Nursing

Mora, Nichole Mae V. March 15, 2013
BSN III-A Thea Camille Samonte, RN, MAN

TERM PAPER ABOUT ABORTION

I. INTRODUCTION Abortion, expulsion of the products of conception before the embryo or fetus is viable. Any interruption of human pregnancy prior to the 28th week is known as abortion. The term spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, is used to signify delivery of a nonviable embryo or fetus due to fetal or maternal factors, as opposed to purposely induced abortion. Therapeutic abortion is an induced abortion performed to preserve the health or life of the mother.
Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine. However,unsafe abortions result in approximately 70,000 maternal deaths and 5 million hospital admissions per year globally. An estimated 44 million abortions are performed globally each year, with slightly under half of those performed unsafely.[3] The incidence of abortion has stabilized in recent years, having previously spent decades declining as access to family planning education and contraceptiveservices increased. Forty percent of the world's women have access to induced abortions (within gestational limits).
Induced abortion has a long history and has been facilitated by various methods including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical trauma, and other traditional methods. Contemporary medicine utilizes medications and surgical procedures to induce abortion. The legality, prevalence, cultural and religious status of abortion vary substantially around the world. Its legality can depend on specific conditions such as incest, rape, fetal defects, socioeconomic factors or the mother's health being at risk. In many parts of the world there is prominent and divisive public controversy over the ethical and legal issues of abortion.
There are two types of Abortion: Induced and Spontaneous.
Induced
Approximately 205 million pregnancies occur each year worldwide. Over a third are unintended and about a fifth end in induced abortion. Most abortions result from unintended pregnancies. A pregnancy can be intentionally aborted in several ways. The manner selected often depends upon the gestational age of the embryo or fetus, which increases in size as the pregnancy progresses. Specific procedures may also be selected due to legality, regional availability, and doctor or patient preference.
Reasons for procuring induced abortions are typically characterized as either therapeutic or elective. An abortion is medically referred to as a therapeutic abortion when it is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman; prevent harm to the woman's physical or mental health; terminate a pregnancy where indications are that the child will have a significantly increased chance of premature morbidity or mortality or be otherwise disabled; or to selectively reduce the number of fetuses to lessen health risks associated with multiple pregnancy. An abortion is referred to as an elective or voluntary abortion when it is performed at the request of the woman for non-medical reasons. Confusion sometimes arises over the term "elective" because "elective surgery" generally refers to all scheduled surgery, whether medically necessary or not.
Spontaneous
Spontaneous abortion, also known as miscarriage, is the unintentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus before the 24th week of gestation. A pregnancy that ends before 37 weeks of gestation resulting in a live-born infant is known as a "premature birth" or a "preterm birth". When a fetus dies in utero after viability, or during delivery, it is usually termed "stillborn". Premature births and stillbirths are generally not considered to be miscarriages although usage of these terms can sometimes overlap.
The most common cause of spontaneous abortion during the first trimester is chromosomal abnormalities of the embryo or fetus, accounting for at least 50% of sampled early pregnancy losses. Other causes include vascular disease (such as lupus), diabetes, other hormonal problems, infection, and abnormalities of the uterus. Advancing maternal age and a patient history of previous spontaneous abortions are the two leading factors associated with a greater risk of spontaneous abortion. A spontaneous abortion can also be caused by accidental trauma; intentional trauma or stress to cause miscarriage is considered induced abortion or feticide.

No clinical procedure is entirely risk free, but abortion poses few risks to a woman’s physical health, particularly when carried out during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Having an abortion will not usually affect your chances of becoming pregnant and having normal pregnancies in future. The risk of problems occurring during an abortion is low. However, there are more likely to be problems if an abortion is carried out later in a pregnancy. The risks associated with abortions are: Hemorrhage, damage to the cervix, and damage to the womb.

