etc. Knowing how to compose a persuasive essay is a skill everyone should learn since it can be widely used in a number of situations; for example, if you would like your boss to give you a raise, you would need to persuade him with strong arguments that you actually deserve it. Even if your readers previously thought exactly the opposite, you can learn how to convince them in the validity of your position and ultimately induce them to change their opinions.

In a persuasive essay on abortion, as mentioned before, there are two opposed sides and no middle ground between them. So after carefully reviewing the available literature and giving it some thought, it is time for you to decide on a thesis that would most accurately represent your own opinion on the topic. The thesis should be formulated in a single sentence and yet reflect a strong position. If for example, after going through all the factual evidence, you decide that abortion is just the wrong thing to do, you can write a persuasive essay from the pro-life position, proving that abortion is murder and, therefore, should be legally sanctioned as such. You can prove your point by asserting that a fetus is a human being from the point of conception and, therefore, has a right to live and anyone trying to deprive it of its right should be treated as a criminal.

In this type of essay, the introduction contains a hook which is used to secure the readers' attention. It can be a quote, an unusual fact, a question, an anecdote or even an exaggerated statement meant to induce a psychological shock, an emotional reaction which would compel your audience to continue reading. When writing an essay against abortion, it can be a quote from the Bible, citing the commandment saying “You shall not kill.” Or, it can be a medical fact on how the fetus already feels pain at six weeks gestation or a sentence taken from an interview you conducted with someone who underwent an abortion and later regretted it.

When writing the body of your persuasive essay, each paragraph should begin with a strong assertion, a mini-thesis of a sort, which would reinforce your claim from different angles adding to its persuasiveness with each succeeding paragraph. Do not forget to add a paragraph including concession statements. A concession is a form of anticipating what your readers might say against your opinion. You acknowledge it and then prove that the particular argument is not valid, or not applicable to the case you are presenting. The concession is not a weakness; it actually adds to the strength of your opinion since it shows you to be open for debate and willing to recognize that there are more sides to the matter than the one you are taking.

Apart from having a strong opinion on the subject, you must be able to communicate it in a logical and professional manner. As easy as it may seem to simply articulate your opinions, you have to follow certain rules if you want to persuade your readers that you are absolutely right. To do that, it is necessary to back your views with supporting evidence in the form of personal experience, statistical facts, and logical justifications. Especially when your statements involve something that is not instantly obvious or common sense, you should be prepared to support it with strong evidence. The evidence you rely on should be factual and objective; otherwise, it will hardly be plausible to your audience. Also, remember to keep your sentences short if you want them to convey a strong message. Only use one point per sentence; otherwise, you will only weaken the argument you are trying to make.

Persuasive essays are relatively short, the body of the essay usually comprising of no more than three paragraphs, out of which two are used for your claims supported by evidence, and one for a counterclaim, followed by refutation thereof. In your pro-life essay on abortion, you could go into detail describing the cruelty and inhumanity of abortion techniques. Pay close attention to conveying the medical information accurately; they are gruesome enough for the average reader to become appalled with and start supporting your position. In the next part of the body, you can portray the fetus as a developing human being, able to experience pain from an early gestational period. It has a beating heart starting at six weeks gestation. Go on to describe the intrauterine development of the bodily systems, explaining when a fetus starts to hear, sleep, open its eyes, has a sense of taste, etc.

You can continue by introducing the religious issue into your essay, citing the commandments and interpreting abortion as murder, therefore being a capital sin. The fetus originates from two human beings and can only be human, nothing else. Also, it is human from the point of conception, although the opponents argue that it cannot be considered a human being before it is viable outside the womb, or before it can exist independently. Nevertheless, its humanity from the conception on cannot be questioned.

After stating your two strongest claims, go on to mention the most common counterclaim and try to refute it with evidence, expert opinions, statistical data, etc. You could make use of the statistics on abortion which show the most unwanted pregnancies to happen in women of young age, of low socioeconomic background, low education, that are in abusive relationships, or currently have no partners at all. One might argue that these are not the best conditions to bring a baby to life. On the other hand, is abortion really the best solution? Should the society not do more for these women in dire need? For example, they can be offered free housing, help with childcare, educational opportunities, jobs. Since every abortion carries a risk of complications including future sterility, this might be a woman's only opportunity to become a mother.

To be persuasive while writing this type of essay, the topic you have chosen has to appeal to you personally. It should be something you feel strongly about and will, therefore, be able to argue it passionately. It should be a highly debatable topic, with two strongly opposed sides. Make sure that your position potentially has enough arguments that support it. If the counterarguments are overwhelming, you should choose another subject to write about.

As mentioned before, persuasive essays are relatively short, so after writing a solid introduction and three segments of the body of the paper, you should summarize the crucial elements of your argument and emphasize once again what you want your readers to believe, what you want them to feel or what action you want them to take. This makes the conclusion part of your essay. Use it to refresh your readers' memory on the important points you made throughout your essay and then add a personal comment at the end. You can close with a quotation which sums up what has been discussed and calls for more in-depth thinking or for taking action to make a difference on the subject. You could end it with a personal note, elaborate on why you took a personal interest in this matter or why it is important to you.

Although writing a persuasive essay on abortion can be a complex task, since it is a highly sensitive issue and everyone tends to feel strongly about it, you should try to be very clear in your points of view. Repeat the most important ones in conclusion, and do it in a meticulous and explicit way. Go through your essay once more, check if there is a nice and natural flow of ideas, if your arguments are relevant to the subject and well supported by evidence and if your conclusion follows your argumentation logically. Also, make sure that the counterarguments have been dealt with objectively and refuted beyond doubt. In the conclusion section of the essay on abortion, you would want to underline the importance of your point of view and induce the readers to start looking at the issue from your perspective.

Revise your essay both regarding content and form. Correct any spelling or grammatical errors, and make sure the writing style is satisfactory. You may need to rephrase something, rearrange the paragraphs in the body of the essay, rethink some evidence and possibly remove a particular argument for being unconvincing or substitute it with another. Remember your task is to persuade the audience of the validity of your claim. You are allowed to appeal to the readers' emotions as well as their common sense and logic.

What has been said on persuasive essays against abortion can also be applied to persuasive speeches against abortion. Similar to writing an essay, when drafting a speech, you also start with an outline, divide what you would like to say in a few segments, each explaining your position from different angles but in a well-defined and persuasive manner. When speaking against abortion, you open with a thesis, give supporting evidence to your claims in the main part of your speech, and close with a recapitulation, a short summary of your position and a call for action. When drafting an outline for your persuasive speech on abortion, do not forget to ask a few questions and then attempt to offer plausible answers to them in the course of your speech. You can talk about statistical data concerning the number of intentional terminations of pregnancies that are performed each year, different legislations on abortion all over the world and how they reflect on the abortion practice. You can bring up the issue of the procedure safety about maternal health; refer to the possible immediate and long-term consequences etc. There is also the issue of human rights of the fetus to be discussed. You do not want to appear bigoted or blindly conservative and oblivious of the instances when abortion is indeed a necessity. Discuss those cases further, talk about the physical and mental health problems of a mother, cover all the angles and leave no stone unturned, so to speak. Remain objective and rational while occasionally also engaging the audience emotionally.

There is an abundance of persuasive essay samples online. They can come in handy when preparing to write your own essay of this type. You can use them to extract ideas or to find reliable sources of information on the subject. To illustrate how a persuasive essay on abortion should look like, here is an example:

Abortion is a term used to describe a purposeful ending of a pregnancy by means of fetus or embryo removal before it is viable to survive outside the mother's womb. It is also called an induced miscarriage in contrast to miscarriages that occur spontaneously. It used to be illegal in most parts of the world but is gradually becoming legalized. The turning point in changing the legislation on abortion was the infamous Roe v Wade case in which it was ruled that the state was not entitled to interfere with a woman's right to privacy or to prevent her from having a pregnancy terminated at request. Regardless of the procedure now being performed legally in the U.S., it remains a controversial and highly debatable subject. There are even attempts to reverse the ruling and limit the availability of abortion. The public opinion is divided into two opposed groups, the pro-life and pro-choice advocates. The pro-life supporters argue that a fetus is a human being entitled to all the rights other human beings have and that abortion is the wrong thing to do from the moral, religious and human rights perspective. Conversely, the pro-choice groups insist on a woman's right to decide over her own body without the interference from the government. Termination of pregnancy has been a common practice for centuries. This was, however, not regulated by law. Nowadays, abortions are legal and available on demand in most of the developed world countries. Legislations vary from country to country and, sometimes, within a single country. In the most permissive legislations, abortion is allowed on broad grounds including on a woman's request, without any medical indications. Other countries only allow it in special cases including the pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, or cases when the fetus has severe congenital malformations. 97% of the countries, however, allow the pregnancy to be terminated when the mother's health is at risk. Although those in favor of abortion claim that a fetus feels no pain, that it is merely a “clump of cells”, this can be challenged as Doctor Maureen L. Condic, a professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, explains that embryos cannot be reduced to collections of human cells, they can grow, to mature, maintain a delicate physiological balance, and adapt to changing conditions. The embryos may not resemble a human being at the beginning, but Dr. Condic raises the question if our respect for human life should really depend on its appearance. The real-life stories of women faced with the dilemma of whether to terminate their pregnancy or not can be heartbreaking. Helen found out that her unborn son had a terrible congenital disease which would make his life filled with pain and misery. The laws on abortion gave her the right to decide if he was to be born or not. This, of course, was not an easy decision. The responsibility for this choice was overwhelming, and Helen had to make it. What would any of us have decided in a similar situation is hard to tell. To conclude, we could argue that the issue of abortion is a highly sensitive and debatable one. No one is left indifferent. Whether it is legally accessible through the health system or performed in illegal unsanitary facilities by unskilled people, it is still the reality of life. There are always circumstances under which women would resort to abortion. Everyone has their own opinions on the reasons that can be considered substantial enough to warrant a termination of pregnancy, no matter if they are economic, medical, social, or even personal. However, human life is precious and worth preserving with utmost care, so that a decision to terminate it should never be made lightly or without thinking.

This essay example could be used when writing a high school level essay on abortion, while a more advanced educational level requires substantiating it with more factual evidence and discussing them in more detail.

RESEARCH PAPER ON ABORTION

A research paper analyses a chosen subject from a particular perspective and argues a point. It involves going through tons of literature, scientific articles, books, encyclopedias and other sources but it cannot be reduced to presenting a collection of those. When it is finished, a research paper represents your own views on a certain topic, strongly supported by meticulously collected facts and pieces of information. You draw upon what you already know about the subject and try to determine what experts in the field have to say about it.

There are several steps in successful writing of a research paper :

Precisely defining the topic of your research paper . For example, a topic defined as “Abortion should be prohibited by law” is not considered good enough because it lacks precision. A better one would sound something like “Abortion should be prohibited by law since it involves killing a fetus that is already a human being.” In this way, the topic is narrowed down and made more precise. When trying to determine the specific topic you would like to write about, you can resort to literature or personal experiences of people who had confronted the issue. Next, you need to explain why you chose to investigate that particular aspect of abortion, to clarify why you regard it as an important subject.
Defining your thesis . It should be a debatable issue that involves facts which are verifiable and can be either confirmed or refuted. Keep your language professional and avoid using expressions like “I think” or “if you ask me,” etc. An example of a thesis on abortion could sound like “It is morally wrong and illegal to perform abortions since a developing fetus can already be viewed as a human being.”
Writing an outline . It serves as means of organizing your notes and making a list of everything you would like to include in your essay. You can divide your topic into subtopics and determine what each of them would contain. The outline consists of an introduction which has a thesis statement at the end, the body of the paper containing several points of argument such as information on legislation, statistical data, medical facts including the explanation of intrauterine fetal development, and a conclusion. The introductory section is supposed to be short and powerful in order to catch the readers' attention and induce them to continue reading. The body of the paper further discusses the main idea suggested in the introduction, and the conclusion summarizes all the main points made throughout the research paper and proves the postulated thesis. So if you have chosen to write a research paper against abortion, you would need to explain your standpoint, look for trustworthy sources of information on it, and use real-life stories of those who had undergone the procedure. Based on your outline, you can define research questions that you would like to answer in your paper. They could include the question of human rights, if, in fact, a fetus’s right to live should prevail over a pregnant woman's right to choose. Or, you could raise a legal question, if making abortion illegal would only raise the number of operations being performed in an unsafe manner; or, the religious question of what the Bible has to say on the subject.
Composing a draft . Focus your attention on the content, as this version of the text will later be revised and any grammatical or spelling mistakes corrected.
Writing a final draft . This version should meet the style requirements, and be free of any spelling or grammatical errors. It should only encompass ideas that are relevant and well supported by factual evidence. The required format of the paper should also be respected which includes adding citations and references, and a title page if requested.

Hopefully, these instructions will assist you in writing your own research paper. If however, you still find that the task exceeds your capabilities or time limitations, you can always order a research paper online .

CAUSE AND EFFECT ESSAY ON ABORTION

A cause and effect essay is a paper in which ideas are organized in such way as to determine why certain things occur, what is their cause, or what possible consequences could something have, what are its effects. Sometimes, there are lots of causes of a single effect, or conversely, different effects can be the outcome of a single cause. When writing this type of essay, your first step would be to determine whether you would like to focus on a cause, such as abortion, and then investigate its possible effects, like health-related complications or psychological issues such as grief, remorse or depression. Or, think if you would like to focus on abortion as an effect, and to examine the factors leading to it. The essay can have the purpose to inform or to persuade, and you would write it accordingly.

When discussing causes to an event, you should stay focused on those narrowly related to the event, and ignore any possible remote or indirect causes for which it could be rather difficult to prove that they played a role in the event. As always, you should support your claims with factual evidence, give examples to clarify your point and offer personal observations to elucidate your ideas further. Pay close attention to the terminology you use, qualify something as a cause only if there is strong evidence to support that qualification; otherwise, speak only of correlation or things occurring simultaneously or in succession but with no clear causal relationship. This is usually a five-paragraph essay, opened with an introduction, followed by two paragraphs discussing cause and effect separately and one in which these are combined, and ended with a conclusion. The instructions for writing a cause and effect essay seem rather straightforward, but should you require further assistance, you can find it online.

SATIRICAL ESSAY ON ABORTION

This sort of essay uses satire to criticize or ridicule the subject of discussion or make it absurd. Primarily, it is not meant to be funny or to amuse the audience, as much as it is intended to get your readers interested in what you have to say, humor being the shortest way to get someone's attention. A satirical essay uses hyperbole or exaggeration to accentuate things you would like to emphasize. Irony is also useful, in a way that saying the exact opposite of what you mean in an ironic way expresses your opinions even more effectively. Make jokes but be careful not to cross the line of good taste and risk offending the audience. When writing about a highly sensitive topic like abortion, you should be extra careful when using humor and irony. You could however quite easily get away with statements like “sex should be forbidden by law,” to point to the absurdity of certain claims that are usually made in connection with the termination of pregnancy.

EXPOSITORY ESSAY ON ABORTION

Expository essay is a type of essay in which a specific idea, or several ideas, are investigated, backed up with evidence, developed further into an argument which conveys the author's point of view on the subject. The means of accomplishing this task include providing definitions, contrasting opposing arguments, listing examples, analyzing what led to an event, etc. It can be written with very little preparation, as it usually does not require extensive research. It is more about your own thoughts on a subject, reinforced by real-life examples or other evidence. When the structure of the essay is concerned, this is a classic five-paragraph essay that starts with an introduction, develops into a three-paragraph body of the essay, and ends with a conclusion. If you are writing on the topic of abortion, you could define your thesis statement as “Abortion should be prohibited because it denies the fetus its human rights.” After composing an outline, you should think of illustrative examples that prove your point. Real life stories can be very useful in this type of essay, but be sure to connect them to the thesis consequently. Try to make your conclusion logical and to the point; it is likely to leave the greatest impression on your audience. If you follow these instructions carefully, writing an expository essay will not be a difficult task for you.

WRITING AN ABORTION ESSAY OUTLINE

After choosing a subject of an essay and doing thorough research on the available literature and other sources, what precedes the actual writing of a paper is drafting an outline. Most types of essays follow the same basic pattern:

Introduction in which the general idea on the topic is conveyed which is meant to grab the readers' attention. The topic is defined, and a thesis statement is formulated. When writing about abortion, the topic can be expressed as “Abortion should be prohibited,” and the thesis statement would be “Abortion should be prohibited because it denies the fetus its human rights.”
Body of the essay which consists of arguments linked to the thesis, backed with supporting evidence. Counterarguments should also be included followed by refuting evidence. Termination of pregnancy is such a controversial and debatable topic that it offers an abundance of possible claims and counterclaims to choose from. It is important to use only those that can be directly linked to the thesis.
Conclusion in which the thesis is restated, all the information is summarized and connected to the thesis.

