Second Trimester Abortion

In 2008, twelve women taking resident in the U.S. died due to legal abortions performed during the second or third trimesters of pregnancy. Abortion should be available to all females living in the United States, but must be a legal citizen to have late abortions, which are during the second or third trimesters of pregnancy. Abortion is a right that women have, and the Fourth Amendment “Search and Seizure” supports it. Fewer women will exercise abortion if it is kept legal in the U.S. Late abortions are dangerous, so only legal citizens of the U.S. may have second or third trimester abortions.

Abortion is never an easy decision, but women have been making the choice for thousands of years. It has become a large dilemma since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court passed a law making the procedure legal, and an even larger controversial issue. The controversy is divided into “Pro-Choice” and Pro-Life” views. Pro-Choice supporters believe that the woman should have to choice whether to abort or not. Pro-Life supporters believe that it should be illegal to abort and preformed. However, there are many ways for this procedure to be performed. Abortion still remains today a controversial issue, by who should determine if it is the right thing to terminate a pregnancy or not and by how the procedure should be preformed.

Before women had rights to decide whether they could keep their baby, some states didn’t allow abortion, therefore requiring women to give birth to their child. In today’s current issues, abortion is still a controversial subject with millions of people supporting it or not supporting it. Every woman has the right to make changes to her own physical body, and those rights should not be taken away, according to the constitution. In the very famous case in 1973, “Roe v. Wade”, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout the first trimester of pregnancy. In the article, “Roe’s Pro-Life Legacy”, it is explained how after this movement, the right to abortion, lives have changed and led to lower abortion rates (Sheilds 2013.)

“Texas’s new strict legislation is already forcing women to leave the state in order to receive medical services in neighboring states more sympathetic to their desires to obtain an abortion (Hagle).” This is causing many problems for expectant mothers, especially those who have preexisting genetic medical conditions. Many time a mother may have some type of illness that can be given to a fetus during pregnancy. Sometimes these issues are seen during a routine ultrasound and sometimes there are not noticed until the time of birth. This is causing woman who live in the state of Texas to have to cross state lines when they find out something is wrong with their baby and choose to terminate the pregnancy.

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 the United States, the late term abortion procedure, Dilation and Evacuation, inhumanely terminates the unborn human fetus and causes harmful side effects to the woman. The medical procedure has been legalized although the actions performed during the process raises ethical concerns for the way the physician executes the fetus.

In today’s society, there are many topics that cause a lot of uproar and controversy. Certain topics like politics, homosexuality, and climate change are just a few topics that are debated on a daily bases. One other topic that has been debated on for centuries is abortion. Abortion is the ending of pregnancy before birth; this results in the death of a fetus or an embryo. Abortion happens in different countries around the world, but it is commonly known in the United States. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world where abortion is legal in some states. Many people know about abortion and what it is, but what some people do not know is that there are several different types of it. Just a few types of abortion are early abortion, late-term abortion, and partial-birth abortion. There is early abortion, which is when the pregnancy is terminated before the fetus is available, and then there is late-term abortion, which is when an abortion is performed after the second trimester. The most crucial type of abortion, partial-birth abortion, is a form of late-term abortion that ends a pregnancy in which the fetus is removed intact and results in death. Although some people believe abortion is not the best decision to make and that it should be illegal, early abortion is a little better than late-term abortion. All in all, late-term abortion should be banned because it is similar to killing a fully developed child.

----An abortion is a medical procedure the effectively terminates a pregnancy by destroying the fetus in the mother’s womb. Abortion had been previously banned in 30 of the USA’s states, however, in the 1970s, a major dispute in the Supreme Court ended with retracting the decision to ban it. The new ruling essentially made abortion legal in all of the US states, however, major controversy has still clouded the topic. All of the US states have to accept abortion in the early stages of a mother’s pregnancy, despite their personal viewpoints, But they are allowed to forbade an abortion if the choice is made in the later points of the fetus’ growth. The fetus begins to take shape after the first trimester, no longer an unidentifiable group of cells. The major discussion is whether abortion should be banned or allowed, each side having exceptions to their

In the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade a pregnant women, Norma McCorvey (also known as “Jane Roe”) seeked to end her pregnancy. Through the fight of the court, it was declared that most state anti-abortion laws were unconstitutional. However, many rules were set into place. In the first trimester of pregnancy (0-12 weeks), states could not interfere with any abortion. During the second semester (13-28 weeks) states could allow a regulated abortion in ways that are related to mental health or even a proscribed abortion. Within the third trimester (29-40 weeks) a women can only get an abortion if it is to preserve the health or life of the mother. Alongside Roe v. Wade, in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v. Casey, the court ruled that a state could require a woman seeking an abortion to give informed consent and to wait 24 hours and in the case of a minor they need to obtain parental consent (Ayers). Throughout abortions long history of pro-choice and pro-life, modern society needs to be fully educated on the topic so they can see how terrible pro-choice is.

Late-term abortions, also called post-viability abortions or induced termination of pregnancy , are abortions that generally take place anyways anywhere between 22 weeks and the third trimester of pregnancy, although “later term” is not precisely defined. “Late-term” isn’t a technical term, just a catchall phrase to describe abortions that take place late in pregnancy. (Anwar Mehak)

Since Roe v Wade, there have been major advancements in the maternal-fetal world of medicine. Advanced technology and science have shown us that there is “life” to a fetus before the last trimester, leading to many regulations and laws to prohibit abortion for the life the fetus. Discussed in this paper are the policies, court cases, and executive decisions affecting legal abortion in the US and the ethical implications that debate them.

Texas continues to fight women’s rights groups for the life of the “unborn child” and has won on many levels. According to the Texas Abortion Laws, Texas includes mandatory ultrasound imaging and parental consent for minors, and women must make at least four visits to a doctor and receive an ultrasound. Women may only receive a third trimester abortion if it is necessary to prevent death or substantial risk of serious impairment to a women’s physical or mental health, or if fetus has severe and irreversible abnormality. Texas considers an illegal abortion if it destroys the vitality or life of child in birth or before (which otherwise would have been born alive); operating a facility without a license, failure to meet Board of Health standards, or failure to make reports to Department of Health; act preformed after pregnancy with intent to cause termination of pregnancy other than for purpose of birth of live fetus or removal

Of all the legal, ethical, and moral issues we Americans continuously fight for or against, abortion may very well be the issue that Americans are most passionate about. The abortion issue is in the forefront of political races. Most recently the “no taxpayer funding for abortion act”, has abortion advocates reeling. Even though abortion has been legal in every state in the United States since the monumental Supreme Court decision, “Roe v Wade”, on January 22, 1973; there are fewer physicians willing to perform abortions today than in 2008. (Kraft) At the heart of the ethical dilemma for many in the medical profession is the viability of the fetus. And just to make this whole dilemma more confusing, according to the United States

Partial-birth abortions in the third trimester, and the recent “day-after” or the RU-486 pill, now add a new attitude on the abortion issue. Partial-birth abortions and abortions in the third trimester are exceedingly controversial, because they involve the termination and/or expulsion of an actual fetus from the womb, whereas many early-prenatal abortions involve the expulsion of the embryo. In some countries, and for a while in America, partial-birth abortions meant that the baby was breached halfway through the womb, and then its neck was broken, which killed the baby instantly. Since then, the United States has banned it as a result of the many infuriated pro-life and even some pro-choice members who found it to be extremely inhumane. The RU-486 pill sends messages telling the brain that the woman that was inseminated, was already pregnant, and that the ovum that had been created, is removed because the body believes it is already impregnated. These operations raise many of the same problems as abortion itself.

When a procedure is done or medication is taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion.