Should Abortion Remain Legal? Essay

When touching the subject of abortion, one must consider that there are two sides battling for control. That is right, abortion has literally turned into a war zone where even the unlikely of individuals do the unthinkable. Each side has their motives and methods for contradicting the other. For instance, there are cases and events that support both sides of this issue.

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 1973, Norma McCovery who is also known as Jane Roe brought a case to the Supreme Court. She and her defense team claimed that the 1859 Texas abortion law violated women’s constitutional right to have an abortion. Before reaching the Supreme Court, this case, which was a class-action suit, was argued in a Dallas Fifth Circuit Court on May 23, 1970. The judges in Dallas ruled that the Texas law violated Roe’s right to privacy which is found in both the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment, so this case was then sent to the U.S. Supreme Court (Brannen and Hanes, 2001).

The issue of abortion is one of the most controversial topics of our time, but recently the amount of public interest has grown exponentially. A number of bills regarding this policy issue such as Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 and Child Interstate Notification Act have both greatly influenced the public’s opinion of abortion. Although, the issue of abortion hasn’t always been like this; according to Timeline of Abortion Laws and Events, an article from the Chicago Tribune, “The earliest anti-abortion laws were intended to protect women from untrained abortionists.” (Timeline) Since the 1973 passing of the Supreme Court Case, Roe V Wade, women have been able to obtain the abortion procedure in all 50 states, 46 of which were

In Roe v. Wade, in 1973, the Supreme Court held a case that a pregnant woman has the full privacy right to have an abortion. The right to abortion is not guaranteed and must be stable against the State’s countervailing benefits in keeping the health of the woman and in protecting the life of the unborn child. The State’s belief in protecting the health of the woman becomes definite, therefore greatly enough to support state ruling of abortion under the strict scrutiny standard of judicial review; after the first trimester, which is the stage of pregnancy when abortion becomes dangerous to the mother carrying the child to term. The State’s concern in protecting the life of the unborn child becomes irresistible, after possibility, the stage of pregnancy when the unborn child is capable of independent life. Because neither interest is irresistible before the second trimester, the State may not regulate abortion in the first trimester either to reserve the woman’s health or to protect the life of the unborn child. After the first trimester the State may control the act of an abortion, but only for the purpose of protecting the woman’s health, not for the purpose of protecting the life of the unborn child. After viability, the State may regulate, and even forbid, abortion to protect the life of the unborn child, except when the act of abortion is needed to

Abortion is a controversial topic that has plagued the country for decades. Even after the 7-2 Supreme Court trial (Roe vs. Wade) made it legal for women to choose to get abortions. This decision was based off the right of privacy coupled with the agreement between the woman and the state. Due to this decision abortion rights vary from state to state, in fact, about 85% of United States counties do not provide abortion services. Even though, abortion is ten times safer than the actual process of giving birth and 68,000 women died from resorting to “back-alley abortions.” Knowing all this, there are still two main groups arguing

In the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, a young, unmarried, pregnant woman, given the alias “Jane Roe,” was denied the right to an abortion under Texas law. She argued that this was unconstitutional and violated her right to privacy. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe’s favor, there were stipulations put into place to protect human life.

The United States has been divided now over the issue of abortion for thirty-three years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. As of today, over 45 million legal abortions have been performed in the United States. Pro-choice advocates hold these 45 million abortions as being 45 million times women have exercised their right to choose to get pregnant and to choose to control their own bodies. To pro-life, or anti-abortion, advocates these 45 million abortions constitute 45 million murders, a genocide of human life in the United States propagated by the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The debate over abortion in the United States is thus a debate of two extremes. One side argues from the personal liberty of the mother. The

Since 1973, when Roe verses Wade was decided, there have been several restrictions made to a woman?s right to obtain an abortion. These restrictions have come from several different angles and from a conservative ideological background. The restrictions that have been made to Roe v. Wade have come from other Supreme Court cases that were argued after 1973 and from State and Federal Legislation; which, ultimately, must go through the process of Judicial Review. Before we look at what restrictions have been made, we will look at the history of Roe. Secondly, we will look at Webster verses Reproductive Health Services (1989) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey

In the United States, per year, twenty million unsafe abortions and sixty-eight thousand deaths from them occur, (Odyssey) while the average death risk for a safe abortion is less than .01 percent. An illegal and unsafe abortion should never result as the last resort, but it tends to because of a lack of access to safe ones. Morals, usually drawn from religious beliefs, tend to play a part in one’s opinion towards abortion. More than three fourths of Americans consider themselves as Christians. This means that more than three fourths of Americans believe that it is morally wrong to undergo an abortion and a person should not hold the right to take someone else’s life away. While a moral belief, based on religion, is something all people are free to have,

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

Abortion rights in the United States are, the abortion ethics debate has kept end of pregnancy in the courts and media since the landmark decision in Roe v Wade. The original ruling was fairly straightforward, legally checking a woman's right to a private medical decision when selecting a medical procedure (abortion) As the debate has raged and the medical matters have become more complex, rulings in the courts and in the legislatures have long beyond this simplistic question to restrictions on gestational age, capability determinations, spousal and parental consents, enforced waiting periods, required language in consents, application of worker skills, the right to use fetal tissue for research or medical treatments, the rights of providers

Abortion has always been a topic of controversy in America; however, it first became a legal issue in 1973 with the Roe V. Wade case. In January of 1973, Norma McCorvey, a pregnant woman living in Texas, was denied an abortion under Texas law. McCorvey claimed that the Texas law preventing her from receiving an abortion was a violation of her right to privacy and was therefore a violation of her constitutional rights. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court agreed with McCorvey and deemed the law unconstitutional. The court then established a system based on “trimesters,” or twelve-week periods, where states’ power over restricting abortions depended upon which trimester the pregnancy was in and how viable (able to survive outside of the womb) the fetus was (“How Did Abortion Become Legal?,” n.d.). It was from this case that every woman’s right to receive an abortion was first conceived.

Since Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, the laws on abortion have changed from the 1960’s. In the 1960’s, 41 states allowed abortion as long as the woman was in danger of her health or going to die (Silmon 1). After Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus was not a person until viability and therefore not protected by the constitution (Silmon 34). Therefore, a woman was given the right to choose whether or

Abortion has been around for nearly thousands of years, occurring through the primal settlement in America. During these early periods, abortion was common and performed regularly as any other procedure. This brought a bigger cause into America where “back-alley” abortions became prevalent and more dangerous than primitive medical procedures. Jane Roe’s case challenged Texan laws on this prohibition of abortion, where it was thought to be illegal to end a pregnancy unless it was to save a mother’s life. The Roe v. Wade case, declared in 1973, pronounced that it was unlawful to inhibit women from having an abortion by reason of disregarding a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, this created a political and societal disunion in America. This case is thought to be one of the most controversial arguments in the Supreme Court yet.