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Quotes on peoples opinion

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236 quotes have been tagged as abortion: Ronald Reagan: 'I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.', George Carlin: 'How come...

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More pro's and con's on abortion.

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How people think

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This provides the impact it made on the citizens and the women.

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Roe v. Wade and Beyond: Forty Years of Legal Abortion in the United States
Carole Joffe &squarf; Impact on Women and their Families Winter 2013

Impact on Providers
This January marked the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. In ways not anticipated by the coalition of physicians and feminist health activists who fought to legalize abortion in the years leading up to Roe, the abortion conflict remains the most divisive issue in American domestic politics. More than any other issue, the abortion war symbolizes the still contested concerns originally brought forward by second-wave feminists in the late 1960s-the changing relationship between the genders, the place of women in the public sphere, the legitimacy of sexual activity separated from procreation. What have been the benefits and costs of this landmark Supreme Court decision?

From a public health standpoint, legal abortion has unquestionably benefited women and their families. Thousands of American women who sought abortions used to die before Roe, and now such women don't. Though we will never know exact figures, estimates of the number of women who died annually from illegal abortion in the years before Roe range anywhere from one thousand to ten thousand. Many more women were injured, often losing their reproductive capacity. Immediately after Roe, death and injuries from abortion declined dramatically, and today, only a handful of women in the United States die each year from complications of legal abortion. American women are more than fourteen times more likely to die in childbirth than from a first trimester abortion. Though the anti-abortion movement has repeatedly claimed negative mental health effects of abortion, this charge has been decisively refuted by mental health experts who state that the best predictor of a woman's mental health after an abortion is her mental health before the procedure.

Moreover, the presence of legal abortion has meant that millions of American women have been able to have the families they wished for, whether that meant delaying having children until a time that they could be adequately taken care of or forgoing childbearing altogether. An under-recognized benefit of abortion is that it has enabled child spacing, which has positive health benefits for both women and children. Coinciding as it did with the re-emergence of the women's movement and the introduction of oral contraception (the "pill"), legal abortion was part of a package that helped facilitate the entrance of American women, in the 1970s and beyond, into various professions and occupations in unprecedented numbers. Given the profound racial and economic stratification that characterizes the United States, the presence of both effective contraception and legal abortion has helped some women far more than others-a point to which I will return.

The price paid for these improvements in women's (and their families') health and well-being has been considerable, and the abortion-providing community has paid most dearly. Eight members of this community (four physicians, two receptionists, a volunteer escort, and an off-duty police officer hired for clinic security) have been assassinated by anti-abortion terrorists. Thousands of other clinicians and clinic staff have been harassed and stalked, at their workplaces, homes, and places of worship. Protesters have shown up at the schools of providers' children.

Given the profound racial and economic stratification that characterizes the United States, the presence of both effective contraception and legal abortion has helped some women far more than others.

Even when not faced with direct threats of violence, abortion provision is subject to a host of regulations on a scale that appears nowhere else in American medicine-and indeed would not be tolerated anywhere else in medicine. Among the most serious of the hundreds of laws have been so-called TRAP laws-Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers-that can compel facilities to conform to the specifications of ambulatory surgery centers with regard to numerous physical features. These requirements are widely agreed to be irrelevant to abortion care and to have as their sole purpose the closing of clinics, which are often unable to afford such upgrades. A number of states have imposed bans on abortions after twenty weeks of gestation; only a small number of abortions are sought then, but such laws can be especially harrowing for parents in a situation where a woman is carrying a fetus that is expected to die a very painful death if the pregnancy is continued to term.

In twenty-three states, doctors or counselors are required by law to violate the most basic understanding of medical ethics by giving patients information that is blatantly untrue; for example, the alleged links between abortion and breast cancer, infertility, and suicide. At the same time, in Arizona, a law now in effect stipulates that a doctor cannot be sued for withholding information from a patient that might lead her to seek an abortion, such as evidence of a compromised fetus.

