People’s Attitude Towards Abortion in Australia

Peoples military strength towards miscarriage in Australia Abstract The hypothesis, It is app atomic number 18nt that in Australia pot are non supportive of miscarriage. would be tested in the authorship. The stick of it was to reveal the current views of people in Australia towards miscarriage, under the helping of antithetical age and heathenish background. A interrogativenaire to a greater extent or less warrant reasons, legalization and nurtures on miscarriage was constructed and the target group would be 20 international students and 20 topical anaesthetic Australians.The international students were mainly Chinese, and a few from South-East Asia. Though most(prenominal) participants did non befuddle a re completely in ally strong perspective of keep endion or not, when in that location were march on questions approximately Pro-choice behavior and legalization of stillbirth, it was discovered that participants were actually in respect of granting immunity of choice, and face that miscarriage should be legalized. Therefore it could be said that comparing the 2 sides, participants were rather supportive to abortion.Based on the results, extended researches covering a large target group which could mostly represent contrasting cultural groups could be conducted to test whether abortion was really generally unexceptionable or not or could it be legalized under all cases. Introduction spontaneous abortion had been a controversial issue for hundreds of days, discussions and debates were always held to argue whether it should or should not be state legal.This issue was crucial at all term because the attitude towards it were mainly influenced by various important values of conduct like morality, valet rights and freedom of choice, adding that they were the key factors to determine whether it should be declared legal. Abortion can be defined as the expulsion or removal of an embryo or foetus from the uterus of the pregna nt become (Blade, 2008). It could be divided into two types. First, the spontaneous abortion occurs when the m nearly others body ejects the foetus due to divergent reasons, usually natural ones (without human effort).This field of study focused on another type of abortion, induced abortion. This was what people usually mean when they use the word abortion. In other quarrel, it was the termination of pregnancy. After the Federation in 1901, abortion was handled by the British Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. In the act, abortion was illegal , no matter under what circumstances. just, since then, abortion would be legal in some cases under the justice.For instance, Natasha,(1998), suggested that under the McGuire ruling (1986) in Queensland, abortion could only be legalized when the convey was in threat that abortion could preserve her life or health. some other case that abortion could be legalized was that if the newborn baby would go bad immediately or within a s hort period. For the current formula nigh it in Queensland under the Queensland Criminal Code, the view doom remained similar that the court of justice would prohibit abortion unless the mothers life or health is in danger.Though, it did not reveal any response on the change of attitudes of people towards abortion. The aim of the report was to reveal the current views of people in Australia towards abortion, under the circumstances of different age and cultural background(international students versus local Australians). It appeared that straight past to a greater extent and more(prenominal) people were supportive to abortion. This view would be supported by the results from behold and then a discussion part of it would be included and at last the conclusion and recommendation would be formulated.Methodology Questionnaires about the attitudes of abortion of people were used to collect data for the report. A qualitative methodological analysis was used. The reason for choosing it was because the report focused more on depth, rather than quantity. consort to the Family Health International (2005), a qualitative research provided information about the human side of an issue, which was often contradictory. It could also interpret the complex worldly concern or create a better understanding to a specific situation and the implications of the qualitative data.Another important point was that it could help place intangible factors (age, gender, nationality, religion, etc) in the report. These factors were the keys that influence a persons attitude toward the issue. The emphasis of the questionnaire was to understand participants standpoints for or against abortion, therefore 10 out of 14 questions were about their opinion, the rest were 3 attribute questions and 1 knowledge question. The descend number of participants was 40. There were altogether 20 international students studying in Australia and 20 local Australians completed the questionnaire.Among the participants, 23 of them were distaff and 17 were male. In the student group, 2 of them were under or below 18 and 18 were at the age of 19 to 30. Among the local Australians, 6 of them were between 31-45 and another 14 were 45 or above. A point to note was that for the international students, 15 of them were Chinese. To make sure the information would be kept secret, no questions were about identity or other snobbish information. The questionnaires were given out in two ways. The first way was to dish out them at school and at homes, and another way was to distribute them by the internet.Participants were quite interested to the questionnaire as they pattern that it was a controversial issue. However in the process, participants found confused with the last unrestricted question about the relationship between culture, age and abortion as it was not needed to state reasons but lines were given. Moreover, due to a lack of time in completing the questionnaire, i. e. in 5 or 10 minutes, the data self-collected expertness be distorted. Results The purpose of the questionnaire was to find out the attitudes of people in Australia towards abortion.Questions were divided into 3 main categories warrant reasons for abortion, legalization of abortion and viewpoints and value towards abortion. For the justified reasons for abortion, a total of 8 choices were given to participants and they could choose more than one answers, including 1. psychological reasons e. g. resisting abrupt change of life 2. economic reasons e. g. fiscal burden of raising children 3. unwanted babies e. g. pregnant in mistake 4. caused by rapes 5. unready for obligation 6. as problems with relationship or wants to avoid single parentage 7. mother has health problems 8. has already all the children she wanted or all children are grown From the questionnaire, participants thought that the most justified reasons for abortion were economic reasons and pregnancies caused by rapes, both of them make 62. 5% of the total. The next would be unready for responsibility (35%), unwanted babies (32. 5%), mother has health problems (30%), problem for relationship or wants to avoid single parenthood (22. 