should abortion not be legalized argumentative essay

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Pro and Con: Abortion

To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether abortion should be legal, go to ProCon.org .

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.

A June 2, 2022 Gallup poll , 55% of Americans identified as “pro-choice,” the highest percentage since 1995. 39% identified as “pro-life,” and 5% were neither or unsure. For the first time in the history of the poll question (since 2001), 52% of Americans believe abortion is morally acceptable. 38% believed the procedure to be morally wrong, and 10% answered that it depended on the situation or they were unsure.

Surgical abortion (aka suction curettage or vacuum curettage) is the most common type of abortion procedure. It involves using a suction device to remove the contents of a pregnant woman’s uterus. Surgical abortion performed later in pregnancy (after 12-16 weeks) is called D&E (dilation and evacuation). The second most common abortion procedure, a medical abortion (aka an “abortion pill”), involves taking medications, usually mifepristone and misoprostol (aka RU-486), within the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy to induce an abortion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 67% of abortions performed in 2014 were performed at or less than eight weeks’ gestation, and 91.5% were performed at or less than 13 weeks’ gestation. 77.3% were performed by surgical procedure, while 22.6% were medical abortions. An abortion can cost from $500 to over $1,000 depending on where it is performed and how long into the pregnancy it is.

• Abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives.
• Abortion bans endangers healthcare for those not seeking abortions.
• Abortion bans deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.
• Life begins at conception, making abortion murder.
• Legal abortion promotes a culture in which life is disposable.
• Increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary.

This article was published on June 24, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org , a nonpartisan issue-information source.

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Key facts about the abortion debate in America

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade – the decision that had guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years – has shifted the legal battle over abortion to the states, with some prohibiting the procedure and others moving to safeguard it.

As the nation’s post-Roe chapter begins, here are key facts about Americans’ views on abortion, based on two Pew Research Center polls: one conducted from June 25-July 4 , just after this year’s high court ruling, and one conducted in March , before an earlier leaked draft of the opinion became public.

This analysis primarily draws from two Pew Research Center surveys, one surveying 10,441 U.S. adults conducted March 7-13, 2022, and another surveying 6,174 U.S. adults conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. Here are the questions used for the March survey , along with responses, and the questions used for the survey from June and July , along with responses.

Everyone who took part in these surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. About six-in-ten adults (57%) disapprove of the court’s decision that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion and that abortion laws can be set by states, including 43% who strongly disapprove, according to the summer survey. About four-in-ten (41%) approve, including 25% who strongly approve.

About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (82%) disapprove of the court’s decision, including nearly two-thirds (66%) who strongly disapprove. Most Republicans and GOP leaners (70%) approve , including 48% who strongly approve.

Most women (62%) disapprove of the decision to end the federal right to an abortion. More than twice as many women strongly disapprove of the court’s decision (47%) as strongly approve of it (21%). Opinion among men is more divided: 52% disapprove (37% strongly), while 47% approve (28% strongly).

About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the summer survey – little changed since the March survey conducted just before the ruling. That includes 29% of Americans who say it should be legal in all cases and 33% who say it should be legal in most cases. About a third of U.S. adults (36%) say abortion should be illegal in all (8%) or most (28%) cases.

Generally, Americans’ views of whether abortion should be legal remained relatively unchanged in the past few years , though support fluctuated somewhat in previous decades.

Relatively few Americans take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion – either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances. The March survey found that support or opposition to abortion varies substantially depending on such circumstances as when an abortion takes place during a pregnancy, whether the pregnancy is life-threatening or whether a baby would have severe health problems.

While Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on the legality of abortion have long differed, the 46 percentage point partisan gap today is considerably larger than it was in the recent past, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling. The wider gap has been largely driven by Democrats: Today, 84% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 72% in 2016 and 63% in 2007. Republicans’ views have shown far less change over time: Currently, 38% of Republicans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, nearly identical to the 39% who said this in 2007.

However, the partisan divisions over whether abortion should generally be legal tell only part of the story. According to the March survey, sizable shares of Democrats favor restrictions on abortion under certain circumstances, while majorities of Republicans favor abortion being legal in some situations , such as in cases of rape or when the pregnancy is life-threatening.

There are wide religious divides in views of whether abortion should be legal , the summer survey found. An overwhelming share of religiously unaffiliated adults (83%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do six-in-ten Catholics. Protestants are divided in their views: 48% say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 50% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. Majorities of Black Protestants (71%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (61%) take the position that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while about three-quarters of White evangelicals (73%) say it should be illegal in all (20%) or most cases (53%).

In the March survey, 72% of White evangelicals said that the statement “human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” reflected their views extremely or very well . That’s much greater than the share of White non-evangelical Protestants (32%), Black Protestants (38%) and Catholics (44%) who said the same. Overall, 38% of Americans said that statement matched their views extremely or very well.

Catholics, meanwhile, are divided along religious and political lines in their attitudes about abortion, according to the same survey. Catholics who attend Mass regularly are among the country’s strongest opponents of abortion being legal, and they are also more likely than those who attend less frequently to believe that life begins at conception and that a fetus has rights. Catholic Republicans, meanwhile, are far more conservative on a range of abortion questions than are Catholic Democrats.

Women (66%) are more likely than men (57%) to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to the survey conducted after the court’s ruling.

More than half of U.S. adults – including 60% of women and 51% of men – said in March that women should have a greater say than men in setting abortion policy . Just 3% of U.S. adults said men should have more influence over abortion policy than women, with the remainder (39%) saying women and men should have equal say.

The March survey also found that by some measures, women report being closer to the abortion issue than men . For example, women were more likely than men to say they had given “a lot” of thought to issues around abortion prior to taking the survey (40% vs. 30%). They were also considerably more likely than men to say they personally knew someone (such as a close friend, family member or themselves) who had had an abortion (66% vs. 51%) – a gender gap that was evident across age groups, political parties and religious groups.

Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms , the March survey found. Overall, just 7% of all U.S. adults say having an abortion is morally acceptable in all cases, and 13% say it is morally wrong in all cases. A third say that having an abortion is morally wrong in most cases, while about a quarter (24%) say it is morally acceptable in most cases. An additional 21% do not consider having an abortion a moral issue.

Among Republicans, most (68%) say that having an abortion is morally wrong either in most (48%) or all cases (20%). Only about three-in-ten Democrats (29%) hold a similar view. Instead, about four-in-ten Democrats say having an abortion is morally  acceptable  in most (32%) or all (11%) cases, while an additional 28% say it is not a moral issue. 

White evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly say having an abortion is morally wrong in most (51%) or all cases (30%). A slim majority of Catholics (53%) also view having an abortion as morally wrong, but many also say it is morally acceptable in most (24%) or all cases (4%), or that it is not a moral issue (17%). Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, about three-quarters see having an abortion as morally acceptable (45%) or not a moral issue (32%).

• Religion & Abortion

Carrie Blazina is a former digital producer at Pew Research Center .

Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election

Support for legal abortion is widespread in many places, especially in europe, public opinion on abortion, americans overwhelmingly say access to ivf is a good thing, broad public support for legal abortion persists 2 years after dobbs, most popular.

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There’s a Better Way to Debate Abortion

Caution and epistemic humility can guide our approach.

If Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization becomes law, we will enter a post– Roe v. Wade world in which the laws governing abortion will be legislatively decided in 50 states.

In the short term, at least, the abortion debate will become even more inflamed than it has been. Overturning Roe , after all, would be a profound change not just in the law but in many people’s lives, shattering the assumption of millions of Americans that they have a constitutional right to an abortion.

This doesn’t mean Roe was correct. For the reasons Alito lays out, I believe that Roe was a terribly misguided decision, and that a wiser course would have been for the issue of abortion to have been given a democratic outlet, allowing even the losers “the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight,” in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, for nearly half a century, Roe has been the law of the land. But even those who would welcome its undoing should acknowledge that its reversal could convulse the nation.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

If we are going to debate abortion in every state, given how fractured and angry America is today, we need caution and epistemic humility to guide our approach.

We can start by acknowledging the inescapable ambiguities in this staggeringly complicated moral question. No matter one’s position on abortion, each of us should recognize that those who hold views different from our own have some valid points, and that the positions we embrace raise complicated issues. That realization alone should lead us to engage in this debate with a little more tolerance and a bit less certitude.

Many of those on the pro-life side exhibit a gap between the rhetoric they employ and the conclusions they actually seem to draw. In the 1990s, I had an exchange, via fax, with a pro-life thinker. During our dialogue, I pressed him on what he believed, morally speaking , should be the legal penalty for a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs one.

My point was a simple one: If he believed, as he claimed, that an abortion even moments after conception is the killing of an innocent child—that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being deserving of all the moral and political rights granted to your neighbor next door—then the act ought to be treated, if not as murder, at least as manslaughter. Surely, given what my interlocutor considered to be the gravity of the offense, fining the doctor and taking no action against the mother would be morally incongruent. He was understandably uncomfortable with this line of questioning, unwilling to go to the places his premises led. When it comes to abortion, few people are.

Humane pro-life advocates respond that while an abortion is the taking of a human life, the woman having the abortion has been misled by our degraded culture into denying the humanity of the child. She is a victim of misinformation; she can’t be held accountable for what she doesn’t know. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument, but I think it ultimately falls short. In other contexts, insisting that people who committed atrocities because they truly believed the people against whom they were committing atrocities were less than human should be let off the hook doesn’t carry the day. I’m struggling to understand why it would in this context.

There are other complicating matters. For example, about half of all fertilized eggs are aborted spontaneously —that is, result in miscarriage—usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Focus on the Family, an influential Christian ministry, is emphatic : “Human life begins at fertilization.” Does this mean that when a fertilized egg is spontaneously aborted, it is comparable—biologically, morally, ethically, or in any other way—to when a 2-year-old child dies? If not, why not? There’s also the matter of those who are pro-life and contend that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being but allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. That is an understandable impulse but I don’t think it’s a logically sustainable one.

The pro-choice side, for its part, seldom focuses on late-term abortions. Let’s grant that late-term abortions are very rare. But the question remains: Is there any point during gestation when pro-choice advocates would say “slow down” or “stop”—and if so, on what grounds? Or do they believe, in principle, that aborting a child up to the point of delivery is a defensible and justifiable act; that an abortion procedure is, ethically speaking, the same as removing an appendix? If not, are those who are pro-choice willing to say, as do most Americans, that the procedure gets more ethically problematic the further along in a pregnancy?

Read: When a right becomes a privilege

Plenty of people who consider themselves pro-choice have over the years put on their refrigerator door sonograms of the baby they are expecting. That tells us something. So does biology. The human embryo is a human organism, with the genetic makeup of a human being. “The argument, in which thoughtful people differ, is about the moral significance and hence the proper legal status of life in its early stages,” as the columnist George Will put it.

These are not “gotcha questions”; they are ones I have struggled with for as long as I’ve thought through where I stand on abortion, and I’ve tried to remain open to corrections in my thinking. I’m not comfortable with those who are unwilling to grant any concessions to the other side or acknowledge difficulties inherent in their own position. But I’m not comfortable with my own position, either—thinking about abortion taking place on a continuum, and troubled by abortions, particularly later in pregnancy, as the child develops.

The question I can’t answer is where the moral inflection point is, when the fetus starts to have claims of its own, including the right to life. Does it depend on fetal development? If so, what aspect of fetal development? Brain waves? Feeling pain? Dreaming? The development of the spine? Viability outside the womb? Something else? Any line I might draw seems to me entirely arbitrary and capricious.

Because of that, I consider myself pro-life, but with caveats. My inability to identify a clear demarcation point—when a fetus becomes a person—argues for erring on the side of protecting the unborn. But it’s a prudential judgment, hardly a certain one.