Beyond such a hostile regulatory climate, providers must contend with local environments that can make running a health care facility a logistical nightmare: for example, having to fly doctors in from out of town because no local physician will work there or being unable to secure necessary services because area businesses are threatened by boycotts by anti-abortionists. Before the late Dr. George Tiller of Kansas was slain in his church by an anti-abortion fanatic, his staff had to deal with the abrupt termination of businesses that had dealt with his clinic for years, including a local cab company, a pizza delivery service, a motel chain that had offered reduced rates to his out-of-town patients, and-most worrisome for daily clinic operations-a trash-hauling company.
Impact on American Political Culture
In the face of such hostility, one can ask, why does anyone keep doing this work? In simplest terms, the social movement opposing abortion has helped create a counter-movement of physicians (today, mainly women) who view their work as a "mission" and not just a medical subspecialty. Interviews I have conducted over many years with this community reveal how deeply meaningful many clinicians (and their office staff) find this work, the obvious drawbacks notwithstanding. Many have spoken of the satisfaction of being able to help a woman solve a crisis at a particularly vulnerable time in her life. As one physician said to me, "You ask how I can do this work? For me, the question is, how could I not?"

A rare bright spot in the beleaguered world of abortion provision is that the longstanding problem of a provider shortage has eased somewhat. This is due in large part to two privately funded programs, one that supports abortion training in ob/gyn residencies and the other that offers a postgraduate fellowship in family planning and abortion. These programs have helped increase the presence of abortion-providing physicians in leading medical school faculties across the country-a sharp contrast to the situation in the first years after Roe, when mainstream medicine, though supportive of legal abortion, was far more equivocal about the abortion provider, due to the legacy of the "back-alley butcher" of the pre- Roe era.

But if an overall shortage of providers is no longer such a serious problem, the issue of access to abortion is. Abortion services tend to be clustered on each coast, and in large metropolitan areas in between. Several Midwestern and Southern states are down to one clinic, and women living in rural areas often have to drive for hours to reach a facility. The lack of accessible and affordable second trimester care is particularly acute. One out of three American women lives in counties without abortion services. Researchers estimate that in the thirty-two states where Medicaid funds are banned for abortions, approximately one-fourth of Medicaid recipients who would have had abortions if subsidized, gave birth instead.

Beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980-for whom the recently mobilized anti-abortion movement had campaigned assiduously-the abortion issue has gradually reshaped American politics. Currently, abortion opponents make up the most significant element of the "base" of the Republican party, the attention paid to the Tea Party notwithstanding. The centrality of abortion activism to Republican electoral fortunes explains why a feature of Reagan's administration, and every Republican administration since then, has been to apply the "abortion litmus test" not only to Supreme Court and other judicial nominees, but to various other appointments, even when blatantly irrelevant or when the nominees were clearly unqualified. As examples, consider that during the presidency of George W. Bush, applicants for positions in the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq were queried as to their position on Roe, and the head of family planning programs under George H.W. Bush was quoted in the press as saying, "When it became possible for women to buy contraceptives...men lost their manhood."

The political strength of the anti-abortion movement has also led to the elevation of "junk science" at the highest levels. Official government websites during the G.W. Bush years posted false information on the alleged abortion-breast cancer link, and millions of federal dollars were directed to abstinence-only sex education programs and "crisis pregnancy centers" that promoted numerous falsehoods about the dangers of abortion.
Impact on Feminism
The abortion conflict has also introduced a disturbingly ugly element into political discourse. A current U.S. senator has called for the execution of abortion providers, and at least three states have introduced "justifiable homicide" laws-laws that are intended to cover killings committed in the defense of an "unborn child" but which have been interpreted by some law enforcement officials as legitimating the murder of providers. (None of these laws have passed to date.) After George Tiller's murder, abortion rights supporters in the U.S. Senate were unable to pass a resolution condemning this act.

The ever-growing strength of abortion opponents as an electoral force explains the otherwise puzzling fact of why, after the 2010 elections-an election ostensibly about the economy-there was an unprecedented amount of abortion-related legislation in both Congress and the states.

