Abortion : A Long And Dangerous History

Even after abortions became illegal, women continued to have them. Practitioners did their work behind closed doors or in private homes. Women often resorted to desperate and deadly measures just to have an abortion. Women had been able to get abortions by leaving the country or paying a physician in the U.S. a large fee for the procedure. While others weren 't so lucky. They often sought out back-alley procedures or took matters in their own hands. The methods

In the news article “Abortion: Every Woman’s Rights” Sharon Smith wrote an article about women’s rights to get abortions prior to the hearing of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey court case, “which threatened to severely restrict women access to abortion” (Smith). Women wanted reproductive control over their lives and felt that they were not equal to men no matter what advances they got at work and how high their level of education was. The women’s right movement wanted women to have the choice of abortion for all women, the rich and the poor. In the US, thirty- seven states did not provide

Abortion has been a complex social issue in the United States ever since restrictive abortion laws began to appear in the 1820s. By 1965, abortions had been outlawed in the U.S., although they continued illegally; about one million abortions per year were estimated to have occurred in the 1960s. (Krannich 366) Ultimately, in the 1973 Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, it was ruled that women had the right to privacy and could make an individual choice on whether or not to have an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. (Yishai 213)

In every society whether it was legal or legal, abortions were used to control fertility. In the United States it was practiced legally until about 1880, by then most states had banned it except to save a woman's life. It was widely practiced through the entire period it was illegal. In the 1890’s there were an estimate of two million abortions per year and, one to two million annually during the 1920’s-30’s. Whether a

Nineteenth century America was one of orthodox views and traditional customs, abortion being among them. Abortion was seen as abnormal and taboo: it was not talked about, seen primarily as a religious and medical issue. As Callahan writes in Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality, only “God has the right to take the life of the innocent; hence the direct killing of the innocent, without the authority of God, is always wrong” (310); however, Luker in The

The battle for reproductive rights began well over a hundred years ago. At a time when families were producing more children than they could afford to feed, many women were seeking primitive forms of birth control and undergoing abortions. It was in the 1860s that a postal inspector turned politician named Anthony Comstock, in partnership with the Young Men’s Christian Association, set out on a crusade to condemn all forms of birth control and any kind of abortion by claiming they violated “anti-obscenity laws” (Baer). These men eventually succeeded and created the Comstock Laws in 1873 that prohibited all “sales, advertising, or information on birth control” (Baer).

Abortions were widely used in the early eighteen hundreds and kept secret due public scrutineer. Not only were they considered against the law in some places but were risky due to high risk of infection from unsterile equipment used to perform the actions.” Without today’s current technology, maternal and infant mortality rates during childbirth were extraordinarily high. “(National abortion Federation, 2016) as time contained states changed and modified their laws to accommodate political agendas, these opposed to legal abortion had begun to fight absent any stated funded abortion clines. Then there was Roe v. Wade this was the first major Supreme Court battle based on abortion laws and ethics. Roe v. Wade decision of the courts said that they “considered the constitutionality of a Texas statute made it a crime to obtain an abortion except when it was necessary to save the life of the mother”. (Harris, 2014) There was another Supreme Court case that changed the views of the courts based on how they judge the frame work of decision on the trimester model. The ethics involved in this are not just solely left to the mother of the potential life but in the network of people

Historically, abortion was not regulated in the United States until the 20th century. Prior to the 1900s, abortion occurred regularly and was performed by midwives, along with other reproductive health care procedures (Ehrenreich & English, 2010). The rise of the medical industry and a growing immigrant population led to more interest amongst doctors in restricting abortion (Davis, 1983; Solinger, 2015). The American Medical Association began to lobby for the criminalization of abortion and the medicalization of birth, claiming to be interested in protecting women from the harsh chemicals used to induce abortion (Solinger, 2015). Solinger (2015) writes:

Abortion was legalized in the United States of America on January 22, 1973 with the help of Roe v. Wade, giving women the freedom of choice and with the help of privacy to seek the termination of an unwanted pregnancy. Before this life changing court case, abortion was illegal in the United States of America. It was during the 1850s, that the heads of the American Medical Association (AMA) that made abortions illegal in the first place to assert their authority as the head doctors of the United States (Reagan 2012).

Abortion has had quite difficult times, back in the day, miscarriages caused death due to not knowing that one was experiencing the loss of their fetus, let alone, know that one was pregnant. Back in the day they did not have the “fancy” technology we have today. Today, we have things such as birth control, IUDS, and condoms, these are contraceptives to keep from having unplanned pregnancies that would lead to the increase of more abortions.

Real awareness surrounding birth control came about when abortion was no longer viewed as acceptable. By examining women’s diaries and correspondence, it was discovered that abortion was relatively widespread and not socially frowned upon up until, the beginning of the 19th century. Even Protestants and Catholics thought abortion should be allowed until “’quickening’- the moment the fetus was believed to gain life” (London 3). However, by the mid 19th century many states began creating laws rendering abortion

Abortion is a controversial issue in many countries all the time and there are always two sides of abortion. Pro-life supporters believe that abortion is immoral, so they argue that it should be illegal because an unborn baby is life. However, they do not figure out that woman who is on the inevitable situation such as infection, rape, or extreme poverty would still have the abortion even though the abortion is illegal. Many women die due to unsafe abortion, which is illegal and performed by uneducated people. Therefore, the abortion should be legal to protect the life of ‘alive women’ because women’s life is equal to human’s right. I would like to provide more affirmative bases to support abortion in this paper.

In 19th century England, abortion became extremely illegal. Women were being punished with the death penalty if found guilty of committing abortion.

Abortion is arguably the most controversial topic in all the issues revolving around reproduction. Women of all different races, classes, and religions have been practicing abortion since before the colonial era in America. The laws pertaining to abortion have changed many times, adding and removing discrepancies and stipulations throughout many years, and still to this day. The views of abortion in society during different time periods have also changed and adapted. At the time of Sarah Grosvenor’s decision to abort, the laws pertaining to abortion did not make the act fully illegal. However in years after Grosvenor’s case abortion was outlawed. The law played a minor part in women’s decisions to

The United States did not begin to prohibit abortion until the nineteenth century. Except abortions that were “necessary to save the life of the woman”, most abortions were illegal in the U.S. by 1880. One reason for making abortion crime was because most procedures done had high mortality rates. Risks against women for performing these procedures, however, cannot explain the large push against abortion. The stated “protection” of women against the harms of these dangers were intended to restrict and control them back to their traditional roles of child-bearing. “Antiabortion legislation was part of an antifeminist backlash to the growing movements for suffrage, voluntary motherhood, and other women’s rights in the nineteenth century.” (New York: Penguin Books, 1990) Male doctors saw midwives as a threat to their own social power because the