“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born” - - Ronald Reagan Abortion, just saying the word will cause heads to turn, ears to perk, and elevates tension for everyone present. The topic evokes such strong reactions it should be included in the taboo list normally reserved for politics, religion, and money. As emotionally charged as the subject of abortion is, the practice itself is actually relatively new. Less than two centuries ago abortion wasn’t a large issue. This was not because society didn’t have strong opinions on the matter, but because of where we were in the industrial revolution. 150 years ago most of the jobs in America required large amounts of manual labor compared to today. Families had to be large in order to operate the family farm. Families also had many children because many did not live past the age of ten. Life expectancy of adults was also much shorter than todays. As technology advanced along with medicine, the role women had to play changed. As people moved to cities and jobs required much more education, the role and necessity of children changed. Instead of being an income source (helping on the farm or working in early factories) children became more of a financial responsibility. Families also didn’t need to have children out of necessity. Couples have children today because they want someone to love or to carry on their family name. In time as women began having fewer children and life expectancy doubled, the amount of time spent as a full time mom has decreased significantly.(Friedman, 2009) The advance in medicine, after the decision of Roe vs. Wade, allowed for women to have a choice once they became...
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Mattes, B. (2014, February 26). "Life News." Retrieved March 01, 2014, from Planned Parenthood Told Them Their Abortion Was Risk-Free, Now They Can't Have Children: www.lifenew.com/2014/02/26.planned-parenthood-told-them-their-abortion-was-risk-free-now-they-cant-have-children/
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Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristen Luker, analyzes the historical and complex sociology of abortion. Luker focuses on three important factors: a historical overview of abortion, the pro-life and pro-choice views, and the direction the abortion debates are going (11, Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood p. 000). Abortion has always been seen as murder and with the idea that those who are already living have more rights. Back in the days, the laws didn’t give fetus personhood. Also, the laws against abortions weren’t strictly enforced upon anyone. In addition, abortion didn’t seem to be a huge problem, which explains why abortion was ignored in the past.
The debate of abortion continues to be a controversial problem in society and has been around for many decades. According to Jone Lewis, “In the United States, abortion laws began to appear in the 1820’s, forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy” (1). This indicates that the abortion controversy has been debated far back into American history. Beginning in the 1900’s, legalized abortion became a major controversy. In 1965, all fifty states in the United States banned abortion; however, that was only the beginning of the controversy that still rages today (Lewis 1). After abortion was officially banned in the United States, groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League worked hard on a plan to once again legalize abortion in the United States (Lewis 1). It wasn’t until 1970 when the case of Roe (for abortion) v. Wade (against abortion) was brought...
Until the mid 1800s, abortion was unrestricted and unregulated in the United States. The justifications for criminalizing it varied from state to state. One big reason was population control, which addressed fears that the population would be dominated by the children of newly ...
"Abortion." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
In America abortion is one of the most heavily debated topics in recent years. Pro-life or pro-choice? Many people believe it is immoral and even consider abortion to be murder. The definition of abortion states “The termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to being capable of normal growth” Did you know that 1 in 3 women in the U.S. will have an abortion in their lifetime? (Baker, Aspen. "A Better Way to Talk about Abortion." Aspen Baker:. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2016.) When first researching this topic I wondered, “What’s the big deal? Why would it matter if someone who was never even born, died?” And I realized that babies that would have been born due to abortion,
For over two hundred years, abortion has been apart of the United States culture. During the 1700’s, Americans viewed abortion merely as a means of ridding women of pregnancies that resulted from illicit relationships. Birthrates in the U.S. were extremely high at the end of the eighteenth century, so consequently the Americans wanted to lower birth rates. This social trend is best cited as “induced abortions became such a popular method of fertility control that it becomes a kind of epidemic” (qtd in Omran). Abortion went from a marginal practice of the desperate few to being a significant factor in the effort of American women to regulate their own fertility. In the 1830’s the use of new contraceptive techniques became available, but for a short while, the abortion rate increases with the new introduction to contraceptives. This is due to the idea that people thought that they could have more sex, which they did, but most of the general public did not master the use of contraceptives, so many “mistakes” occurred. Even when contraceptives were used correctly, the quality of contraceptive devices was not very good. After contraception devices became more mainstream, the abortion rate lowered(Sachdev 150-151).
Throughout the past fifty years, and even longer than that, abortion has been an important topic for women. United States’ citizens are torn on the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” debate, the laws in the United States have changed throughout the years, political parties are split on the abortion legalization debate, and methods of abortion have changed throughout the world. The debate on legalizing abortion, or making it illegal, will probably not end anytime soon.
