Abortion

ABORTIONPRUDENCE

Aquino, AdrianFlores, JohazenMagdangal, JMMeneses, DexterVillaganas, MerwinCanlas, MaesueVictorio, RachelleIV-GALILEI

I. INTRODUCTIONAbortion, from the Latin word, aboriri, means to perish may be briefly defined as the loss of a fetal life. In it the fetus dies while yet within the generative organs of the mother, or it is ejected or extracted from them before it is viable; that is, before it is sufficiently developed to continue itslifeby itself. The termabortionis also applied, though less properly, to cases in which the child is become viable, but does not survive the delivery. In this article we shall take the word in its widest meaning, and treat of abortion as occurring at anytimebetween conception and safe delivery. The word miscarriageis taken in the same wide sense. Yetmedicalwriters often use these words in special meanings, restricting abortion to thetimewhen the embryo has not yet assumed specific features, that is, in thehumanembryo, before the third month of gestation; miscarriage occurs later, but before viability; while the birth of a viable child before the completed term of nine months is styled premature birth. Viability may exist in the seventh month of gestation, but it cannot safely be presumed before the eighth month. If the child survives its premature birth, there is no abortion for this word always denotes the loss of fetallife.Abortion is also defined as the willful killing of the fetus in the uterus, or the violent expulsion of the fetus from the maternal womb, which results in the death of the fetus (carrara). Abortion is one of the most persistently controversial issues in American culture and politics today. Since the 1973 national legalization of abortion, competing groups have fought to either restrict or increase access to the procedure, leading to heated debates among political activists, religious organizations, state legislatures, and judges.As we all know, abortion is not good for the baby as it causes its death, and also for the mother itself. It is widely known as deadly to an innocent child. Abortion, if not properly done, may cause poisoning inside the body of the mother. Abortion can be done by a hilot, midwife, doctor or the woman herself.There are several types of surgical abortion:1. Dilation and Curettage (D&C) The cervix or the mouth of the womb is first stretched open. A curette or a sharp, loop-shaped knife is then inserted, and cuts the fetus into small pieces. Its head is crushed with the forceps in order to remove the baby. The womb is then scraped out completely.2. Suction Curettage Abortion A tube inserted into the uterus; the suction breaks and crushes the body parts of the fetus drawing them out into a jar. With both of these methods, the resulting tissue is clearly identifiable as small pieces of a baby. The actual cause of death is the physical dismemberment of the body.

3. Saline Injection This method is used too large for D&C and Suction-Curettage. A long needle is injected through the mothers abdomen to extract a certain amount of the amniotic fluid. This portion of the fluid is replaced with a toxic salt (Strong Salt Poisoning Solution), which burns the outer layer of the childs skin. An increase in movement is noted as the baby inhales and swallows the solution. The baby often convulses, goes into a comma, and dies an hour or two later. Labor begins 24-28 hours later. In all these cases, the unborn child dies from mutilation or poisoning before it can be removed from the womb.4. Hormone Drug Injection Prostaglandin drug is injected into the amniotic sac. This hormone drug produces labor and premature birth. The baby, in most cases, is born alive with a heartbeat then put aside to die.5. Hysterectomy It is generally used when saline injection is impractical. The baby is delivered as it would be in a Caesarian Section. Almost all babies delivered by Hysterectomy are born alive. Many cry and kick, within a few minutes, however, most die of exposure and willful neglect.

