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1. Abortion should be illegal.
2.The police department should not be defunded.
3.The U.S should not ban assault weapons.

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The debate over the continued use of the Electoral College resurfaced during the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump lost the general election to Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes and won the Electoral College by 74 votes. The official general election results indicate that Trump received 304 Electoral College votes and 46.09% of the popular vote (62,984,825 votes), and Hillary Clinton received 227 Electoral College votes and 48.18% of the popular vote (65,853,516 votes).

Prior to the 2016 election, there were four times in US history when a candidate won the presidency despite losing the popular vote: 1824 ( John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson), 1876 ( Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden), 1888 ( Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland), and 2000 ( George W. Bush over Al Gore).

The Electoral College was established in 1788 by Article II of the US Constitution, which also established the executive branch of the US government, and was revised by the Twelfth Amendment (ratified June 15, 1804), the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 1868), and the Twenty-Third Amendment (ratified Mar. 29, 1961). Because the procedure for electing the president is part of the Constitution, a Constitutional Amendment (which requires two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress plus approval by 38 states) would be required to abolish the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a compromise between electing the president via a vote in Congress only or via a popular vote only. The Electoral College comprises 538 electors; each state is allowed one elector for each Representative and Senator (DC is allowed 3 electors as established by the Twenty-Third Amendment).

In each state, a group of electors is chosen by each political party. On election day, voters choosing a presidential candidate are actually casting a vote for an elector. Most states use the "winner-take-all" method, in which all electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the popular vote in that state. In Nebraska and Maine, the candidate that wins the state's overall popular vote receives two electors, and one elector from each congressional district is apportioned to the popular vote winner in that district. For a candidate to win the presidency, he or she must win at least 270 Electoral College votes.

At least 700 amendments have been proposed to modify or abolish the Electoral College.

On Monday Dec. 19, 2016, the electors in each state met to vote for President and Vice President of the United States. Of the 538 Electoral College votes available, Donald J. Trump received 304 votes, Hillary Clinton received 227 votes, and seven votes went to others: three for Colin Powell, one for Faith Spotted Eagle, one for John Kasich, one for Ron Paul, and one for Bernie Sanders). On Dec. 22, 2016, the results were certified in all 50 states. On Jan. 6, 2017, a joint session of the US Congress met to certify the election results and Vice President Joe Biden, presiding as President of the Senate, read the certified vote tally.

A Sep. 2020 Gallup poll found 61% of Americans were in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, up 12 points from 2016.

For the 2020 election, electors voted on Dec. 14, and delivered the results on Dec. 23. On Jan. 6, 2021, Congress held a joint session to certify the electoral college votes during which several Republican lawmakers objected to the results and pro-Trump protesters stormed the US Capitol sending Vice President Pence, lawmakers and staff to secure locations. The votes were certified in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2021 by Vice President Pence, declaring Joe Biden the 46th US President. President Joe Biden was inaugurated with Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 20, 2021.

Should the United States Use the Electoral College in Presidential Elections?

Pro 1

The Electoral College ensures that that all parts of the country are involved in selecting the President of the United States.

If the election depended solely on the popular vote, then candidates could limit campaigning to heavily-populated areas or specific regions. To win the election, presidential candidates need electoral votes from multiple regions and therefore they build campaign platforms with a national focus, meaning that the winner will actually be serving the needs of the entire country.

Without the electoral college, groups such as Iowa farmers and Ohio factory workers would be ignored in favor of pandering to metropolitan areas with higher population densities, leaving rural areas and small towns marginalized.

Tina Mulally, South Dakota Representative, stated that the Electoral College protects small state and minority interests and that a national popular vote would be ""like two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner." Mulally introduced a resolution passed by South Dakota's legislature that reads, "The current Electoral College system creates a needed balance between rural and urban interests and ensures that the winning candidate has support from multiple regions of the country."
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Pro 2

The Electoral College was created to protect the voices of the minority from being overwhelmed by the will of the majority.

The Founding Fathers wanted to balance the will of the populace against the risk of "tyranny of the majority," in which the voices of the masses can drown out minority interests.

