Notes on Abortion

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

Abortions became increasingly more common throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, even though, by 1900, abortion was prohibited by law throughout the U.S. unless two or more doctors agreed that an abortion was necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman (Sauer).

Abortion has been around for thousands of years and was legal in the United States since the very beginning. First it became illegal throughout the 1880’s up until 1973. Although abortion was

Abortion has been around for ages. When it was banned in the US in the 1800s, it was justified by the eugenics movement and the US government as concern

These illegal abortions were unsafe, and could be fatal to most women, and put their lives at risk. Jane Roe was a twenty-one year old woman that was pregnant, who represented all of the women who wanted abortions but could not get one. Henry Wade was a Texas attorney General who had defended the state’s law. The Supreme Court ruled for Roe and stated that America’s right to privacy included: the right for a woman to choose whether or not to have her child; and the right for a woman and her doctor to make this decision without state involvement within the first trimester of the pregnancy. It made it possible for woman to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained medical practitioners. Consequently, there was a dramatic decrease in pregnancy related deaths.

Roe v. Wade set the stage for the US to talk about abortion and the rights that pregnant citizens have regarding their bodies. The Supreme Court declared that abortion was a fundamental right, much to many citizens, and organizations dismay. States were no longer allowed to prohibit abortion unless the pregnant person's health or life is in danger. This created a divide between Americans as people quickly found themselves on the side of pro-life or pro-choice.

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

Women may have an abortion for a variety of reasons, but in general they choose abortion because a pregnancy at that time is in some way wrong for them. “Abortion is the removal of a fetus from the uterus before it is mature enough to live on its own” (Kuechler 1996). When this happens spontaneously we call it a miscarriage. Induced abortion is brought about deliberately by a medical procedure that ends pregnancy. Legal abortion, carried out by trained medical practitioners, is one of the most common and safest surgical procedures. “About 1.5 million American women choose to have induced abortions each year. Less than 1% of all abortion patients experience a major complication associated with the procedure” (Kuechler 1996).

In the beginning of the 1900s, dozens of states in the U.S. began creating laws to limit abortions, or make them completely illegal unless it was necessary to save the mother. This led to women having illegal abortions, which were often dangerous because of the unsanitary conditions they were performed in ("Background Summary"). Some states did relax their abortion laws when the sexual revolution began, making it easy for women from neighboring states to cross the border to have abortions. Unfortunately, poor women often did not have enough money to

Angus McLaren, author of “Illegal Operations: Women, Doctors, and Abortion” demonstrates the life of an abortionist in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. McLaren explains a series of affairs in detail with many different abortionists. Since abortion was illegal at the time, many women consulted midwives, or took the procedure of abortion among themselves, this at times resulted in their death.

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:

Over the years, technology has changed the way medical procedure performs and has made abortion a safer option for women in all social and economic groups. During the 1880s, there were many surgical procedures that were found dangerous and risky for patients. Health professions and other people who were committed to providing abortion to women were not equipped with safe and sanitary surgical tools. They lacked skill, knowledge, and proper concern in abortion, which resulted in a significant number of deaths and severe health consequences for women. Groups such as the American Medical Association

Abortions were widely practiced before the 1800s by which most states had banned abortions unless it was to save a woman’s life. However, starting in the year of 1973 they started legalizing abortions which caused a lot of debate throughout the United States, whether abortions were constitutional or not. Since then, abortions are one of the many things that everyone has a different opinion on.

As early as 1550 B.C., Egyptians were performing abortions. Egyptians documented the techniques they used to perform abortions and by the Middle Ages, the concept of abortion had spread globally (PRB). Knowing the idea, of terminating a pregnancy, was being performed in 1550 B.C., the number of babies lost to this horrific death will never truly be known. Since 1969, the CDC started documenting the numbers of legal abortions obtained in the United States. Roe vs. Wade was the infamous court case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1973, that assisted abortion in becoming completely legal. The United National Library of Medicine published that since that day in 1973 abortion rates peaked but remained continuous through the

Dating all the way back to the 1800’s, abortions have been taking place all over the world. In the US abortion laws were created around 1820 stating that women would not have abortions after already being pregnant for four months. Then by 1900 most abortions were outlawed. It wasn’t until 1956 that all fifty states had