Abortion Is Not A Black And White Issue

Although abortion is a political topic that seems very recent, in the United States it dates back to before the early 1820s. Connecticut is the first state to have passed any laws regulating abortion. In 1821, they pass a law prohibiting the use of any sorts of a toxic substance that causes a miscarriage after quickening (the moment a pregnant woman first feels fetal movement) (Wilson, Jaque). Many other states followed Connecticut’s lead (Wilson, Jaque). Besides trying to humanely discard of fetuses, states began banning abortion for population control reasons as well. “In the mid-to-late 1800s states began passing laws that made abortion illegal. The motivations for anti-abortion laws varied from state to state. One of the reasons included fears that the population would be dominated by the children of newly arriving immigrants, whose birth rates were higher than those of ‘native’ Anglo-Saxon

Abortions became increasingly more common throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, even though, by 1900, abortion was prohibited by law throughout the U.S. unless two or more doctors agreed that an abortion was necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman (Sauer).

Nineteenth century America was one of orthodox views and traditional customs, abortion being among them. Abortion was seen as abnormal and taboo: it was not talked about, seen primarily as a religious and medical issue. As Callahan writes in Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality, only “God has the right to take the life of the innocent; hence the direct killing of the innocent, without the authority of God, is always wrong” (310); however, Luker in The

These laws were in fact against poison used in the home, or “poison control”. In the 1840’s the abortion business was booming, including the sale of illegal drugs that were prohibited by the poison statutes that were mentioned earlier. The sales of illegal drugs and of abortions were advertised openly in the media. To give you an example of how big the business was, the most popular abortionist was Madame Restell; she would openly provide abortion to any women who wanted one. She had offices that she operated out of in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. She also had traveling sales people that promoted her famous female monthly pill. Oddly enough in a historical twist the one group that was petitioning for abortion to be outlawed was the American medical association, this was an association of physicians. The very group that is now performing a majority of abortions that go on today. The American medical association’s crusade against abortion was not entirely selfless. The reason the association decided to crusade against abortion was because they saw the white American birth rate declining and saw the immigrates birth rate moving up. In that day the economic status and ethnic heritage of the women receiving the abortions were very different from today, the average women who was receiving an abortion were upper class to middle class Caucasian women who were considered Americans. Horatio R. Storer, anti-abortion leader of the cause asked in 1868. “ This is a

In the beginning of the 1900s, dozens of states in the U.S. began creating laws to limit abortions, or make them completely illegal unless it was necessary to save the mother. This led to women having illegal abortions, which were often dangerous because of the unsanitary conditions they were performed in ("Background Summary"). Some states did relax their abortion laws when the sexual revolution began, making it easy for women from neighboring states to cross the border to have abortions. Unfortunately, poor women often did not have enough money to

Historically, abortion was not regulated in the United States until the 20th century. Prior to the 1900s, abortion occurred regularly and was performed by midwives, along with other reproductive health care procedures (Ehrenreich & English, 2010). The rise of the medical industry and a growing immigrant population led to more interest amongst doctors in restricting abortion (Davis, 1983; Solinger, 2015). The American Medical Association began to lobby for the criminalization of abortion and the medicalization of birth, claiming to be interested in protecting women from the harsh chemicals used to induce abortion (Solinger, 2015). Solinger (2015) writes:

Abortion has been legal and commonly practiced from the time of the earliest settlers. By federal law, abortion is legal, although many states have their own individual regulations and restrictions. Various states began passing laws to make abortion illegal in the mid-to-late- 1800s for fear that they would become overpopulated with children of newly arriving immigrants (national abortion federation ).Even though abortions can hold many risks today, they were especially dangerous in the 1800s where hospitals and antiseptics were not common (national abortion federation). Hospitals were not as common back then and doctors had basic training. Doctors wanted to criminalize abortion so that untrained physicians etc. could not steal their patients.

Over the years, technology has changed the way medical procedure performs and has made abortion a safer option for women in all social and economic groups. During the 1880s, there were many surgical procedures that were found dangerous and risky for patients. Health professions and other people who were committed to providing abortion to women were not equipped with safe and sanitary surgical tools. They lacked skill, knowledge, and proper concern in abortion, which resulted in a significant number of deaths and severe health consequences for women. Groups such as the American Medical Association

In the period around 1960 the number of women procuring abortions had reduced as compared to the period around 1930. The great depression of the economy had forced women to take up birth control as people tightened their belts to survive the harsh economic times. Due to this any unwanted pregnancy had high chances of being terminated. As much as abortions were many they were considered relatively safe during this period even after taking into account that several medical breakthroughs like the discovery of penicillin had not taken place as of yet (Reagan 1997). In 1939 majority of medical students in institutions in the U.S admitted that if abortion were to be legalized they would willingly perform it. A large number of them set up clinics as Leslie expresses in her book ‘When Abortion Was a Crime’ which were equipped with qualified doctors and other medical staff like trained nurses as well as midwives. These clinics operated in contradiction with the present laws of the time.

Dating all the way back to the 1800’s, abortions have been taking place all over the world. In the US abortion laws were created around 1820 stating that women would not have abortions after already being pregnant for four months. Then by 1900 most abortions were outlawed. It wasn’t until 1956 that all fifty states had

Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo, resulting in or caused by its death. In the beginning

Abortion has always been a controversial topic in the United States for decades. Abortion is like taking the life of someone without their permission so it is technically “murder”. There is no such thing as an unwanted child, millions of families in the United States are always willing to adopt. On the other hand, there are circumstances where a woman can barely care and sustain herself so chances are that she will not be able to take care of her child. Or when a rape occurs, having an abortion is not as bad as when a woman has sex without protection and knows she has the chance to get pregnant.

Women have been having elective abortions, using different methods, all over the world, for thousands of years. In the United States, from the time the first settlers arrived abortion was legal during the first trimester or what was then called the quickening. The quickening was

Abortions have been an issue in this country for many years. Some people agree That abortion should be illegal while others disagree and say that abortions should be legal. The three branches of government have been called upon to address the issue.

When a women becomes pregnant, they start to form a fetus in the womb of the women. There are times when the mother of the fetus does not want the child. So in order to be rid of the fetus they would go to the doctor to perform a surgery to be rid of the baby. The surgery is called abortion, abortion is the ending of a pregnancy, performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion began over several centuries ago, there is history of women helping each other to abort their child. Until the late 1800s, women that specialized in medical procurers in Western Europe and the U.S. help provide abortions and trained other women how to conduct the surgery, without legal prohibitions. Several years later abortion became a crime for several reasons. Around the mid-19th century broadened liberal support for criminalization, because at that time abortion was too dangerous of a procedure to be done with crude methods, few antiseptics. Many women died of the loss of blood or pain. Around the same time, male doctors began learning and started to were tightening their skills and control over the medical profession. Doctors considered midwives, who attended births and performed abortions as part of their regular practice, and valued them very highly. Years later, the government began to make abortion illegal. Saying that the only reason to have an abortion was because of rape or incest. That law later changed. But every state, there are different restrictions. In the