In the Philippines, studies indicate that the methods most frequently used in hospitals include: dilation and curettage (D&C); prophylactic or oxytoxics and antibiotics; vacuum aspiration and hysterectomy. Outside the hospitals, the most common method in inducing abortion is by insertion of a catheter, followed by deep abdominal massage, then by use of drugs, herbs and medicinal conditions. Whether you refer to this as killing or induced death, the effect on the child is the same.Abortion is a much debated subject with strong views often put forward on both sides of the argument. The first evidence of the termination of pregnancies goes back many centuries, thought to be as far back as 1550 BC. General opinion is that abortions were first performed in significant numbers in the 13th century. There were no abortion laws at this time.The first abortion laws went through in Britain in the early nineteenth century, when it was made illegal to perform an abortion after "quickening". Quickening was the term used to describe the time when the fetus can first be felt by a pregnant women. Abortion was made illegal under any circumstances in 1861, although the penalty was reduced to life imprisonment. These rules were relaxed in 1929 when abortion was legalized in some situations. If a woman's life was deemed to be in danger, or her health at risk, then the pregnancy could be aborted before 28 weeks.Campaigns to legalize abortions started to gather pace in the 1930's, when the subject was much more in the public eye. Campaigners mostly fought on the grounds that many were resorting to illegal abortions, which were leading to the injuries and deaths of hundreds of women in the UK.The case of Alec Bourne was instrumental in the route to the eventual legalisation of abortion, although it was still almost 20 years before it would become legal. Dr Bourne was prosecuted in 1938 after aborting a 14 year old girls' pregnancy. He claimed that she had been suicidal, and was eventually acquitted on the grounds that her life was in danger if she continued with the pregnancy. This was a landmark case, and laws were further relaxed as a result of this. Although still illegal, it opened up the doors for more women to successfully seek abortions on physical and mental health grounds.This caused problems of equality between rich and poor though. Examination by a psychiatrist was required for abortions on the grounds of mental health and this was costly, meaning only the wealthy were able to go down this route. This therefore reduced the number of illegal, unsafe abortions that took place, but many poorer women still underwent unsafe abortions.In 1967 the Abortion Act was bought in, legalizing terminations in the UK (except in Northern Ireland). The main reason for the change in law was to prevent injuries and deaths that had been caused by unsafe abortions. Although there have been some changes in abortion law since, the Abortion Act has been relatively unchanged over the years.The law currently requires a woman to have a certificate from two different doctors outlining the reasons why she would like a termination. The legal limit for abortions has been changed from 28 weeks to 24. They have to be carried out in hospitals, and can be funded either through the NHS or privately. Under 16's do not need parental permission to undergo an abortion. Much of the law is still down to interpretation, although it is rare that someone seeking an abortion is refused. It is still though, illegal in Northern Ireland.

II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDWhile the first recorded recipe form an abortion inducing drug came from 2600 BC, and there is a record of Egyptian potions made from crocodile dung, dating to 1850 BC, the history of Abortion in the U.S. is, obviously of more interest. Most people consider the U.S. history of abortion to have begun with the famous 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, but the history of abortion in the U.S. began with the pilgrims. What may not be widely known is that abortion in early America was NOT illegal before the last part of the Nineteenth century. When abortion was frowned on, it was for social and economic reasons, not because of concern about the fetus. In fact, while "in Colonial New England, adultery was illegal, so was incest and insubordination, abortion was not expressively forbidden" (Flanders, 17). In fact, there was not even a canonical law of the Catholic Church forbidding abortion. (That happened in 1869 by edict of Pope Pius IX.)"From the 1660's through 1776, the colonies, following English common law, permitted abortions everywhere (Rosenblatt 8). So, why did the movement to make abortions illegal really take hold? Strangely enough, one major cause was the falling birthrate among middle-class whites. More than that, it was the beginning of a crusade of medical doctors who felt that some of their practices (including abortions) were now being taken over by non-physician practitioners, including midwives, even pharmacists and homeopaths. "No group of physicians was more insecure than the gynecology/obstetrics specialists" (Flanders 176). Even worse, doctors and other anti-abortionists, brought race and "patriotism" into the argument, as the Great Plains were opening up. "The leading mid-century antiabortion campaigner demanded: 'Shall they be filled with our children or by those of aliens?'" (Flanders 178). o, by 1880 "anti-abortion laws were written in 40 states and territories. Interestingly, America's mainline Protestant churches did not support the medical profession's crusade; the practice was too common in their congregations" (Rosenblatt 9). Before the end of the Nineteenth century when abortion laws first made the rounds of state legislatures, "commercial preparations were so widely available that they had inspired their own euphemism ('taking the trade'). Unfortunately, these drugs were often fatal" (Pollin 112). Actually, as Pollin (1997) explains, the first laws were not really anti-abortion, but poison-control laws. Abortion continued to be offered by specialists- who were not doctors. "The most famous practitioner, Madame Restell, openly provided abortion services for thirty-five years with offices in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia and traveling salesmen touting her 'Female Monthly Pills'" (Pollin 112). By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, abortion was illegal in every state in the U.S. "In 45 states an exception was made if the mother's life were in danger from the pregnancy" (Gale 1). This was liberalization of the strict "no abortion" emphasis made by 19th century doctors. At this same time, the medical establishment believed, unlike today "that life began at about four months, when the mother felt the baby move in her stomach (a moment known as quickening)" (Shenkman 69). At the beginning of the 10th Century, we find another interesting statistic about abortions. Family size. "In an age where couples lacked all but the most basic information about birth control, abortion had emerged as a way for women to control the size of their families" (Tarshis 11). According to Shenkman (1988) there have even been some statistics which estimate almost one out of every four pregnancies in the 1920'a were terminated by an abortion. It may not necessarily be called "liberalization", but as the years passed, there were other exceptions to the medically unsafe legislation. "There was a growing concern about birth defects and advances in physicians' abilities to predict them during pregnancy" (Gale 1). And, then, some states passed controversial laws permitting abortions when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, still debated in 2004. Early in the 20th Century. there has even been a foreign aspect about abortion. The Cold War added to the furor, because anti-Communists publicized the fact that "in 1920 the Soviet Union became the first nation in the world to provide legal abortion on request during the first trimester" (Anon. 1891). By the 1960s, there were some different events which changed the minds of some about abortion. "The first involved the drug thalidomide. Widely used by European women to alleviate morning sickness in pregnancy, the drug caused serious deformities in the babies many of these women were carrying" (Tarshis 11). The most famous case involved a woman named Sherri Finkbine, who had taken the drug and, when she heard about the dangers, she applied to her local hospital for an abortion. The hospital refused. So did other hospitals, and the tabloids were filled with stories and pictures of deformed babies. The 1960s also were the beginning of a stronger women's movement in the U.S., in which the motivation and central theme was that women should have a right to control what happens to (and even in) their bodies. Of course, the central focus of abortion history in the U.S. was the Roe vs. Wade decision by the Supreme Court in 1973. What was this decision? The Supreme Court struck down a Texas law which made abortion illegal. "The Court ruled that the constitutional right to privacy 'encompassed a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy'" (Tarshis 12). Since Roe vs. Wade, the abortion controversy seems to have increased. At first, of course, it was the Religious Right that took up the public outcry. They were aided and abetted by some of the medical establishment who argued that life began at conception, not as was mentioned earlier, at "quickening". On the other side, the women's movement seemed to feel that Roe vs. Wade did not go far enough. One has to remember that Roe vs. Wade ONLY covered the first three months of a woman's pregnancy. As we now know what is called "late term abortion" has been a political football during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Still, there are those who see abortion as a religious issue. Some believe that, since the Catholic church prohibits abortion (just as it permits sex only for procreation), all Catholics are anti-abortion. However, there are some recent statistics that tell a different story. It is interesting to note that even among educated Catholics the trend is toward agreement that a woman should have a right to choose. However, the polarization continues between the liberal and conservatives. It is a fundamental moral and ethical issue and will continue to polarize American society, no matter whether Roe vs. Wade will remain the law of the land or be overturned. Aside from the philosophical differences, the key question now is- will there continue to be the violence of recent years? The problem with polls on Abortion is that the questions themselves are often weighted toward one side or the other: One deficiency with most polls is that they require snap judgments from the subjects. For example: a TIME-CNN poll in 1992 showed that "only 11% of American adults would withhold an abortion" (TIMES 1). The debate over Abortion continues, even as both sides of the question seem to use some historical facts to prove their case. It is not merely a medical debate. It is a religious and social and gender debate. "It sometimes seems that the further abortion is removed from the actual lives and circumstances of real girls and women, the more interesting it becomes to talk about" (Pollin 112). While medical progress has made aborting a fetus easier, the debate about Abortion issue is about ethics, religion, and morality. Opponents of abortion say it is against every aspect of humanity to "kill a defenseless human being". They also believe that no state should "rule" whether abortions can and should be legalized, or ruled illegal and "murder" of sorts. Yet, the fact remains that "43% of American women will have an abortion in their life-time, if current rates are sustained....But few women share the details beyond a small circle of loved ones because the experiences don't fit neatly into a debate that centers on moral absolutes" (Waldman 20) It seems clear, therefore, that the Abortion polarity in this country in both its social and medical aspects, offers no way to compromise and bring the two sides together. Even though history shows that abortion was common even thousands of years ago, the debate about its morality or legality will not go away.