OTHER USEFUL INFORMATION ON WRITING AN ABORTION ESSAY

Tons of written materials are readily available wherever you look. So what can you do to make your essay stand out from the multitude of similar essays and appeal to the audience? Well, first of all, you should determine who your audience or target group (or possibly a target person) is. It can be your high school teacher or a college professor who assigned you a writing project and who will grade your work afterward. It can be a group of classmates or peers or another social group. The tactic you will employ depends primarily on who you are writing for. If it is your teacher, your essay should instigate him to give you a good grade, if it is a person in charge of college admission, your aim is to convince them to admit you to college. But in the case of these two examples, there is not an issue of whether they would actually read your paper. They are required to do it; it is in their job description. Other audiences, however, are a completely different story. Since they are not obliged to read your essay, and can easily skip it and find something else to read, you need to catch their attention and make them interested in what you have to say.

Luckily, abortion is a topic which never ceases to be popular or widely debated. Nevertheless, you would need a good essay hook. A hook is a sentence or a phrase that attracts attention by presenting intriguing information which makes you want to continue reading and find out more about it. Consequently, you decide to read the essay through, which is exactly what the author wanted you to do. The hook is also dependent on who your audience is and what they want to read about. Do they simply want to be entertained, or do they need instruction on how to do something or how to resolve an issue? Or are they looking for answers to a particular question? When you have determined what your audience expects to get from reading your essay, you should try to formulate your hook in the way that corresponds to the readers' needs best. There is no simple formula how to do this. Just come up with one or two strong sentences to start your essay with, and you will successfully grab your readers' attention.

It is also necessary to determine the purpose of your essay. The purpose basically depends on the type of essay you are planning to write, whether it is an argumentative essay, a persuasive essay, a research study or any other kind which was previously discussed throughout this paper. In certain types of essays, the main purpose is to describe the subject in detail; in others, it is to persuade the audience to look at an issue from your particular point of view. A successful hook would be able to elicit an emotional response, and the type of emotions involved would depend on how you want your audience to feel after reading your essay, what is the desired effect that you aim to accomplish. In order to come up with a good hook for your abortion essay, it is always a good idea to read a few abortion essays written in a similar way, to evaluate them critically to determine what caught your attention and to find an advantage for yourself.

Some of the possible hooks for an abortion essay would be:

Is abortion a murder?
Whose child gets to be born?
Abortion – a solution to overpopulation
You are poor – get an abortion
It is your body – why should the government decide?

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOPIC

The selection of a suitable topic is essential when planning to write an argumentative essay. Abortion being an extremely popular subject, there is almost no way you could go wrong. It all comes down to actually choosing a topic that suits you, that is in line with your personal opinions and points of view so that you can argue it convincingly. When it comes to abortion, there are two opposed fractions with basically no middle ground between them. They are the pro-life and pro-choice advocates. If you are not assigned to write from a particular position, simply go ahead and choose the one that is the closest to how you actually feel about the subject. Then you can decide to focus on different angles, including the religious point, the health issues argument, the legal aspects of abortion, the human rights issue, etc. Examples of good topics are: “Should abortion be fully legalized?”, “Is abortion a violation of human rights?”, “Is abortion morally right?”

CLOSING SECTION OF THE ABORTION ESSAY

The conclusion serves the purpose of recapitulating all that has previously been said in the course of the assignment. If your essay was rather long, then it is useful to summarize in short what has already been said on the subject. On the other hand, if your essay was a shorter one, you could just give a concise review of your argument. This is your chance to round up your major ideas, connect them all together and provide a closure for the subject you have been writing on, without completely shutting the discussion down, but rather creating a basis for continued thinking on the subject. When writing on abortion, there is an abundance of possible topics to choose from, such as:

Should the government have a say in ending a pregnancy?
Should a woman be required to undergo an abortion in specific cases?
How many abortions are women allowed to have in her lifetime?

Regardless of the specific content you decided to write about, the conclusion should contain a powerful message, perhaps putting the subject of the essay in a larger context or talking about the possible implications of the debated issue. The conclusion should make an impression on the audience; compel them to look at the problem from your perspective.

To become proficient in writing a high quality essay on abortion, the best policy is to adhere to the advice provided to you throughout this article, and combine what you have learned with reading several example essays that exist on the subject. It should equip you with tools necessary to get the structure of the essay just right, expand your knowledge on the topic as well as your vocabulary that you could later put to good use in your own paper, teach you how to use proper grammatical constructions and well-composed sentences. Apart from that, examples are indicative of the way a good essay should look like, what it consists of, where and how to formulate your thesis statement, how to secure a natural and logical flow of ideas, how to use a hook, how to link all the pieces of evidence and all the arguments to the thesis, and finally, how to write a strong conclusion that will convince your readers in the idea you are trying to put through.

There is absolutely no reason to start everything from scratch. Why waste time and energy on creating something that already exists, and has already been optimized by others? You can simply use the existing essays as sources of ideas, and make your own original work of art. You can combine solutions provided in multiple papers to accomplish the desired result. Also, if you experience a writer's block, you are temporarily unable to come up with fresh and original ideas, or lack time to do it, feel free to turn to the free essays on abortion available online. They will give you a much-needed push start, which you can later build on and make it original and stylish. All different types of essays on abortion, including the argumentative essay, the persuasive essay, the research paper, the expository essay, the satirical essay and the cause and effect essay can be found on the internet.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON WRITING AN ESSAY ON ABORTION

A possible way to address the issue of abortion is to look at it from a positive or a negative point of view. Depending on what you decide, you would either demonstrate its advantages or disadvantages. If you write from the advantages perspective, you will accentuate its good sides presenting them from various angles. From the legal point of view, it is much better to have permissive legislation that allows abortion on broad grounds so that women carrying unwanted children would not have to resort to illegal and unsafe procedures done by unskilled people in unsanitary conditions. Also, a woman should not be coerced to give birth to a child when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. From the social perspective, if a woman is too young, or still in school and with no income of her own, it would be better for her to postpone childbearing until she has finished school or found a decent job. This would potentially be beneficial for the child as well, as he/she would have better chances of growing up in a stimulating and loving environment. There is also the issue of terminating a pregnancy on medical grounds, when the mother's or the baby's life is in danger.

The issue of abortion can also be discussed in terms of philosophical questions it raises. Our modern society has still not reached a consensus when this sensitive issue is concerned. It remains a highly controversial topic. If you would want to argue it in a philosophical way you would need to formulate a plausible thesis, come up with arguments to support it and anticipate any possible counterarguments so that you can prepare a defense against them. You would need to create a comprehensive list of pros and cons and discuss each one of them in view of your thesis. An excellent philosophical essay on abortion has been written by Carl Sagan. He tries to ascertain at what moment is it considered that a fetus is a human being whose life should be preserved. He also raises the question of how it can be murder to kill a newborn infant, but not murder if it was killed just a day before. Was it not human then? Was the crime any less then? These are some of the most difficult questions to answer, and every profession involved in the issue has dealt with them in ways they can use in practice. Courts have ruled on the matter and stuck to their rulings; the medical profession has strict policies on when and on what grounds abortions can be performed. But the philosophical question of the value of human life, or indeed when the human life begins, remains open.

After having read these instructions and advice on how to write an essay on abortion, if you need further assistance, please contact our custom writing services , and a high-quality essay will be provided for you.

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Abortion Research Paper: Example, Outline, & Topics

The long-standing debate surrounding abortion has many opponents and advocates. Groups known as Pro-Choice and Pro-Life argue which approach is better, with no easy solution in sight. This ethical complexity is what makes abortion a popular topic for argumentative writing. As a student, you need to tackle it appropriately.

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The picture shows statistics regarding the legal status of abortion.

If this task sounds daunting, read this guide by our custom-writing experts to get excellent writing tips on handling this assignment. You will also find here:

abortion topics and prompts,
a research paper outline,
a free essay sample.
🤔 Why Is Abortion a Good Topic?
☑️ Research Paper Prompts
👨‍⚕️ Abortion Research Questions
📚 Research Topics
🔬 Before You Start
✍️ Step-by-Step Writing Guide

📋 Abortion Research Paper Example

🔍 references, 🤔 why is abortion a good research topic.

Abortion studies are a vast area of research and analysis. It touches upon numerous domains of life, such as politics, medicine, religion, ethics, and human rights perspectives.

Like gun control or euthanasia, the abortion debate offers no evident answers to what kind of regulation is preferable. According to a recent survey, 61% of US adults are in favor of abortion , while 37% think it should be illegal. The arguments from both sides make sense, and there is no “yes-no” solution.

All this makes investigating the abortion debate a valuable exercise to hone your critical analysis skills. It will teach you to back up your claims with sound evidence while giving credit to counterarguments. Besides, expanding the body of abortion research is beneficial for the American community and women’s rights.

☑️ Abortion Research Paper Prompts

The first step to writing a successful paper is choosing an appropriate topic. Abortion is surrounded by numerous legal, medical, ethical, and social debates. That’s why the choice of ideas is virtually endless.

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Don’t know where to start? Check out the prompts and creative titles below.

Should Abortion Be Legal: Research Paper Prompt

You can approach this question from several perspectives. For example, propose a new legal framework for regulating eligibility for abortion. Some states allow the procedure under certain circumstances, such as a threat to a woman’s health. Should it be made legal in less extreme situations, too?

Anti-Abortion Research Paper Prompt

The legal status of abortions is still disputed in many countries. The procedure’s most ardent opponents are Catholic religious groups. In an anti-abortion paper, you may list ethical or faith-based claims. Focus on the right-to-life arguments and give scientific evidence regarding embryo’s rights.

Abortion and Embryonic Stem Cell Research Prompt

Stem cell research is a dubious issue that faces strong opposition from ethical and religious activists. Here are some great ideas for an essay on this topic:

Start by explaining what stem cells are.
Outline the arguments for and against their use in research.
Link this discussion to the status of abortion.

Abortion Law Research Paper Prompt

If you get an abortion-related assignment in your Legal Studies class, it’s better to take a legislative approach to this issue. Here’s what you can do:

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Study the evolution of abortion laws in the US or other countries.
Pinpoint legal gaps.
Focus on the laws’ strengths and weaknesses.

Abortion Breast Cancer Research Prompt

Increasing research evidence shows the link between abortion and breast cancer development . Find scholarly articles proving or refuting this idea and formulate a strong argument on this subject. Argue it with credible external evidence.

Abortion Ethics Research Paper Prompt

Here, you can focus on the significance of the discussion’s ethical dimension. People who are against abortion often cite the ethics of killing an embryo. You can discuss this issue by quoting famous thinkers and the latest medical research. Be sure to support your argument with sound evidence.

👨‍⚕️ Questions about Abortion for Research Paper

How does technology reframe the abortion debate ?
Is there new ethics of abortion in the 21 st century?
How did the abortion debate progress before the Roe v. Wade decision?
How is the abortion debate currently being shaped on social media?
How do abortion rights advocates conceptualize the meaning of life ?
Can the abortion debate be called a culture war?
What are women’s constitutional abortion rights ?
How does abortion reshape the concept of a person?
How does the abortion debate fit in the post-Socialist transition framework of the European community?
Where does the abortion debate stand in the politics of sexuality?

📚 Abortion Topics for Research Paper

The changing legal rhetoric of abortion in the US .
Constructing abortion as a legal problem .
Regendering of the US’ abortion problem .
Evolution of public attitudes to abortion in the US.
Choice vs. coercion in the abortion debate.
Abortion and sin in Catholicism.
Artificial wombs as an innovative solution to the abortion debate.
Religious belief vs. reason in the abortion debate.
Introduction of pregnant women’s perspectives into the abortion debate: dealing with fetal abnormalities .
The role of ultrasound images in the evolution of women’s abortion intentions.

🔬 Research Papers on Abortions: Before You Start

Before discussing how to write an abortion paper, let’s focus on the pre-writing steps necessary for a stellar work. Here are the main points to consider.

The picture explains the difference between qualitative and quantitative research design.

Abortion Research Design

Before you start exploring your topic, you need to choose between a qualitative and quantitative research design:

💬 Qualitative studies focus on words and present the attitudes and subjective meanings assigned to the concept of abortion by respondents.

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🧪 Quantitative studies , in turn, focus on numbers and statistics. They analyze objective evidence and avoid subjective interpretations.

Pick a research design based on your research skills and the data you’re planning to analyze:

If you plan to gain insight into people’s opinions, attitudes, and life experiences related to abortion, it’s better to go for an interview and qualitative analysis.
If you have a survey and want to focus on descriptive statistics, it’s better to stick to quantitative methods .

Abortion Research Paper Outline Format

Next, it’s time to choose the format of your paper’s outline. As a rule, students use one of the 3 approaches:

You can learn more about these formats from our article on how to write an outline .

Choosing Headings & Subheadings

A strong title can save your paper, while a poor one can immediately kill the readers’ interest. That’s why we recommend you not to underestimate the importance of formulating an attention-grabbing, exciting heading for your text.

Here are our best tips to make your title and subheadings effective:

A good title needs to be brief. It’s up to 5 words, as a rule. Subheadings can be longer, as they give a more extended explanation of the content.
Don’t be redundant. Make sure the subheadings are not duplicating each other.
Mind the format. For instance, if your paper is in the APA format, you need to use proper font size and indentation. No numbering of headings and subheadings is necessary as in the outline. Ensure the reader understands the hierarchy with the help of heading level distinctions.

Components of an Effective Outline

According to academic writing conventions, a good outline should follow 4 essential principles:

Parallelism . All components of your outline need to have a similar grammatical structure. For example, if you choose infinitives to denote actions, stick to them and don’t mix them with nouns and gerunds.
Coordination . Divide your work into chunks with equal importance. This way, you will allocate as much weight to one point as to all the others. Your outline’s sections of similar hierarchy should have equal significance.
Subordination . The subheadings contained within one heading of a higher order should all be connected to the paper’s title.
Division . The minimum number of subheadings in each outline heading should be 2. If you have only one point under a heading, it’s worth adding another one.

Use this list of principles as a cheat sheet while creating your outline, and you’re sure to end up with well-organized and structured research!

Abortion Research Paper Outline Example

To recap and illustrate everything we’ve just discussed, let’s have a look at this sample abortion outline. We’ve made it in the decimal format following all effective outlining principles—check it out!

History of abortion laws in the USA.
Problem: recent legal changes challenge Roe vs. Wade .
Thesis statement: the right to abortion should be preserved as a constitutional right
The fundamental human right to decide what to do with their body.
Legal abortions are safer.
Fetuses don’t feel pain at the early stages of development.
Abortion is murder.
Fetuses are unborn people who feel pain at later stages.
Abortion causes lifelong psychological trauma for the woman.
Roe vs. Wade is a pro-choice case.
The constitutional right to privacy and bodily integrity.
Conclusion.

✍️ Abortion Research Paper: How to Write

Now, let’s proceed to write the paper itself. We will cover all the steps, starting with introduction writing rules and ending with the body and conclusion essentials.

Abortion Introduction: Research Paper Tips

When you begin writing an abortion paper, it’s vital to introduce the reader to the debate and key terminology. Start by describing a broader issue and steadily narrow the argument to the scope of your paper. The intro typically contains the key figures or facts that would show your topic’s significance.

For example, suppose you plan to discuss the ethical side of abortion. In this case, it’s better to structure the paper like this:

Start by outlining the issue of abortion as a whole.
Introduce the arguments of pro-choice advocates, saying that this side of the debate focuses on the woman’s right to remove the fetus from her body or leave it.
Cite the latest research evidence about fetuses as living organisms, proceeding to debate abortion ethics.
End your introduction with a concise thesis statement .

The picture shows parts of an introduction in an abortion research paper.

Thesis on Abortion for a Research Paper

The final part of your introduction is a thesis—a single claim that formulates your paper’s main idea. Experienced readers and college professors often focus on the thesis statement’s quality to decide whether the text is worth reading further. So, make sure you dedicate enough effort to formulate the abortion research paper thesis well!

Don’t know how to do it? These pro tips will surely help you write a great thesis:

Abortion Research Paper Body

Now, it’s time to proceed to the main body of your paper. It should expand on the main idea in more detail, explaining the details and weighing the evidence for and against your argument.

The secret of effective writing is to go paragraph by paragraph . Your essay’s body will have around 2-5 of them, and the quality of each one determines the value of the whole text.

Here are the 4 easy steps that can help you excel in writing the main part of your essay:

Start each paragraph with a topic sentence. It functions as a mini-thesis statement and communicates the paragraph’s main idea.
Then, expand it with additional facts and evidence. It’s better to back that information with external sources, showing that it’s not your guesswork. Make sure you properly analyze the citations and show how they fit into your broader research.
A paragraph should end with a concise wrap-up. Write a concluding sentence restating the topic sentence or a transition linking to the next section.

Research Papers on Abortions: Conclusion

The conclusion of an abortion paper also plays a major role in the overall impression that your paper will produce. So, how do you make it interesting?

Instead of simply restating the thesis and enumerating your points, it’s better to do the following:

Focus on the broader implications of the issue you’ve just discussed.
Mention your study’s limitations and point out some directions for further research.
It’s also a good idea to include a call to action , which can help create a sense of urgency in the readers.

Abortion Articles for Research Paper & Other Sources

Every research paper ends with “works cited” or a reference page enumerating the sources used for the assignment. A rule of thumb is to cite credible, authoritative publications from governmental organizations and NGOs and academic articles from peer-reviewed journals. These sources will make your research more competent and professional, supporting your viewpoint with objective scientific information.

