Introduction
Abortion has a long and varied history both with regard to its prevalence and its legal status. In many parts of the world, including the United States, Turkey, and Egypt, abortion was socially acceptable, legal, and widely available until the mid to late nineteenth century (Hessini, 2007). After over a century of its criminalization in the United States and Canada, restrictions on abortion began to be reviewed and liberalized throughout the 1970s and 1980s with intense struggle from activists both for and against its legalization. Currently, even where abortion is legal, the practice is the subject of intense political, social, and ethical debate.
Definition
Abortion refers to the deliberate termination of a pregnancy. Where legal access to abortion is available, pregnancies are terminated in the care of a licensed physician either through a surgical procedure known as a vacuum aspiration or by the administration of a medication that causes the expulsion of the pregnancy...
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Sheese, K. (2014). Abortion. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_2
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