III. PRESENTATION OF THE STUDYAbortion is also defined as the willful killing of the fetus in the uterus, or the violent expulsion of the fetus from the maternal womb, which results in the death of the fetus (carrara). Abortion is one of the most persistently controversial issues in American culture and politics today. Since the 1973 national legalization of abortion, competing groups have fought to either restrict or increase access to the procedure, leading to heated debates among political activists, religious organizations, state legislatures, and judges.Cytotec (misoprostol) is indicated for the prevention of NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including asprin)-induced gastric ulcers in patients at high risk of complications from gastric ulcer, eg, the elderly and patients with concomitant debilitating disease, as well as patients at high risk of developing gastric ulceration, such as patients with a history of ulcer.Because of its abortifacient property, Cytotec is contraindicated for use by pregnant women. Cytotec may cause miscarriage if given to pregnant women at any time during pregnancy. Miscarriages caused by Cytotec may be incomplete, which could lead to dangerous bleeding, hospitalization, surgery, infertility, or maternal or fetal death.Recent major studies from Australia and Canada have also concluded that miscarriages and induced abortions raise the odds of premature birth and low birth weight but only modestly. (Those studies were able to distinguish women who had miscarried from women who had intentionally ended their pregnancies.) Many other studies have found no clear link at all. Perhaps that's because different study populations, taken from all over the world, involve different risk factors for premature birth; or it may be simply that the sample sizes in some studies were too small to pick up relatively small differences between women who had had abortions and those who had not.

IV. DEFINITION OF TERMSMISCARRIAGE A miscarriage is any pregnancy that ends spontaneously before the fetus can survive. A miscarriage is medically referred to as a spontaneous abortion. The World Health Organization defines this unsurvivable state as an embryo or fetus weighing 500 grams or less, which typically corresponds to a fetal age (gestational age) of 20 to 22 weeks or less. Miscarriage occurs in about 15% to 20% of all recognized pregnancies, and usually occurs before the 13th week of pregnancy. With the development of highly sensitive assays for hCG levels that can detect an early pregnancy even prior to the expected next period (menstruation), researchers have been able to show that around 60% to 70% of all pregnancies (recognized and unrecognized) are lost. Because the loss occurs so early, many miscarriages occur without the woman ever having known she was pregnant. Of those miscarriages that occur before the eighth week, 30% have no fetus associated with the sac or placenta. This condition is called blighted ovum, and many women are surprised to learn that there was never an embryo inside the sac.As described above, some miscarriages occur before women recognize that they are pregnant. About 15% of fertilized eggs are lost before the egg even has a chance to implant (embed itself) in the wall of the uterus. A woman would not generally identify this type of miscarriage. Another 15% of conceptions are lost before eight weeks' gestation. Once fetal heart function is detected in a given pregnancy, the chance of miscarriage is less than 5%.A woman who may be showing the signs of a possible miscarriage (such as vaginal bleeding) may have her pregnancy referred to as a "threatened abortion."FETUSThe unborn offspring from the end of the 8th week after conception (when the major structures have formed) until birth. Up until the eighth week, the developing offspring is called an embryo.CYTOTECMisoprostol is a synthetic (man-made) prostaglandin that is used to reduce the risk of stomach ulcers in patients treated with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs, for example, aspirin, ibuprofen, etc.) that are used for pain and various inflammatory conditions, for example, arthritis. Misoprostol is used primarily in patients at high risk for stomach ulcers when treated with NSAIDs, for example, the elderly, patients with concomitant debilitating diseases, and patients with a history of ulcers. Prostaglandins are chemicals that are made within many organs of the body including the stomach. In the stomach, prostaglandins are believed to protect the inner lining of the stomach from the ulcer-producing effects of NSAIDs. Scientists now believe that NSAIDs produce ulceration by preventing the production of prostaglandins in the stomach. Synthetic prostaglandins such as misoprostol given orally "replace" the prostaglandins whose production is inhibited by NSAIDs and have been shown to protect the lining of the stomach from NSAID-induced ulcers. Misoprostol was approved by the FDA in December 1988.MIDWIFEA person trained to assist a woman during childbirth. Many midwives also provide prenatal care for pregnant women, birth education for women and their partners, and care for mothers and newborn babies after the birth. A midwife may be a man or a woman. Depending on local law, midwives may deliver babies in the mother's home, in a special birthing center or clinic, or in a hospital. Most midwives specialize in normal, uncomplicated deliveries, referring women with health problems that could require hospitalization during birth to a hospital-based obstetrician. Others work with physicians as part of a team. Legal qualifications required to practice midwifery differ between the US states and various countries. See also midwife, certified; midwife, certified nurse; midwife, certified professional; midwife, direct-entry; midwife, traditional.

V. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATUREIn doing the proper abortion, four conditions are followed:1. That we do not wish theevileffects, but make all reasonable efforts to avoid them;2. That the immediate effect begoodin itself;3. That theevilis not made a means to obtain thegoodeffect; for this would be to doevilthatgoodmight come of it a procedure never allowed;4. That thegoodeffect be as important at least as theevileffect.

CYTOTEC OR MISOPROSTOL PILLSThe Cytotec (misoprostol) is indicated for the prevention of NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including asprin)-induced gastric ulcers in patients at high risk of complications from gastric ulcer, eg, the elderly and patients with concomitant debilitating disease, as well as patients at high risk of developing gastric ulceration, such as patients with a history of ulcer. Contraindications and WarningsGeneralCytotec produces uterine contractions, uterine bleeding, and expulsion of the products of conception. Miscarriages caused by Cytotec may be incomplete.Anecdotal reports, primarily from Brazil, of congenital anomalies and reports of fetal death subsequent to use of misoprostol as an abortifacient have been received.Because of its abortifacient property, Cytotec is contraindicated for use by pregnant women. Cytotec may cause miscarriage if given to pregnant women at any time during pregnancy. Miscarriages caused by Cytotec may be incomplete, which could lead to dangerous bleeding, hospitalization, surgery, infertility, or maternal or fetal death.First trimester of pregnancyIn studies in women undergoing elective termination of pregnancy during the first trimester, Cytotec caused partial or complete expulsion of the products of conception in 11% of the subjects and increased uterine bleeding in 41%.Beyond first trimester of pregnancyUterine rupture has been reported when Cytotec was administered intravaginally in pregnant women to induce labor or to induce abortion beyond the first trimester of pregnancy.Uterine perforation has been reported following administration of combined vaginal-and-oral Cytotec in pregnant women to induce abortion. In each of these reported cases, the gestational age of the pregnancies was unknown.One case of amniotic fluid embolism, which resulted in maternal and fetal death, has been reported with use of misoprostol during pregnancy. Severe vaginal bleeding, retained placenta, shock, fetal bradycardia, and pelvic pain have also been reported. These women were administered misoprostol vaginally and/or orally over a range of doses.Cytotec may cause the uterus to rupture (tear) in pregnant women if it is used to bring on (induce) labor or to cause an abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy. Miscarriages or rupture of the uterus may result in severe bleeding, hospitalization, surgery, infertility or death.What is a successful abortion with cytotec pills?Every woman considering medication abortion by pills have to understand what is complete and successful abortion. The only one way to see if your abortion is complete and successful is to take an ultrasound. You have to have an ultrasound 10 days after you use pills. Around it, you should not have strong pain, heavy bleeding, fever or diarrhea. Some not heavy bleeding may still continue up to 3 weeks. Usually woman just know was abortion successful or not. But woman cannot be absolutely certain that her abortion was successful unless she take an ultrasound and will be examined by doctor. You have to wait 10 days until you take an ultrasound because 80% abortions are complete after 5 days only.