At the same time, even if one believes that the moral needle ought to lean in the direction of protecting the unborn from abortion, that doesn’t mean one should be indifferent to the enormous burden on the woman who is carrying the child and seeks an abortion, including women who discover that their unborn child has severe birth defects. Nor does it mean that all of us who are disturbed by abortion believe it is the equivalent of killing a child after birth. In this respect, my view is similar to that of some Jewish authorities , who hold that until delivery, a fetus is considered a part of the mother’s body, although it does possess certain characteristics of a person and has value. But an early-term abortion is not equivalent to killing a young child. (Many of those who hold this position base their views in part on Exodus 21, in which a miscarriage that results from men fighting and pushing a pregnant woman is punished by a fine, but the person responsible for the miscarriage is not tried for murder.)

“There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?”

That strikes me as right; with abortion, we’re dealing with an awesome mystery and insoluble empirical questions. Which means that rather than hurling invective at one another and caricaturing those with whom we disagree, we should try to understand their views, acknowledge our limitations, and even show a touch of grace and empathy. In this nation, riven and pulsating with hate, that’s not the direction the debate is most likely to take. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying.

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As the Supreme Court considers Roe v. Wade, a look at how abortion became legal

Nina Totenberg

The future of abortion, always a contentious issue, is up at the Supreme Court on Dec. 1. Arguments are planned challenging Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the court's major decisions over the last half-century that guarantee a woman's right to an abortion nationwide. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

The future of abortion, always a contentious issue, is up at the Supreme Court on Dec. 1. Arguments are planned challenging Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the court's major decisions over the last half-century that guarantee a woman's right to an abortion nationwide.

For nearly a half-century, abortion has been a constitutional right in the United States. But this week, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a Mississippi case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions.

Those rulings consistently declared that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy in the first two trimesters of pregnancy when a fetus is unable to survive outside the womb. But with that abortion right now in doubt, it's worth looking back at its history.

Abortion did not become illegal in most states until the mid to late 1800s. But by the 1960s, abortion, like childbirth, had become a safe procedure when performed by a doctor, and women were entering the workforce in ever larger numbers.

Still, being pregnant out of wedlock was seen as scandalous, and women increasingly sought out abortions, even though they were illegal. What's more, to be pregnant often meant that women's educations were stunted, as were their chances for getting a good job. Because of these phenomena, illegal abortion began to skyrocket and became a public health problem. Estimates of numbers each year ranged from 200,000 to over a million, a range that was so wide precisely because illegal procedures often went undocumented.

At the time, young women could see the perils for themselves. Anyone who lived in a college dormitory back then might well have seen one or more women carried out of the dorm hemorrhaging from a botched illegal abortion.

George Frampton clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun the year that his boss authored Roe v. Wade , and he remembers that until Roe , "those abortions had to be obtained undercover if you had a sympathetic doctor" and you were "wealthy enough." But most abortions were illegal and mainly took place "in backrooms by abortion quacks" using "crude tools" and "no hygiene."

By the early to mid-1960s, Frampton notes, thousands of women in large cities were arriving at hospitals, bleeding and often maimed.

One woman, in an interview with NPR, recalled "the excruciatingly painful [illegal] procedure," describing it as "the equivalent of having a hot poker stuck up your uterus and scraping the walls." She remembered that the attendant had to "hold her down on the table."

The result, says Frampton, was that by the mid-1960s, a reform movement had begun, aimed at decriminalizing abortion and treating it more like other medical procedures. Driving the reform movement were doctors, who were concerned about the effect that illegal abortions were having on women's health. Soon, the American Law Institute — a highly respected group of lawyers, judges and scholars — published a model abortion reform law supported by major medical groups, including the American Medical Association.

Many states then began to loosen their abortion restrictions. Four states legalized abortion, and a dozen or so adopted some form of the model law, which permitted abortion in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality, as well as to save the life or health of the mother.

By the early 1970s, when nearly half the states had adopted reform laws, there was a small backlash. Still, as Frampton observes, "it wasn't a big political or ideological issue at all."

In fact, the justices in 1973 were mainly establishment conservatives. Six were Republican appointees, including the court's only Catholic. And five were generally conservative, as defined at the time, including four appointed by President Richard Nixon. Ultimately, the court voted 7-to-2 that abortion is a private matter to be decided by a woman during the first two trimesters of her pregnancy.

That framework has remained in place ever since, with the court repeatedly upholding that standard. In 1992, it reiterated the framework yet again, though it said that states could enact some limited restrictions — for example, a 24-hour waiting period — as long as the restrictions didn't impose an "undue burden" on a woman's right to abortion.

Frampton says that the court established the viability framework because of the medical consensus that a fetus could not survive outside the womb until the last trimester. He explains that "the justices thought that this was going to dispose of the constitutional issues about abortion forever."

Although many had thought that fetal viability might change substantially, that has not happened. But in the years that followed, the backlash to the court's abortion decisions grew louder and louder, until the Republican Party, which had earlier supported Roe , officially abandoned it in 1984.

Looking at the politicization of the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process in recent years, one can't help but wonder whether Roe played a part in that polarization. What does Frampton think?

"I'm afraid," he concedes, "that analysis is absolutely spot on. I think they [the justices] saw it as a very important landmark constitutional decision but had no idea that it would become so politicized and so much a subject of turmoil."

Just why is abortion such a controversial issue in the United States but not in so many other countries where abortion is now legal? Florida State University law professor Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America , points out that in many countries, the abortion question has been resolved through democratic means — in some countries by national referendum, in others by parliamentary votes and, in some, by the courts. In most of those countries, however, abortions, with some exceptions, must be performed earlier, by week 12, 15 or 18.

But — and it is a big but — in most of those countries, unlike in the U.S., national health insurance guarantees easy access to abortions.

