Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus.[nb 1][2] An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of all pregnancies.[3][4] When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion.[5][6] The most common reasons women give for having an abortion are for birth-timing and limiting family size.[7][8][9] Other reasons reported include maternal health, an inability to afford a child, domestic violence, lack of support, feeling they are too young, wishing to complete education or advance a career, and not being able or willing to raise a child conceived as a result of rape or incest.[7][9][10]
Around 73 million abortions are performed each year in the world,[26] with about 45% done unsafely.[27] Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008,[28] before which they decreased for at least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased.[29] As of 2018[update], 37% of the world's women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason.[30] Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed.[31] Abortion rates are similar between countries that restrict abortion and countries that broadly allow it, though this is partly because countries which restrict abortion tend to have higher unintended pregnancy rates.[32]
Globally, there has been a widespread trend towards greater legal access to abortion since 1973,[33] but there remains debate with regard to moral, religious, ethical, and legal issues.[34][35] Those who oppose abortion often argue that an embryo or fetus is a person with a right to life, and thus equate abortion with murder.[36][37] Those who support abortion's legality often argue that it is a woman's reproductive right.[38] Others favor legal and accessible abortion as a public health measure.[39]Abortion laws and views of the procedure are different around the world. In some countries abortion is legal and women have the right to make the choice about abortion.[40] In some areas, abortion is legal only in specific cases such as rape, incest, fetal defects, poverty, and risk to a woman's health.[41]
^"abortion". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on 19 August 2020. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
^"Abortion (noun)". Oxford Living Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 28 May 2018. Retrieved 8 June 2018. [mass noun] The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy
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^Faúndes A, Shah IH (October 2015). "Evidence supporting broader access to safe legal abortion". International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. World Report on Women's Health 2015: The unfinished agenda of women's reproductive health. 131 (Suppl 1): S56–S59. doi:10.1016/j.ijgo.2015.03.018. PMID26433508. A strong body of accumulated evidence shows that the simple means to drastically reduce unsafe abortion-related maternal deaths and morbidity is to make abortion legal and institutional termination of pregnancy broadly accessible.[...] [C]riminalization of abortion only increases mortality and morbidity without decreasing the incidence of induced abortion, and that decriminalization rapidly reduces abortion-related mortality and does not increase abortion rates.
^Sedgh G, Singh S, Shah IH, Ahman E, Henshaw SK, Bankole A (February 2012). "Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to 2008"(PDF). Lancet. 379 (9816): 625–632. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61786-8. PMID22264435. S2CID27378192. Archived(PDF) from the original on 6 February 2012. Because few of the abortion estimates were based on studies of random samples of women, and because we did not use a model-based approach to estimate abortion incidence, it was not possible to compute confidence intervals based on standard errors around the estimates. Drawing on the information available on the accuracy and precision of abortion estimates that were used to develop the subregional, regional, and worldwide rates, we computed intervals of certainty around these rates (webappendix). We computed wider intervals for unsafe abortion rates than for safe abortion rates. The basis for these intervals included published and unpublished assessments of abortion reporting in countries with liberal laws, recently published studies of national unsafe abortion, and high and low estimates of the numbers of unsafe abortion developed by WHO.
^"Induced Abortion Worldwide". Guttmacher Institute. 1 March 2018. Archived from the original on 23 February 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2020. Of the world's 1.64 billion women of reproductive age, 6% live where abortion is banned outright, and 37% live where it is allowed without restriction as to reason. Most women live in countries with laws that fall between these two extremes.
^Culwell KR, Vekemans M, de Silva U, Hurwitz M, Crane BB (July 2010). "Critical gaps in universal access to reproductive health: contraception and prevention of unsafe abortion". International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. 110 (Suppl): S13–S16. doi:10.1016/j.ijgo.2010.04.003. PMID20451196. S2CID40586023.
^"Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion Worldwide". Guttmacher Institute. 28 May 2020. Archived from the original on 23 February 2020. Retrieved 9 March 2021. Abortion is sought and needed even in settings where it is restricted—that is, in countries where it is prohibited altogether or is allowed only to save the women's life or to preserve her physical or mental health. Unintended pregnancy rates are highest in countries that restrict abortion access and lowest in countries where abortion is broadly legal. As a result, abortion rates are similar in countries where abortion is restricted and those where the procedure is broadly legal (i.e., where it is available on request or on socioeconomic grounds).
^Johnstone MJ (2009). "Bioethics a nursing perspective". Confederation of Australian Critical Care Nurses Journal. 3 (4) (5th ed.). Sydney, NSW: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier: 24–30. ISBN978-0-7295-7873-8. PMID2129925. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017. Although abortion has been legal in many countries for several decades now, its moral permissibilities continues to be the subject of heated public debate.