George Carlin Case

A young girl sits in her bathroom crying hysterically. She can’t catch a substantial breath between sobs. Her world is crumbling down around her. She has a pregnancy test clutched in her sweating palm; it reads a pink plus sign. What is usually a joyous occasion for a woman and her husband, has become a heartbreaking event. There are 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies, each year (Dreweke). The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network estimates that about 3,204 pregnancies result from rape each year in the U.S. Legality of abortion would help many women stuck in tough, heart wrenching, prenatal situations. In order to avoid cases of perilous procedures, to protect mothers’ health, and to relieve rape or incest victims, abortion should be permissible.

Many abortions are done by untrained people with unsanitary operating materials. If abortion is illegal, women are still going to go through with it, only without the safety of a hospital or another sanitary facility. These sketchy, low key operations are risky for the mother’s heath. According to the National Abortion Federation, when abortion was illegal, many women died or got awful medical conditions because of unsafe procedures. “In an estimated 42 million abortions; 20 million were done in unsafe conditions and or completed by someone without proper medical skills” (Bureau) Women would go to any extent to end their pregnancy, inducing their own abortion or going to untrained practitioners. Women flooded emergency rooms with complications such as, perforations of the uterus, retained placentas, severe bleeding, cervical wounds, infections, poisoning, shock, and gangrene. (Bureau) With abortion being illegal, it became the leading cause of maternal death. An estimated sixty-eight thousand women pass away each year from unsafe abortions. Some of these pregnancies are teens.

Each year, about a million teenage girls get pregnant, seventy-eight percent of which being unintended. (Bureau) Four in every five Americans have had sex by the time they’re twenty. By the time they turn twenty, at least 40% of these women have been pregnant at least once. If a girl decides to keep the baby, she may have to drop out of school, be given insufficient prenatal care, rely on assistance to raise her child, develop health problems, and if the father marries her, have it end in divorce. Children born to teen mothers are more likely to have larger drawbacks in life to those born to older mothers: medical, psychological, economic, and educational.

Teens are not financially or emotionally capable of taking care of a baby. If they’re lucky enough to have a job, the funds may be insufficient in caring for their child. Babies cost a lot of money, thousands and thousands. Teenagers don’t have the emotional strength that adults do. Pregnancy can come with self-esteem complication, depression, lowered reputation, and bodily malfunction.

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