Abortion
intentional ending of a pregnancy
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. The unmodified word abortion generally refers to induced abortion, or deliberate actions to end a pregnancy. Abortion occurring without intervention is known as spontaneous abortion or "miscarriage", and occurs in roughly 30–40% of all pregnancies. Common reasons for inducing an abortion are birth-timing and limiting family size. Other reasons include maternal health, an inability to afford a child, domestic violence, lack of support, feelings of being too young, wishing to complete an education or advance a career, and not being able, or willing, to raise a child conceived as a result of rape or incest.
When done legally in industrialized societies, induced abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine. Modern methods use medication or surgery for abortions. The drug mifepristone (aka RU-486) in combination with prostaglandin appears to be as safe and effective as surgery during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. Self-managed medication abortion is highly effective and safe throughout the first trimester. The most common surgical technique involves dilating the cervix and using a suction device.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Abortion” is intentional ending of a pregnancy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Abortion, intentional and ending, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8452. The Library of Congress control number is sh85000196. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abortion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.