Lastly, Ziegler observes, "there are a lot of people in the United States who have a stake in our polarized politics. ... It's a way to raise money. It's a way to get people out to the polls."

And it's striking, she adds, how little our politics resemble what most people say they want. Public opinion polls consistently show that large majorities of Americans support the right to abortion in all or most cases. A poll conducted last May by the Pew Research Center found 6 in 10 Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And a Washington Post -ABC poll conducted last month found that Americans by a roughly 2-to-1 margin say the Supreme Court should uphold its landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

But an NPR poll conducted in 2019 shows just how complex — and even contradictory — opinions are about abortion. The poll found that 77% of Americans support Roe . But that figure dropped to 34% in the second trimester. Other polls had significantly higher support for second trimester abortions. A Reuters poll pegged the figure at 47% in 2021. And an Associated Press poll found that 49% of poll respondents supported legal abortion for anyone who wants one "for any reason," while 50% believed that this should not be the case. And 86% said they would support abortion at any time during a pregnancy to protect the life or health of the woman.

All this would seem to suggest that there is overwhelming support for abortion rights earlier in pregnancy, but less support later in pregnancy, and overwhelming support for abortions at any time to protect the life or, importantly, the health of the mother. That, however, is not where the abortion debate is in the 25 or so states that have enacted very strict anti-abortion laws, including outright bans, in hopes that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe .

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The Case Against Abortion

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

A striking thing about the American abortion debate is how little abortion itself is actually debated. The sensitivity and intimacy of the issue, the mixed feelings of so many Americans, mean that most politicians and even many pundits really don’t like to talk about it.

The mental habits of polarization, the assumption that the other side is always acting with hidden motives or in bad faith, mean that accusations of hypocrisy or simple evil are more commonplace than direct engagement with the pro-choice or pro-life argument.

And the Supreme Court’s outsize role in abortion policy means that the most politically important arguments are carried on by lawyers arguing constitutional theory, at one remove from the real heart of the debate.

But with the court set this week to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, it seems worth letting the lawyers handle the meta-arguments and writing about the thing itself. So this essay will offer no political or constitutional analysis. It will simply try to state the pro-life case.

At the core of our legal system, you will find a promise that human beings should be protected from lethal violence. That promise is made in different ways by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; it’s there in English common law, the Ten Commandments and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We dispute how the promise should be enforced, what penalties should be involved if it is broken and what crimes might deprive someone of the right to life. But the existence of the basic right, and a fundamental duty not to kill, is pretty close to bedrock.

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• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9753-6914 Perry Hendricks
• Department of Philosophy , Purdue University , West Lafayette , Indiana , USA
• Correspondence to Mr Perry Hendricks, Purdue University Department of Philosophy, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; ampchendricks{at}gmail.com

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• infanticide

Introduction

It is often assumed that if the fetus is a person, then abortion should be illegal. Thomson 1 laid the groundwork to challenge this assumption, and Boonin 2 has recently argued that it is false: he argues that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. In this article, I explain both Thomson’s and Boonin’s reason for thinking that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. After this, I show that Thomson’s and Boonin’s argument for legalised abortion fail; they have not given us good reason for thinking abortion should be legal. 1 Finally, I argue that—if we play Boonin’s game—abortion should be illegal.

Boonin’s argument for legalised abortion

Contributors PH wrote the whole paper.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

↵ Most of this article addresses Boonin’s argument, since it is more developed and recent than Thomson’s.

↵ Though, see refs. 6–8 for arguments about abortion that do not concern the moral status of the fetus.

↵ See ref. 9 for a recent challenge to Thomson.

↵ While Boonin refers both to ‘persons’ and those with a ‘right to life,’ I will simply take a person to be a thing that has a right to life. Nothing hinges on this point.

↵ Boonin 2 thinks that this strategy is sufficient to undermine his argument, though, he is sceptical about finding such a case. I will (hopefully) show below that his scepticism is unwarranted.

↵ This is because I do not know what the property (or properties) are.

↵ Here, I understand X to coerce Y to R if (roughly) X will harm (broadly construed) Y if Y does not R. E.g. the U.S. coerces those with cars to purchase license plate tabs—if one is caught driving without (or with expired) tabs, she will be subject to a fine.

↵ You can find the details of this case here: https://ktvo.com/news/local/se-iowa-mother-convicted-of-starving-son-to-death-gets-10-years

↵ I ignore fathers for the sake of simplicity. But, obviously, fathers can be, should be, and are arrested for starving their infants as well.

↵ By ‘unwilling mother,’ I just mean a mother that does not want to take care of her infant.

↵ More exactly, she must give up the infant or feed it. I suppose here that she has not given it up and also does not want to feed it.

↵ By this I mean that the mother would have to breastfeed her infant for her infant to get the breastmilk, not just that she has a bottle of breastmilk available.

↵ Of course, this is an empirical question to which no survey has (to my knowledge) been conducted. For whatever it is worth, anecdotally, the vast majority that I have asked about CASE 2 have agreed with it.

↵ For example, some argue that mothers are responsible for the care of their fetuses (in typical cases) in which the pregnancy is unwanted. See refs. 10 11

↵ The qualification ‘only’ here entails that the infant is not able to be transferred to someone else to be fed.

↵ Of course, in this case, the infant is dead, so the state cannot coerce her into feeding her infant after she is taken from the cabin. My point is the state would be right in enacting a law that generally punished those who let their infants starve when there was food available. If there were such a law, the state would be coercing Sally into feeding her infant.

↵ How might the government coerce Sally? One way would be to have laws that dictate that she be fined or imprisoned if she were to starve her infant in such a case.

↵ Indeed, if one accepts Boonin’s view that McFall does not have the right to use Shimp’s body, then being a person is not sufficient for having a right to use another’s body. So, in the case of abortion and infant starvation, some other property (or conjunction of properties) is what gives the fetus the right to its mother’s body.