You may also take a pregnancy test after two weeks. In case you are still pregnancy (this is possible because medication abortion is not 100% method) you may repeat the procedure. This is reason why is recommended to order and buy extra Misoprostol (Cytotec) pills.Keep in minds, you have to continue taking abortion tablets until you will have a miscarriage, but not more than it described in abortion guideline.If your abortion was successful, you will feel less cramps and less pain than after the first time you take Misoprostol (Cytotec) pills.

Over-all, the use of cytotec pill is dangerous for the baby and the mother herself. It can be deadly. The pregnant women must understand that even though you dont want to be pregnant, you should love your child for he is a gift from God himself. We should not tolerate this kind of improper medications. And as it states in the Ten Commandment, Thou shall not kill, we should not kill an innocent child.VI. REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIESAbortions increase the risk of low birth weight in future pregnancies by a factor of three, and of premature birth by a factor of two, according to the largest U.S. study of its kind. The study is hardly perfect; the data is more than 40 years old and doesn't distinguish between medical abortions and "spontaneous abortions," better known as miscarriages. Yet the report, published today in theJournal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH),shows one of the strongest links yet between miscarriage or abortion on premature birth and low birth weight major risk factors for infant death or sickness.What makes report significant is the size and detail of data. Some previous, smaller studies on abortion and future birth weight have suffered because researchers were unable to untangle the effects of abortion from, say, the effects of being poor (which also happens to increase a woman's odds of having an abortion). But the researchers behind theJECHstudy, which evaluated just over 45,000 single-child live births from 1959 to 1966, were able to adjust for an impressive array of confounding variables, including race, age, weight, height, marital status, occupation, the number of prenatal visits, the number of previous children, smoking and drinking habits, drug habits, infant gender and both parents' education levels.That kind of rigor makes the new findings particularly important. The study not only found a link between abortion or miscarriage and low birth weight, but it also found that the risk appears to increase with every subsequent miscarriage or abortion. The accruing risk, says co-author Tilahun Adera at Virginia Commonwealth University, suggests that termination of pregnancy is a true cause of low birth weight and preterm birth rather than a variable associated with such conditions. "It's not just an association," he says. "The risk of premature birth increases with the increasing number of abortions."Women who had had one, two or three prior abortions or miscarriages were three, five and nine times more likely, respectively, to have a low-birth-weight child, the data showed. Though it's still not clear why that's so, doctors theorize that the cervix may be weakened by miscarriage or abortion, increasing the risk of preterm birth later on. Or, it could be that uterine adhesions or infections from the terminated pregnancy slow the growth of the fetus in subsequent pregnancies.Recent major studies from Australia and Canada have also concluded that miscarriages and induced abortions raise the odds of premature birth and low birth weight but only modestly. (Those studies were able to distinguish women who had miscarried from women who had intentionally ended their pregnancies.) Many other studies have found no clear link at all. Perhaps that's because different study populations, taken from all over the world, involve different risk factors for premature birth; or it may be simply that the sample sizes in some studies were too small to pick up relatively small differences between women who had had abortions and those who had not.The big question, however, is how well data from the 1960s really represents American women today. Back in the '60s, induced abortions were illegal in the U.S. It's possible that some women in the study had abortions but denied it even to their doctors or claimed to have miscarried. That makes the data harder to interpret. Illegal abortion techniques of the day, moreover, were no doubt cruder than abortion procedures today, and they may have caused more permanent damage to the reproductive system.Indeed, the public-health implications of theJECHstudy may be more suitable for developing countries, says Adera places where abortion is still illegal, and where prenatal care may be similar to what was offered in the U.S. half a century ago. Still, he says, all over the world, "Women need to be informed about these risks."Some women who perform or already performed abortion doesnt know the risks of having an abortion. And as it says from the above, the woman should have an ultrasound to know if the abortion is successful. If not, it may cause infection inside the body of the women and it may kill her.