The Future of Legal Abortion: An Election Postscript
The ever-growing strength of abortion opponents as an electoral force explains the otherwise puzzling fact of why, after the 2010 elections-an election ostensibly about the economy-there was an unprecedented amount of abortion-related legislation in both Congress and the states. A record ninety-two laws restricting abortion in various ways were passed by state legislatures in 2011, more than four times the number passed in the previous year. What is notable about the most recent legislation, apart from its sheer volume, is the increased misogyny it reveals in comparison to earlier anti-abortion measures. For example, the Orwellian-named Protect Life Act, passed by 251 members of Congress (mainly Republicans but some Democrats as well), stipulates that hospitals may refuse to offer abortions even in life-threatening situations and are not even required to provide referrals in such cases. (This Act has not been taken up by the Senate.)

For the feminist movement as a whole, the need to defend Roe has inevitably meant a lessened focus on other items on the movement's agenda. We might therefore think of the last forty years as a period of opportunities lost. The millions of hours and dollars spent on legal defense, clinic defense, mobilizing of voters, lobbying of friendly politicians, and so on have meant resources that were not available for other priorities of the movement, such as affordable quality child care, job training and equal pay issues, a more robust defense of welfare rights, and so on.

Moreover, the presence of legal abortion has seemingly not done much to change the situation of the most vulnerable women in American society. Currently, low-income women of color are significantly overrepresented in the pool of abortion recipients. This in turn reflects, among other factors, this group's high rate of unplanned pregnancies and their difficulties in obtaining the most reliable (and more expensive) forms of birth control. Abortion, for those in this group able to afford it, has made often very difficult lives somewhat more manageable and helped them to better provide for the children they already have (61 percent of abortion recipients are already mothers) or hope to have at a later point. But the "severe poverty" rate (the number of households with income half of the official poverty threshold) has recently hit a record high in the United States-leading to the obvious conclusion that a far broader range of opportunities and services is needed to improve the status of these women and their families.

With the victory of Barack Obama in November 2012, abortion rights supporters breathed a collective sigh of relief, as the fate of Roe quite literally rested on the results of this election. Several Supreme Court vacancies are anticipated in the near future, and Obama will most certainly nominate those who can be expected to uphold this law (while his opponent made clear his intention, if elected, to do the opposite). As I write these words in the immediate aftermath of the election, it is clear that women's votes-the fabled "gender gap"-played a significant role in Obama's victory: the president won women voters by twelve percentage points, while Mitt Romney won men by eight, accounting for a twenty-point gender gap, the largest in history. With respect to reproductive issues, it is quite revealing to break down further Obama's support among women. The president failed to gain a majority of white women as a whole; his record-breaking gender gap resulted from the votes of a huge portion of minority women; younger women, and an overwhelming "marriage gap," as single women-a fourth of the electorate-gave 67 percent of their votes to the president. In short, Obama drew his strongest support among exactly those women most likely to need an abortion and publicly funded contraception.

Although it is difficult, at this point, to pinpoint the precise role that reproductive issues played in these women's support of Obama-the economy was obviously of enormous concern-one likely reason for this gender gap was Obama's artful presentation of his support of abortion and contraception as economic issues: in difficult times, women cannot take part in the paid economy or properly take care of the children they have if they cannot control their fertility.

But there is much reason to assume that abortion and contraception, in their own right, were significant factors in the election. Exit polling revealed stronger support for legal abortion than in many previous polls: 59 percent of the electorate as a whole said they wanted abortion to remain legal, while this position received even a higher number among Latinos (66 percent). The bizarre and offensive remarks about rape and abortion by congressional and senatorial candidates clearly cost Republicans several races, including two Senate seats they were expected to win. Furthermore, this election cycle saw far more prominent attacks on contraception by Republicans than in previous campaigns. Recall Mitt Romney's promise to " get rid of Planned Parenthood" and conservatives' hysteria about contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act. If Republican Party hostility to birth control indeed proves to have been a driving force for women voters, this will have to be understood as a classic case of miscalculation, if not hubris, by the Party. Although even supporters of abortion express some ambivalence about it-and current estimates are that about one in three American women will have an abortion by age forty-five- contraceptive use at some point is virtually universal among heterosexually active women.

Further post-election analysis may also reveal how effectively, in this age of cable television and the Internet, the Democrats' and their progressive allies' accusation of a Republican "war on women" took hold among women voters. In addition, women may have responded not only to the national attention given to the rape issue mentioned above but to the similarly high visibility of laws mandating transvaginal ultrasounds for abortion recipients who are then forced to listen to a description of their fetus's development; Rush Limbaugh's savage verbal attack on a law student as a "slut" because she advocated for contraceptive coverage; and, of course, the contrast Obama skillfully drew between his signing of the Lily Ledbetter Act on equal pay for women and his opponent's silence on that measure

Even with Obama's victory, abortion care in the United States will remain precarious for the foreseeable future. While a Democratic Senate and the re-elected president's veto will serve as a firewall against federal anti-abortion legislation, the most consequential abortion restrictions take place in the states. And until politicians find that it is no longer in their electoral interest to try to shut down abortion services, such efforts will continue. Despite Obama's victory, conservative Republican candidates did very well in state elections. Indeed, in Ohio-where Obama won such a significant victory-state legislators announced, the day after the election, their intention to pursue a particularly controversial "fetal heartbeat" bill, a measure, if implemented, that would ban nearly all abortions in the state. In short, election losses can energize, and anti-abortion forces, especially at the state level, are not going away.

Because of the commitment of the provider community and the tireless efforts of pro-choice lawyers, some women, in some places beyond the liberal coasts and a few large metropolitan areas elsewhere, are still able to obtain abortions. But the harsh regulatory climate is taking its toll. Even if abortion remains technically legal, the United States may well return to the situation of the pre- Roe era, when women of means managed to get safe abortion care and poor women often did not.

In order to prevent this, in the short run the abortion rights community will no doubt step up its efforts with abortion assistance funds that will not only pay for abortions but for travel money to reach a facility. In the long run, the only route to addressing this disparity between poor and non-poor women is for abortion to become normalized within mainstream reproductive health care in the United States-a goal, some forty years after Roe, that remains elusive.
Carole Joffe is a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, and her most recent book is Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients and the Rest of Us.

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Roe v. Wade and Beyond: Forty Years of Legal Abortion in the United States | Dissent Magazine

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This January marked the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. In ways not anticipated by the coalition of physicians and feminist health activists who fought to legalize abortion in the years ...

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This article is about women's right and the peoples opinion on abortion.

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It was the celebration that was particularly galling. On the 46 th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, signed into law a protocol that gives practically unrestricted access to abortion, permitting the killing of an unborn child up until the moment of delivery. In the wake of the ratification, the legislators and their supporters whooped, hollered, and cheered, a display depressingly similar to the jubilation that broke out in Ireland when a referendum legalizing abortion passed last year. Of course, all of the rhetoric about women's rights and reproductive health and empowerment was trotted out, but who can fail to see what was at stake? If an infant, lying peacefully in a bassinet in his parents' home, were brutally killed and dismembered, the entire country would rightfully be outraged and call for an investigation of the murder. But now the law of New York confirms that that same child, moments before his birth, resting peacefully in his mother's womb, can be, with utter impunity, pulled apart with forceps. And the police won't be summoned; rather, it appears, the killing should be a matter of celebration.