Here are some databases that can supply top-quality data to back the abortion-related claims in a research paper:

Feel free to check these databases for studies related to your subject. It’s best to conduct preliminary research to see whether your topic has enough supporting evidence. Also, make sure there are plenty of new studies to back your arguments! Abortion is a fast-changing field of research, so it’s best only to use publications no more than 5 years old.

To learn more about credible research sources, check out our guide on choosing reliable websites .

We’ve taught you all you need to write a well-researched and thoughtful abortion paper. Finally, we want to give you an example of an essay on the topic “ Should Abortion Rights Be Preserved? ” Check it out to gain inspiration.

Now you know all the details of abortion paper writing. Use our tips to choose a topic, develop sound arguments, and impress your professor with a stellar piece on this debatable subject!

❓ Abortion Research Paper FAQs

First, you need to pick a debatable topic about abortion and develop a thesis statement on that subject.
Next, choose the arguments to support your claim and use external evidence to back them up.
End the paper with a concise wrap-up.
Begin your introduction with a catchy fact or shocking statistics on the issue of abortion.
Ask a rhetorical question to boost your readers’ interest.
Cite a famous person’s words about the pros and cons of legal abortion.

To compose a strong opening for your abortion essay, make sure to provide some background and context for further discussion. Explain why the debate about abortions is so acute and what the roots of the problem are.

There are many interesting topics related to abortion, spanning the areas of sociology, ethics, and medicine. You can focus on the progression of the abortion debate along with civil rights or discuss abortion from a feminist perspective.

You can choose between qualitative and quantitative approaches for your abortion research. Hold a survey among women and report the findings of your qualitative study in a short report. Or, you can measure factual information in numbers and conduct quantitative research.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Research Paper: Grammarly
Scholarly Articles on Abortion: Gale
Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion Worldwide: Guttmacher Institute
Why Abortion Should Be Legal: News 24
Pro and Con: Abortion: Britannica
Organizing Academic Research Papers: The Introduction: Sacred Heart University
How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Research Paper: Steps and Examples: Research.com
Abortion: American Psychological Association
Writing a Research Paper: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Writing a Research Paper: Purdue University
A Process Approach to Writing Research Papers: University of California, Berkeley
What Is Qualitative vs. Quantitative Study?: Grand Canyon University
Decimal Outlines: Texas A&M University
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Comparison/Contrast Essays: Two Patterns

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First Pattern: Block-by-Block

By Rory H. Osbrink

Abortion is an example of a very controversial issue. The two opposing viewpoints surrounding abortion are like two sides of a coin. On one side, there is the pro-choice activist and on the other is the pro-life activist.

The argument is a balanced one; for every point supporting abortion there is a counter-point condemning abortion. This essay will delineate the controversy in one type of comparison/contrast essay form: the “”Argument versus Argument,”” or, “”Block-by-Block”” format. In this style of writing, first you present all the arguments surrounding one side of the issue, then you present all the arguments surrounding the other side of the issue. You are generally not expected to reach a conclusion, but simply to present the opposing sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined) Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Block-by-Block Format

One of the most divisive issues in America is the controversy surrounding abortion. Currently, abortion is legal in America, and many people believe that it should remain legal. These people, pro-choice activists, believe that it is the women’s right to chose whether or not to give birth. However, there are many groups who are lobbying Congress to pass laws that would make abortion illegal. These people are called the pro-life activists.

Explains pro-choice

Abortion is a choice that should be decided by each individual, argues the pro-choice activist. Abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet fully human, therefore, it is not in defiance against God. Regardless of the reason for the abortion, it should be the woman’s choice because it is her body. While adoption is an option some women chose, many women do not want to suffer the physical and emotional trauma of pregnancy and labor only to give up a child. Therefore, laws should remain in effect that protect a woman’s right to chose.

Explains pro-life

Abortion is an abomination, argues the pro-life activist. It makes no sense for a woman to murder a human being not even born. The bible says, “”Thou shalt not kill,”” and it does not discriminate between different stages of life. A fetus is the beginning of life. Therefore, abortion is murder, and is in direct defiance of God’s will. Regardless of the mother’s life situation (many women who abort are poor, young, or drug users), the value of a human life cannot be measured. Therefore, laws should be passed to outlaw abortion. After all, there are plenty of couples who are willing to adopt an unwanted child.

If we take away the woman’s right to chose, will we begin limiting her other rights also? Or, if we keep abortion legal, are we devaluing human life? There is no easy answer to these questions. Both sides present strong, logical arguments. Though it is a very personal decision, t he fate of abortion rights will have to be left for the Supreme Court to decide.

Second Pattern: Point-by-Point

This second example is also an essay about abortion. We have used the same information and line of reasoning in this essay, however, this one will be presented in the “”Point-by-Point”” style argument. The Point-by-Point style argument presents both sides of the argument at the same time. First, you would present one point on a specific topic, then you would follow that up with the opposing point on the same topic. Again, you are generally not expected to draw any conclusions, simply to fairly present both sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined)

Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Point-by-Point Format

Point One: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Supporters of both pro-life and pro-choice refer to religion as support for their side of the argument. Pro-life supporters claim that abortion is murder, and is therefore against God’s will. However, pro-choice defenders argue that abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet a fully formed human. Therefore, abortion would not be a defiance against God.

Point Two: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Another main point of the argument is over the woman’s personal rights, versus the rights of the unborn child. Pro-choice activists maintain that regardless of the individual circumstances, women should have the right to chose whether or not to abort. The pregnancy and labor will affect only the woman’s body, therefore it should be the woman’s decision. Pro-life supporters, on the other hand, believe that the unborn child has the right to life, and that abortion unlawfully takes away that right.

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Abortion Essay Example

05 January, 2020

11 minutes read

Author: Elizabeth Brown

Composing essays is a must during your college studies. Sometimes, you might get a topic that you aren’t fully aware of. Or, you can fail to grasp the idea of what a particular essay topic requires you to reveal in your essay. An abortion essay, for example, has become one of the very on-going issues these days. Professors believe that elaborating an essay on such a topic can help a student learn how to develop appropriate arguments and ideas, even in the most sensitive essays. If you experience any difficulty with the abortion essay writing, you just need to take a few points into account. Regardless of your title, which can be either why abortion should be supported or why abortion should be illegal essay, you can master your writing just by acknowledging several essential facts about it.

Abortion Essay: Definitions, Goals & Topics

An abortion argumentative essay reveals the arguments for or against pregnancy termination. The main peculiarity of such an essay is that one can write it from different points of view. While one may strongly feel like composing an abortion arguments essay and advancing their positioning in terms of healthcare and research, others may think of this essay in terms of psychology and sociology. Regardless of the stance, it is necessary to carry out some preliminary research and make sure you operate on both your arguments and data accurately.

essay sample about abortion with introduction, body and conclusion

Abortion essays require the essay writer to stay tolerant and open-minded. The topic, the selection of arguments, vocabulary – all of these indicators should not offend people who are sensitive to the outlined topic.

All in all, the ultimate goal of an argumentative essay on abortion is to present the topic and provide arguments for and against it. It is likewise essential to give an insight into the subject, reveal its current state, and include most recent findings.

Abortion Essay Titles

When composing a title for an abortion essay, the first critical thing to keep in mind is transparency. The title should not create confusion or offend the reader. To select a title you would like to develop in your essay, decide whether you know why abortion is wrong essay, or if you favor supporting the topic. Here are some of the topics that will be easy to elaborate on in your essay about abortion:

Reasons why women in underdeveloped countries are inclined to abortions
Potential health hazard as a consequence of abortion
How different countries approach abortions
The reasons why calling abortion murder is inappropriate
Depriving a woman of the right to make an abortion is equal to depriving a woman of her freedom

Abortion Essay Structure

As you have already learned, a classical essay comprises three parts: an introduction, several body paragraphs (3-5), and concluding remarks. The abortion essay isn’t an exception. But a structure of an abortion essay should be very specific as it contains several fundamental points that differ from other essay types.

Introduction

First, you need to define abortion as soon as you start writing an abortion essay. Even though almost everyone in the world knows what abortion is, it is essential to state its interpretation. Later, you can mention recent findings or events that fairly make an abortion a topic of heated debate. At the end of an introduction, your primary task is to demonstrate your attitude to the topic. Namely, you need to write a short thesis statement that will mention your opinion. For instance, a thesis statement can be: “Should society decide for women what to do with their lives and bodies?”.

If you decide to support abortion in the essay, you may write the body part in the following way: 2-3 paragraphs supporting abortion + one counter-argument against abortion. Remember to provide arguments and support them, not just admit that abortion is good or bad.

Conclusion

When writing a conclusion, briefly summarize everything you mentioned in the text. You should come back to the thesis you mentioned in the introduction while writing it. Don’t forget to mention your own vision and attitude to a problem.

Best Tips For Writing Abortion Essay

Research comes first.

First of all, explore what is already said and written on the topic of abortions. Namely, don’t just read what people say and don’t make conclusions based on what image abortion has in the media. Instead, you may refer to recent research, speeches, and scientific papers by people whose findings are objective and not based on their subjective, emotional perception. Afterward, try to figure out what your attitude on the topic of abortions is. Are you an opponent of the topic, or would you rather support it?

Pay attention to introduction

An introduction is the most fundamental part of the whole paper. If writing an introduction seems to be too complicated, just refer to scientific papers. Find an attention-grabbing statement and feel free to use it in your paper. If possible, try to paraphrase it.

Think of the implications

Suppose you decided to write an essay as an opponent of abortions. Think of some possible implications that termination of pregnancy may have. Also, consider the hazard of continuing an unwanted pregnancy. Doing so is essential if you want to strengthen your arguments.

Be flexible

Since such a topic might be extremely sensitive, it is vital not to be critical. It isn’t a good idea to get emotional or, what is worse, judgemental in your paper. Demonstrate that even though you support a particular argument, you don’t exclude that the opposite argument may also hold true.

Abortion Essay Examples

Abortion implies a termination of pregnancy by removing the embryo from a woman’s uterus prior to its birth. Uncountable controversies and criticism have increasingly surrounded the topic of abortion. Even though most developed countries officially carry out a lot of abortions annually, this medical procedure is actively discussed in many countries. Today, a lot of people believe that pregnancies are terminated by women who are either underaged, poor, or promiscuous. A woman who terminates her pregnancy can also be mature, having kids already, married, happy, and wealthy. Women make this step due to multiple reasons. Should society take control over a female body and decide her and her kid’s fate, and does the prohibition of abortion indeed decrease the abortion rate?

Official prohibition of abortions isn’t likely to reduce the abortion rate. For example, gambling and prostitution have long ago been prohibited in many countries in the world. However, this doesn’t mean that the people don’t gamble and that particular women don’t make their living by engaging in prostitution. The same concerns abortions. Once abortions are prohibited on a state level, women will be left with nothing but a decision to find a person who will carry out an abortion illegally. Or, what is worse, women might induce a miscarriage on their own if they can’t find a specialist. While a medical abortion procedure is a safe way to terminate pregnancy, the latter is not. The risk of terminating pregnancy elsewhere or even at home might be incompatible with life. A lot of women die because of an unsuccessful pregnancy termination, which is way worse than a safe abortion in a medical institution.

A lot of infants in the US die during the first years, months, if not days of their life. This happens as a result of an inborn pathology. Pathology is usually diagnosed during pregnancy screenings. Since such screenings are performed at an early pregnancy phase, a woman can terminate pregnancy once such pathology is identified. The fact of the matter is that many pathologies are incompatible with life too. For each mother, watching her kid dying and knowing that she cannot help, even if she had all the money in the world, is devastating. And that’s even worse for a suffering child. This leads to the conclusion that terminating a pregnancy is the most humane decision in such a situation.

Prohibiting abortions often equals to forcing a woman to give birth to a child she does not want. The reasons for such an unwillingness are uncountable. First, a woman might not be mature enough, she might have kids already and no money to afford this child. Besides, her pregnancy might be a mistake not because of her fault. Indeed, 2 in 1000 women in the US are raped annually. Why should a woman be judged by her decision to terminate pregnancy which is a result of a sexual assault? Even in cases when no sexual assault took place, it is still irrelevant to shame a woman and criticize her for knowing what will be better for her. It is better to terminate a pregnancy than to give life to a child who will never be loved and secure and be an unsuitable fit for a woman at the same time.

Terminating pregnancy, on the other hand, is not just depriving an unborn child of a right to live a life he or she deserves. Regardless of the woman’s motives, she imposes risks on her health. First of all, an abortion undermines a woman’s emotional and mental health. Additionally, it might set risks for her physical health. Indeed, she might reduce her chances of getting pregnant again or increase further pregnancy complications. Besides, 7 in every 100 women face a risk of having parts of a fetus remaining in her womb.

Overall, abortion is solely a woman’s issue. It should not have anything to do with politics, religion, and disgrace. Bringing a child to the world is the responsibility of a woman who has enough grounds for making an appropriate decision. Although terminating a pregnancy might bring severe health risks, it erases the problems that might be even more severe, such as watching a child suffer and not being able to give them a childhood they deserve.

Write an Abortion Essay with HandmadeWriting

Composing an abortion essay might sometimes be a challenging assignment. However, this topic is vast and extensively discussed. The latter allows you to refer to multiple ideas and get access to a multitude of insights to generate your own understanding of a topic. But if you find it problematic to compose an abortion essay – you can get it done with HandmadeWriting . Even if you merely lack inspiration, we will take care of your paper. Just hand in your paper instructions and enjoy your spare time while our writers are crafting your essay. Getting a paper done in such short time frames has never been easier.

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How To Create A Best Abortion Argumentative Essay?

Table of Contents

How To Create A Best Abortion Argumentative Essay

The topic of abortion is highly debated among various groups of people all around the world. Abortion is a synthetic way of ending a pregnancy by extraction or removal of an embryo before it can live outside the womb.

Because of the moral subsoil of the question, it is fiercely discussed even in the countries where such medical procedure is allowed by the government.

Argumentative essay on abortion: what’s the thing about?

First and foremost you need to remember that the topic which has a medical aspect requires a careful and attentive approach to the research and presentation. Examine the question diligently in order to operate with the terminology you may need freely.

Keep in mind that many people are sensitive to your abortion argumentative essay topic, so be careful with the word choice in your essay not to offend anybody.

The structure for the essay on abortion is the same as for any of a kind.

You begin your essay with the introduction . Here you give the main definitions in case the reader is not aware of the topic. You also include some background information on the problem, describe the reason for your work and end the entry with a thesis. As a rule, a thesis contains your point of view on the subject.

A useful hint: to write a good thesis statement for abortion, you definitely have to be well acquainted with the topic, but also you need to be honest with what you write.

In the main body of your college research paper , you express all the points for and against the abortions. That means you will have two paragraphs for each group of statements. In this part, you place all the ideas you have.

Finally, you write a conclusion for the essay. Here you have to sum up all the thoughts you’ve already written, without adding anything new. Express your own point of view on the question of abortion.

In some cases, you may be asked to write an outline for your essay. It is a table of contents where you enumerate the paragraphs of your essay.

To make it as well-directed as possible, select the main ideas of every paragraph and note them down. It may look like this:

Introduction: The problem of abortions.

Main body: Everything considered on the topic of abortions, namely

Paragraph 1: Advantages an abortion can provide.
Paragraph 2: Disadvantages and negative consequences of an abortion.

Conclusion: Inference and personal point of view on the problem.

Argumentative essay on abortion examples and ideas

How about some examples and ideas for your research paper writing needs? Try one of the following topics:

Will abortion illegalization increase the number of backstreet abortions?
The attitude to abortion in different cultures.
What are the effects of abortion on a woman’s health?
What should be the lowest age for abortion?
What are the reasons behind the decision of married couples to do an abortion?
Can the unborn fetus feel pain during the procedure of abortion?
Should abortion be considered as a murder?
Why women do abortions?

A general argumentative essay on abortion pro-choice which fits the outline above may have the following structure:

Introduction.

The definition of an abortion.
The analysis of the social aspect.
Thesis: “Should society’s disapproval break not only the women’s, but also the families and unwanted children’s lives?”
Paragraph 1. An argument in favor of abortion (two, three, or more).
Paragraph 2: An argument against abortion (same as in the previous paragraph).

Conclusion.

A general deduction that confirms the thesis in the introduction.
Expression of a personal vision of a problem.

What’s more, it may be of great help for you to search for some full free argumentative essays on abortion. This will help you to get a complete picture of an essay.

Supporting arguments for abortion

Here are some ideas of pro-abortion thesis statements. You may use them in your essay or make up your unique arguments.

Everybody has a basic fundamental right to do anything with own body.
It is crucial for a woman’s independence to decide whether she wants to have a child.
Some scientists claim that personhood starts when a fetus is able to live outside the womb, so after the birth.
Most neuroscientists believe that fetuses can’t feel pain when the abortion is done.
Legal and professional abortions reduce women’s injury or even death from illegal backstreet abortions.
Modern methods of abortion won’t cause infertility and other lasting health problems.
Abortion is the chance not to give birth to a child with deviations.
Women who can’t do an abortion may become unemployed, live below the poverty line, or become a victim of domestic violence.
A child may not come to the world unwanted.
Abortion is considered to be one of the methods of population control.

What to say against abortion?