↵ Hereafter, I will omit the qualification ‘given fetal personhood’ for the sake of readability. However, it should be clear that my discussion is following Boonin and Thomson in assuming fetal personhood.

↵ Indeed, a referee points out that if McFall versus Shimp is to be made analogous to pregnancy/abortion, then, first, we would need to assume that Shimp had been giving McFall bone marrow (but not given him a sufficient amount). And, second, we would need to assume that to stop giving bone marrow to McFall, Shimp would have to actively kill him in some way (for a defence of abortion as killing, see ref. 4 ). In that case, it is not clear that McFall should not be coerced into giving more bone marrow to Shimp, and therefore not clear whether McFall versus Shimp supports Boonin’s position.

↵ It is equally true that not all ethically permissible actions should be legal (e.g., slightly exceeding the speed limit on a road should not be legal).

↵ Of course, this does not mean that anything goes—there will be heavy restrictions on what the government can/should do here.

↵ Think of the popularity (in certain parts of the world) of governmental healthcare.

↵ It is worth noting that there are some legal cases that offer support for CASE 2*. For example, Beckwith considers a case in American tort law in, 12 pages 196–197, which arguably supports the conclusion of this section. I do not consider a such rulings in this piece partly because there are bound to be cases that support both sides and partly because I think we can see, independent of prior rulings, that CASE 2* is right.

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• News24,(2013). Why abortion should be legal. Retrieved from https://ww.news24.com/MyNews24/Why-abortion-should-be-legal-20131230
• Amnesty International,(2018). Facts on Abortion. Retrieved from www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/sexual-and-reproductive-rights/abortion-facts/
• More than 25 million Abortions are performed every year. Retrieved from www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/09/174289/unsafe-abortion-statistics­­­­­­-­­­­
• Kartha Pollitt, Abortion quotes. Retrieved from www.brainyquote.com/topics/abortion
• Mesce D; Sines E (2006). Washington, D.C., Population Reference Bureau [PRB], 2006. 58 p. Retrieved from https://www.popline.org/node/563328
• ­­­­­https://brightkite.com/essay-on/women-have-the-right-to-abortion
• https://essayforum.com/writing/right-abortion-argumentative-paper-6112/
• https://www.debate.org/opinions/do-women-have-the-right-to-abortion
• https://www.allfamilieshealth.org/abortions/
• https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Women-Have-the-Right-to-Abortion- P3RXPEYTJ
• https://revcom.us/a/1265/what-is-abortion.htm
• https://www.babygaga.com/15-whisper-confessions-of-women-forced-to-have- the-baby-they-didnt-want/

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Princeton Legal Journal

The First Amendment and the Abortion Rights Debate

Sofia Cipriano

4 Prin.L.J.F. 12

Following Dobbs v. Jackson ’s (2022) reversal of Roe v. Wade (1973) — and the subsequent revocation of federal abortion protection — activists and scholars have begun to reconsider how to best ground abortion rights in the Constitution. In the past year, numerous Jewish rights groups have attempted to overturn state abortion bans by arguing that abortion rights are protected by various state constitutions’ free exercise clauses — and, by extension, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. While reframing the abortion rights debate as a question of religious freedom is undoubtedly strategic, the Free Exercise Clause is not the only place to locate abortion rights: the Establishment Clause also warrants further investigation. 

Roe anchored abortion rights in the right to privacy — an unenumerated right with a long history of legal recognition. In various cases spanning the past two centuries, t he Supreme Court located the right to privacy in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments . Roe classified abortion as a fundamental right protected by strict scrutiny, meaning that states could only regulate abortion in the face of a “compelling government interest” and must narrowly tailor legislation to that end. As such, Roe ’s trimester framework prevented states from placing burdens on abortion access in the first few months of pregnancy. After the fetus crosses the viability line — the point at which the fetus can survive outside the womb  — states could pass laws regulating abortion, as the Court found that   “the potentiality of human life”  constitutes a “compelling” interest. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) later replaced strict scrutiny with the weaker “undue burden” standard, giving states greater leeway to restrict abortion access. Dobbs v. Jackson overturned both Roe and Casey , leaving abortion regulations up to individual states. 

While Roe constituted an essential step forward in terms of abortion rights, weaknesses in its argumentation made it more susceptible to attacks by skeptics of substantive due process. Roe argues that the unenumerated right to abortion is implied by the unenumerated right to privacy — a chain of logic which twice removes abortion rights from the Constitution’s language. Moreover, Roe’s trimester framework was unclear and flawed from the beginning, lacking substantial scientific rationale. As medicine becomes more and more advanced, the arbitrariness of the viability line has grown increasingly apparent.  

As abortion rights supporters have looked for alternative constitutional justifications for abortion rights, the First Amendment has become increasingly more visible. Certain religious groups — particularly Jewish groups — have argued that they have a right to abortion care. In Generation to Generation Inc v. Florida , a religious rights group argued that Florida’s abortion ban (HB 5) constituted a violation of the Florida State Constitution: “In Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the Act. As such, the Act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and thus violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.” Similar cases have arisen in Indiana and Texas. Absent constitutional protection of abortion rights, the Christian religious majorities in many states may unjustly impose their moral and ethical code on other groups, implying an unconstitutional religious hierarchy. 

Cases like Generation to Generation Inc v. Florida may also trigger heightened scrutiny status in higher courts; The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) places strict scrutiny on cases which “burden any aspect of religious observance or practice.”

But framing the issue as one of Free Exercise does not interact with major objections to abortion rights. Anti-abortion advocates contend that abortion is tantamount to murder. An anti-abortion advocate may argue that just as religious rituals involving human sacrifice are illegal, so abortion ought to be illegal. Anti-abortion advocates may be able to argue that abortion bans hold up against strict scrutiny since “preserving potential life” constitutes a “compelling interest.”

