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Should Abortion Be Determined By The State Or Mother

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Homework #2: History and overview of the Policy Issue

Should Abortion be determined by the State or Mother?

Abortion has been one of the most controversial topics in America. Abortion is defined as the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed in the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy. Abortion is when the pregnancy is ended to prevent child birth. The pregnancy is taken out of the uterus of the women by medical abortion which involves taking medicines to cause a miscarriage or by surgery, where the pregnancy is out of the uterus. The policy issue at hand is whether the decision to terminate the pregnancy be given to the mother or the State, also known as Pro-Choice or Pro-life movements. …show more content…

The law gave all minors the opportunity to appear before a court for consent to have an abortion without parental consent and discretion (Bellotti 1979). The 1990 Hodgson v. Minnesota case challenged the state statute that requires minors to
Contain consent or notify both biological parents before having an abortion. The law had no exceptions for un-married, divorced, or unknown parents. This law gave minors the option of obtaining judicial consent for abortion, when they were not able to obtain it from parents
(Hodgson 1990). Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey of 1992 challenged restriction on abortion in Pennsylvania. The court kept constitutional protection for the right to choose, but adopted the undue burden test for evaluating restrictive abortion laws. Under this test, the state laws can make it through the constitutional review without putting substantial obstacles in the path of a women seeking an abortion (Casey 1992). The 2006 Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England case challenged the law that required doctors to notify a parent at least 48 hours before performing an abortion on a minor, and that contained no exception for abortions performed in a medical emergency. The
Supreme Court issues its opinion in the case, in which they affirmed that

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