If you’ve decided to adhere to the opposite side, here are some useful arguments against abortion. Take one of these or come up with own.

Abortion is a murder of the innocent creature.
Life begins in the womb of a woman, so the unborn child is a human who has the right to live.
Many scientists believe that fetuses feel sufferings while abortion is done.
Abortion contradicts God’s commandments.
Abortion causes psychological problems.
Abortions may reduce the number of children available for adoption.
Abortion, because of the embryo’s abnormalities, can be regarded as discrimination of a physical feature.
Abortion is not a form of contraception.
Women have to accept the responsibilities that come with pregnancy.
Originally, the Hippocratic Oath forbids abortion.
Abortion popularizes the disrespect of life.
According to the investigations of a Guttmacher Institute, black women are doing abortions more frequently than white, which means that it violates the balance of African babies.
Abortion destroys the possible social contribution of an unborn child.
Abortion may cause future health problems of a woman.

On balance…

The topic of abortion is highly discussed nowadays so it won’t be too difficult to make up your mind about the issue you’d want to cover in your essay.

No inspiration to write another essay? Hand it to one of our writers and enjoy the free time. Your top-notch paper would be crafted for you by the deadline!

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Social Issue: Abortion

Basic Info (Facts, Books)
Scholarly Articles
Opinions & Arguments

Finding Opinions and Arguments about Abortion

We are all biased. That is, we all have our own personal biases - our beliefs about ourselves, the world around us, and what 'authorities' and sources of information we are likely to listen to, trust and believe. These beliefs are so much a part of us that we often don't question them.

However...part of learning how to be a good debater, how to write an effective argument paper, or how to create a convincing presentation about a controversial topic, is to take the time to learn about and understand all sides of an argument (and there are often more than just two!). Sometimes this information may challenge our own long-held beliefs, even make us uncomfortable - but it is good if we can explore it anyway.

To get you started, we have included a few top, online sources showing various sides of the abortion debate. The tab titles indicate the general biases of those particular stakeholders.

When you know you will be exploring inevitably biased information, you may also want to review: Checking on the Reliability of Online Information

Biases, opinions, arguments, & analysis.

Balanced (Showing Both Sides of the Debate)
For Abortion ('Pro-Choice')
Against Abortion ('Pro-Life')
ProCon: Should Abortion Be Legal? Website. Both pro and con arguments concerning abortion from ProCon.org.
Pew Research Center: Abortion Website. Pew Research Center reports and data on views toward abortion in the United States and around the world.
The Abortion Diary Multiple Podcasts. "The Abortion Diary creates a safe and supportive environment for all people to share their personal, unmediated abortion experiences and the complex decision making process surrounding the choice to have an abortion."
Abortion Onscreen Website. Results of a project investigating the history of abortion plotlines in film and on television.
A Better Way to Talk about Abortion Video. Ted Talk by Aspen Baker. "In this personal, thoughtful talk, Aspen Baker makes the case for being neither “pro-life” nor “pro-choice” but rather "pro-voice" — and for the roles that listening and storytelling can play when it comes to discussing difficult topics." (10:58)
My Abortion. My Life.: The Podcast Multiple Podcasts. "My Abortion, My Life is changing the conversation by creating safe spaces for sharing abortion stories and having nuanced, respectful conversations about abortion experiences."
When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories Video. A 1992 American short documentary film directed by Dorothy Fadiman, consisting of first person stories which reveal the physical, emotional and legal consequences of having or providing an abortion when it was a criminal act. (28:22)
Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About The landmark Roe v. Wade decision, handed down by the United States Supreme Court in 1973, touched off a divide deep within the American culture that shows little signs of healing. The reason is not necessarily that people have intransigent views when it comes to abortion. Instead, the issue is genuinely hard to grapple with, even from a moral standpoint, as Harvard Law Professor and bioethicist Glenn Cohen explains. (Video, 7 min.)
Planned Parenthood: Abortion Website. Planned Parenthood delivers vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of people worldwide.
National Abortion Federation Website. The National Abortion Federation provides standards of care, protocols, and clinical education about abortion to health care professionals.
NARAL Pro-Choice America Website. Fights for access to abortion care, birth control, paid parental leave and protections from pregnancy discrimination.
Family Research Council: Abortion Website. Family Research Council's mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview.
March for Life Website. This group's mission is to 'end abortion by uniting, educating, and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square.' Sponsors a march on Washington, D.C. annually on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision.
National Right to Life Website. Founded in 1968, National Right to Life is the nation's oldest and largest pro-life organization.
Stephanie Gray: "Abortion: From Controversy to Civility" (Talks at Google) Video. Stephanie Gray, well-known anti-abortion speaker and author, applies the Socratic method and storytelling to the debate surrounding abortion, inviting the audience to be "pro-conversation" on a topic that can be one of the most divisive, and demonstrates that it is possible to be gracious and respectful when encountering different ideas. (1:03:50)
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Last Updated: Dec 20, 2023 5:09 PM
URL: https://libguides.framingham.edu/c.php?g=904384

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5.1: Arguments Against Abortion

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Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob
Morehouse College & University of South Carolina Sumter via Open Philosophy Press

We will begin with arguments for the conclusion that abortion is generally wrong , perhaps nearly always wrong . These can be seen as reasons to believe fetuses have the “right to life” or are otherwise seriously wrong to kill.

5.1.1 Fetuses are human

First, there is the claim that fetuses are “human” and so abortion is wrong. People sometimes debate whether fetuses are human , but fetuses found in (human) women clearly are biologically human : they aren’t cats or dogs. And so we have this argument, with a clearly true first premise:

Fetuses are biologically human.

All things that are biologically human are wrong to kill.

Therefore, fetuses are wrong to kill.

The second premise, however, is false, as easy counterexamples show. Consider some random living biologically human cells or tissues in a petri dish. It wouldn’t be wrong at all to wash those cells or tissues down the drain, killing them; scratching yourself or shaving might kill some biologically human skin cells, but that’s not wrong; a tumor might be biologically human, but not wrong to kill. So just because something is biologically human, that does not at all mean it’s wrong to kill that thing. We saw this same point about what’s merely biologically alive.

This suggests a deficiency in some common understandings of the important idea of “human rights.” “Human rights” are sometimes described as rights someone has just because they are human or simply in virtue of being human .

But the human cells in the petri dish above don’t have “human rights” and a human heart wouldn’t have “human rights” either. Many examples would make it clear that merely being biologically human doesn’t give something human rights. And many human rights advocates do not think that abortion is wrong, despite recognizing that (human) fetuses are biologically human.

The problem about what is often said about human rights is that people often do not think about what makes human beings have rights or why we have them, when we have them. The common explanation, that we have (human) rights just because we are (biologically) human , is incorrect, as the above discussion makes clear. This misunderstanding of the basis or foundation of human rights is problematic because it leads to a widespread, misplaced fixation on whether fetuses are merely biologically “human” and the mistaken thought that if they are, they have “human rights.” To address this problem, we need to identify better, more fundamental, explanations why we have rights, or why killing us is generally wrong, and see how those explanations might apply to fetuses, as we are doing here.

It might be that when people appeal to the importance and value of being “human,” the concern isn’t our biology itself, but the psychological characteristics that many human beings have: consciousness, awareness, feelings and so on. We will discuss this different meaning of “human” below. This meaning of “human” might be better expressed as conscious being , or “person,” or human person. This might be what people have in mind when they argue that fetuses aren’t even “human.”

Human rights are vitally important, and we would do better if we spoke in terms of “conscious-being rights” or “person-rights,” not “human rights.” This more accurate and informed understanding and terminology would help address human rights issues in general, and help us better think through ethical questions about biologically human embryos and fetuses.

5.1.2 Fetuses are human beings

Some respond to the arguments above—against the significance of being merely biologically human—by observing that fetuses aren’t just mere human cells, but are organized in ways that make them beings or organisms . (A kidney is part of a “being,” but the “being” is the whole organism.) That suggests this argument:

Fetuses are human beings or organisms .

All human beings or organisms are wrong to kill.

Therefore, fetuses are wrong to kill, so abortion is wrong.

The first premise is true: fetuses are dependent beings, but dependent beings are still beings.

The second premise, however, is the challenge, in terms of providing good reasons to accept it. Clearly many human beings or organisms are wrong to kill, or wrong to kill unless there’s a good reason that would justify that killing, e.g., self-defense. (This is often described by philosophers as us being prima facie wrong to kill, in contrast to absolutely or necessarily wrong to kill.) Why is this though? What makes us wrong to kill? And do these answers suggest that all human beings or organisms are wrong to kill?

Above it was argued that we are wrong to kill because we are conscious and feeling: we are aware of the world, have feelings and our perspectives can go better or worse for us —we can be harmed— and that’s what makes killing us wrong. It may also sometimes be not wrong to let us die, and perhaps even kill us, if we come to completely and permanently lacking consciousness, say from major brain damage or a coma, since we can’t be harmed by death anymore: we might even be described as dead in the sense of being “brain dead.” 10

So, on this explanation, human beings are wrong to kill, when they are wrong to kill, not because they are human beings (a circular explanation), but because we have psychological, mental or emotional characteristics like these. This explains why we have rights in a simple, common-sense way: it also simply explains why rocks, microorganisms and plants don’t have rights. The challenge then is explaining why fetuses that have never been conscious or had any feeling or awareness would be wrong to kill. How then can the second premise above, general to all human organisms, be supported, especially when applied to early fetuses?

One common attempt is to argue that early fetuses are wrong to kill because there is continuous development from fetuses to us, and since we are wrong to kill now , fetuses are also wrong to kill, since we’ve been the “same being” all along. 11 But this can’t be good reasoning, since we have many physical, cognitive, emotional and moral characteristics now that we lacked as fetuses (and as children). So even if we are the “same being” over time, even if we were once early fetuses, that doesn’t show that fetuses have the moral rights that babies, children and adults have: we, our bodies and our rights sometimes change.

A second attempt proposes that rights are essential to human organisms: they have them whenever they exist. This perspective sees having rights, or the characteristics that make someone have rights, as essential to living human organisms. The claim is that “having rights” is an essential property of human beings or organisms, and so whenever there’s a living human organism, there’s someone with rights, even if that organism totally lacks consciousness, like an early fetus. (In contrast, the proposal we advocate for about what makes us have rights understands rights as “accidental” to our bodies but “essential” to our minds or awareness, since our bodies haven’t always “contained” a conscious being, so to speak.)

Such a view supports the premise above; maybe it just is that premise above. But why believe that rights are essential to human organisms? Some argue this is because of what “kind” of beings we are, which is often presumed to be “rational beings.” The reasoning seems to be this: first, that rights come from being a rational being: this is part of our “nature.” Second, that all human organisms, including fetuses, are the “kind” of being that is a “rational being,” so every being of the “kind” rational being has rights. 12

In response, this explanation might seem question-begging: it might amount to just asserting that all human beings have rights. This explanation is, at least, abstract. It seems to involve some categorization and a claim that everyone who is in a certain category has some of the same moral characteristics that others in that category have, but because of a characteristic (actual rationality) that only these others have: so, these others profoundly define what everyone else is . If this makes sense, why not also categorize us all as not rational beings , if we are the same kind of beings as fetuses that are actually not rational?

This explanation might seem to involve thinking that rights somehow “trickle down” from later rationality to our embryonic origins, and so what we have later we also have earlier , because we are the same being or the same “kind” of being. But this idea is, in general, doubtful: we are now responsible beings, in part because we are rational beings, but fetuses aren’t responsible for anything. And we are now able to engage in moral reasoning since we are rational beings, but fetuses don’t have the “rights” that uniquely depend on moral reasoning abilities. So that an individual is a member of some general group or kind doesn’t tell us much about their rights: that depends on the actual details about that individual, beyond their being members of a group or kind.

To make this more concrete, return to the permanently comatose individuals mentioned above: are we the same kind of beings, of the same “essence,” as these human beings? If so, then it seems that some human beings can be not wrong to let die or kill, when they have lost consciousness. Therefore, perhaps some other human beings, like early fetuses, are also not wrong to kill before they have gained consciousness . And if we are not the same “kind” of beings, or have different essences, then perhaps we also aren’t the same kind of beings as fetuses either.

Similar questions arise concerning anencephalic babies, tragically born without most of their brains: are they the same “kind” of beings as “regular” babies or us? If so, then—since such babies are arguably morally permissible to let die, even when they could be kept alive, since being alive does them no good—then being of our “kind” doesn’t mean the individual has the same rights as us, since letting us die would be wrong. But if such babies are a different “kind” of beings than us, then pre-conscious fetuses might be of a relevantly different kind also.

So, in general, this proposal that early fetuses essentially have rights is suspect, if we evaluate the reasons given in its support. Even if fetuses and us are the same “kind” of beings (which perhaps we are not!) that doesn’t immediately tell us what rights fetuses would have, if any. And we might even reasonably think that, despite our being the same kind of beings as fetuses (e.g., the same kind of biology), we are also importantly different kinds of beings (e.g., one kind with a mental life and another kind which has never had it). This photograph of a 6-week old fetus might help bring out the ambiguity in what kinds of beings we all are:

In sum, the abstract view that all human organisms have rights essentially needs to be plausibly explained and defended. We need to understand how it really works. We need to be shown why it’s a better explanation, all things considered, than a consciousness and feelings-based theory of rights that simply explains why we, and babies, have rights, why racism, sexism and other forms of clearly wrongful discrimination are wrong, and , importantly, how we might lose rights in irreversible coma cases (if people always retained the right to life in these circumstances, presumably, it would be wrong to let anyone die), and more.

5.1.3 Fetuses are persons

Finally, we get to what some see as the core issue here, namely whether fetuses are persons , and an argument like this:

Fetuses are persons, perhaps from conception.

Persons have the right to life and are wrong to kill.

So, abortion is wrong, as it involves killing persons.

The second premise seems very plausible, but there are some important complications about it that will be discussed later. So let’s focus on the idea of personhood and whether any fetuses are persons. What is it to be a person ? One answer that everyone can agree on is that persons are beings with rights and value . That’s a fine answer, but it takes us back to the initial question: OK, who or what has the rights and value of persons? What makes someone or something a person?

Answers here are often merely asserted , but these answers need to be tested: definitions can be judged in terms of whether they fit how a word is used. We might begin by thinking about what makes us persons. Consider this:

We are persons now. Either we will always be persons or we will cease being persons. If we will cease to be persons, what can end our personhood? If we will always be persons, how could that be?

Both options yield insight into personhood. Many people think that their personhood ends at death or if they were to go into a permanent coma: their body is (biologically) alive but the person is gone: that is why other people are sad. And if we continue to exist after the death of our bodies, as some religions maintain, what continues to exist? The person , perhaps even without a body, some think! Both responses suggest that personhood is defined by a rough and vague set of psychological or mental, rational and emotional characteristics: consciousness, knowledge, memories, and ways of communicating, all psychologically unified by a unique personality.

A second activity supports this understanding:

Make a list of things that are definitely not persons . Make a list of individuals who definitely are persons . Make a list of imaginary or fictional personified beings which, if existed, would be persons: these beings that fit or display the concept of person, even if they don’t exist. What explains the patterns of the lists?

Rocks, carrots, cups and dead gnats are clearly not persons. We are persons. Science fiction gives us ideas of personified beings: to give something the traits of a person is to indicate what the traits of persons are, so personified beings give insights into what it is to be a person. Even though the non-human characters from, say, Star Wars don’t exist, they fit the concept of person: we could befriend them, work with them, and so on, and we could only do that with persons. A common idea of God is that of an immaterial person who has exceptional power, knowledge, and goodness: you couldn’t pray to a rock and hope that rock would respond: you could only pray to a person. Are conscious and feeling animals, like chimpanzees, dolphins, cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, and cows more relevantly like us, as persons, or are they more like rocks and cabbages, non-persons? Conscious and feeling animals seem to be closer to persons than not. 13 So, this classificatory and explanatory activity further supports a psychological understanding of personhood: persons are, at root, conscious, aware and feeling beings.

Concerning abortion, early fetuses would not be persons on this account: they are not yet conscious or aware since their brains and nervous systems are either non-existent or insufficiently developed. Consciousness emerges in fetuses much later in pregnancy, likely after the first trimester or a bit beyond. This is after when most abortions occur. Most abortions, then, do not involve killing a person , since the fetus has not developed the characteristics for personhood. We will briefly discuss later abortions, that potentially affect fetuses who are persons or close to it, below.

It is perhaps worthwhile to notice though that if someone believed that fetuses are persons and thought this makes abortion wrong, it’s unclear how they could coherently believe that a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest could permissibly be ended by an abortion. Some who oppose abortion argue that, since you are a person, it would be wrong to kill you now even if you were conceived because of a rape, and so it’s wrong to kill any fetus who is a person, even if they exist because of a rape: whether someone is a person or not doesn’t depend on their origins: it would make no sense to think that, for two otherwise identical fetuses, one is a person but the other isn’t, because that one was conceived by rape. Therefore, those who accept a “personhood argument” against abortion, yet think that abortions in cases of rape are acceptable, seem to have an inconsistent view.