The question of when life begins—which is fundamentally a moral and religious question—is both essential to the abortion debate and often ignored by left-leaning activists. For select Christian advocacy groups (as well as other anti-abortion groups) who believe that life begins at conception, abortion bans are a deeply moral issue. Abortion bans which operate under the logic that abortion is murder essentially legislate a definition of when life begins, which is problematic from a First Amendment perspective; the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prevents the government from intervening in religious debates. While numerous legal thinkers have associated the abortion debate with the First Amendment, this argument has not been fully litigated. As an amicus brief filed in Dobbs by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Center for Inquiry, and American Atheists  points out, anti-abortion rhetoric is explicitly religious: “There is hardly a secular veil to the religious intent and positions of individuals, churches, and state actors in their attempts to limit access to abortion.” Justice Stevens located a similar issue with anti-abortion rhetoric in his concurring opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) , stating: “I am persuaded that the absence of any secular purpose for the legislative declarations that life begins at conception and that conception occurs at fertilization makes the relevant portion of the preamble invalid under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution.” Judges who justify their judicial decisions on abortion using similar rhetoric blur the line between church and state. 

Framing the abortion debate around religious freedom would thus address the two main categories of arguments made by anti-abortion activists: arguments centered around issues with substantive due process and moral objections to abortion. 

Conservatives may maintain, however, that legalizing abortion on the federal level is an Establishment Clause violation to begin with, since the government would essentially be imposing a federal position on abortion. Many anti-abortion advocates favor leaving abortion rights up to individual states. However, in the absence of recognized federal, constitutional protection of abortion rights, states will ban abortion. Protecting religious freedom of the individual is of the utmost importance  — the United States government must actively intervene in order to uphold the line between church and state. Protecting abortion rights would allow everyone in the United States to act in accordance with their own moral and religious perspectives on abortion. 

Reframing the abortion rights debate as a question of religious freedom is the most viable path forward. Anchoring abortion rights in the Establishment Clause would ensure Americans have the right to maintain their own personal and religious beliefs regarding the question of when life begins. In the short term, however, litigants could take advantage of Establishment Clauses in state constitutions. Yet, given the swing of the Court towards expanding religious freedom protections at the time of writing, Free Exercise arguments may prove better at securing citizens a right to an abortion. 

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Legalized Abortion and the Public Health: Report of a Study (1975)

Chapter: summary and conclusions.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The legal status of abortion in the United States became a heightened national issue with the January 1973 rulings by the Supreme Court that severely limited states' rights to control the procedure. The Court's decisions on the historic cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton precluded any state interference with the doctor-patient decision on abortion during the first trimester (three months) of pregnancy. During the second trimester, a state could intervene only to the extent of insisting on safe medical practices "reasonably related to maternal health." And for approximately the final trimester of a pregnancy—what the Court called "the state subsequent to viability" of a fetus—a state could forbid abortion unless medical judgment found it necessary "for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." The rulings crystallized opposition to abortion, led to the intro- duction of national and state legislation to curtail or prohibit it, and generated political pressures for a national debate on the issue. Against this background of concerns about abortion, the Institute of Medicine in 1974 called together a committee to review the existing evidence on the relationship between legalized abortion and the health of the public. The study group was asked to examine the medical risks to women who obtained legal abortions, and to document changes in the risks as legal abortion became more available. Although there have been other publications on particular relationships between abortion and health, the Institute's study is an attempt to enlist scholars, researchers, health practitioners, and concerned lay persons in a more comprehensive analysis of the available medical information on the subject. Ethical issues of abortion are not discussed in this analysis, nor are questions concerning the fetus in abortion. The study group recog- nizes that this approach implies an ethical position with which some may disagree. The emphasis of the study is on the health effects of abortion, not on the alternatives to abortion.

Abortion legislation and practices are important factors in the relationship between abortion and health status. In order to examine legislation and court decisions that have affected the availability of legal abortion in the U.S., the study group classified the laws and practices into three categories: restrictive conditions, under which abortion is prohibited or permitted only to save the pregnant woman's life; moderately restrictive conditions, under which abortion is per- mitted with approval by several physicians, in a wider range of circumstances to preserve the woman's physical or mental health, prevent the birth of a child with severe genetic or congenital defects, or terminate a pregnancy caused by rape or incest; and non-restrictive conditions, under which abortion essentially is available according to the terms of the Supreme Court ruling. Before 1967, all abortion laws in the United States could be classified as restrictive. Easing of restrictions began in 1967 with Colorado, and soon thereafter 12 other states also adopted moderately restrictive legislation to expand the conditions under which therapeutic abortion could be obtained. In 1970, four states (Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington) removed nearly all legal controls on abortion. Non-restrictive conditions have theoretically existed throughout all fifty states since January 22, 1973, the date of the Supreme Court decision. There is evidence that substantial numbers of illegal abortions were obtained in the U.S. when restrictive laws were in force. Although some of the illegal abortions were performed covertly by physicians in medical settings, many were conducted in unsanitary surroundings by unskilled operators or were self-induced. In this report, "illegal abortion" generally refers to those performed by a non-physician or the woman herself. The medical risks associated with the last two types of illegal abortions are patently greater than with the first. A recent analysis of data from the first year of New York's non- restrictive abortion legislation indicates that approximately 70 percent of the abortions obtained legally in New York City would otherwise have been obtained illegally. Replacement of legal for illegal abortions also is reflected in the substantial decline in the number of reported complications and deaths due to other-than-legal abortions since non- restrictive practices began to be implemented in the United States. The number of all known abortion-related deaths declined from 128 in 1970 to 47 in 1973; those deaths specifically attributed to other-than-legal abortions (i.e., both illegal and spontaneous) dropped from 111 to 25 during the same period, with much of that decline attributed to a reduced incidence of illegal abortions. Increased use of effective con- traception may also have played a role in the decline of abortion-related deaths. Methods most frequently used in the United States to induce abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy are suction (vacuum aspiration) or dilatation and curettage (D&C). Abortions in the second trimester are usually performed by replacing part of the amniotic fluid that surrounds