Using electors instead of the popular vote was intended to safeguard the presidential election against uninformed or uneducated voters by putting the final decision in the hands of electors who were most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision in a time when news was not widely disseminated.

The Electoral College was also intended to prevent states with larger populations from having undue influence, and to compromise between electing the president by popular vote and letting Congress choose the president.

According to Alexander Hamilton, the Electoral College is if "not perfect, it is at least excellent," because it ensured "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."

Democratic Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak vetoed a measure in 2019 that would add the state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would have obligated the state's electors to vote for the popular vote winner. Governor Sisolak stated, the compact "could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada's electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose."

Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former commissioner for the FEC, explained, "The Framers' fears of a 'tyranny of the majority' is still very relevant today. One can see its importance in the fact that despite Hillary Clinton's national popular vote total, she won only about a sixth of the counties nationwide, with her support limited mostly to urban areas on both coasts."
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Pro 3

The Electoral College can preclude calls for recounts or demands for run-off elections, giving certainty to presidential elections.

If the election were based on popular vote, it would be possible for a candidate to receive the highest number of popular votes without actually obtaining a majority.

This happened with President Nixon in 1968 and President Clinton in 1992, when both men won the most electoral votes while receiving just 43% of the popular vote. The existence of the Electoral College precluded calls for recounts or demands for run-off elections.

Richard A. Posner, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, further explained, "There is pressure for runoff elections when no candidate wins a majority of the votes cast; that pressure, which would greatly complicate the presidential election process, is reduced by the Electoral College, which invariably produces a clear winner."

The electoral process can also create a larger mandate to give the president more credibility; for example, President Obama received 51.3% of the popular vote in 2012 but 61.7% of the electoral votes.

In 227 years, the winner of the popular vote has lost the electoral vote only five times. This proves the system is working.
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Con 1

The Electoral College gives too much power to swing states and allows the presidential election to be decided by a handful of states.

The two main political parties can count on winning the electoral votes in certain states, such as California for the Democratic Party and Indiana for the Republican Party, without worrying about the actual popular vote totals. Because of the Electoral College, presidential candidates only need to pay attention to a limited number of states that can swing one way or the other.

A Nov. 6, 2016 episode of PBS NewsHour revealed that "Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made more than 90% of their campaign stops in just 11 so-called battleground states. Of those visits, nearly two-thirds took place in the four battlegrounds with the most electoral votes - Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina."

Gautam Mukunda, political scientist at Harvard University , explained that states are given electors based on its representation in the House and Senate, so small states get extra votes. Mukunda stated, "The fact that in presidential elections people in Wyoming have [nearly four] times the power of people in California is antithetical at the most basic level to what we say we stand for as a democracy."
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Con 2

The Electoral College is rooted in slavery and racism.

The "minority" interests the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to protect were those of slaveowners and states with legal slavery. James Madison stated, "There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections."

As Wilfred Wilfred Codrington III, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School and a fellow at the Brennan Center, explained, "Behind Madison's statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president... With about 93 percent of the country's slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South's congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise [counting only 3/5 of the enslaved population instead of the population as a whole] as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College."

The racism at the root of the Electoral College persists, suppressing the votes of people of color in favor of voters from largely homogenously white states.
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Con 3

Democracy should function on the will of the people, allowing one vote per adult.

There are over an estimated 332 million people in the United States, with population estimates predicting almost 342 million by 2024, the next presidential election. But just 538 people decide who will be president; that's about 0.000156% of the population deciding the president. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than one million votes, yet still lost the election on electoral votes.

Robert Nemanich, math teacher and former elector from Colorado Springs, stated, "Do we really want 538 Bob Nemanichs electing our president? ...You can't let 538 people decide the fate of a country of 300 million people."

Even President Donald Trump, who benefitted from the Electoral College system, stated after the 2016 election that he believes presidents should be chosen by popular vote: "I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win." Just as in 2000 when George W. Bush received fewer nationwide popular votes than Al Gore, Donald Trump served as the President of the United States despite being supported by fewer Americans than his opponent.