5.1.4 Fetuses are potential persons

If fetuses aren’t persons, they are at least potential persons, meaning they could and would become persons. This is true. This, however, doesn’t mean that they currently have the rights of persons because, in general, potential things of a kind don’t have the rights of actual things of that kind : potential doctors, lawyers, judges, presidents, voters, veterans, adults, parents, spouses, graduates, moral reasoners and more don’t have the rights of actual individuals of those kinds.

Some respond that potential gives the right to at least try to become something. But that trying sometimes involves the cooperation of others: if your friend is a potential medical student, but only if you tutor her for many hours a day, are you obligated to tutor her? If my child is a potential NASCAR champion, am I obligated to buy her a race car to practice? ‘No’ to both and so it is unclear that a pregnant woman would be obligated to provide what’s necessary to bring about a fetus’s potential. (More on that below, concerning the what obligations the right to life imposes on others, in terms of obligations to assist other people.)

5.1.5 Abortion prevents fetuses from experiencing their valuable futures

The argument against abortion that is likely most-discussed by philosophers comes from philosopher Don Marquis. 14 He argues that it is wrong to kill us, typical adults and children, because it deprives us from experiencing our (expected to be) valuable futures, which is a great loss to us . He argues that since fetuses also have valuable futures (“futures like ours” he calls them), they are also wrong to kill. His argument has much to recommend it, but there are reasons to doubt it as well.

First, fetuses don’t seem to have futures like our futures , since—as they are pre-conscious—they are entirely psychologically disconnected from any future experiences: there is no (even broken) chain of experiences from the fetus to that future person’s experiences. Babies are, at least, aware of the current moment, which leads to the next moment; children and adults think about and plan for their futures, but fetuses cannot do these things, being completely unconscious and without a mind.

Second, this fact might even mean that the early fetus doesn’t literally have a future: if your future couldn’t include you being a merely physical, non-conscious object (e.g., you couldn’t be a corpse: if there’s a corpse, you are gone), then non-conscious physical objects, like a fetus, couldn’t literally be a future person. 15 If this is correct, early fetuses don’t even have futures, much less futures like ours. Something would have a future, like ours, only when there is someone there to be psychologically connected to that future: that someone arrives later in pregnancy, after when most abortions occur.

A third objection is more abstract and depends on the “metaphysics” of objects. It begins with the observation that there are single objects with parts with space between them . Indeed almost every object is like this, if you could look close enough: it’s not just single dinette sets, since there is literally some space between the parts of most physical objects. From this, it follows that there seem to be single objects such as an-egg-and-the-sperm-that-would-fertilize-it . And these would also seem to have a future of value, given how Marquis describes this concept. (It should be made clear that sperm and eggs alone do not have futures of value, and Marquis does not claim they do: this is not the objection here). The problem is that contraception, even by abstinence , prevents that thing’s future of value from materializing, and so seems to be wrong when we use Marquis’s reasoning. Since contraception is not wrong, but his general premise suggests that it is , it seems that preventing something from experiencing its valuable future isn’t always wrong and so Marquis’s argument appears to be unsound. 16

In sum, these are some of the most influential arguments against abortion. Our discussion was brief, but these arguments do not appear to be successful: they do not show that abortion is wrong, much less make it clear and obvious that abortion is wrong.

Abortion - List of Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Abortion is a highly contentious issue with significant moral, legal, and social implications. Essays on abortion could explore the various aspects of the debate including the ethical dimensions, the legal frameworks governing abortion, and the social attitudes surrounding it. They might delve into historical changes in public opinion, the different arguments presented by pro-life and pro-choice advocates, and the impact of legal rulings on the accessibility and safety of abortion services. Discussions could also explore the intersection of abortion with issues like gender equality, religious freedom, and medical ethics. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Abortion you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

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Every person in the United States is granted inalienable rights, whether it be to practice their own religion or vote, which should include autonomy over their own bodies. A woman should have the right to choose what she does with her own body, and in 1973 that became a possibility for American women. In 1973 Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to legally choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies within their first two trimesters. The government finally took into […]

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Don Marquis begins his argument of abortion being immoral by mentioning the pro-choice premise, which was that the statement of a fetus is never a person being too narrow. It's too narrow because if the fetus is never a person, then what would be the difference of a 9-month-old fetus and a newborn baby? That would just mean that infanticide isn't considered murder because a 9-month-old fetus and newborn weren't ever considered to be a person. Marquis further mentions that […]

Effects of Abortion on Young Women

Abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. It is a controversial conversation that most people avoid having. Abortion is different than most issues in politics, because it directly impacts women, rather than men. Young women being targeted over the last forty-five years, has changed the way the public views abortion and what it does to women. A rise in physical complications, mental health problems, and the modern wave of feminism are the effects of legalized abortion […]

The Murder of Innocence

Abortion is a new generation's way of shrugging off accountability of their action at the cost of human life agreeing to the first revision to the structure that says we have the proper way to give of discourse. Me personally for one beyond any doubt that most of us would agree to the reality that ready to say and do what we need and select. For it is our choice to control of speech our conclusions. In connection, moms at […]

The History of Abortion

The history of abortion' is more complex than most people realize. There has been a lot of debate in the past few years about abortion being murder/not murder. Abortion has become illegal in most states. There are several women who believe in "pro-choice" which means they want to have a choice taking care of the baby. I, personally, believe abortion is murder. You are killing a fetus that is going to be born within months and they don't have a […]

Abortion: Go or no Go

Premature birth ends a pregnancy by killing an actual existence yet the mother isn't accused of homicide. Is this right? Shockingly, this has happened roughly twenty million times in the previous twenty years. Tragically, in South Africa, an unborn human has been slaughtered lawfully because of the nation's insufficient laws! The enemy of a honest unprotected human is a killer, accordingly, the individual merits the discipline proportional to a killer by law. Premature birth on interest just gives a mother […]

Abotion: Right or Wrong

When does a person learn right from wrong? Is someone that knows right from wrong, different from someone who does not? These questions bring up the topic of the difference between a "Human" and a "Person". A human would be of human genetics and have a certain build. On the other hand, a human can also not be a person at certain points in the stage of life. If you can distinguish right from wrong, and are able to make […]

Let’s Talk about my Abortion Article

Why is something that requires two people, almost always considered the woman's problem? Every answer to this question is different, more aggressive in some cases, but it narrows down to basic human rights. Now you may be asking "What the hell is she talking about?" and I can assure you, we will get to that. I'd like for you to first put yourself in a situation: You're given a puppy, yet you're allergic to dogs and absolutely do not have […]

Debates on Abortion Theme

Abortion has proved to be a highly controversial topic in religion, politics, and even ethics. Its debate has caused division between factions with some supporting and others opposing its practice. This issue has also landed in the realm of philosophy where several ethicists have tried to explain why they think the method should either be supported or opposed. This essay looks at the works of Judith Thomson and Don Marquis as a representation of both sides of arguments (advocates and […]

Abortion on Teens should be Abolished

Am sure we have all heard of the girl meets boy story, where the girl falls in love with the boy despite receiving plenty of warnings and criticism from any person who has ever mattered in the girl's life. Everything is merry and life is good for the girl until one day she realizes she has missed her period and rushes to her man's home telling herself that everything will be okay. Reality checks in, hard, when the boy declines […]

The Mother and Abortion

For Gwendolyn Brooks, writing poetry that would be considered out of the ordinary and frowned upon was a common theme for her. Her widespread knowledge on subjects like race, ethnicity, gender, and even abortion placed this African American poet apart from many others. Like many poets, Brooks based many of her works on her own life experiences. Although it's unclear whether or not Brooks had an abortion herself, she creates hints and provokes strong feelings towards the issue, revealing the […]

An Issue of Women’s Reproductive Rights

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men and women are created equal (Elizabeth Cady Stanton). In America this has been the basis of what our nation stands for. It is stated that every citizen has the right to equality that shall not be stripped away, in many cases that is not true. Whether man or women you should possess the same rights, but more often than not the women's rights are taken away. There are many instances in […]

What is Abortion

Every year, approximately 40-50 million abortions are conducted. That's about 125,000 little human beings being vacuumed, sucked out, and dissolved, everyday. That's 1 baby being aborted every 26 seconds. As of 58% of Americans think abortion should be legal.. Only 37% thinks it should be illegal in all, Or most cases. Abortion should be eliminated because it is murder, gives women mental health issues, and can cause high risks in the mother's future baby's health. There are two different types […]

The Complex Debate: Exploring Abortion Laws and their Implications

There has been a disputed discussion in history among religious, political, ethical, moral and practical grounds when it comes to the case about abortion. Abortion law forbids, allows, limits and governs the availability of abortion. Abortion laws alter to a high degree by country. For example, three countries in Latin America and two others in Europe ban the act of abortion altogether. In other countries like the United Kingdom contains the abortion act of 1967 that clarifies and prescribes abortion […]

My Beliefs on Abortion

Society today condones the killing of a life, they call it abortion, but I will try to show you why this is wrong. Life begins at conception. The Bible provides proof that God knew us before we were even formed. This provides truth that what is inside a woman's body is a human life. I believe that when you decide to have an abortion, you are deciding to kill an innocent baby. Whether you're doing it because the baby may […]

Research on Abortion Issues

The raging battle for women's rights can be found in almost every avenue of American culture. Whether it be in the workplace, in the government, in churches, or within families, females are fighting for their freedom to control their own lives. They want to work in whichever field they desire, to love whomever they want, and to make decisions for themselves. One of the biggest cases in the quarrel for feminism is the legalization of abortion. Women argue that it […]

Reasons the Constitution of Texas should be Rewritten

The constitution of Texas was written in 1876 but this constitution is not successful in this modern time. Rules and set of protocols which are written in this constitution are not valid for urban Texas these rules need to be amended. From the time of the adoption of this constitution, a total number of 653 amendments were proposed and out of these 653 a total of 474 amendments were approved by the voters and 179 were rejected. Some ?urrent political […]

Get Rid of Abortion or Not?

The world includes a huge variety of people who share different beliefs and morals, however, the Bible states that no one should judge others. One is supposed to respect another for whom they are as a person. The people in this world are beginning to divide because of the debate concerning if abortion is right, or if it is wrong. People identifying themselves to be pro-choice are in support of abortion because they believe a woman should be allowed to […]

Abortion Issues in Modern World

Premature birth alludes to the end of a pregnancy by evacuating or removing the baby or fetus from the uterus before it is prepared for birth. There are two noteworthy types of premature birth: unconstrained, which is regularly alluded to as an unsuccessful labor or the intentional fetus removal, which is frequently instigated fetus removal. The term fetus removal is normally used to allude to the prompted premature birth, and this is the premature birth, which has been loaded up […]

My Understanding of Abortion

Life has a beginning and an end and every individual knows this, as much as they may not want to know or understand it. An abortion, however, brings a thought to many people within our modern society: Is a baby alive before it is born? There are many ways to look at this but scientist have found out that there is an age of viability, where a baby is considered alive after a certain period of a woman's pregnancy. Before […]

Potential Factors that Influence Abortion

When it comes to women and unplanned pregnancies, there are alternatives other than abortions that a woman can use who and go for who isn't interested in having a child. Adoptions could be one of those alternatives; however, some women can't bear the thought of actually carrying a child. Therefore, they turn to their only option which is the abortion. For women, there are several reasons that may lead to them wanting to have an abortion. According to Stacey (2018), […]

The Status of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights

The consequences of sexual behaviour between women and men have driven a desire and determination of women to control their fertility, yet in an environment in which anti-choice legislators and organizations do not protect women's reproductive rights, there is an ongoing dispute on who decides the fate of such rights. The status of women's sexual and reproductive rights remains controversial and while there have been many attempts to gain such basic human right, the fight for reproductive freedoms remains intense. […]

Abortion and Fathers Rights

In this section I will be focusing on the fathers' situation before and after conception, and bring out arguments how he could effectively avoid becoming a parent in any way (biological, bearer of financial costs, emotional). The father after conception has no alternatives left, unlike the mother has. She is in a position that can terminate the pregnancy by opting for an abortion, or she can carry out (or at least try to) the pregnancy until the end. The father […]

Abstinence only Vs. Abortion Rates

If an individual decides to have premarital sex and becomes pregnant it is likely that they will be shamed by someone no matter what decision they make. If they decide to keep the baby they will be shamed. If they decided to put the baby up for adoption they will be shamed. If they decide to get an abortion they will be shamed. Although the United States of America was founded on the ideas of freedom of religion and the […]

Why Abortion should be Illegal

Abortion is an issue in today’s society, people that agree or disagree about taking an innocent life away. Even though women now have the legal right to decide what to do with their bodies and to decide whether to end a baby’s life, there are options other than abortions. Each and every life is valuable, and babies should be able to experience a future ahead of them. Abortions should be illegal. Making abortion illegal could allow children to live a […]

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why abortion is legal.

Due to the outcome of a Supreme Court hearing, abortion is completely legal. In 1973, the Supreme Court's ruling on Roe vs Wade provided people legal access to abortion across the entire country. While legal, some doctors will not perform abortions.

How Abortion Affects Economy?

Women who have access to legal abortion will have the ability to continue their education and careers. Women denied an abortion because of gestational limits are more than 80% more likely to experience bankruptcy or face eviction.

Where Abortion is Illegal?

Abortion is legal in the entire country of the US, but some states have restrictions based on gestational status, fetal fatal conditions, and even rape. Other countries around the world have different laws and some have completely outlawed abortion, including Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador.

Will Abortion Affect Health?

Women who have an abortion by a medical professional are at no risk for future pregnancies and there are no risks to overall health. Abortions do not increase any risk of breast cancer or have any effect on fertility.

Is Abortion Morally Justifiable?

This will depend on the person and their beliefs. Many women find abortion to be moral and a choice they are allowed to make in regards to their own bodies. Some religions have a strict stance on abortion and deem it immoral, regardless of the reason.

How To Write an Essay About Abortion

Introduction to the topic of abortion.

Abortion is a deeply complex and often controversial topic, encompassing a range of ethical, legal, and social issues. In your essay's introduction, it is important to define abortion and the various viewpoints and ethical considerations surrounding it. This introduction should establish the scope of your essay, whether you are focusing on the moral arguments, the legal aspects, the impact on individuals and society, or a combination of these. Your introduction should set a respectful and scholarly tone, acknowledging the sensitivity of the topic and the diverse opinions held by different groups.

Developing a Balanced Argument

The body of your essay should be dedicated to presenting a balanced and well-reasoned argument. Whether your essay is persuasive, analytical, or exploratory in nature, each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of the abortion debate. This could include the ethical implications of abortion, the legal history and current laws regarding abortion in different regions, the psychological and physical effects on individuals, or the societal impacts. It's crucial to back up your points with evidence, such as statistical data, legal texts, ethical theories, medical research, and sociological studies. Addressing counterarguments is also important to show that you have considered multiple viewpoints and to strengthen your own argument.

Exploring Ethical and Societal Implications

An essay on abortion should also delve into the ethical dilemmas and societal implications surrounding the topic. This might involve discussing the moral philosophies related to the right to life, bodily autonomy, and the definition of personhood. The societal perspective might include the impact of abortion laws on different socio-economic groups, public health considerations, and the role of education and family planning. This section of your essay should challenge readers to think critically about their own values and the role of societal norms and laws in shaping the abortion debate.

Concluding the Discussion

In your conclusion, bring together all the threads of your argument, emphasizing the complexity of the abortion debate. This is your final opportunity to reinforce your main points and leave a lasting impression on your readers. Reflect on the broader implications of the debate and the ongoing challenges in finding a consensus in such a polarized issue. You might also offer recommendations for future policy, research, or public discourse. Remember, a strong conclusion doesn't just restate what has been said; it provides closure and offers new insights, prompting readers to continue thinking about the topic long after they have finished reading your essay.

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10 Essential Essays About Women’s Reproductive Rights

“Reproductive rights” let a person decide whether they want to have children, use contraception, or terminate a pregnancy. Reproductive rights also include access to sex education and reproductive health services. Throughout history, the reproductive rights of women in particular have been restricted. Girls and women today still face significant challenges. In places that have seen reproductive rights expand, protections are rolling back. Here are ten essential essays about reproductive rights:

“Our Bodies, Ourselves: Reproductive Rights”

bell hooks Published in Feminism Is For Everyone (2014)

This essay opens strong: when the modern feminism movement started, the most important issues were the ones linked to highly-educated and privileged white women. The sexual revolution led the way, with “free love” as shorthand for having as much sex as someone wanted with whoever they wanted. This naturally led to the issue of unwanted pregnancies. Birth control and abortions were needed.

Sexual freedom isn’t possible without access to safe, effective birth control and the right to safe, legal abortion. However, other reproductive rights like prenatal care and sex education were not as promoted due to class bias. Including these other rights more prominently might have, in hooks’ words, “galvanized the masses.” The right to abortion in particular drew the focus of mass media. Including other reproductive issues would mean a full reckoning about gender and women’s bodies. The media wasn’t (and arguably still isn’t) ready for that.

“Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights”

Angela Davis Published in Women, Race, & Class (1981)

Davis’ essay covers the birth control movement in detail, including its race-based history. Davis argues that birth control always included racism due to the belief that poor women (specifically poor Black and immigrant women) had a “moral obligation” to birth fewer children. Race was also part of the movement from the beginning because only wealthy white women could achieve the goals (like more economic and political freedom) driving access to birth control.

