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1470L

Abortion
Date: 2024
From: Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection
Publisher: Gale, part of Cengage Group
Document Type: Topic overview
Length: 3,138 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1470L

Full Text:
Abortion is a medical or surgical procedure to deliberately end a pregnancy. In 1973 the US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade
ruled that the Constitution protected the right to an abortion prior to the viability of a fetus. Until the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson
Women's Health Organization, Roe v. Wade allowed a person living in any US state to exercise the right to an abortion at their own
discretion through the end of the first trimester, around the twelfth week of pregnancy. States were allowed some power to regulate
abortion access during the second and third trimesters. The Dobbs ruling, however, ended federal protections for abortion rights and
returned to the states the authority to determine abortion law.

In the decades between Roe and Dobbs, activists and policy makers in many states sought to change legal protections for
reproductive rights. Though the public has consistently indicated opposition to bans on abortion, several state legislatures passed
bans in anticipation of the conservative Supreme Court majority overturning the nearly fifty-year-old Roe decision. As of June 2024,
fourteen states had adopted near total abortion bans, while an additional twenty-seven had imposed bans on abortions after certain
gestation durations (the amount of time since conception). In addition, twenty-one states had established some abortion protections
through constitutional amendments, laws, or court decisions.

In June 2024 the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, rejecting a lawsuit that would
have restricted access to mifepristone, the drug most commonly used in medication abortions. The ruling marked the court's first
decision related to abortion since overturning Roe two years earlier.

Main Ideas
Abortion refers to a procedure to terminate a pregnancy. The term is typically applied to a planned medical or surgical
procedure.
People who support legal access to abortion typically identify as pro-choice, while those who support bans and heavy
restrictions identify as pro-life.
Medical abortions can take place during the first trimester of a pregnancy. In these procedures, the patient takes a
combination of drugs to induce an abortion.
In 1973 the US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that state laws banning abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy
were unconstitutional. Reproductive rights advocates challenged subsequent restrictions placed on abortion in federal court.
In 2022 the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that the US Constitution did not
guarantee the right to abortion. The decision overturned the court's previous ruling in Roe v. Wade.
After the Dobbs ruling, many states passed or implemented abortion bans or restrictions, despite continuing US public
support for legal abortion. Bans have increased travel to obtain abortions to states where it remains legal and resulted in
increased maternal and infant deaths in states where abortion has been banned.

Support for and Opposition to Abortion

Opponents of abortion, who generally refer to themselves as pro-life, typically object to the practice for religious or ethical reasons,
contending that the procedure amounts to the killing of what they consider to be a human life. Supporters of abortion rights, who
typically identify as pro-choice, consider it an issue of human rights, asserting that individuals should be able to make medical
decisions about their own bodies and lives. Both movements encompass a range of opinions on the subject. Some pro-life activists
may condone abortions in cases of rape or incest, while others argue that all abortion is murder. Within the pro-choice movement,
some activists contend that no restrictions should be placed on abortion, while others support laws requiring a waiting period before
abortions can be performed or that minors obtain permission from their parents.

The majority of Americans oppose banning abortion altogether. For example, in a May 2024 Gallup poll only 12 percent of
respondents indicated a belief that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances. In a 2024 Pew Research Center poll, 63
percent of US adults believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 8 percent who said it should be prohibited in
all cases. However, the public has remained divided on the extent to which the government should be allowed to impose restrictions.
Poll results also showed a partisan divide on abortion that has widened over time, with 85 percent of Democrats believing abortion
should be legal in all or most cases in 2024 compared to 41 percent of Republicans. According to an April 2024 report from the Pew
Research Center, 58 percent of Americans said it would be very or somewhat easy to get an abortion in their area, compared to 65
percent in 2019. A further 31 percent of respondents to the Pew poll said it should be easier to have an abortion in their area, up from
26 percent in 2019.

After Roe was overturned, protest marches and demonstrations erupted across the United States and lasted for days, with some
commentators noting the wide discrepancy between popular support for Roe and the court's rejection of it. While abortion has long
been considered a feminist or women's rights issue, the protests highlighted its effects on all Americans regardless of gender. The
Dobbs ruling removed precedents related to the right to privacy and the right to bodily autonomy, neither of which is specifically
stated in the Constitution. However, these assumed rights have been foundational to rulings decriminalizing interracial marriage,
contraception, nonprocreative sex, and same-sex marriage.

Surgical and Medical Abortions

Most abortions take place within the first trimester of pregnancy. Abortions fall into two general categories: surgical and medication.
The most commonly performed surgical abortion procedure is suction abortion, also referred to as vacuum aspiration, which involves
removing tissue from the uterus through a thin tube. The procedure is less invasive than surgeries at later stages of pregnancy, which
require labor to be induced. First-trimester surgical abortions performed by trained medical professionals are among the safest and
simplest forms of surgery. Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that many fewer women die
from legal abortions than from childbirth or many other common procedures, leading many medical experts to conclude that abortion
is safer than giving birth in the United States.

Abortions achieved with drugs instead of surgery are called medication abortions and are considered safe and effective until between
nine and eleven weeks after the last menstrual period. The most commonly used drugs for medication abortions in the United States
are mifepristone and misoprostol, taken in sequence as prescribed by a health care provider. Patients first take mifepristone
(previously called RU-486), which blocks the body's natural production of progesterone, an essential pregnancy hormone. The patient
takes the second pill, misoprostol, two days later. This drug causes the uterus to contract and expel the embryo. Medication abortions
are different from emergency contraception, a type of birth control pill used after unprotected sexual intercourse that prevents
pregnancy.

The number of medication abortions surpassed the number of surgical abortions for the first time in 2020, accounting for an estimated
54 percent of all abortions that year, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Medication abortions have continued to compose an
increasingly larger percentage of abortions in the United States, rising to 63 percent in 2023. In April 2021, due in part to the impact
of the COVID-19 pandemic on providing and accessing health care services, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted a ban
on dispensing abortion medication through the mail. The decision enabled patients to access abortion without risking COVID
exposure and allowed abortion providers that operate online to mail pills to more states. The FDA made this change permanent in
December 2021. This change as well as the agency's 2016 decision to update the labeling of abortion drugs were at the center of the
challenge in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (2024) in which the Supreme Court upheld the FDA's rulings.

Roe v. Wade
Abortions were commonly performed in the United States at the time of its founding and were not restricted by law until Connecticut
passed the first anti-abortion law in 1821. Until the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 there was no federal standard for abortion laws, which
were left to the discretion of state legislatures. By 1967 forty-nine states and the District of Columbia had classified abortion as a
felony crime in most cases. That same year, however, Colorado passed a law that allowed women to seek voluntary abortions.
Several states followed Colorado in liberalizing their abortion laws. By 1973 laws prohibiting abortions had been repealed in four
states and loosened in fourteen. In states where abortions were prohibited by law, women who wished to terminate their pregnancies
sought out illegal abortions provided by health care workers who risked jeopardizing their careers or by individuals without the proper
skills or tools to perform the procedure safely.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive abortion laws were unconstitutional and violated a woman's right to privacy,
as implied by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court's decision also determined that an embryo or unviable
fetus is not a person in the legal sense. The ruling established that pregnant persons and their physicians had sole discretion in
decisions to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester but permitted state governments to regulate abortion during the second
trimester. States could ban abortion after the fetus had reached viability, except in cases where the pregnant person's health is
endangered. Viability refers to a fetus's ability to survive outside of the womb. The point at which viability is achieved during a
pregnancy remains a topic of debate, though it is usually accepted as near the end of the second trimester, at around twenty-four
weeks.

In Doe v. Bolton, a companion case to Roe v. Wade decided on the same day, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its decision in Roe v.
Wade by prohibiting abortion laws that require admission to a hospital, approval by a hospital abortion committee, a second and third
medical opinion, or legal residence in a state. The decision also extended the definition of what posed a health threat to the pregnant
person when performing a post-viability abortion by allowing a health care provider to consider such factors as the woman's age and
emotional and psychological health. These two court decisions contributed to a notable decrease in mortality rates among pregnant
women.

After Roe, the Supreme Court heard several cases that challenged the ruling and helped refine abortion law. In Planned Parenthood
v. Danforth (1976), the court ruled against several restrictions imposed by Missouri's abortion laws, thus expanding access to
abortion. One year later, however, the court ruled in Maher v. Roe that state governments could choose to deny public funds for an
abortion, granting the government additional control over reproductive health care. The Maher v. Roe decision took advantage of the
Hyde Amendment, legislation passed by Congress in 1976 that excluded abortion from the list of medical services provided and
covered through Medicaid, the federal and state government program that subsidizes medical costs for patients with limited financial
means.

Campaign to Overturn Roe v. Wade

Responding first to a trend in the states toward liberalizing abortion laws and later to the court's decision in Roe v. Wade, activists
founded several organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s, giving rise to a network of fervent pro-life groups. On the one-year
anniversary of the Roe decision, approximately twenty thousand activists participated in the first March for Life in Washington, DC,
which became an annual event for anti-abortion activists. Activists also commonly hold public demonstrations outside abortion clinics,
brandishing signs with disturbing images of fetuses and shouting condemnations toward people entering the buildings. In 1994 the
Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act made blocking the entrances of places providing abortion counseling or services
a federal offense punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Some anti-abortion activists have taken more extreme, surreptitious, or violent measures. Members of groups such as Project
Veritas, for instance, have posed as patients and secretly filmed abortion providers, using the footage to create misinformation
campaigns alleging unethical and criminal behavior. Anti-abortion groups also operate organizations known as crisis pregnancy
centers or pregnancy resource centers, nonprofit institutions that seek to deter women from terminating unintended pregnancies.
Such organizations have been accused of using misleading and deceptive advertising and purposefully providing inaccurate
information. Members of militant pro-life organizations like Operation Rescue have committed acts of domestic terrorism, such as
bombing clinics and waging aggressive harassment campaigns. Several doctors who provided abortions have been murdered by pro-
life activists.

