LIFE, DEATH, AND POLITICS A run-down of the abortion debate. Few issues have fostered such controversy as has the topic of abortion. The participants in the abortion debate not only have firmly-fixed beliefs, but each group has a self-designated appellation that clearly reflects what they believe to be the essential issues. On one side, the pro-choice supporters see individual choice as central to the debate: If a woman cannot choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, …showed first 75 words of 2497 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2497 total…the number of women who died or suffered serious, sometimes permanent, injury. A second, equally important, result of legalization concerns equity: before abortion was legal, it was poor women, minority women, and very young women who suffered most, since their only options often were delivery of an unwanted child or a back-alley abortion.         Today the threat to women's lives and health no longer comes from abortion. It comes from those who want to outlaw it.