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The Struggle For Improving Reproductive Rights

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Her Body, Her Rights Throughout American history, women have faced many challenges to earn equal rights in almost all aspects of life. Although changes have been made, today there are still battle to be won. One of these issues is the struggle for improving reproductive rights. Women are often judged for their maternal decisions, whether that is in choosing surrogacy, abortion, and even those who choose different forms of contraception. Over the years, Planned Parenthood and other health services have recieved a negative connotation for what services they provide, especially on the basis of providing abortion services. With our new president in office, women are concerned that their reproductive rights, such as the right to have an …show more content…

This makes for a major divide in what should be done in the case of women having an abortion. In Paula Abram’s The Bad Mother: Stigma, Abortions, and Surrogacy, she talks about how stigma is placed on both surrogacy and abortion because conservatives view them both as unnatural ways of maternity. What people on this side of the argument fail to understand is that women seek a surrogate when they are physically incapable of carrying a child, but want to start a family. Stigma is tied heavily into surrogacy, because not only are women seeking this service, but gay and trans people seek to start families, and use surrogacy to do so. Stigma is also placed here because others believe that surrogacy disrupts the traditional expectations regarding pregnancy. But because of recent laws that allowed gay couples the right to marry, this opened up the opportunity for gay and trans couples to start families. This is not to say that gay and trans couples weren’t already starting families through surrogacy and adoption, but the right to marry allows them the opportunity to make for a more traditional process of marriage and family. Surrogacy has allowed married couples, unmarried couples, and even singles to raise children and families, which may seem untraditional to some, but a way of life for others. On the spectrum of abortion, most conservatives view abortion as the murder of an unborn child. Most conservatives will

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