In light of this history, Davis emphasizes that the fight for reproductive freedom hasn’t led to equal victories. In fact, the movements driving the gains women achieved actively neglected racial inequality. One clear example is how reproductive rights groups ignored forced sterilization within communities of color. Davis ends her essay with a call to end sterilization abuse.

“Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights”

Dorothy Roberts Published in Dissent Magazine (2015)

Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and Fatal Invention , describes attending the March for Women’s Lives. She was especially happy to be there because co-sponsor SisterSong (a collective founded by 16 organizations led by women of color) shifted the focus from “choice” to “social justice.” Why does this matter? Roberts argues that the rhetoric of “choice” favors women who have options that aren’t available to low-income women, especially women of color. Conservatives face criticism for their stance on reproductive rights, but liberals also cause harm when they frame birth control as the solution to global “overpopulation” or lean on fetal anomalies as an argument for abortion choice.

Instead of “the right to choose,” a reproductive justice framework is necessary. This requires a living wage, universal healthcare, and prison abolition. Reproductive justice goes beyond the current pro-choice/anti-choice rhetoric that still favors the privileged.

“The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice”

Loretta J. Ross, SisterSong Published in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (2016)

White supremacy in the United States has always created different outcomes for its ethnic populations. The method? Population control. Ross points out that even a glance at reproductive politics in the headlines makes it clear that some women are encouraged to have more children while others are discouraged. Ross defines “reproductive justice,” which goes beyond the concept of “rights.” Reproductive justice is when reproductive rights are “embedded in a human rights and social justice framework.”

In the essay, Ross explores topics like white supremacy and population control on both the right and left sides of politics. She acknowledges that while the right is often blunter in restricting women of color and their fertility, white supremacy is embedded in both political aisles. The essay closes with a section on mobilizing for reproductive justice, describing SisterSong (where Ross is a founding member) and the March for Women’s Lives in 2004.

“Abortion Care Is Not Just For Cis Women”

Sachiko Ragosta Published in Ms. Magazine (2021)

Cisgender women are the focus of abortion and reproductive health services even though nonbinary and trans people access these services all the time. In their essay, Ragosta describes the criticism Ibis Reproductive Health received when it used the term “pregnant people.” The term alienates women, the critics said, but acting as if only cis women need reproductive care is simply inaccurate. As Ragosta writes, no one is denying that cis women experience pregnancy. The reaction to more inclusive language around pregnancy and abortion reveals a clear bias against trans people.

Normalizing terms like “pregnant people” help spaces become more inclusive, whether it’s in research, medical offices, or in day-to-day life. Inclusiveness leads to better health outcomes, which is essential considering the barriers nonbinary and gender-expansive people face in general and sexual/reproductive care.

“We Cannot Leave Black Women, Trans People, and Gender Expansive People Behind: Why We Need Reproductive Justice”

Karla Mendez Published in Black Women Radicals

Mendez, a freelance writer and (and the time of the essay’s publication) a student studying Interdisciplinary Studies, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies, responds to the Texas abortion ban. Terms like “reproductive rights” and “abortion rights” are part of the mainstream white feminist movement, but the benefits of birth control and abortions are not equal. Also, as the Texas ban shows, these benefits are not secure. In the face of this reality, it’s essential to center Black people of all genders.

In her essay, Mendez describes recent restrictive legislation and the failure of the reproductive rights movement to address anti-Blackness, transphobia, food insecurity, and more. Groups like SisterSong have led the way on reproductive justice. As reproductive rights are eroded in the United States, the reproductive rights movement needs to focus on justice.

“Gee’s Bend: A Reproductive Justice Quilt Story From the South”

Mary Lee Bendolph Published in Radical Reproductive Justice (2017)

One of Mary Lee Bendolph’s quilt designs appears as the cover of Radical Reproductive Justice. She was one of the most important strip quilters associated with Gee’s Bend, Alabama. During the Civil Rights era, the 700 residents of Gee’s Bend were isolated and found it hard to vote or gain educational and economic power outside the village. Bendolph’s work didn’t become well-known outside her town until the mid-1990s.

Through an interview by the Souls Grown Foundation, we learn that Bendolph didn’t receive any sex education as a girl. When she became pregnant in sixth grade, she had to stop attending school. “They say it was against the law for a lady to go to school and be pregnant,” she said, because it would influence the other kids. “Soon as you have a baby, you couldn’t never go to school again.”

“Underground Activists in Brazil Fight for Women’s Reproductive Rights”

Alejandra Marks Published in The North American Congress on Latin America (2021)

While short, this essay provides a good introduction to abortion activism in Brazil, where abortion is legal only in the case of rape, fetal anencephaly, or when a woman’s life is at risk. The reader meets “Taís,” a single mother faced with an unwanted pregnancy. With no legal options, she researched methods online, including teas and pills. She eventually connected with a lawyer and activist who walked her through using Cytotec, a medication she got online. The activist stayed on the phone while Taís completed her abortion at home.

For decades, Latin American activists have helped pregnant people get abortion medications while wealthy Brazilians enter private clinics or travel to other countries. Government intimidation makes activism risky, but the stakes are high. Hundreds of Brazilians die each year from dangerous abortion methods. In the past decade, religious conservatives in Congress have blocked even mild reform. Even if a new president is elected, Brazil’s abortion rights movement will fight an uphill battle.

“The Ambivalent Activist”

Lauren Groff Published in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 years of Landmark ACLU Cases (2020)

Before Roe v. Wade, abortion regulation around the country was spotty. 37 states still had near-bans on the procedure while only four states had repealed anti-abortion laws completely. In her essay, Groff summarizes the case in accessible, engaging prose. The “Jane Roe” of the case was Norma McCorvey. When she got pregnant, she’d already had two children, one of whom she’d given up for adoption. McCorvey couldn’t access an abortion provider because the pregnancy didn’t endanger her life. She eventually connected with two attorneys: Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. In 1973 on January 2, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that abortion was a fundamental right.

Norma McCorvey was a complicated woman. She later became an anti-choice activist (in an interview released after her death, she said Evangelical anti-choice groups paid her to switch her position), but as Groff writes, McCorvey had once been proud that it was her case that gave women bodily autonomy.

“The Abortion I Didn’t Want”

Caitlin McDonnell Published in Salon (2015) and Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (2020)

While talking about abortion is less demonized than in the past, it’s still fairly unusual to hear directly from people who’ve experienced it. It’s certainly unusual to hear more complicated stories. Caitlin McDonnell, a poet and teacher from Brooklyn, shares her experience. In clear, raw prose, this piece brings home what can be an abstract “issue” for people who haven’t experienced it or been close to someone who has.

In debates about abortion rights, those who carry the physical and emotional effects are often neglected. Their complicated feelings are weaponized to serve agendas or make judgments about others. It’s important to read essays like McDonnell’s and hear stories as nuanced and multi-faceted as humans themselves.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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How to Tell a True Abortion Story

Nicole walker on the craft of getting personal.

On August 18th, almost two months after the Dobbs decision, I published an essay in The New York Times called “ My Abortion at 11 Wasn’t a Choice. It Was My Life .” It detailed the molestation I’d experienced as a kid and the subsequent abortion I had in Utah. In the piece, I wondered what my life would be today if I’d been forced to give birth before I was even a teenager. I asked the readers not to look away. The essay found a good readership—I received no hate mail, only letters expressing the reader’s sympathy and thanking me for sharing my story.

After the essay came out, I traveled to Massachusetts and Rhode Island to give talks from my recent book, Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster , but most everyone wanted to talk about the NYT piece. That was fine with me. I have said the word abortion more times in the past three months than in my whole life. Shame is a thing of the past.

More than once, the audience asked questions about what it was like to write so openly. In response, I quoted Brenda Miller in her essay “Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My, Courage and Creative Nonfiction,” from Bending Genre , a collection I edited with Margot Singer. Miller writes that while reading an essay she had never read aloud to an audience before, she inadvertently revealed some highly personal material. She had been too enmeshed in the creation of the piece to feel awkward about the content. She was trying to get it right.

I thanked everyone warmly, and I really did appreciate the praise, but I went back to my seat feeling suddenly self-conscious, deflated, a fraud. Brave? I’m afraid of my own shadow. And to anoint me as brave made me feel as if I had really done something wrong, something no one in their right mind would do: risk making an ass of myself in public. Bravery implied that I had screwed up my courage to both write and read that essay, but I had simply been in my chair writing. I had been following form and language and voice to get the essay where it wanted to go; at some point momentum had taken over. I didn’t even know what I was writing until I’d written it, and I’d been chuckling the whole time, enjoying myself immensely. I’d read the piece to that audience only because I liked the form so much, loved reading that voice aloud. Brave? Uh oh, I thought, what have I done?

After quoting Miller, I explained that what I worried about in writing the abortion piece was my metaphors. Was the metaphor of feeling like the gates of a jail came down after Dobbs too extreme? Was the connection to the removal of a cyst from the back of my mom’s head making too much of a parallel between an embryo and a ganglion? Should I begin with dialogue or with the presentation of my daughter as a young woman on the cusp of college, wondering how she wants to contribute to the fabric of this world? When you’re deep in the sentences, you don’t worry about how personal you get—you just hope to convey and to evoke.

I mainly write about the environment by looking through lenses of particular objects: microorganisms, eggs, trees, brine shrimp. In the NYT piece, the lens had already been provided. My abortion at 11 (which, before a fact-checker conferred with my mom, I had thought had been at 12), was the lens. Could I do something more important with my story than deliver a cautionary tale? Could I make it mean something more than one girl’s sad story? I couldn’t connect this short essay to my environmental writing. The political mot juste was obvious, but to Brenda Miller’s point, could I, through language and details, make a piece that was more than tragic or pitiful or political? Could I knit it into a bigger fabric? Using the knitting needle of craft and metaphor, could I hook the yarn of my story to the larger picture?

At The College of Holy Cross, I was invited to speak by my friend Leila Philip, whose book Beaverland has just been published. She and I share a common interest in what it means to be a creature on this planet, one who colonized, who has been colonized, an animal who has disappeared, an animal who came back. She taught a triptych essay I wrote called “Fish,” first published in Brevity Magazine . Pressing her students to talk about how agency operates in this super short essay, she noticed that in the first section, in which a salmon flings itself up the fish ladders on the Columbia River, the salmon does what biology instructs—finds a way to spawn. Is that agency or just biological determinism?

In the second tych, the narrator (me) fishes from a boat off the coast of Florida. The captain and steward help her catch a fish by putting her feet in the correct, stirrup-like position. They help her reel in a barracuda. She notes how they leer at her from behind their sunglasses. She is a puppet to their hands and a meal to their eyes. In the third section, I write a recipe. There’s very little agency in a recipe. Do this to a piece of dead fish, I instruct to the reader. Make a delicious sauce.

In discussing the NYT essay and “Fish” with the students, I explored the connections between the bravery Brenda Miller eschews in place of aesthetic interest and the way that the narrative agency in “Fish” is always undermined. The salmon flings itself. The men lift her legs. Whisk oil and water together. Agency, or lack of it, becomes the bigger question.

When you write the hard things, I tell them, you have to trouble the craft to hook into the larger themes. Metaphors can transport the story from singular anecdote to a meaningful, more universal experience. And yet, crafting a story can over-aestheticize the experience, creating distance. In some ways, I worried that the metaphor here was that I, after my molestation and abortion, was the fish. A slab of dead fish. And here I was, doctoring it up, making it palatable. Am I aestheticizing? Am I digging so hard into the sentences that I’m not even sure what I am revealing? But what is “Fish” about but lack of agency? What is Dobbs about except taking away agency from more than half of the country’s people? What is a person anyway? A fish? An egg? A host for microorganisms? That question mark? That’s the hook of the knitting needle—that’s the one that pulls you into the fabric.

In a workshop on writing about abortion, hosted by the Flagstaff Abortion Alliance and other local rights groups, I met with a group of ten on a Sunday morning in a cinder block building. One woman told us we were the first people she had ever told, other than medical staff, that she’d had an abortion. Another woman told us about her pre- Roe abortion in 1969. I told them that this workshop is about writing the hard things—any kind of trauma. Abortion is traumatic primarily because of the way it’s siloed off from normal access to health care, that it’s drenched in politics and suffers from manipulated stories. But it’s also hard to write about head-on. On the one hand, it’s just like writing about a cyst or a broken arm, which might be a boring story. Millions of people have had abortions. What makes yours unique?

To access their unique stories, I had each of them write a paragraph about something they’d been obsessed with this summer, adding as many sensory details as possible. They could write about trees or Grey’s Anatomy or trying to grow tomatoes in Flagstaff’s uncooperative climate. Then I asked them to write another paragraph about something they would like to research. The history of the building in which we wrote. The history of Roe . The Burlington Northern/Santa Fe trains that roll through the middle of our city over 100 times a day.

I then asked them to time-write their stories. For two minutes, they wrote about their hard story, their abortion or otherwise, then they switched to a research question or their obsession for two minutes. Then, back to their trauma story. The effect of this toggling serves a few purposes—it gives the writing tension. It gives the author sensory material to dip into. It gives the author a chance to escape the hard story for a couple of minutes.

But mainly this toggling starts the process of stitching the individual story into the fabric of the larger world, a world made of obsessions, research, and other people’s stories, too. The more stories we tell about the hard things, the more varied and vibrant that larger fabric becomes, the more we recognize each thread as important.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shows us how to write about trauma: tell the same story over and over again, from different angles, from different points of view, with different, shimmering details. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story,” as O’Brien tries to settle down into the truth of his fellow soldier’s death, the details stick—like Curt Lemon, exploded, his body in a tree where “Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of arm.”

O’Brien also remembers a baby buffalo. The color of moss. A can of C rations pork and beans. A guy with Juicy Fruit in his ears to stem the sound of desperate music playing in the background. He remembers the Batangan Peninsula and the river and Bob Kiley, whom everyone called Rat.

Near the end of the chapter, O’Brien writes, “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight.” It’s how we look at things—or rather, it’s the act of looking that matters. We must look at the story of the woman who, at age 11, had to have an abortion. We must look at the bone matter hanging in the tree in Vietnam. There are a million ways to tell a war story and an abortion story. There are a million war stories and a million abortion stories. The details make our stories unique, but it’s the act of looking that pulls our stories together.

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Key facts about the abortion debate in America

A woman receives medication to terminate her pregnancy at a reproductive health clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 23, 2022, the day before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade – the decision that had guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years – has shifted the legal battle over abortion to the states, with some prohibiting the procedure and others moving to safeguard it.

As the nation’s post-Roe chapter begins, here are key facts about Americans’ views on abortion, based on two Pew Research Center polls: one conducted from June 25-July 4 , just after this year’s high court ruling, and one conducted in March , before an earlier leaked draft of the opinion became public.

This analysis primarily draws from two Pew Research Center surveys, one surveying 10,441 U.S. adults conducted March 7-13, 2022, and another surveying 6,174 U.S. adults conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. Here are the questions used for the March survey , along with responses, and the questions used for the survey from June and July , along with responses.

Everyone who took part in these surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. About six-in-ten adults (57%) disapprove of the court’s decision that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion and that abortion laws can be set by states, including 43% who strongly disapprove, according to the summer survey. About four-in-ten (41%) approve, including 25% who strongly approve.

A bar chart showing that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade draws more strong disapproval among Democrats than strong approval among Republicans

About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (82%) disapprove of the court’s decision, including nearly two-thirds (66%) who strongly disapprove. Most Republicans and GOP leaners (70%) approve , including 48% who strongly approve.

Most women (62%) disapprove of the decision to end the federal right to an abortion. More than twice as many women strongly disapprove of the court’s decision (47%) as strongly approve of it (21%). Opinion among men is more divided: 52% disapprove (37% strongly), while 47% approve (28% strongly).

About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the summer survey – little changed since the March survey conducted just before the ruling. That includes 29% of Americans who say it should be legal in all cases and 33% who say it should be legal in most cases. About a third of U.S. adults (36%) say abortion should be illegal in all (8%) or most (28%) cases.

A line graph showing public views of abortion from 1995-2022

Generally, Americans’ views of whether abortion should be legal remained relatively unchanged in the past few years , though support fluctuated somewhat in previous decades.

Relatively few Americans take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion – either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances. The March survey found that support or opposition to abortion varies substantially depending on such circumstances as when an abortion takes place during a pregnancy, whether the pregnancy is life-threatening or whether a baby would have severe health problems.

While Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on the legality of abortion have long differed, the 46 percentage point partisan gap today is considerably larger than it was in the recent past, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling. The wider gap has been largely driven by Democrats: Today, 84% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 72% in 2016 and 63% in 2007. Republicans’ views have shown far less change over time: Currently, 38% of Republicans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, nearly identical to the 39% who said this in 2007.

A line graph showing that the partisan gap in views of whether abortion should be legal remains wide

However, the partisan divisions over whether abortion should generally be legal tell only part of the story. According to the March survey, sizable shares of Democrats favor restrictions on abortion under certain circumstances, while majorities of Republicans favor abortion being legal in some situations , such as in cases of rape or when the pregnancy is life-threatening.