VII. STAND OF THE GOVERNMENTArticle II of the 1987 Philippine Constitution says, in part, "Section 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.The act is criminalized by the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, which was enacted in 1930 and remains in effect today. Articles 256, 258 and 259 of the Code mandate imprisonment for the woman who undergoes the abortion, as well as for any person who assists in the procedure, even if they be the woman's parents, a physician or midwife. Article 258 further imposes a higher prison term on the woman or her parents if the abortion is undertaken "in order to conceal [the woman's] dishonor".There is no law in the Philippines that expressly authorizes abortions in order to save the woman's life; and the general provisions which do penalize abortion make no qualifications if the woman's life is endangered. It may be argued that an abortion to save the mother's life could be classified as a justifying circumstance (duress as opposed to self-defense) that would bar criminal prosecution under the Revised Penal Code. However, this has yet to be adjudicated by the Philippine Supreme Court.Proposals to liberalize Philippine abortion laws have been opposed by the Catholic Church, and its opposition has considerable influence in the predominantly Catholic country. However, the constitutionality of abortion restrictions has yet to be challenged before the Philippine Supreme Court.The present Constitution of the Philippines, enacted in 1987, pronounces as among the policies of the State that "[The State] shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception." (sec. 12, Art. II) The provision was crafted by the Constitutional Commission which drafted the charter with the intention of providing for constitutional protection of the abortion ban, although the enactment of a more definitive provision sanctioning the ban was not successful. It is also notable that the provision is enumerated as among several state policies, which are generally regarded in law as unenforceable in the absence of implementing legislation. The 1987 RP Constitution also contains several other provisions enumerating various state policies including, e.g., the affirmation of labor "as a primary social economic force" (Section 14, Article II); the equal protection of "the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception" (Section 12, Article II); the "Filipino family as the foundation of the nation" (Article XV, Section 1); the recognition of Filipino as "the national language of the Philippines" (Section 6, Article XVI, and even a requirement that "all educational institutions shall undertake regular sports activities throughout the country in cooperation with athletic clubs and other sectors." (Section 19.1, Article XIV) Whether these provisions may, by themselves, be the source of enforceable rights without implementing legislation has been the subject of considerable debate in the legal sphere and within the Supreme Court. The Court, for example, has ruled that a provision requiring that the State "guarantee equal access to opportunities to public service" could not be enforced without implementing legislation, and thus could not bar the disallowance of so-called "nuisance candidates" in presidential elections. However, in another case the Court held that a provision requiring that the State "protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology" did not require implementing legislation to become the source of operative rights. Any legal challenge to abortion restrictions in the Philippines would necessarily have to evaluate the legal force given to Section 12, Article II of the Constitution.

VIII. STATISTICSAbortion Practices in the PhilippinesOne study estimated that, despite legal restrictions, in 1994 there were 400,000 abortions performed illegally in the Philippines and 80,000 hospitalizations of women for abortion-related complications. 12% of all maternal deaths in 1994 were due to unsafe abortion according to the Department of Health of the Philippines. Two-thirds of Filipino women who have abortions attempt to self-induce or seek solutions from those who practice folk medicine. The Department of Health has created a program to address the complications of unsafe abortion, Prevention and Management of Abortion and its Complications. This program had been tested in 17 government-run hospitals by 2003.ABORTION ACCESS IN THE U.S. It is conservatively estimated that one in five Medicaid-eligible women who want an abortion cannot obtain one. In the U.S., 84% of all counties have no abortion services; of rural counties, 95% have no services. Nine in ten abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas. Only 17 states fund abortions. Only 12% of OB/GYN residency programs train in first-trimester abortions; only 7% in second-trimester abortions. Abortion is the most common OB/GYN surgical procedure; yet, almost half of graduating OB/GYN residents have never performed a first-trimester abortion. Thirty-nine states have parental involvement laws requiring minors to notify and/or obtain the consent of their parents in order to obtain an abortion. Twenty-one states require state-directed counseling before a woman may obtain an abortion. (This is often called ``informed consent''; some critics call it a ``biased information requirement.'') Many states require women seeking abortions to receive scripted lectures on fetal development, prenatal care, and adoption. Twelve states currently enforce mandatory waiting periods following state- directed counseling; this can result in long delays and higher costs.

IX. LIST OF REFERENCEShttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article/246346/history_of_abortion_pg6.html?cat=17hfttp://ezinearticles.com/?A-Brief-History-of-Abortion&id=3348642http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/abortion.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Philippineshttp://www.abortionconcern.org/abortion-info/cytotec.phphttp://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1695927,00.html#ixzz1b2evNdQnhttp://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3424http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38205

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