Abortion Between 15 24 Weeks example essay topic

In the UK alone, (figures for England & Wales only), 173,696 unborn children were killed in the womb in 1999, the most recent year for figures. The number of abortions on girls under the age of 16 years has risen by almost 25% in the last decade. There were 4,382 terminations on under-16's in 2000 compared with 3,510 in 1992. All this despite, or perhaps because of, freely available contraceptives.

Indeed, research is now showing that, rather than reduce unwanted teenage pregnancies, the wide availability of contraceptives is actually increasing the figures. Dr. David Paton, of Nottingham University Business School, has studied the figures from 1988 and states, "My research casts doubts on current Government policy. We have had a massive expansion in family planning services for young people, yet there is no evidence that this has reduced either under-age pregnancies or abortion rates. Although family planning may make sexually active teenagers less likely to get pregnant, it seems that it also encourages others to start having sex". These figures do not include the untold thousands of terminations caused by mechanical and chemical devices such as, "emergency contraceptives", which in fact do not prevent new life beginning, but destroy a life already begun. Nor do they include the embryos created and then discarded under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFE A) have released figures (to March 1998) showing that 763,499 embryos (i.e. human beings) have been created, but that only 36,317 were born alive. This means that 727,182 were 'flushed down the pan'. The first UK statistics for 1998 show a 3.8% rise in abortion levels, hardly surprising when such organisations as the Marie Stops Clinic offer 15 minutes, "lunch-time" abortions. Recently, in the UK, a cross-party group of Members of Parliament, and Peers, led by Baroness Gould, supported the launch of a new campaign to change the law on abortion.

The 'Voice For Choice Campaign' wants: . Abortion on demand in the first 3 months of pregnancy so that no doctor is required to agree that a woman needs an abortion up to 14 weeks... Easy access to surgery up to 6 months, so that an abortion between 15-24 weeks requires the agreement of only one doctor... The abortion law extended to Northern Ireland... Doctors who are opposed to abortion to register their views on a central register. In March 2000, The Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists issued new guidelines which directed doctors that they, 'must respect of woman's right to choose', and that abortion, 'is a basic health care need'.

In October 2000, Ann Fur edi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, speaking at a conference on abortion law, stated, "It may be time to understand that, for women, abortion is an essential method of family planning and accept it as such". In December 2000, the UK Government, in a blinding bit of parliamentary quick stepping, made the 'morning-after' pill available over the counter. Avoiding both the Green and White paper stages of normal parliamentary democratic procedure, it simply went ahead and did it following secret trials in Manchester. Monitored by sympathetic MPs.