Human rights

Abortion and the Public Health: Time for Another Look By Stephen A. McCurdy

Amanee Ahmed

McCurdy, Stephen A. “Abortion and Public Health: Time for Another Look.” The Linacre Quarterly. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2016. 

Stephen McCurdy is a professor of medicine at the University of California and affiliated with UC Davis Medical Center. His research is mainly focus on agricultural health. In “Abortion and the Public Health: Time for Another Look,” by Stephen A. McCurdy, the article explores the effects of abortion on public health and contends that the conventional opposition between pro-choice and pro-life does not adequately represent the complexity of the issue. McCurdy contends that legislators and medical experts should pay attention to abortion since it is a matter of public health. He examines the historical background of abortion in the US and assesses how restrictive abortion regulations affect outcomes for the general public’s health. He also talks about how contraception helps to lower the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. This academic journal is useful to my topic because it provides a comprehensive analysis of the public health implications of abortion, and it also represents the importance of safe and legal abortion access as a critical component of reproductive health care.

  1. “There is often failure to distinguish between biologic fact—the embryo or fetus as a unique human life—and philosophical construct—the embryo or fetus as a “person” deserving of protections that normally pertain to that status. The very term “human being” is disputed, with one group using it in the factual biologic sense denoting species and the other reserving it for those with advanced cognitive abilities, conveniently excluding the embryo and fetus.” (McCurdy)
  2. “Support for abortion means that the principle of protection for human life above a parental interest in autonomy does not hold for the days, weeks, and months prior to delivery. Thus, calls for reproductive justice and compassion apply only to the woman with an unintended pregnancy and not to the human life she temporarily shelters.” (McCurdy)

Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change By Celeste Michelle Condit 

Amanee Ahmed

Condit, Celeste M. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1990. 

Celeste Michelle Condit is an associate professor in speech communication in the University of Georgia. She is also known as a co-author of another book known as “Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo- African Word”. The book “Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change” examines the terminology and rhetoric used in the abortion issue in the United States. The author looks at how various participants in the discussion, such as politicians, activists, and media sources, utilize language to influence the public’s views and affect public policy. The author also discusses how the rhetoric have a powerful impact on public opinion and policy, and that effective communication strategies are essential to advancing reproductive justice and human rights. This book is useful because it examines the ways in which various stakeholders in the debate use language to shape public opinion and influence policy, the book provides insight into the cultural, political, and ideological factors that contribute to the abortion debate.

  1. “Public disclosure serves as such a bridge because it is both a concrete material practice and the bearer of ideas. It becomes, therefore, vital to any understanding of the evolution of material practices and ethics. Unfortunately, the few studies that have taken serious account of the disclosure of the abortion controversy have lacked methodological sophistication or have taken a static ahistorical perspective.” (Condit)
  2. “Omitting this disclosure seems to reproduce the blanket of silence over these feminisms and to rely on a crude distinction between public, or *out-group, rhetoric and *in-group rhetoric.” (Condit)