5%), psychological reasons (12. %) and the least justified reason would be has already children she wanted or all children are grown (10%). For another category, legalization of abortion, there was an open-ended question intercommunicate the participants about one pros and cons of abortion. For the pros, there were several main ideas. First, people thought that after legalization of abortion, risks could be reduced as people no longer find doctors with no license to abort. Secondly, it would a respect to freedom of choice of people. Thirdly, there would be fewer children grown up in an unstable environment.For the cons, people also got similar ideas, for instance, abortion was against the respect of life, i. e. kill innocent life. Also, people could be more irresponsible as they could abort legally. For the last category, viewpoints and values towards abortion, 6 questions were raised. Majorities believed that abortion was adequate common nowadays (25% power amply agree, 50% agree). For the question about whether the peoples views towards abortion was changing, bigger part of them agree with the statement (20%strongly agree, 40% agree) procure quite a number of people maintained neutral (32. %). For the question it is inhuman and should be banned, the 2 sides were almost balanced (5% strongly agree, 32. 5% agree versus 7. 5%strongly disagree and 37. 5% disagree), about 17. 5% people chose to be neutral. In the question of freedom of choice, it was quite one-sided that it should be highly respected (40% for both strongly agree or agree, adding up to 80%). Asking about if it was acceptable in all cases, disagreement (20% strongly disagree, 42. 5% disagree) was more than agreement (32. 5% agree).Though, quite a lot of people thought that they would hav e different views upon abortion in different cases (35% strongly agree, 32. 5% agree). For the last open-ended question about the relationship between age, culture and views towards abortion, the main ideas of the participants were that elder people, i. e. age group of 45 or above, would be more buttoned-down and therefore have a negative view upon abortion. Moreover, they thought that people with different culture, particularly westerners in the Chineses eyes, would be more open and accept the idea of abortion.Discussion and conclusion The aim of the report was to reveal the current views of people in Australia towards abortion, under the circumstances of different age and cultural background (international students versus local Australians). From the results, we could see that many participants did not have a really strong stance of living abortion or not, only a few do. For instance, about 70% of the participants agree that they would have different views upon abortion in diff erent cases.The most justified cases would be pregnancies by rapes and economic reasons (It was logical that according to Thomson Reuters (2009), an income group of US$39,100 $65,800 would need a total of $170,460 a year to raise up a children form 0 to 17 year old). Yet, there were generous data to test the hypothesis. There were data supporting the hypothesis. From the results, participants who did not fully support abortion were mainly female or Chinese, whom thought that abortion was inhuman and should be banned. The number made up 32. 5% of the total participants.The reason behind was that female themselves would have real experiences in bad birth so they would have deeper thoughts than male. For Chinese participants, they were young but at the same time they were also deeply influenced by a tralatitious style of education. The curriculum focused on teaching people to have right values stated by the Confucius and other great figures. fit to Vivien (2006), the vice presiden t for education at the Asia Society, china should move away from the traditional forms of practices and adopt a broader curriculum to achieve the goal of becoming a real modern society.Despite there were data supporting the hypothesis, it was in a small proportion. We could find more data that was reverse gear to it. It also proved that people at older ages might not be conservative. Participants, mostly Australians (mostly aged 45 or above), were rather pro-choice. It was because of the panache of abortion. It was becoming more and more common. According to a table drawn by Wm Robert Johnson (2008), the abortion percentage rose from 15. 6% in 1984 to 21. 5% in 2006 in Australia. It might also be because of the cultural background. analyse to country like China, westernized countries emphasized more on freedom of people. From the results, there were 32. 5% of the total participants who thought abortion was acceptable at all cases. Most importantly, over 80% of them agreed that pe ople should respect the mothers decision. The data was supported by a report by Monash University (2002). It included a survey on AES voters and candidates (about 2000 people are surveyed a year) about their attitudes towards abortion, from 1987 to 2001.The percentage of people choosing the criteria Woman should be able to keep an abortion readily when they want one rose from 38% to 59% from 1987 to 2001. On the other hand, the percentage of people choosing the criteria abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances dropped from 6% to 3% in that period. Another evidence was that when participants were asked about whether abortion should be legalized, 65% of them thought that it should be legalized. From the above, we could understand the current views of people in Australia towards abortion, at different ages and cultural background.Though people did not have a strong stance of supporting abortion or not, we could find more evidence presentation that people were actually more Pro-Choice than Pro-Life, in other words they would be more supportive to abortion, especially in recent years where abortion was more commonly found. Recommendations Concerning the implications of the report findings, it was quite obvious that more people in Australia were actually supportive to abortion, based on their Pro-Choice attitude and the agreement of legalizing abortion.The scale and the target groups of the report were small that might distort the real opinion throughout the country. However, based on the report findings, extended researches could be done in examining whether abortion was generally acceptable or not and the possibility to further legalize abortion, as participants of the questionnaire could already clearly state some pros and cons of legalizing abortion. The research should cover a larger target group as Australia was rather multi-cultural.People in different culture could have their views in according to the religion, which was also important in th is issue and not discussed in this report. To conclude, though the report did not represent most age and cultural groups in Australia, it could be the basis of further research in testing whether legalizing abortion was possible. References Blade 2001, Should abortion be legalized in Queensland, Australia? , Available at http//www. bladesplace. id. au/abortion-law-queensland. html C. Natasha 1998, Abortion law in Australia, Law and Bills Digest GroupFamily Health International 2005, soft Research Methods A Data Collectors Field involve, p. 1-2 People and Place 2004, Monash University, vol 12, no. 4 , p. 25 S. Vivien, E. Owens 2006, Education abroad The China Syndrome, Edutopia magazine Thomson Reuters 2009, The cost of raising children, available at http//moneycentral. msn. com/articles/family/kids/tlkidscost. asp viper Wm. Robert Johnson 2008, Historical abortion statistics available at http//www. johnstonsarchive. net/policy/abortion/australia/ab-aust-qld. html