Roe v. Wade: The Necessity of Legal Abortions

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In 1973 the Supreme Court was presented with Roe v. Wade. The ruling on this case caused an addition to be made to the the 14th Amendment, extending the right to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Abortions can currently be done legally, yet out of the 44 million abortions done each year, half are done unsafely. Regardless of this statistic, many religious beliefs oppose the idea and condemn an individual who decides to have one. However, while many people believe abortion is an act of murder, abortion should remain legal because a large percentage of the female population will always need this option available for reasons such as a lack of income, family support, or medical issues. Up until the early 1970s, it was illegal to have an abortion. Despite this law, women still took unsafe actions in order to cause a miscarriage or death to the fetus. According to a study published in 2009 by Iqbal Shah and Elisabeth Ahman, graduates with a PhD and MA, unsafe abortions cause 47,000 deaths and 5 million hospital admissions a year. OBOS Abortion Contributors reveals that some of the actions taken to self-abort a baby include “inserting knitted needles or coat hangers into the vagina or uterus, douching with dangerous …show more content…

While we live in a nation supposedly based off of freedom, often times the decisions we make result in backlash no matter what decision is made. The most common opposers to abortion are religious groups, who believe that an abortion is equivalent to murder. While we are granted the freedom to do what we want with our bodies, there are people who believe that this is true for everyone except pregnant women. Therefore, abortion should remain legal in order to provide women with an alternative option instead of forcing them to conceive a child that may negatively be affected by financial situations, medical needs, or

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