User:JonRichfield/abortest

"Abortion" and related or derived words such as abort, abortive, or abortus, have various meanings according to context. In general they refer in one sense or another to prevention or failure of a particular thing coming to be, properly developing, or succeeding. Usage of such words in various more or less technical senses is long-established and continues. However, in the public mind, heated and persistent controversies about artificial termination of human pregnancy, its legality, preconditions, and merits, have associated the word abortion and its derivatives with induced human abortions rather than anything else.

Etymology, literal and figurative meanings

Abort has two Latin roots. A- or ab- means more or less "starting from" or more particularly, "away from". It might refer literally to the direction of movement (such as in abductor muscle, but it often used in senses such as the negative or negation of something. The second root is orior or oriri, generally referring to concepts such as "starting", "rising", "being born". As such it occurs in the etymology of many words such as "orient", "origin", and "exhort".

Accordingly the concept of "abortion", most broadly speaking, is the negation of the starting or development of some process or thing. It may be intransitive, as in "abortive buds", meaning buds that did not develop, in spite of the fact that there had been no action to prevent them. Alternatively the usage may be transitive, as in "he aborted the mission".

The use of the formation to refer to miscarriage was very early. In Latin abortio and abortus referred to miscarriage or untimely birth, and abortivum meant abortifacient.

The use of the concept in abuse and invective is ancient and has endured to modern times. In the works of Shakespeare it was used in referring to empty pride (King Henry VI), in cursing an enemy that he should have abortive (and accordingly monstrous) children and in personal insult (King Richard III).

Biological terminology and significance

A dormant axillary bud that will become abortive unless it is stimulated into growth. Opposite and above it is a shoot from a similar bud that did sprout.

Gymnosporia buxifolia thorns may be seen as abortive branches.

In biology there are several contexts in which mechanisms of abortive development are important. Some organs may be developed and sacrificed for functions atypical of that type of organ. Consider for example cataphylls in plants; specialised leaves are grown with little or no photosynthetic function — instead they abort into spines, bud scales, storage organs or cotyledons. Some plants produce so-called abortive stamens or staminodes that produce no pollen. This can be for various reasons, such as avoiding self pollination, or taking up the role of petals in plants without petals, such as Canna.

Again, some plants produce large numbers of seeds, most of which are abortive, such as Liquidambar styraciflua in which the woody capsules are mostly filled with abortive seeds resembling sawdust, possibly to frustrate seed eaters. In many other plants, though the ovary might contain many ovules, only one or a few develop into seeds within the ripe fruit, the rest aborting. The flower of Platypodium elegans for example contains four ovules, but usually only the most distal ovule develops into a seed. One explanation for such development could be that with multiple ovules there is a higher probability of at least one being fertilised, after which, if the plant's ecological strategy favours large seeds, it is a small price to sacrifice all but one of the fertilised ovules to produce just one that is as large as possible. Again, many plants produce buds that do not sprout at once, but remain dormant until conditions, such as the death of nearby shoots, favour their sprouting. If this never happens for a given bud, it eventually becomes abortive; in some cases whole branches become abortive in growing into thorns.

In zoology there are other examples of abortive functions for various reasons. Simple abortion or resorption of embryos or ova may happen in response to danger, stress, famine, and exposure to male stimuli of various types.

Certain Mymaridae that are particularly tiny, but have large eggs in relation to their size, can resorb their eggs if they fail to find a suitable opportunity for oviposition. Those eggs are by definition abortive, but they enable the insect to survive in the hope of another opportunity for oviposition. Trophic eggs are eggs that may or may not be fertile, but are laid by insects such as queen ants of certain species, to feed their first generation of worker larvae. Oophagy in some species of sharks goes further, in that advanced embryos may feed on eggs instead of only absorbing their own yolk sacs. In other (generally related) species, the first embryo or embryos eat smaller embryos as well, an activity called intrauterine cannibalism.

In other animals

Further information: Miscarriage § In other animals

Spontaneous abortion occurs in various animals. For example, in sheep, it may be caused by stress, such as when they are badly herded, crowded through doors, or chased by dogs. In various livestock, such as sheep and cattle, abortion may be caused by contagious disease, such as Brucellosis or Campylobacter. There is a Brucellosis vaccine and Campylobacter infections can be treated with antibiotics, but good hygiene and husbandry are the main weapons against such diseases.

In the context of animal husbandry abortion may be induced where necessary, for example when a mare has been mated improperly, or has been purchased by an owner who had not realized that the mare was pregnant, or if a mare is pregnant with twin foals.

Feticide can occur in horses and zebras as a result of male harassment of pregnant mares or forced copulation, although the frequency of such events in the wild has been questioned. Male gray langur monkeys may attack females following male takeover, causing miscarriage.

In the wild, various sources of stress or poisoning, famine, injury, disease, or too-early pregnancy can lead to abortion in a wide range of animals.

Abortion in humans

Abortion in humans may be spontaneous or induced. Commonly spontaneous abortion is called miscarriage, defined as the spontaneous end of a pregnancy such that the embryo or foetus cannot, or is not intended to, survive independently, either because it is too immature or because it is already dead or otherwise unviable (for instance anencephalic).

Induced abortion is defined as the intentional termination of pregnancy by removing or causing the expulsion of a foetus or embryo from the uterus, this being done before the foetus or embryo attains viability or otherwise cannot be expected to survive the procedure. In informal speech abortion most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy.

Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine. However, unsafe abortions result in about 70 thousand maternal deaths and 5 million disabilities per year globally. An estimated 44 million abortions are performed globally each year, with roughly half of those being performed unsafely. The incidence of abortion has stabilized in recent years, having previously spent decades declining as access to family planning education and contraceptive services increased. Forty percent of the world's women have access to induced abortions (within gestational limits).

Induced abortion has a long history. It has been achieved by various means, including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical trauma, and other traditional methods. Contemporary medicine utilizes medications and surgical procedures to induce abortion. The legality, prevalence, cultural and religious status of abortion vary widely in different countries. In many parts of the world there is heated and divisive public controversy over the ethical and legal issues of abortion.