Meanwhile, in states led by pro-life conservative politicians, legislatures passed laws that placed additional regulations on abortion
providers and had the effect of making abortion services more difficult to obtain. For example, some of these laws included provisions
that required examination rooms for abortion procedures to be a certain size. Other laws required abortion providers and facilities to
be affiliated with a hospital or located within a certain distance from a hospital. Pro-choice groups refer to these laws as Targeted
Regulation (or Restriction) for Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws. The Supreme Court ruled against TRAP bills from Texas and
Louisiana in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016) and June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo (2020), determining that such
requirements did not produce sufficient medical benefit to justify the imposition placed on women seeking abortions.

Many anti-abortion activists celebrated the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, as he had committed during his campaign to
nominating pro-life judges. Anticipating a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, lawmakers in several states advanced more
restrictive anti-abortion legislation, including many laws intended to prohibit abortions before the end of the first trimester. For
example, some states passed legislation outlawing abortion after a "fetal heartbeat" is detected. Reproductive health doctors consider
this terminology misleading, as they describe the sounds heard by the ultrasound machine as the result of electrical activity in fetal
cells, not a heartbeat produced by a functioning heart. Texas' "fetal heartbeat" law prohibited abortions after six weeks and relied on
private citizens for enforcement by allowing anyone in any state to file a civil suit against any person who helps someone get an
abortion in Texas. Out of fear of possible litigation, most providers in the state had ceased operations months before the Supreme
Court issued its ruling in Dobbs.

In the courts, pro-life attorneys brought challenges to Roe in the hopes the Supreme Court would eventually overturn it, while pro-life
activists built an organized pipeline of judicial nominees. In 1982 a group of conservatives and libertarians founded the Federalist
Society for Law and Public Policy Studies as a professional network that would support and promote judges who shared a similar
legal vision, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Trump administration nominated several Federalist Society members as
federal judges, including Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. As of 2024, five of the nine
Supreme Court justices were members of the Federalist Society.

Critical Thinking Questions

Do you think it would be possible for federal lawmakers to add a constitutional amendment or pass a federal law establishing
a national standard regarding abortion rights? Why or why not?
Under what circumstances, if any, do you think state governments should restrict access to abortion services? Explain your
reasoning.
In your opinion, what has been the most significant effect of the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision on US society?
Explain your answer.

Abortion Rights Post-Roe

The Dobbs ruling, which denied that the Constitution ever recognized or implied a right to abortion in the US Constitution, has had a
significant impact on abortion access throughout the country. In the late 2010s, in anticipation of a conservative majority on the court,
lawmakers in some states began passing legislation to safeguard the right to legal and safe abortions in the event Roe v. Wade was
overturned. In 2019, for example, New York passed the Reproductive Health Act, which removed several restrictions, decriminalized
abortion, and limited government interference with the decisions of women and their health care providers. Before Roe's overturning,
ten states had state constitutions protecting abortion rights. As of June 2024, twenty-one states and the District of Columbia had
expanded or protected access to abortion, though the governments of some of these states were challenging those protections.

Before the Dobbs ruling, thirteen US states had passed trigger laws that would outlaw all or most abortions if Roe were overturned,
but not all went into effect immediately after the decision. Some triggered the beginning of a process to ban abortion, while others
triggered the ban going into effect. Some laws were blocked from taking effect while lawsuits against them moved through the courts.
In some states nearly all abortions became illegal, with some not allowing exceptions in instances of rape and incest or when
continuing the pregnancy could be fatal.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order aimed at protecting reproductive rights in July 2022, following the Dobbs ruling. The
order directed federal agencies, including the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to develop plans to protect patient
privacy, safety, and security, as well as ensure access to comprehensive and reliable medical information and medical services,
including abortion and contraception. Despite the sweeping intentions of the executive order, the Biden administration's ability to
affect abortion rights remained limited without congressional action.

Since Dobbs, states have passed new laws either protecting or restricting abortion. In 2022 six states also held ballot initiatives in
which voters chose to protect abortion rights. One major point of contention between states is the ability of people to travel in order to
access abortion. Several states have passed shield laws to protect abortion patients and providers from prosecution in states where
abortion is illegal. In response to a federal rule allowing military personnel stationed in states where access to abortion is restricted to
travel to states where abortion is legal, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R–AL) blocked the Senate from voting on military promotions,
leaving several crucial high-level posts vacant from February 2023 until December 2023.

In the year following Dobbs, the US maternal death rate, already the highest among industrialized countries, rose in states where
abortion access was illegal or highly restricted. According to a January 2023 report by the Gender Equity Policy Institute, pregnant
people in states where abortion is banned were up to three times more likely to die during pregnancy or labor or soon after than
pregnant people in less restrictive states. Of these deaths, one in seven occurred in Texas. Babies were 30 percent likelier to die
during their first month of life in states with abortion bans, and teen birth rates were twice as high in abortion restriction states. The
number of abortions performed in the United States increased after the Dobbs decision. According to the Guttmacher Institute, health
care providers performed about 1,037,000 abortions performed in 2023, compared to 930,160 in 2020.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2024 Gale, part of Cengage Group

Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
"Abortion." Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2024. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/PC3010999336/OVIC?u=orgtec&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=90df568e. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.
Gale Document Number: GALE|PC3010999336