Jesse Wegman, author of Let the People Pick the President, stated, "If anything, representative democracy in the 21st century is about political equality. It's about one person, one vote - everybody's vote counting equally. You're not going to convince a majority of Americans that that's not how you should do it."

John Koza, Chairman of National Popular Vote, warned, "At this point I think changing the system to something better is going to determine whether there's a dictator in this country."
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Discussion Questions
1. Should the Electoral College be abolished? Why or why not?

2. Should the Electoral College be modified? How and why? Or why not?

3. What other voting reforms would you make? Rank choice voting? Voter ID laws? Make a list and offer support for each reform. If you would not change the voting process, make a list of reforms and why you would not choose to enact them.
Take Action
1. Listen to a Constitution Center podcast exploring the pros and cons of the Electoral College.

2. Explore the Electoral College via the US National Archives.

3. Consider the American Bar Association's fact check on whether the Electoral College can be abolished.

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

26.

John Wagner, et al., "Pence Declares Biden Winner of the Presidential Election after Congress Finally Counts Electoral Votes," washingtonpost.com, Jan. 7, 2021

33.

Mara Liasson, "A Growing Number of Critics Raise Alarms about the Electoral College," npr.org, June 10, 2021

More Election Debate Topics
Should People Who Have Completed Felony Sentences Be Allowed to Vote? - The pros and cons of the felon voting debate include arguments about the social contract, voting while in prison, and paying debts.

Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16?- Proponents say teens are knowledgeable enough to vote. Opponents say kids aren't mature enough to vote.

Should Election Day Be Made a National Holiday? - Proponents say an election day holiday will increase voter turnout. Opponents say would disadvantage low-income and blue collar workers.

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Electoral College Pros and Cons - Top 3 Arguments For and Against

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Proponents say the Electoral College ensures everyone selects the president. Opponents say it allows only a few states to select the president.

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All 50 US states have set their minimum drinking age to 21 although exceptions do exist on a state-by-state basis for consumption at home, under adult supervision, for medical necessity, and other reasons.

Proponents of lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed underage binge drinking into private and less controlled environments, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens.

Opponents of lowering the MLDA argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, and thus are more likely to harm or even kill themselves and others by drinking prior to 21. They contend that traffic fatalities decreased when the MLDA increased. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

18 is the age of legal majority (adulthood) in the United States.

Americans enjoy a range of new rights, responsibilities, and freedoms when they turn 18 and become an adult in the eyes of the law.

18-year-olds may vote in local, state, and federal elections; may serve on juries; and may be charged as an adult if accused of a crime. 18-year-olds are responsible for any legally binding contracts they enter; are liable for negligence; and may be sued.

18-year-olds must register with the Selective Service if male and may be drafted into service at times of war. However, 17-year-olds may enter US military service.

18-year-olds may get married without parental consent; buy a house; and enjoy new privacy rights including the shielding of medical, academic, and financial information from parents.

However, drinking alcohol remains regulated under a legal age of license. An 18-year-old may legally be responsible children and legally allowed to make life decisions with years of impact, but may not legally drink a beer.

Todd Rutherford, South Carolina State Representative and Democrat House Minority Leader, who filed a bill on Nov. 10, 2021 to lower South Carolina's MLDA to 18, stated: "This is a personal freedom issue. If you are old enough to fight for our country, if you're old enough to vote, if you're old enough to sign on thousands of dollars of students loans for a college education, then you are old enough to have a[n alcoholic] drink."
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Pro 3

MLDA creates a mindset of non-compliance with the law among young adults.

Lowering MLDA from 21 to 18 would diminish the thrill of breaking the law to get a drink. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something to be done responsibly and in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college and the workforce.

High non-compliance with MLDA 21 promotes general disrespect and non-compliance with other areas of US law. MLDA 21 encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents to procure alcohol. It would be better to have fewer fake IDs in circulation and more respect for the law.