There are wide religious divides in views of whether abortion should be legal , the summer survey found. An overwhelming share of religiously unaffiliated adults (83%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do six-in-ten Catholics. Protestants are divided in their views: 48% say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 50% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. Majorities of Black Protestants (71%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (61%) take the position that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while about three-quarters of White evangelicals (73%) say it should be illegal in all (20%) or most cases (53%).

A bar chart showing that there are deep religious divisions in views of abortion

In the March survey, 72% of White evangelicals said that the statement “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” reflected their views extremely or very well . That’s much greater than the share of White non-evangelical Protestants (32%), Black Protestants (38%) and Catholics (44%) who said the same. Overall, 38% of Americans said that statement matched their views extremely or very well.

Catholics, meanwhile, are divided along religious and political lines in their attitudes about abortion, according to the same survey. Catholics who attend Mass regularly are among the country’s strongest opponents of abortion being legal, and they are also more likely than those who attend less frequently to believe that life begins at conception and that a fetus has rights. Catholic Republicans, meanwhile, are far more conservative on a range of abortion questions than are Catholic Democrats.

Women (66%) are more likely than men (57%) to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling.

More than half of U.S. adults – including 60% of women and 51% of men – said in March that women should have a greater say than men in setting abortion policy . Just 3% of U.S. adults said men should have more influence over abortion policy than women, with the remainder (39%) saying women and men should have equal say.

The March survey also found that by some measures, women report being closer to the abortion issue than men . For example, women were more likely than men to say they had given “a lot” of thought to issues around abortion prior to taking the survey (40% vs. 30%). They were also considerably more likely than men to say they personally knew someone (such as a close friend, family member or themselves) who had had an abortion (66% vs. 51%) – a gender gap that was evident across age groups, political parties and religious groups.

Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms , the March survey found. Overall, just 7% of all U.S. adults say having an abortion is morally acceptable in all cases, and 13% say it is morally wrong in all cases. A third say that having an abortion is morally wrong in most cases, while about a quarter (24%) say it is morally acceptable in most cases. An additional 21% do not consider having an abortion a moral issue.

A table showing that there are wide religious and partisan differences in views of the morality of abortion

Among Republicans, most (68%) say that having an abortion is morally wrong either in most (48%) or all cases (20%). Only about three-in-ten Democrats (29%) hold a similar view. Instead, about four-in-ten Democrats say having an abortion is morally acceptable in most (32%) or all (11%) cases, while an additional 28% say it is not a moral issue.

White evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly say having an abortion is morally wrong in most (51%) or all cases (30%). A slim majority of Catholics (53%) also view having an 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%). Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, about three-quarters see having an abortion as morally acceptable (45%) or not a moral issue (32%).

Religion & Abortion

What the data says about abortion in the U.S.

Support for legal abortion is widespread in many countries, especially in europe, nearly a year after roe’s demise, americans’ views of abortion access increasingly vary by where they live, by more than two-to-one, americans say medication abortion should be legal in their state, most latinos say democrats care about them and work hard for their vote, far fewer say so of gop, most popular.

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Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words

Updated on
Feb 5, 2024

Essay on Abortion: Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. The termination happens due to the removal of the embryo or fetus.

The process of abortion can be natural as well as intentional. The intentional forces abortion involves a decision to end the pregnancy while when this process unfolds naturally without any external forces such as genetic abnormalities, maternal age, hormonal imbalances, or lifestyle, it is termed as miscarriage or spontaneous abortion. It is important to understand the difference between intentional abortion and miscarriage to explore reproductive health.

Master the art of essay writing with our blog on How to Write an Essay in English .

Table of Contents

1 Types of Abortion
2 Law in India for Abortion
3.1 1. Comprehensive Sex Education
3.2 2. Access to Contraceptives
3.3 3. Support System for Pregnant Women

Also Read: 3-Minute Speech on Motherhood and Education

Types of Abortion

Abortion procedures can be classified into two main types, Medical abortion and Surgical abortion. Medical abortion involves the termination of pregnancy using medications, such as the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol. This medication method is generally effective within nine weeks of pregnancy and does not involve any penetration or incision of the body or the insertion of instruments into the body.

On the other hand, surgical abortion involves a physical procedure to remove the pregnancy. The common surgical abortion method includes aspiration (suction) abortion, dilation and curettage (D&C), and dilation and evacuation (D&E) also called vacuum aspiration.

Law in India for Abortion

Laws of abortion play a vital role in the complexities of reproductive health. These laws aim to safeguard the well-being of women by ensuring that the abortion procedures are conducted under safe and medically supervised conditions.

In India, the legal framework for governing abortion primarily comes under the guidance of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act. The act was enacted in the year 1971 and aimed to liberalize the voluntary absorption largely decriminalized Section 312 of the IPC. To have safe and legal abortion services in India The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Regulations,2003 were issued under the MTP Act.

Further in the year 2021, certain amendments were passed for safe abortion services in case of failures of contraceptive failures, increase in gestation limit to 24 weeks, and the opinion of one abortion service provider up to 20 weeks of gestation. Moreover, the amendment also supported abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy. The amendment acknowledges 7 specific circumstances to the MTP Act where a female can go for an abortion and those include Minor pregnancies, rape survivors, women with mental and physical disabilities, and more.

Alternative and Support of Abortion

Some alternative measures that will help to raise awareness about abortion are as follows:

1. Comprehensive Sex Education

The physical experience of abortion for women can be hazardous too, therefore, to provide an alternative it is necessary that comprehensive sex education should be provided in schools beyond subjects like Biology, healthy relationships, consent, and making responsible choices. Through this knowledge, students will not only be equipped with information but will also navigate relationships and avoid unintended pregnancies.

2. Access to Contraceptives

Easy access to contraceptives is another way to empower women to take charge of their reproductive health. Whether it is condoms, birth control pills, or any other methods of protection ensures to make responsible decisions and help in taking precautions against unplanned pregnancies.

3. Support System for Pregnant Women

To support women with unwanted pregnancies it is important to create a supportive environment for them mentally as well as emotionally. The government can offer counselling services, and access to healthcare information, and can provide resources to help pregnant women make informed choices or decisions about their future for example parenting classes, legal guidance and financial assistance programs.

In conclusion, we can say that the topic of abortion is complex as well as deep with emotions as well as with different perspectives. The ethical, religious, and legal debate on this sophisticated topic makes it challenging to find a common ground. Therefore it is necessary to have open and respectful communication, understanding empathy and healthcare options for the women.

Also Read: National Safe Motherhood Day 2023

Ans. 1 Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. The termination happens due to the removal of the embryo or fetus.

Ans. 2 As she was going through many health issues the family decided to go for an abortion.

The causes of abortion in the first trimester can be emotional or psychological, maternal health concerns, unintended pregnancies, contraceptive failure and more.

Ans. 4 The opposite of abortion is success, continuation, accomplishment, and achievement.

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Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with expertise in creating educational and informative content. She has a year of experience writing content for speeches, essays, NCERT, study abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and ananlysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particulary in education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs with related to her field to further expand her expertise. In personal life, she loves creative writing and aspire to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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Argumentative Essay on Abortion – Sample Essay

Published by gudwriter on October 24, 2017 October 24, 2017

A Break Down of my Abortion Argumentative Essay

Styling format: APA 6th Edition

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Any type of essays can be written by our expert tutors. Whether you want an argumentative essay on abortion or on any other topic, our MBA application essay help has got you covered on any type of essay you want written.

Title: Abortion Should Be Legal

Introduction.

The introduction paragraph of an argumentative essay constitutes of 4 parts. Topic introduction, a reason why the topic is important, accepting there is a difference of opinion on this topic and lastly a statement that gives the writer’s main premises, popularly known as a thesis statement.

The body of my abortion argumentative essay contains reasons + evidence to support my thesis. I have also included opposing arguments to show the reader that I have considered both sides of the argument and that am able to anticipate and criticize any opposing arguments before they are even stated. I have made sure to show the reader that though I have written opposing arguments and that I do not agree with them.

The conclusion paragraph of this abortion essay constitutes of three main parts. The first part restates the main premises: The decision to terminate a pregnancy should generally lie with pregnant women. The second part presents 1 – 2 sentences which summarizes the arguments that support my thesis. And lastly my personal position.

I tried to use credible resources for this essay. Books from respectable publishers on this subject. Peer reviewed articles and journals are also acceptable.

Argumentative Essay on Abortion

The abortion debate is an ongoing controversy, continually dividing Americans along moral, legal, and religious lines. Most people tend to assume one of two positions: “pro-life” (an embryo or fetus should be given the right to gestate to term and be born. Simply put, women should not be given the right to abort as that constitutes murder) or “pro-choice” (women should be given the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy).

When you are writing an abortion argumentative essay , you are free to support any side that you want. Whichever position you take, make sure you have good points and supporting facts.

In this abortion essay, I have decided to take the pro-choice position: a woman carrying a fetus should be given the right to abort it or carry the baby to term. In fact, my thesis statement for this argumentative essay is abortion should be legal and women should have the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

My essay is divided into three basic parts, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Read till the end to find the brief analysis of the parts /sections.

Here is my abortion argumentative essay. Enjoy!

Abortion Should Be Legal

A heated debate continues to surround the question of whether or not abortion should be legal. Those who feel it should be legal have branded themselves “pro-choice” while those opposed to its legality fall under the banner of “pro-life.” In the United States of America, not even the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case (Parker, 2017) that declared abortion as a fundamental human right has served to bring this debate to an end. The pro-choice brigade front an argument that abortion is a right that should be enjoyed by all women and one that should not be taken away by religious authority or even governments. They claim that this right cannot be superseded by the perceived right that should be enjoyed by a fetus or embryo. If not legalized, the pro-choice claim, women would resort to unsafe means. However, to pro-life, the life of a human being begins at fertilization and therefore abortion condemns an innocent human being to immoral murder. They further argue that the practice exposes the unborn human to pain and suffering. This paper argues that abortion should be legal and women should have the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

Perhaps you may find comparing and contrasting the higher education between England and Kenya interesting .

Just as was observed by the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, an individual should be allowed certain privacy zones or areas. The decision of a pregnant woman to terminate her pregnancy or not should fall within this fundamental right (Parker, 2017). Interfering with this right is a kin to deciding for a person the kind of people they may associate with or the kind of a person they may fall in love with. These kinds of private matters are very sensitive and any decision touching on them should be left at the discretion of an individual. After all, it is the woman who knows why they would want to terminate a pregnancy. It could be that seeing the pregnancy to its maturity and eventual delivery would endanger the life of the bearer. It could also be that a woman is not comfortable with having a baby due to some reason(s). Whatever reason a woman might have, it is their private affair; they should be left to handle it in private.

On the same note, women get empowered by reproductive choice as they get the opportunity to freely exercise control over their bodies. Just like male members of the society, women should be allowed to be independent and be able to determine their future. This includes the freewill of determining whether or not to have children. The ability to control their productive lives would ensure that women are well placed to take part equally in the social and economic matters of the society (Mooney, 2013). It should not be that upon conceiving, a woman has no otherwise but to deliver the baby. What if the conception was accidental? Even if it was not accidental, a woman can realize or determine before delivery that she is just not ready to have the baby as she might have initially planned. At that point, they should have the freedom to terminate the pregnancy.

The pro-life’s argument that abortion is murder is a bit far fetched. The fetus or embryo may be innocent as they claim. However, it is noteworthy that it is only after the fetus becomes able to survive outside the womb that personhood begins (Ziegler, 2015). This is definitely after birth and not during the pregnancy or at conception. In this respect, the claim that abortion kills innocent human beings is actually not valid. On the contrary, this stance or statement culminates in the victimization of innocent women who have committed no wrong but exercised their right of controlling their reproductive life. Ideally, an embryo or fetus should not be considered a human being just yet. There should thus be nothing like “unborn babies” but fetuses or embryos.

Legal abortion also ensures that women may avoid maternal injury or death by securing professional and safe means of performing abortion. The point here is that illegalizing abortion would compel some women to resort to unsafe abortion means. In the process, they might sustain life threatening injuries or even lose their lives (Schwarz & Latimer, 2012). Whether legal or not, a woman would make up their mind and terminate her pregnancy! The only difference is that in a “legal” environment, she would be safe. Why then endanger the lives of pregnant women who may like to have an abortion by illegalizing the practice? In addition, the pro-life argument that a fetus feels pain during the procedure of abortion is less convincing. It may be that the reason a mother is terminating a pregnancy is to prevent the yet to be born child from facing the pains of the world. If a mother feels she may not accord her child all the necessities of life, she would be right to subject the child to the “short-term pain” during abortion.

Those opposed to abortion further argue that the practice brews a traumatic experience for women as it involves the death of a human being. Specifically, they contend that the experience emanates from a woman witnessing how she intentionally and violently condemns her unborn child to death by physically destroying it. They hold that it also subjects the woman to unacknowledged grief and thoughts of severed maternal attachments and as well violates her parental responsibility and instinct (Major et al., 2009). According to this argument, this experience can be as traumatic as to plunge a woman into serious mental health problems, in what may be called post-abortion syndrome (PAS). This syndrome may attract symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they say. Anti-abortion crusaders further contend that the aftermath of undergoing the procedure may see a woman experience such PTSD related symptoms as substance abuse, guilt, shame, anger, grief, depression, denial, and flashbacks (Major et al., 2009). While all these may seem to be sensible to some extent, they fail to recognize that a woman who willfully secures an abortion would not have to worry about having “killed” her unborn baby. Instead, she would appreciate that she was able to successfully terminate the pregnancy before it could grow to maturity.

The decision to terminate a pregnancy should generally lie with pregnant women. It is a private decision that should not be interfered with. Women should be able to determine when to have a child. If she deems it not yet time, she should be allowed to abort. A woman actually kills nobody by aborting but rather prevents the fetus from being able to survive outside the womb. The reason for aborting should not be questioned, whether medical, involving incest or rape, or just personal. Whatever reason it might be, it falls within the right of a woman to determine and control their productive life.

Major, B. et al. (2009). Abortion and mental health. American Psychologist , 64 (9), 863-890.

Mooney, C. (2013). Should abortion be legal? San Diego, CA: ReferencePoint Press, Incorporated.

Parker, W. (2017). Life’s work: a moral argument for choice . New York City, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Schwarz, S. D., & Latimer, K. (2012). Understanding abortion: from mixed feelings to rational thought . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Ziegler, M. (2015). After Roe . Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press.

Argumentative Essay against Abortion 2, with Outline

Abortion argumentative essay outline.

Thesis: Abortion is wrong and should not be legalized since its disadvantages far outweigh its advantages, if any.

Paragraph 1:

It is wrong to condemn an innocent human being to murder.

Human life begins at conception and this implies that at whatever stage a pregnancy may be terminated, an innocent being would have been killed.
The fetus is a human being and should be allowed to grow and be born and live their life to the fullest.
A fetus has a unique genetic code and thus it is a unique individual person.

Paragraph 2:

It is wrong to deliberately cause pain.

Whatever process is used to secure an abortion subjects the developing human to untold suffering before they eventually die.
By 18 weeks, a fetus has undergone sufficient development to feel pain.
Aborting a fetus is the same as physically attacking an innocent person and causing them fatal physical bodily harm.

Paragraph 3:

Abortion increases tolerance of killing which is a wrong precedence for the human race.

To legalize abortion and to view it as being right is like to legalize killing and see nothing wrong with it.
The respect people have for human life would be reduced if killing would be legalized.
Loss of society’s respect for human life may result into increased murder rates, genocide, and euthanasia.

Paragraph 4:

Abortion is can seriously harm a woman’s body and in some cases lead to the death of that woman.

It yields both anticipated physical side effects as well as potentially more serious complications.
In other instances, a woman may experience serious complications that may even threaten her life as a result of having an abortion.

Paragraph 5:

People who believe abortion is not morally wrong argue that the fetus should not necessarily be considered a person with the right to life.

This is wrong because the collection of human cells that is the fetus, if given the opportunity to grow, eventually becomes a complete human being.
The beginning of human life should be considered to be at conception.
A conceived human should be allowed to see out their life.

Paragraph 6:

The pro-choice group argues that pregnant women have moral rights too and that these rights may override the right of the fetus to live.

This argument fails to acknowledge that the moral rights of one human being should not deny another human being their moral rights.
Both the woman and fetus’ rights should be respected.

Argumentative Essay against Abortion Example 2

People across the world have strong opinions for and against abortion. Those who argue for its legalization fall under the “pro-choice” group while those who oppose its legalization are under the “pro-life” group. Even after the practice was declared a fundamental human right in the United States by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case, the debate about it is still going on in the country. According to pro-choice arguments, all women should enjoy abortion as a human right and no religious and/or government authorities should take that away from them. On the other hand, pro-life brigade argue that abortion immorally murders innocent human beings since the life of a human being begins at fertilization. This paper argues that abortion is wrong and should not be legalized since its disadvantages far outweigh its advantages, if any.

The major reason why abortion is wrong is because it is wrong to condemn an innocent human being to murder. Human life begins once they are conceived and this implies that at whatever stage a pregnancy may be terminated, an innocent being would have been killed. The fetus is in itself a human being and should be allowed to grow and be born and live their life to the fullest. As pointed out by Kaczor (2014), a fetus has a unique genetic code and thus it is a unique individual person. It is a potential human being with a future just like people who are already born. It would be wrong to destroy their future on the account of being killed through abortion.