the fetus with a concentrated salt solution (saline abortion), which usually induces labor 24 to 48 hours later. Other second trimester methods are hysterotomy, a surgical entry into the uterus; hysterectomy, which is the removal of the uterus; and, recently, the injection into the uterine cavity of a prostaglandin, a substance that causes muscular contractions that expel the fetus. Statistics on legal abortion are collected for the U.S. government by the Center for Disease Control. CDC's most recent nationwide data are for 1973, the year of the Supreme Court decision. Some of those figures are: — The 615,800 legal abortions reported in 1973 were an increase of approximately 29,000 over the number reported in 1972. These probably are underestimates of the actual number of abortions performed because some states have not yet developed adequate abortion reporting systems. — The abortion ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) increased from 180 in 1972 to 195 in 1973. — More than four out of five abortions were performed in the first trimester, most often by suction or D&C. — Approximately 25 percent of the reported 1973 abortions were obtained outside the woman's home state. In 1972, before the Supreme Court decision, 44 percent of the reported abortions had been obtained outside the home state of the patient, primarily in New York and the District of Columbia. — Approximately one-third of the women obtaining abortions were less than 20 years old, another third were between 20 and 25, and the remaining third over 25 years of age. — In all states where data were available, about 25 percent of the women obtaining abortions were married. — White women obtained 68 percent of all reported abortions, but non-white women had abortion ratios about one-third greater than white women. In 1972, non-white women had abortion rates (abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age) about twice those of whites in three states from which data were available to analyze. A national survey of hospitals, clinics, and physicians conducted in 1974 by The Alan Guttmacher Institute furnished data on the number of abortions performed in the U.S. during 1973, itemized by state and type of provider. A total of 745,400 abortions were reported in the survey, a figure higher than the 615,800 abortions reported in 1973 to CDC. The Guttmacher Institute obtains its data from providers of health services, while CDC gets most of its data from state health departments.

Risks of medical complications associated with legal abortions are difficult to evaluate because of problems of definition and subjective physician judgment. Available information from 66 centers is provided by the Joint Program for the Study of Abortion, undertaken by The Population Council in 1970-1971. The JPSA study surveyed almost 73,000 legal abortions. It used a restricted definition of major complications, which included unintended major surgery, one or more blood transfusions, three or more days of fever, and several other categories involving prolonged illness or permanent impairment. Although this study also collected data on minor complica- tions, such as one day of fever post-operatively, the data on major com- plications are probably more significant. The major complication rates published by the JPSA study and summarized below relate to women who had abortions in local facilities and from whom follow-up information was obtained. — Complications in women not obtaining concurrent sterilization and with no pre-existing medical problems (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, or gynecological problems) occurred 0.6 times per 100 abortions in the first trimester and 2.1 per 100 in the second trimester. — Complications in women not obtaining concurrent sterilization, but having pre-existing problems, occurred 2.0 times per 100 in the first trimester and 6.7 in the second. — Complications in women obtaining concurrent sterilization and not having pre-existing problems occurred 7.2 times per 100 in the first trimester and 8.0 in the second. — Women with both concurrent sterilization and pre-existing problems experienced complications approximately 17 times per 100 abortions regardless of trimester. The relatively high complication rates associated with sterilization in the JPSA study would probably be lower today because new sterilization techniques require minimal surgery and carry lower rates of complications. The frequency of medical complications due to illegal abortions cannot be calculated precisely, but the trend in these complications can be estimated from the number of hospital admissions due to septic and incomplete abortion—two adverse consequences of the illegal procedure.

The number of such admissions in New York City's municipal hospitals declined from 6,524 in 1969 to 3,253 in 1973; most restrictions on legal abortion in New York City were lifted in July of 1970. In Los Angeles, the number of reported hospital admissions for septic abortions declined from 559 in 1969 to 119 in 1971. Other factors, such as an increased use of effective contraception and a decreasing rate of unwanted pregnancies may have contributed to these declines, but it is probable that the introduction of less restrictive abortion legislation was a major factor. There has not been enough experience with legal abortion in the U.S. for conclusions to be drawn about long-term complications, particularly for women obtaining repeated legal abortions. Some studies from abroad suggest that long-term complications may include prematurity, miscarriage, or ectopic pregnancies in future pregnancies, or infertility. But research findings from countries having long experience with legal abortion are inconsistent among studies and the relevance of these data to the U.S. is not known; methods of abortion, medical services, and socio-economic characteristics vary from one country to another. Risks of maternal death associated with legal abortion are low—1.7 deaths per 100,000 first trimester procedures in 1972 and 1973—and less than the risks associated with illegal abortion, full-term pregnancy, and most surgical procedures. The 1973 mortality rate for a full-term pregnancy was 14 deaths per 100,000 live vaginal deliveries; the 1969 rate for cesarean sections was 111 deaths per 100,000 deliveries. For second trimester abortions, the combined 1972-73 mortality ratio was 12.2 deaths per 100,000 abortions. (For comparison, the surgical removal of the tonsils and adenoids had a mortality risk of five deaths per 100,000 operations in 1969). When the mortality risk of legal abortion is examined by length of gestation it becomes apparent that the mortality risks increase not only from the first to the second trimester, but also by each week of ges- tation. For example, during 1972-73, the mortality ratio for legal abortions performed at eight weeks or less was 0.5, and for those performed between nine and 10 weeks was 1.7 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. At 11 to 12 weeks the mortality ratio increased to 4.2 deaths, and by 16 to 20 weeks, the ratio was more than 17 deaths per 100,000 abortions. Hysterotomy and hysterectomy, methods performed infrequently in both trimesters, had a combined mortality ratio of 61.3 deaths per 100,000 procedures. Some data on the mortality associated with illegal abortion are avail- lable from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and from CDC. In 1961 there were 320 abortion-related deaths reported in the U.S., most of them presumed by the medical profession to be from illegal abortion. By 1973, total reported deaths had declined to 47, of which 16 were specifi- cally attributed to illegal abortions. There has been a steady decline in the mortality rates (number of deaths per 100,000 women aged 15-44) associated with other-than-legal abortion for both white and non-white women, but in 1973 the mortality rate for non-white women (0.29) was almost ten times greater than that reported for white women (0.03).

