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Pro Life And Pro Choice Essay

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Abortion policy has been shifting throughout American history as American views have simultaneously transitioned from more conservative to more liberal. Doctors, specifically regular physicians, have surprisingly guided the discussion surrounding abortion in the most influential way. Their power, in particular, their medical expertise, has allowed them to take hold of the issue and push against abortion from a medical stance. As a result of the change in traditionalistic views, the power the doctors held for a long time was taken by women, and abortion simultaneously became not an issue of health, but one questioning morality as well as a woman’s right to choose: pro-life and pro-choice. In America, abortion policy has transitioned from an issue of health and morality to one of women’s rights over time due to the power shifting from doctors to women as a result of modernization and the change in how Americans saw religion; this shift in turn impacting how the abortion issue’s sides are defined and how the issue is argued. 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

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