Abortion is also wrong because it is wrong to deliberately cause pain. Whatever process is used to secure an abortion subjects the developing human to untold suffering before they eventually die. By 18 weeks, a fetus has undergone sufficient development to feel pain (Meyers, 2010). Thus, aborting it would be the same as physically attacking an innocent person and causing them fatal physical bodily harm. Under normal circumstances, such an attack would attract condemnation and the person or people involved would be punished accordingly as per the law. This is the exact same way abortion should be viewed and treated. It should be legally prohibited and those who do it should be punished for causing pain on an innocent person.

Further, abortion increases tolerance of killing and this is a wrong precedence being created for the human race. Just as Kershnar (2017) warns, to legalize abortion and to view it as being right is like to legalize killing and see nothing wrong with it. The respect people have for human life would be reduced if killing was legalized. It would be wrong and detrimental to reduce society’s respect for human life as it may result in increased murder rates, genocide, and euthanasia. Just like such measures as vaccination and illegalization of murder are taken to preserve human life, prohibiting abortion should be considered an important way of increasing human respect for life. Society should not tolerate killing in whatever form and should discourage it through every available opportunity.

Another detrimental effect of abortion is that it can seriously harm a woman’s body and in some cases lead to the death of that woman. It yields both anticipated physical side effects as well as potentially more serious complications. Some of the side effects a woman is likely to experience after securing an abortion include bleeding and spotting, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and cramping and abdominal pain. Worse is that these side effects can continue occurring two to four weeks after the procedure is completed (“Possible Physical Side Effects,” 2019). In other instances, a woman may experience serious complications that may even threaten her life as a result of having an abortion. These complications may include damage to other body organs, perforation of the uterus, the uterine wall sustaining scars, the cervix being damaged, sepsis or infection, and persistent or heavy bleeding. In the worst case scenario, a woman undergoing the abortion process might lose her life instantly (“Possible Physical Side Effects,” 2019). While such cases are rare, it is still not sensible to expose a woman to these experiences. A practice that has the potential to endanger human life in this manner should be considered wrong both legally and morally. It is the responsibility of individuals to care for and not expose their lives to harm.

People who believe abortion is not morally wrong argue that the fetus should not necessarily be considered a person who has the right to life. They hold that the fetus is just a collection of human cells and thus does not deserve the express right to live (Bailey, 2011). This argument is misinformed because the fact is that this collection of human cells that is the fetus, if given the opportunity to grow, eventually becomes a complete human being. This is why the beginning of human life should be considered to be at conception and not at birth or after some time after conception. A conceived human should be allowed to see out their life and only die naturally.

Another argument by the pro-choice group is that pregnant women have moral rights too and that these rights may override the right of the fetus to live under certain circumstances. These rights, according to this argument, include the right to take decision without legal or moral interference, the right to decide one’s own future, the right to ownership of one’s own body, and the right to life (Bailey, 2011). This argument fails to acknowledge that the moral rights of one human being should not deny another human being their moral rights. Even in cases where carrying a pregnancy to delivery would endanger the life of a pregnant woman, the fetus should be separated from the mother and be allowed to grow through such other mechanisms as being placed in an incubator.

Abortion is absolutely wrong and no arguments can justify its morality or legality. It kills innocent human beings before they can develop and experience life. It also causes untold pain and suffering to an innocent fetus. It further increases tolerance to killing, a precedence that would make people throw away their respect to human life and kill without a second thought. Even worse is that the practice exposes aborting women to serious bodily harm and could even claim their lives. Those who do not consider the fetus as a moral person who deserves to live are wrong because upon complete development, the fetus indeed becomes a human being. Similarly, those who feel the moral rights of a pregnant woman should override those of the fetus ignore the fact that both the woman and the fetus are human beings with equal rights.

Bailey, J. (2011). Abortion . New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group.

Kaczor, C. (2014). The ethics of abortion: women’s rights, human life, and the question of justice . New York, NY: Routledge.

Kershnar, S. (2017). Does the pro-life worldview make sense?: Abortion, hell, and violence against abortion doctors . New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Meyers, C. (2010). The fetal position: a rational approach to the abortion issue . Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

“Possible Physical Side Effects after Abortion”. (2019). In American Pregnancy Association , Retrieved July 5, 2020.

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Gail Collins

Abortion Is Remaking Our Political Landscape. Why Aren’t Guns?

Seen through the empty space surrounding one gun’s out-of-focus trigger, guns of varying colors hang on a wall.

By Gail Collins

Opinion Columnist

Why don’t we talk more about guns?

Not that the issue doesn’t come up. But think about the public debate on gun control versus the one we’re having on abortion rights. Perhaps the two biggest long-running social issues in American politics, and the gulf does seem huge.

A lot of politicians who were historically opposed to abortion have clearly gotten very nervous about public opinion, worrying that being anti-choice is costing them votes. Take Arizona’s Kari Lake, one of the Republican Party’s most famous crazy-person candidates, now running for a Senate nomination. In 2022 when she was trying to get elected governor, she was a big fan of her state’s ancient ban on virtually all abortions (“a great law”).

But like many, many ambitious pols, Lake noticed that the public — even much of the conservative public — didn’t like seeing politicians mess with a woman’s right to control what happens with her own body. When a state Supreme Court suddenly upheld that Arizona abortion ban, circa 1864, Lake said that the old law was indeed “out of line with where the people of this state are.” Then she tried to drown the debate with a mystery statement. (“I chose life, but I’m not every woman. I want to make sure that every woman who finds herself pregnant has more choices so that she can make that choice that I made.”)

Of course, if we’re talking about folks who are principle-free, there’s always Donald Trump. Our former president felt the pro-abortion-rights winds blowing when, after the Supreme Court majority he brags about creating declared abortion wasn’t a constitutional right, his party did worse than expected in the next House elections. Hoping to dump the problem on the governors, he embraced the theory that abortion was a state issue.

But when it comes to guns, Trump clearly hasn’t seen any need to search for a pseudo-middle ground. He recently attended an N.R.A. gathering in Pennsylvania, where he assured his audience that “every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.”

Now, the idea of making abortion a state issue only works if you’re just looking for a make-believe answer that might let you escape from discussing the subject. But we don’t have a visible gun consensus. Even mass school shooting tragedies like Sandy Hook and Uvalde didn’t bring the debate to a head. Many, many politicians are still trying to protect the right of Americans to own weapons while giving at least some verbal deference to the right of everybody else not to be shot.

Shootings qualify as “mass” when a minimum of four people — shooter excluded — are hit. At this writing there have been 119 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. (Really kinda depressing to be living in a country that requires the services of a Gun Violence Archive.) But don’t hold me to that number — it goes up fast. Just the other day one child was killed and 10 people injured at a backyard party in Chicago and 12 people were shot outside a New Orleans nightclub, one fatally.

These terrible gun stories often happen while people are pursuing what’s supposed to be their normal life. Late last month, an Uber driver in Ohio was killed when she was dispatched to the home of an 81-year-old man who believed she was working for somebody who was trying to scam him.

The last thing we should be leaving to the individual states is gun regulation, given that it’s extremely easy — and common — for weapons to travel across state lines. And anyway, you don’t really want to rely on state legislatures when it comes to national life-or-death issues. Basically, you’d be gambling on the wisdom and prudence of people like Colorado State Representative Don Wilson, who recently had to apologize for leaving a loaded semiautomatic handgun in the State Capitol restroom.

Or the state senators in Tennessee, whose response to the terrible Nashville school shooting that left six people, including three children, dead was to pass a bill allowing teachers to carry concealed guns to work.

Is it possible for us to get to the same place on gun safety that we’re getting to on abortion — where the people who make the policy feel pressure to be sensible? Christian Heyne, an official at Brady, an organization against gun violence, thinks that when it comes to public attitudes, we’re getting there. “It’s really a new ballgame for us,” he said.

That’s in large part because of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in 2022, which prevents misdemeanor offenders from purchasing guns for five years after their release from prison and enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21.

A landmark bill. Truly, that’s what they called it. Because we live in a country where when it comes to guns, basically sane can be totally impossible. One of the leaders behind the bill, Senator Chris Murphy, feels Congress tackled both the abortion and gun issues because history forced it to. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the abortion protection in Roe v. Wade triggered an effort to pass some new authorization. And guns went back on the agenda after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of 19 students and two teachers.

Ordinary citizens, Murphy said, were drenched in “the feeling someone else controls their bodies and the fear that their child won’t come home from school.”

So, changes on both fronts. But totally irresponsible — sometimes totally criminal — people can still buy guns through online or gun-show setups and sell them to dealers who specialize in selling them to the exact people we don’t want to see walking around armed. Changes have been made, but the setup is still … scary. Women’s rights rule on the abortion front — or at least in states that want to restrict them, politicians are trying to disguise their intent. But the gun lobby still reigns on the shooting side of things. And Trump, for one, courts them with gusto.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Gail Collins is an Opinion columnist, is a former member of the editorial board and was the first woman to serve as the Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @ GailCollins • Facebook

IMAGES

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Abortion Argumentative Essay: Writing Guide, Topics, Examples

COMMENTS

Abortion Argumentative Essay: Writing Guide, Topics, Examples
Hooks for an Abortion Essay. Writing a hook is a good way to catch the attention of your audience, as this is usually the first sentence in an essay. How to start an essay about abortion? You can begin with some shocking fact, question, statistics, or even a quote. However, always make sure that this piece is taken from a trusted resource.
» Good Hook for Abortion Essay
Discuss the Problem of Rape. The best argument for abortion rights, which can persuade nearly every reader, is connected with abuse. When a woman is raped and becomes pregnant, she has a substantial legal and moral right to interrupt her pregnancy. Naturally, a forced pregnancy is a problem which many believe requires radical solutions.
Pro Choice (Abortion) Essays
Pro Choice (Abortion) Topics: Abortifacient, Abortion, Abortion debate, Birth control, Childbirth, Fertility, Fetus, Human rights, Pregnancy, Pro Choice (Abortion) 1 2 3. Find a perfect Pro-Choice (Abortion) essay sample to gain some inspiration and write your own essay. Inspiration Examples Best topics.
Persuasive Essay About Abortion: Examples, Topics, and Facts
Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion. The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester. Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
Debates on Abortion: Arguments Against and for
Abortion Argumentative Essay: Hook Examples. A Controversial Crossroads: In the heart of one of the most polarizing debates in our nation's history, the topic of abortion stands as a moral and ethical crossroads. As we delve into this complex issue, we'll explore the perspectives, the consequences, and the underlying principles that shape the discourse on abortion.
Abortion Essay Writing Guide That Will Help You Get A+ Grade
An example of a thesis on abortion could sound like "It is morally wrong and illegal to perform abortions since a developing fetus can already be viewed as a human being.". Writing an outline. It serves as means of organizing your notes and making a list of everything you would like to include in your essay.
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To compose a strong opening for your abortion essay, make sure to provide some background and context for further discussion. Explain why the debate about abortions is so acute and what the roots of the problem are. ... One of the easiest ways is to start your introduction with a catchy hook. A hook is a phrase or a sentence that helps to grab ...
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The argument is a balanced one; for every point supporting abortion there is a counter-point condemning abortion. This essay will delineate the controversy in one type of comparison/contrast essay form: the ""Argument versus Argument,"" or, ""Block-by-Block"" format. In this style of writing, first you present all the arguments ...
2.5: Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis and Kristina Grob)
11 Common Arguments about Abortion Nathan Nobis and Kristina Grob 27. 1 Introduction. Abortion is often in the news. In the course of writing this essay in early 2019, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama and Missouri passed legislation to outlaw and criminalize abortions starting at six to eight weeks in pregnancy, with more states following.
Abortion Essay Writing Guide with Examples
Main body. If you decide to support abortion in the essay, you may write the body part in the following way: 2-3 paragraphs supporting abortion + one counter-argument against abortion. Remember to provide arguments and support them, not just admit that abortion is good or bad.
PDF Abortion and Social Justice
1. Questions about the moral status of abortion, and debates about whether. abortion should be legal have occupied a central and highly contentious place in. public discourse and philosophical writing for more than four decades.1 These. debates are highly polarized: debaters rarely agree on shared assumptions or.
How to Write an Abortion Argumentative Essay? + FREE Sample
5 Successful Abortion Essay Writing Tips. Tip 1 - Create the Paper Structure. Tip 2 - Outline Your Work. Tip 3 - Plan Your Time Wisely. Tip 4 - Find Good Sources. Tip 5 - Read Abortion Essays Examples. Do's and Don'ts of Abortion Essay Writing. DO'S. DON'TS.
How To Create A Best Abortion Argumentative Essay?
Express your own point of view on the question of abortion. In some cases, you may be asked to write an outline for your essay. It is a table of contents where you enumerate the paragraphs of your essay. To make it as well-directed as possible, select the main ideas of every paragraph and note them down.
LibGuides: Social Issue: Abortion: Opinions & Arguments
A 1992 American short documentary film directed by Dorothy Fadiman, consisting of first person stories which reveal the physical, emotional and legal consequences of having or providing an abortion when it was a criminal act. (28:22) Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About. The landmark Roe v.
5.1: Arguments Against Abortion
5.1.1 Fetuses are human. 5.1.2 Fetuses are human beings. 5.1.3 Fetuses are persons. 5.1.4 Fetuses are potential persons. 5.1.5 Abortion prevents fetuses from experiencing their valuable futures. We will begin with arguments for the conclusion that abortion is generally wrong, perhaps nearly always wrong. These can be seen as reasons to believe ...
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111 essay samples found. Abortion is a highly contentious issue with significant moral, legal, and social implications. Essays on abortion could explore the various aspects of the debate including the ethical dimensions, the legal frameworks governing abortion, and the social attitudes surrounding it. They might delve into historical changes in ...
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Including these other rights more prominently might have, in hooks' words, "galvanized the masses." ... around the country was spotty. 37 states still had near-bans on the procedure while only four states had repealed anti-abortion laws completely. In her essay, Groff summarizes the case in accessible, engaging prose. The "Jane Roe ...
PDF Media guidelines: Abortion hooks
Abortion hooks Sisson, Herold and Woodruf (2017)1 interviewed over thirty journalists and found that they face a myriad of challenges when it comes to reporting on abortion. One of the problems mentioned by numerous journalists included the constant need to find new ways to write on abortion. Editors often demand a fresh take and a clear hook.
How to Tell a True Abortion Story ‹ Literary Hub
November 2, 2022. On August 18th, almost two months after the Dobbs decision, I published an essay in The New York Times called " My Abortion at 11 Wasn't a Choice. It Was My Life .". It detailed the molestation I'd experienced as a kid and the subsequent abortion I had in Utah. In the piece, I wondered what my life would be today if I ...
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Step 1 - Prepare your "why". Story development and how to create your story for lasting impact. Step 2 - Know the Facts. Abortion facts and talking points to use in your conversations. Step 3 - Think About Who You Want to Speak With, When And How To Address Them. Crafting your conversations for success.
Key facts about abortion views in the U.S.
Women (66%) are more likely than men (57%) to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to the survey conducted after the court's ruling. More than half of U.S. adults - including 60% of women and 51% of men - said in March that women should have a greater say than men in setting abortion policy.
Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words
Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words. Essay on Abortion: Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. The termination happens due to the removal of the embryo or fetus. The process of abortion can be natural as well as intentional. The intentional forces abortion involves a decision to end the pregnancy while when this process unfolds ...
Argumentative Essay on Abortion
The conclusion paragraph of this abortion essay constitutes of three main parts. The first part restates the main premises: The decision to terminate a pregnancy should generally lie with pregnant women. The second part presents 1 - 2 sentences which summarizes the arguments that support my thesis.
Abortion Is Remaking Our Political Landscape. Why Aren't Guns?
But when it comes to guns, Trump clearly hasn't seen any need to search for a pseudo-middle ground. He recently attended an N.R.A. gathering in Pennsylvania, where he assured his audience that ...

Abortion Argumentative Essay: Definitive Guide

Where to begin?

Speaking of Outline

Abortion Essay Introduction

Hooks for an Abortion Essay

Body Paragraphs: Pros and Cons of Abortion

Make a draft

Trust only reliable sources

Edit rigorously

Determine your weak points

Add an opposing view

Why Should Abortion Be Legal

Types of abortion

Cases when abortion is needed

Countries and their abortion laws

Why Abortion Should Be Banned

Health complications after abortion

Abortion Essay Conclusion

Abortion Facts for Essay

Abortion Essay Topics

Abortion Essay Example

Examples of Essays on Abortion

A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Abortion and Infanticide by Michael Tooley

Some Biological Insights into Abortion by Garret Hardin

FAQs On Abortion Argumentative Essay

Good Hook for Abortion Essay

Start with Something to Interest Your Reader

Observe the Problem from the Side of Ethics and Religion.

Say about Women’s Rights.

Mention the Health Risks.

Discuss the Problem of Rape.

Crafting a Convincing Persuasive Essay About Abortion

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Step 1: Choose Your Position

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

Step 3: Define Your Argument

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good argument for abortion?

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Debates on Abortion: Arguments Against and for

Abortion Argumentative Essay: Hook Examples

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