II. JOURNAL

Recent Studies Confirm Women Face Depression After Abortion, Other Problems by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 28, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – A new study with a very limited sample of women having abortions, just 69, has received considerable attention for supposedly disproving the plethora of peer-reviewed studies confirming women who have abortions face both depression and other mental health problems.
Other recent studies from the last two years provide nearly irrefutable evidence that abortion affects women in a myriad of ways — making it so they face everything from depression and relationship problems to PTSD and elevated risks for abusing drugs or alcohol.
An August study published in the Journal of Pregnancy and involving 374 women who had abortions — more than five times the number of women who appeared in the new study — found women having high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for women having both early and late abortions.
Approximately 52 percent of the early abortion group and 67 percent of the late term abortion group met the American Psychological Association’s criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD).
The authors of the study say those high rates are the result of women facing pressure or coercion to have an abortion or, at minimum, ambivalence about having it — showing more pre-abortion screening is needed to rule out abortion as an option for many women.
A May 2010 study put out by researchers at the University of Manitoba in Canada found women who have had abortions are about four times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol as those who carried their pregnancy to term. The authors confirmed a link between abortion and the substance abuse issues.
The study appeared in the April issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry and it showed women having abortions were 3.8 times more likely to have substance abuse disorders.
That was the case even when other factors such as exposure to violence were included that could have raised the risk outside of abortion.
The Canadian study also found abortion associated with other mental health conditions such as mood disorders, but substance abuse proved to be the strongest link when it comes to post-abortion problems for women.
Meanwhile, three studies alone published in peer-reviewed medical journals at the end of 2008 show abortion causes problems for women.
Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, and her colleagues published a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research showing an abortion-depression link exists.
The research team found induced abortions result in increased risks for a myriad of mental health problems ranging from anxiety to depression to substance abuse disorders.
The number of cases of mental health issues rose by as much as 17 percent in women having abortions compared to those who didn’t have one and the risks of each particular mental health problem rose as much as 145% for post-abortive women.
For 12 out of 15 of the mental health outcomes examined, a decision to have an abortion resulted in an elevated risk for women.
"What is most notable in this study is that abortion contributed significant independent effects to numerous mental health problems above and beyond a variety of other traumatizing and stressful life experiences," they concluded.
Researchers at Otago University in New Zealand reported their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry and found that women who have abortions have an increased risk of developing mental health problems.

Citation: Ertelt, S. (2010). Recent Studies Confirm Women Face Depression After Abortion, Other Problems. Available at http://www.lifenews.com/2010/09/28/nat-6733/

III. REACTION

Abortion has been one of the most difficult and controversial ethico- moral issues this modern world’s been facing and considering. It’s like, “there are two sides to every story”. We need to listen to both sides, even though that will be a tough thing to do. Because both have moral insights, even if those are being outweighed by the other one.

As for us, health care providers, abortion may or may not be an option depending on why the abortion will be done because there are women undergoing therapeutic abortion for becoming pregnant will be bring harm to their health, while on the other side, other women undergone abortion simply because they want to eliminate the growing fetus inside their womb.

With regards to the moral status of the fetus, there are several question concerning about its life. For instance, “Is fetus a person? At what stage in its development does it becomes a person? Conception? Birth?” These questions pop up inside a woman’s mind, thus she begins to have two sides whether she will continue to carry the fetus or have it expelled. Through those, the woman begins to feel ambivalence towards the pregnancy.

There are times when others consider abortion because they feel that they are too young to have a child. Didn’t they realize that when they were doing pre-marital sex? Everybody must know that when they engage into something like that they must be prepared to the possibility of getting pregnant so as to prevent those depressing moments such as deciding whether to keep it or expel it.

The ethico-moral issue concerning the fetus is whether it is a person or not. If it is a person, then it has the rights that belong to persons, including the right of life.

Women became depressed and suffers a lot of problems because for me, they’re morality was being challenged during the decision making and after that when they have finally decided to have it aborted there comes a second thought that maybe they shouldn’t, but in the end they’ll still have it expelled. After abortion, many engage in substance misuse to help them forget what they did to the human being growing inside them. But this doesn’t help because it just made them be more depressed thinking that they killed a person. Killed a person. Killed a person. Over and over they will think about it. Over and over there will be a pang of guilt that will forever haunt them. Because there will come to a point, when their minds are clear from all the stacks of conflicts, that they will realize and will be able to know that every new life begins at conception, which is true with regards to animals and human. It’s the same as what we were thought in biology that every species reproduces after its own kind; thus, in abortion, every single abortion ends an innocent human being’s life.

Most people undergone abortion becomes anxious, having post-traumatic stress disorder. Their anxiety reach its highest causing them to become the person they’re not and increasing their risks of mental health problems.

This ethico-moral issue has been on a debate for years whether there will be a law to make it legal or not. For me, if a woman gets pregnant she must continue to carry it until she came to deliver the fetus. So as to prevent those depressions and other problems such as post- traumatic stress disorders.