Abortion has been an issue since 1820. In the beginning the problem was more about protecting doctors who have licenses. “Regular doctors thus had an incentive to ban abortion as part of an effort to drive irregular doctors many of whom were women out of business” (Straggenborg, p.211). The AMA (American Medical Association), which was the group that the regular doctors made, started a campaign that made the people believe that the white population was getting smaller and the population of the immigrants was rising. Abortions were made illegal to insure the stability of the population of American citizens. It seems odd that the only reason that abortions were made illegal at one point was because of money issues and a lust for white supremecy. It seemed to have nothing to do with the rights of a child or a woman. One of the reasons why abortion came into question in the beginning of the 1950s was due to the fact that a lot of doctors and lawyers were seeing many cases of illegal abortions and it was becoming a large social problem. Since there was a lack of competition for legal abortions, doctors found no problem making them legal again -- “They felt that abortions were justified under certain circumstances, and they begun to see the laws against abortion as an infringement on their own medical discretion” (Straggenborg, p.212). And so the issue arose again with many pro- choice groups speaking up. Then with court cases like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, abortion again became legal in the United States.
Many who seek abortions are financially insecure. In a survey conducted by the journal Perspectives on Se...
With so many women choosing to have abortions, it would be expected that it would not be so greatly frowned up, yet society is still having problems with its acceptance. Every woman has the fundamental right to decide for herself, free from government interference, whether or not to have an abortion. Today, more than ever, American families do not want the government to trample on their right to privacy by mandating how they must decide on the most intimate, personal matters. That is why, even though Americans may differ on what circumstances for terminating a crisis pregnancy are consistent with their own personal moral views, on the fundamental question of who should make this personal decision, the majority of Americans agree that each woman must have the right to make this private choice for herself. Anti-choice proposals to ban abortions for “sex-selection” or “birth-control” are smokescreens designed to shift the focus of the debate away from this issue and trivialize the seriousness with which millions of women make this highly personal decision. Any government restriction on the reasons for which women may obtain legal abortions violates the core of this right and could force all women to publicly justify their reasons for seeking abortion.
Being a mother is a lifelong job that requires copious time, energy, and money. There are myriad different reasons in which a woman would consider getting an abortion. The decision is often tragic and painful for the mother. It is one of the biggest choices a woman will make. Many people have strong beliefs about abortion, and if a mother makes a decision that they do not agree with they sometimes turn against the mother, and enkindle egregious feelings about their decision for the rest of their life. Indeed a woman may not get an abortion for selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as her own health or a decent standard of living for the other members of the family. Additional intentions for having abortion include rape, financial difficulties, obligation by family members, or danger to the baby’s health (Roleff
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)
Population control comes in many forms: cancer, famine, A.I.D.S, genocide, war and natural disasters, but never has one been so celebrated and socially accepted before abortion. Abortion has been practiced for hundreds of years and medical technology has advanced accordingly; providing a safer and much more sanitary procedure for the women receiving the operation, but the result remains the same for the defenseless child. Abortion continues to be one of the most debated and country dividing topics this nation has seen. In the recent past, there has been steady movement towards the governmental restrictions of abortion. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was one of the greatest victories in congress related to this topic. The ban restricts a certain form of abortion (partial-birth abortion) past 24 weeks from conception (United States Congress). Even though this is a positive step in the right and moral direction, the act needs to be revised. It needs to have the allotted time reduced from 24 weeks to 20 weeks based upon new medical research that fetuses can “feel pain” prior to 24 weeks. Abortion will never become completely illegal (that is just harsh reality), but the restrictions that govern abortions can be fine tuned to incorporate a smaller and more humane window for abortions.
"Abortion." Current Issues: Macmillan Social Science Library. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
There are many issues in America today such as violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy that is on a rise. There is also abortion which is what I chose to write about today due to the fact that it has been such a controversial and important issue of my generation although it has been an ongoing issue for centuries going back to 2600 B.C when the first recipe for an abortion producing drug. Since the 19th century English common law forbade abortion. Abortion prior to quickening (feeling life) was a misdemeanor and a felony after that. In the early 1800s it was discovered that human life did not begin when she “felt life” but at fertilization. In 1869 the British Parliament passed the “Offenses Against the Persons Act” Eliminating the bifid punishment and dropping the felony punishment back to fertilization, so across the middle years of the 19th century each state passed their own laws against abortion. In 1967 the first two states to legalize abortion was Colorado and California and by June 1970 New York passed the first abortion on demand law with a 24 week limit it became the 16th state to allow abortion while the other states were still very restrictive and only allowing abortions for pregnancies due to rape, incest, life of the mother or severe fetal handicap.