Rip the Baby Out of the Womb!?

Abortion is a topic that everyone has an opinion on nowadays, they’re either pro-life or pro-choice. Munson talks about the history of abortion throughout the United States starting in the nineteenth century leading to today. Munson also talks about how prior to Roe v. Wade abortion was rarely talked about and not really seen as a moral issue. After Roe v. Wade there was a spark in pro-life activism. Fischer talks about how although public opinion has shifted on “premarital sex, living together out of marriage, and even homosexuality, and on religion, Americans accepted more individual choice” on these, but they have not changed their positions on abortion. It remains a topic in which public opinion has not shifted in the past three decades.

The history of abortion in the United States is important to understand with this upcoming election and where each candidate stands on the issue. There was a dramatic shift from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century in which “abortion went from being largely unregulated to being completely banned by law” (Munson, p. 78). Physicians wanted to make abortion more of an issue to be able to compete with others who were seen on the same field of expertise as them without any medical training. By 1939 there were therapeutic abortion committees who made the decisions of whether a woman could have an abortion or not. Unfortunately, “far fewer abortions were therefore authorized when the committees took over” (p. 80). The ability to get an abortion if one needed it was strictly regulated and unfortunately “one result was an increase in the number of abortions being performed in unsafe conditions by unqualified providers, often with fatal consequences” (p. 80). The consequence of regulating and only allowing abortion under strict circumstances spiked an increase in the amount of illegal and unsafe abortions because women felt they had no other choice. In 1973, the Supreme Court made the decision in Roe v. Wade that abortion regulations were unconstitutional. This was a huge success for women everywhere, although many do not agree with this statement there is an unfortunate but absolute reality that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned we would be going back to unsafe abortions.

Last night’s debate hit this topic asking both the candidates about their stance on abortion. Trump plans to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that are pro-life and believes that if they overturn Roe v. Wade then the decision will go back to the states. Clinton stands with Roe v. Wade because it supports the constitutional right to a woman to make the decision about her healthcare. We have many cases (such as Texas in 2011 defunding Planned Parenthood) in which states are already taking small initiatives to defund Planned Parenthood. Trump wants to go back to when women did not have the right to choose and Clinton would like to continue allowing women to choose what happens with their own bodies. The American people are still split on the topic of abortion today and those who view this topic as important to them clearly have a side to fall on to meet their expectations.