An ideology, taken in the negative sense, is a conceptual framework that blinds one to reality. The purpose of any ideational system, obviously, is to shed light, to bring us closer to the truth of things, but an ideology does the reverse, effectively obfuscating reality, distancing us from truth. All of the buzz terms I mentioned above are ideological markers, smokescreens. Or if I can borrow the terminology of Jordan Peterson, they are the chattering of demons, the distracting hubbub of the father of lies. I recall that during the presidential campaign of 2016, Hillary Clinton was asked several times whether the child in the womb, within minutes of birth, has constitutional rights, and this extremely intelligent, experienced, and canny politician said, over and over again, "That's what our law dictates." Therefore, by a sheer accident of location, the unborn baby can be butchered, and the same baby, moments later and in the arms of his mother, must be protected by full force of law. That many of our political leaders can't or won't see how utterly ludicrous this is can only be the result of ideological indoctrination.

As I watched film of Andrew Cuomo signing this repulsive bill into law, my mind drifted back to 1984 and an auditorium at the University of Notre Dame where Cuomo's father, Mario-also Governor of New York at the time-delivered a famous address. In his lengthy and intellectually substantive speech, Gov. Cuomo presented himself, convincingly, as a faithful Catholic, thoroughly convinced in conscience that abortion is morally outrageous. But he also made a fateful distinction that has been exploited by liberal Catholic politicians for the past thirty-five years. He explained that though he was personally opposed to abortion, he was not willing to pursue legal action to abolish it or even to limit it, since he was the representative of all the people, and not just of those who shared his Catholic convictions. Now this distinction is an illegitimate one, which is evident the moment we draw an analogy to other public matters of great moral import: "I'm personally opposed to slavery, but I'll take no action to outlaw it or limit its spread"; "I personally find Jim Crow laws repugnant, but I will pursue no legal strategy to undo them"; etc. But at the very least, Mario Cuomo could declare himself deeply conflicted, anguished, willing to support abortion law only as a regrettable political necessity in a pluralistic democracy.

But in a single generation, we have moved from reluctant toleration to unbridled celebration, from struggling Mario to exultant Andrew. And there is a simple reason for this. A privatized religion, one that never incarnates itself in gesture, behavior, and moral commitment, rapidly evanesces. Once-powerful convictions, never concretely expressed, devolve, practically overnight, into pious velleities-and finally disappear altogether. In Robert Bolt's magnificent play regarding St. Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons, we find a telling exchange between Cardinal Wolsey, a hard-bitten, largely amoral politico, and the saintly More. Wolsey laments, "You're a constant regret to me, Thomas. If you could just see facts flat on, without that horrible moral squint, with just a little common sense, you could have been a statesman." To which More responds, "Well...I believe when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties...they lead their country by a short route to chaos." Abandoning the convictions of one's conscience in the exercise of one's public duties is precisely equivalent to "I'm personally opposed but unwilling to take concrete action to instantiate my opposition."

And this abandonment-evident in Mario Cuomo's 1984 address-has indeed led by a short road to chaos, evident in Andrew Cuomo's joyful celebration of a law permitting the murder of children.

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New York, Abortion, and a Short Route to Chaos | Word on Fire

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It was the celebration that was particularly galling. On the 46th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, signed into law a protocol that gives practically unrestricted access to abortion, permitting the killing of an unborn child up until the moment of delivery.

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This article is acknowledging how abortion is taking away human life.

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Abortion and public health: Time for another look

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Four decades after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains highly contentious, pitting a woman’s right to choose against a fetal claim to life. Public health implications are staggering: the US annual total of more than one million induced abortions equals nearly…

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All the ways to get an abortion; steps in getting an abortion.

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Abortion | Medical Abortion | MedlinePlus

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An abortion is a medical procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus.

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This is an article of the questions girls should ask themselves before considering abortion.

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Should I Get An Abortion? | Information to Help You Decide

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Having an unplanned pregnancy is common, and many people decide to have an abortion. Good information & support can really help you make the best decision.

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This article represents the Pro's and on's on abortion
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The debate over whether abortion should be a legal option has long divided people around the world. Split into two groups, pro-choice and pro-life, the two sides frequently clash in protests.

Proponents of legal abortion believe abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives, while abortion bans endanger pregnant people not seeking abortions, and deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.

Opponents of legal abortion believe abortion is murder because life begins at conception, that abortion creates a culture in which life is disposable, and that increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives.