Further, MLDA 21 enforcement is not a priority for many law enforcement agencies. Police are inclined to ignore or under-enforce MLDA 21 because of resource limitations, statutory obstacles, perceptions that punishments are inadequate, and the time and effort required for processing and paperwork. An estimated two of every 1,000 occasions of illegal drinking by youth under 21 results in an arrest.

Combine a lack of consequences with the thrill of breaking the law, and MLDA 21 actually encourages underage drinking and potentially other illegal activities, such as driving while intoxicated and illicit drug use. Lowering the MLDA would make 18- to 20-year-olds subject to the same laws enforced for those 21 and over.
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1. Underage drinking is allowed in some US states if done on private premises with parental consent, for religious purposes, or for educational purposes.

2. Between 1970 and 1976, 30 states lowered their Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19, or 20.

3. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds.

4. After the repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933, Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976) set their state drinking age at 21 for men and 18 for women. The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered in the US? 13 Pros and Cons

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Proponents of a lower drinking age say 18 is the US age of adulthood. Opponents say lowering the age would be medically irresponsible. Research both sides.

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Since 1977, one year after the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty, more than 1,480 people have been executed, primarily by means of lethal injection. Most death penalty cases involve the execution of murderers although capital punishment can also be applied for treason, espionage, and other crimes.

Proponents of the death penalty say it is an important tool for preserving law and order, deters crime, and costs less than life imprisonment. They argue that retribution or "an eye for an eye" honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

Opponents of capital punishment say it has no deterrent effect on crime, wrongly gives governments the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices by disproportionately targeting people of color (racist) and people who cannot afford good attorneys (classist). They say lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive punishment than death.

PROS & CONS BY CATEGORY

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Death Penalty - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org

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The pros and cons of the death penalty debate include aguments for and against life imprisonment, crime deterrence, and methods like hanging.

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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.
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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."
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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.
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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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1.Abortion should be illegal because its murder
2. The US shouldn't be able to ban assault weapons
3. The death penalty should not be allowed in america.

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1. Abortion should be illegal
2. The police should not be defunded
3.The us shoundn't ban assault weapons

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1. abortion should be legal
2. LGBTQ individuals should be treated like everyone else equal
3. there should be more restrictions on gun use and the buying of them

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1 abortion should be legal after 22 weeks
2 the police department should not be defunded
3 the us should not ban assault weapons

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1. Abortion should be illegal after 22 weeks
2.The U.S should not ban assault weapons
3.The police department should not be defunded

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1.  abortion should be legal, because it is a woman´s choice
2. Drinking over 21, because 18 years old are mostly still kids I feel like 21 an over are not kids
3.

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1:The U.S shouldn't ban assault weapons

2: Death penalty shouldn't be allowed in America
3: Schools should reopen during Covid 19

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1. The U.s should not have the death penalty.
2. The  police department should not be defunded.
3.  The US should not Ban Assault Weapons

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1.immigrants who entered illegally should be allowed citizenship.
2.college should be tuition-free.
3.  Abortion should not be illegal

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1. The police department should not be defunded
2.  The us should use the death penalty
3. School should be a gun free zone

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1: They should ban assault weapons
2: The U.S. should raise the minimum wage
3: The police should not be defunded, but the rest of the money should be used for something else.

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2. the us should not ban assault weapons
5. the us should not use the death penalty
57. Americans should be able to import prescription drugs

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1. 1. LGBTQ+ should have protection for being fired for being apart of LGBTQ+

2. 2. Transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S Military

3. 3. Transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S Military

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1. LGBTQ+ should have protection for being fired for being apart of LGBTQ+
2.  Adoption agentcys should not be alowed to turn down LGBTQ+ clients.
3. Transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S Military

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1.The US should not Ban Assault Weapons
2.The Police Departments should not be Defended
3.The US should make it easier for illegal immigrants to become US citizens

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1. Adoption Agencies should not be able to refuse LGBTQ+ couples
2. Schools should not be gun-free zones
3. Abortion should be legal in some cases

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1. Family and Medical Leave for All Americans
2. LGBTQ+ citizens should have discrimination protection from being fired for being LGBTQ+
3. The US should rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement 