Should Abortion Be Legalized? Abortion The term abortion simply refers to the planned and deliberate termination of pregnancy in order to kill the unborn child, who has not entered in the world. Consequently, abortion is a popular method to get rid of the unwanted child developing in the fetus in the wake of sexual union between two or more individuals belonging to the opposite genders. “More than 40% of all women will end a pregnancy by abortion at some time in their reproductive lives.” (Trupin & Stöppler, 2011) Hence, a significant proportion of the American women seek the services of doctors, nurses or other medical staff to throw away their unborn child at different stages of pregnancy. Though abortion had been a vehemently disputed issue, and authorities stated it as crime, the same has obtained the legal status during the second half of twentieth century. Since abortion is completely the personal matter for women, which not only relieves unnecessary domestic, financial and social burden from the very back of women, but also leaves positive impact on their health and fitness, it must have legal status in every country of the globe, and mothers should have the right to decide about the fate of their unborn children without any interference from statute of law or social norms and cultural values prevailing in their social establishment. There was a time when abortion was criticized and censured by an overwhelming majority of the people in almost all parts of the world. The people widely looked down upon the act and declared it a serious sin, injustice and crime against religious, moral and ethical principles being followed. The dogmatists particularly condemned and rebuked the practice by declaring it as an obnoxious act against humanity at large, which is equally heinous to the murder of a born individual. The religious people were of the view that since Nature had allowed the unborn child to enter the world, without entering into debate that whether he is legitimate or illegitimate, no human should have the right to stop his way to arriving in the world at any cost. Another main reason behind opposing abortion was this that the person(s) responsible for the same were regarded as the murderers of an innocent life, which neither had any contribution in arriving in the world, nor did he had power to defend himself from the cruel clutches ready to take his life before birth even. Thus, taking the life of a harmless, defenseless and innocent unborn was undoubtedly a serious crime against society in the eyes of the religious-minded people as ell as for the moralists in past. It is therefore, the act of abortion always invited displeasure and abhorrence of the large number of the population for the last several centuries, and people always maintained very negative opinion regarding the act. Animistic religion tends to regard abortion as a direct attack on the vital principles of nature. Similarly, Abrahamic faiths including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, do not allow any step even that advances towards abortion, as the Old Testament states: “Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of Yahweh your God, obeying His voice, clinging to Him; for in this your life consists, and on this depends your long stay in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers... (Dt 30:19-20). It is therefore the legalization of abortion had not been taken into consideration altogether till the end of nineteenth century. Somehow, time took drastic turn, and society started entering into debates and discussions in respect of the validity of abortion in the best interest of women and society. The supporters of abortion argue that since mother is the major sufferer before and after the birth of children, she should have been granted the permission to decided whether the child should be born or not. It would, according to them, not only leave pleasant impact on the physical and psychological health of the mothers, but will also remove the extra and unnecessary financial burden on mothers in particular, and on society in general. Additionally, abortion is also helpful in respect of protecting the unwed women from defamation, degradation and humiliation in case the pregnancy is the outcome of rape, incest and sexual relations beyond the marital knot. Thus, abortion is the only way to avoid and escape illegitimate and extra marital pregnancy on the one hand, and is certainly beneficial to make the victims of rape forgetful of the mishap happened in their life that has left permanent and indelible imprint of woe, anguish and despair on the mind and memory of the victim. According to the Tennessee Right to Life organization website, “even though 93% of abortions are done as a means of birth control it still does not hide the fact that 1% are performed because of rape or incest; 3% because of fetal abnormalities; 3% due to the mother's health problems.”