The death rate for legal abortions is 0.7 deaths for every 100,000 abortions. By contrast, there are one to two deaths per 100,000 plastic surgery procedures, three deaths for every 100,000 colonoscopies, and three to six deaths per 100,000 tonsillectomies. Childbirth has nine deaths per 100,000 deliveries.

Pregnancy-related maternal deaths could increase 20% in US states with abortion bans. Amanda Stevenson, Sociology Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, explained, "People with resources are more likely to make it out of state or find out about medication abortions. People who can't are more likely to have health issues, to live in poverty and have less access to resources." People of color are especially likely to be in the latter category and, thus, negatively impacted by abortion bans.

The predicted 20% maternal death rate does not include those who will die from "back alley" or illegal abortions because legal options were not available.

Globally 45% of abortions are unsafe, 97% of which take place in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions; however, it does affect whether the abortions that women and girls attain are safe and dignified. The proportion of unsafe abortions are significantly higher in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws than in countries with less restrictive laws."
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Pro 2

Abortion bans endanger healthcare for those not seeking abortions.

Medical treatment for nonviable pregnancies is often exactly the same as an abortion.

Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterine cavity. About one in 50 pregnancies are ectopic, and they are nonviable. Bleeding from ectopic pregnancies caused 10% of all pregnancy-related deaths, and ectopic pregnancies were the leading cause of maternal death in the first trimester.

One out of every ten pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The drugs used for medication abortions are the only treatment recommended for early miscarriages. For later or complicated miscarriages, the same surgical procedure used for abortions is recommended.

While some abortion bans include specific exceptions for nonviable pregnancies and miscarriages, other bans are too vague to be practicable. Healthcare providers may refuse to perform a procedure that could be interpreted as an "on-demand" abortion for fear of liability or prosecution.

Further, bans are a slippery slope to contraceptive and other healthcare restrictions. For example, some already wrongly view Plan B (the morning after pill) as an abortifacient and are thinking of including it in abortion bans.
Read More

Pro 3

Abortion bans deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated, "eliminating the rights of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.... In many cases, abortions are of teenage women, particularly low-income and often Black, who aren't in a position to be able to care for children, have unexpected pregnancies, and it deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the workforce."

After being denied an abortion, household poverty increased and lasted four or more years, resulting in an inability to cover basic expenses including food, housing and transportation. A denied abortion was associated with a lowered credit score, increased debt, and an increase in negative public records including evictions and bankruptcies. The households were also more reliant on government assistance. Transgender and nonbinary people denied abortions may face even worse outcomes.

And the consequences can be much more dire. "If a woman of childbearing age dies, it has enormous economic consequences.... It's someone who society has invested in and who has many productive economic years ahead of them," according to David Slusky, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas. Often, death also removes a wage-earner and caregiver from the household.

60% of women seeking abortions already had other children. Being denied an abortion worsened the well-being of their older children, including not meeting childhood development markers.

The Turnaway Study concluded, "Abortion does not harm women," and "Women who receive a wanted abortion are more financially stable, set more ambitious goals, raise children under more stable conditions, and are more likely to have a wanted child later."
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Con 1

Life begins at conception, making abortion murder.

Conception is the moment a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell, which begins the process of cell division that creates a human.

Tara Sander Lee, Senior Fellow and Director of Life Sciences at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, stated, "life begins from the moment of conception when the sperm fertilizes the egg, because there is the creation of a new, totally distinct, integrated organism or a human being, which is going to be biologically distinct from all other life forms on this planet." The first cell is biologically distinct because it has its own DNA that is different from either biological parent and all other humans.

Ending a life is murder legally and ethically, even a life that is only a few growing cells at the time of death.

Pope Francis explained, "Abortion is murder. Those who carry out abortions kill.... At the third week after conception, often even before the mother is aware (of being pregnant), all the organs are already (starting to develop). It is a human life. Period. And this human life has to be respected. It is very clear.... Scientifically, it is a human life."

That people may face difficulties without abortion as an option does not excuse or justify murder. A reader of The Atlantic, who gave only the initial K., clarified the moral dilemma: "I wish that I could be pro-choice because the awful circumstances so many women face-that I can't even imagine facing-seem so much more real to me than the rights of a fetus who doesn't even always look human. But abortion is the intentional killing of a human being and we look back with horror at anyone in history who decided a group of people did not actually count as people. We cannot solve the problem of injustice against women with more injustice. We need solutions that support women without killing fetuses."
Read More

Con 2

Legal abortion promotes a culture in which life is disposable.

Echoing a 2014 remark by Pope Francis that connected abortion to " throwaway culture," Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, stated, "abortion represents a failure to recognize the sanctity of human life and promotes a culture in which human life in its most vulnerable moment is perceived as disposable. Such a proposal targets poor women as needing an expedient solution to a complex problem."

Tobin previously declared legal abortion a "brutalization of the American heart" on par with the "dehumanization of the undocumented" immigrants.

Alveda King, former Georgia state representative and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., also connected abortion to other societal ills: "Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness. We create the deceptions that the other person is less important, less worthy, less human. We are all fully human. When we face this truth, there is no justification for treating those who look different than us as lesser beings. If we simply treat other people the way we'd like to be treated, racism, abortion, and other forms of inhumanity will be things of the past."

As King notes, some fetuses are treated as less than human. This ideology combined with legal abortion could create a slippery slope to designer babies, gender selection, termination of disabled but healthy fetuses, and other trait-selection-based abortions. The slippery slope can then extend to the mentally disabled and elderly in general.

"[A]bortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation," according to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "Technological advances have only heightened the eugenic potential for abortion, as abortion can now be used to eliminate children with unwanted characteristics, such as a particular sex or disability."
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Con 3

Increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary.

Experts largely contribute the decline in abortions in the United States and elsewhere to the improved safety and availability of LARC (long-acting reversible contraception) including IUDs and contraceptive implants that can last up to 10 years.

Access to health insurance to pay for contraceptives also contributed to a drop in abortions. With the passage of Obamacare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), more people were insured with access to free or low-cost contraceptives and reproductive care.

Linda Rosenstock, Public Health Professor of Health Policy and Management at UCLA, summarized the simplicity of the connection: "In the United States each year, about half of pregnancies are unintended and about 40% of those lead to abortion. Access to birth control leads to fewer abortions."

Further, teens are having sex later in life than their parents. 38.4% of American high schoolers reported they have had sex (down from 54% in 1991) and only 27.4% reported they were currently sexually active (37.5% in 1991).

Because teen birth control use has not increased significantly, experts attribute the decline in part to better sex education. A 2021 study found that students who received comprehensive sexual education initiated sex later than students who did not participate in sex ed. The later teens have sex, the less chance there is for them to become pregnant unintentionally, which leads to fewer abortions.
Read More

Did You Know?

1. Throughout much of Western history, abortion was not considered a criminal act as long as it was performed before "quickening" (the first detectable movement of the fetus, which can occur between 13-25 weeks of pregnancy).

2. In 1821, Connecticut became the first US state to criminalize abortion.

3. The death rate for legal abortions is 0.7 deaths for every 100,000 abortions. By contrast, there are one to two deaths per 100,000 plastic surgery procedures, three deaths for every 100,000 colonoscopies, and three to six deaths per 100,000 tonsillectomies. Childbirth has nine deaths per 100,000 deliveries.

4. Abortion rates in the United States have fallen at what the CDC called a "slow yet steady pace" since a peak in 1981. That year there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The rate fell to 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women in 2019.

5. 60% of women seeking abortions already had other children.

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Abortion - Top Arguments For and Against - ProCon.org

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The Pro Choice side says women should have control of their bodies. Pro Lifers say abortion is murder. Explore both sides of the debate.

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Peoples opinion

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The risks on abortion

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Why girls think its right