Amid the battle over abortion rights, a failure to agree on how to define abortion
Across the country, there’s widespread disagreement — among doctors, lawmakers, and the public — about what the definition of an abortion is.
Every year, Lisa Campo-Engelstein tells her medical ethics class the story of Isabel: A fictional character who arrives at a health clinic seeking an abortion. Doctors determine that Isabel is 37 weeks pregnant and, what’s more, she’s suffering from high blood pressure that endangers the life of the fetus.
Thirty-seven weeks is just three shy of an average full-length pregnancy, so instead of an abortion, the clinic’s doctors recommend that Isabel have an emergency C-section to maximize the chance of a live birth. Isabel refuses. “I don’t want to get cut open to save a baby I didn’t even want in the first place,” she says. By refusing the C-section, is she having an abortion?
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