Psychological effects of legal abortion are difficult to evaluate for reasons that include lack of information on pre-abortion psychological status, ambiguous terminology, and the absence of standardized measurements. The cumulative evidence in recent years indicates that although it may be a stressful experience, abortion is not associated with any detectable increase in the incidence of mental illness. The depression or guilt feelings reported by some women following abortion are generally described as mild and temporary. This experience, however, does not necessarily apply to women with a previous history of psychiatric illness; for them, abortion may be followed by continued or aggravated mental illness. The JPSA survey led to an estimate of the incidence of post-abortion psychosis ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 per 1,000 legal abortions. This is lower than the post-partum psychosis rate of one to two per 1,000 deliveries in the United States. Psychological factors also bear on whether a woman obtains a first or second-trimester abortion. Two studies in particular suggest that women who delay abortion into the later period may have more feelings of ambiva- lence, denial of the pregnancy, or objection on religious grounds, than those obtaining abortions in the first trimester. It is also apparent, however, that some second-trimester abortions result from procedural delays, difficulties in obtaining a pregnancy test, locating appropriate counseling, or arranging and financing the procedure. Diagnosis of severe defects of a fetus well before birth has greatly advanced in the past decade. Developments in the techniques of amniocen- tesis and cell culture have enabled a number of genetic defects and other congenital disorders to be detected in the second trimester of pregnancy. Prenatal diagnosis and the opportunity to terminate an affected pregnancy by a legal abortion may help many women who would have refrained from becoming pregnant or might have given birth to an abnormal child, to bear children unaffected by the disease they fear. Abortion, with or with- out prenatal diagnosis, also can be used in instances where there is reasonable risk that the fetus may be affected by birth defects from non-genetic causes, such as those caused by exposure of the woman to rubella virus infection or x-rays, or by her ingestion of drugs known to damage the fetus. Almost 60 inherited metabolic disorders, such as Tay-Sachs disease, potentially can be diagnosed before birth. More than 20 of these diseases already have been diagnosed with reasonaable accuracy by means of amniocentesis and other procedures. The techniques also can be used to identify a fetus with abnormal chromosomes, as in Down's syndrome (mongolism), and to discriminate between male and female fetuses, which in such diseases as hemophilia would allow determination of whether the fetus was at risk of being affected or simply at risk of being a hereditary carrier of the disorder.

In North America, amniocentesis was performed in more than 6,000 second-trimester pregnancies between 1967 and 1974. The diagnostic accuracy was close to 100 percent and complication rates were about two percent. Less than 10 percent of the diagnoses disclosed an affected fetus, meaning that the great majority of parents at risk averted an unnecessary abortion and were able to carry an unaffected child to term. There are many limitations to the use of prenatal diagnosis, especially for mass screening purposes. Amniocentesis is a fairly expensive procedure, and relatively few medical personnel are qualified to administer it and carry out the necessary diagnostic tests. Only a small number of genetic disorders can now be identified by means of amniocentesis and many couples still have no way to determine whether or not they are to be the parents of a child with genetic defects. Nevertheless, the avail- ability of a legal abortion expands the options available to a woman who faces a known risk of having an affected child. Abortion as a substitute for contraception is one possibility raised by the adoption of non-restrictive abortion laws. Limited data do not allow definitive conclusions, but they suggest that the introduction of non-restrictive abortion laws in the U.S. has not lead to any documented decline in demand for contraceptive services. Among women who sought abortion and who had previously not used contraception or had used it poorly, there is some evidence that they may have begun to practice contraception because contraceptives were made available to them at the time of their abortion. The health aspects of this issue bear on the higher mortality and mor- bidity associated with abortion as compared with contraceptive use, and on the possibility that if women rely on abortion rather than contraception they may have repeated abortions, for which the risk of long-term compli- cations is not known. The incidence of repeated legal abortions is little known because legal abortion has only been widely available in the U.S. for a few years. Data from New York City indicate that during the first two years of non-restrictive laws 2.45 percent of the abortions obtained by residents were repeat procedures. If those two years are divided into six-month periods, repeated legal abortions as a percent of the total rose from 0.01 percent in the first period to 6.02 percent in the last. Part of this increase is attributable to a statistical fact: the longer non-restrictive laws are in effect, the greater the number of women eligible to have repeated legal abortions. Perhaps, too, the reporting system has improved. In any case, some low incidence of repeated abortions is to be expected because none of the current contraceptive methods is completely failureproof, nor are they likely to be used with maximum care on all occasions.

8 A recent study has suggested that one additional factor contributing to the incidence of repeated abortions is that abortion facilities may not routinely provide contraceptive services at the time of the procedure. This is of concern because of recent evidence that ovulation usually oc- curs within five weeks and perhaps as early as 10 days after an abortion. The conclusions of the study group: — Many women will seek to terminate an unwanted pregnancy by abortion whether it is legal or not. Although the mortality and morbidity . associated with illegal abortion cannot be fully measured, they are clearly greater than the risks associated with legal abortion. Evidence suggests that legislation and practices that permit women to obtain abortions in proper medical surroundings will lead to fewer deaths and a lower rate of medical complications than restrictive legislation and practices. —• The substantial differences between the mortality and morbidity associated with legal abortion in the first and second trimesters suggest that laws, medical practices, and educational programs should enable and encourage women who have chosen abortion to obtain it in the first three months of pregnancy. — More research is needed on the consequences of abortion on health status. Of highest priority are investigations of long-term medical complications, particularly after multiple abortions the effects of abortion and denied abortion on the mental health and social welfare of individuals and families the factors of motivation, behavior, and access associated with contraceptive use and the choice of abortion.

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