Abortion Debate - Yes & No Comparison

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Should women have legal access to abortion? Even forty years after the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of legal abortion on January 22, 1973 in the case of Roe v. Wade, the American public still remains split into two opposing teams. The pro-choice team, of which I personally consider myself a member, supports a woman’s right to choose on whether or not to abort her pregnancy. The pro-life team supports the notion that some, if not all, forms of abortion, under particular circumstances, should be outlawed. Many of the arguments made by the pro-life team take a moral, ethical, or religious standpoint in their persuasion of others. In order for us to gain a more objective look at the debate with real-world pros and cons, the moral, ethical, and/or religious arguments will not be covered. Abortion has been a topic of controversy in America for almost two hundred years. The earliest known instance of conflict occurred in 1821 when Connecticut outlawed the selling of poisons used to induce abortion in women (Abortion ProCon.org). In 1845, New York began the trend of slapping legal consequences for women who have abortions. By 1965, all 50 states had outlawed abortion (Abortion ProCon.org). Eight years later, the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade overturned state legislations on the grounds that denying anyone’s right to choose is certainly unconstitutional. One primary argument used by the pro-choice team in favor of abortion is that women have their fundamental right to choose, and the illegalization of abortion would be a direct threat to that right. As briefly mentioned above, the ruling of the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade clearly sided with pro-choice activists. Jane Roe, the pregnant woman wanting a legal and safe abortion, “…claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy,

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