"Abortion: The Facts and the Reality"

Abortion is legally described as the loss/removal of an embryo/fetus before it can survive outside of the mother’s body. In the book Abortion –Debating the Issues, by Nancy Day, in “Abortion: The Facts and the Reality”, the author faces the true reality of two girls. Debbie, who decides to have an abortion, and Tanya, who chooses pro life; a decision that they both feel they have made correctly. Day states, “There are approximately 1.5 million legal abortions in the United States each year” (7). The most common reasons for girls to get abortions are either they aren’t mature enough or they don’t have the money too. Tanya, who is 19, decides against an abortion and claims to love her baby more than anything, though sometimes she admits it’s hard she says she couldn’t ever imagine if she’d have ever gone through with an abortion and is glad she didn’t. Debbie, who is a separated mother of a two-year old boy, claims that she didn’t want to have to marry the new baby’s father so she goes through with an abortion, and says that she also is very glad about her decision because she didn’t think it would have been fair to her only son. The problem is, Day talks about how later on in life you may have problems with the realities of going through with an abortion and it can be very hard on you, mentally.

This excerpt of Day’s book was very informative and I really liked how you got both sides. Although I didn’t agree with Debbie and her reasonings, I could understand why she didn’t want to put her son through all that. I was very proud of Tanya and have always wondered how anyone could ever be such a young parent, but yet still make it through college and work, which is exactly what she did and I really respect that. I also think that if I ever did something like this then I would be one of the people that had problems with it later on because I have such a bad conscious and for some people that really could end up messing with you mentally later on in life.

Day, Nancy. Abortion- Facing the Issues. Springfield, MI: Enslow Publishers, INC., 1995.