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Abortion Final Paper : Abortion

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Abortion Final Paper
Robert Stockfleth
Arizona State University Abortion Final Paper
The issue of abortion has been a highly polarizing topic in recent decades, although abortion has been around for thousands of years. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2014) defines abortion as “a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of a fetus.” Today three highly debated points regarding abortion are: should it be legal, when does human life begin, and who should provide financial backing for the procedures?
According to a historical review by Williams, abortion was legal in the United States from the days of the early settlers until the nineteenth century. During the 1800s, several laws were passed prohibiting abortion, except in life-or-death situations for the mother. In the 1960s, several states started to relax their abortion policies, with a few entirely legalizing it again. This sparked several lawsuits that challenged abortion’s legality and there was little agreement among the lower courts (Williams, 2013).
Williams continued that in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the case Roe v. Wade that a woman had a right to reproductive privacy. This meant she (with the help of her doctor) was able to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy without intrusion from the government. The Roe v. Wade ruling was extremely controversial and several states actually resisted compliance until they were forced to do so (Williams, 2013). According

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