Abortion :: essays research papers

The Right to Choose Should there be a constitutional amendment banning abortion? In society today an agreement exists that when life becomes human life, that the human being must be protected. Many religions, organizations and individuals have passionately held conflicting beliefs about when human life begins. Is a fetus a human life at conception? Or is a child a human life at birth? Today, this question goes hand in hand with that question of abortion. There is so much controversy over this delicate issue that congress has been debating over it for nearly thirty years. This comes down to yet another heated question. Should there be a constitutional amendment banning abortion? It is nearly impossible to find someone who doesn’t have an opinion about abortion and probably a strong opinion at that. Debates on this topic usually go nowhere, leaving the opponents even more committed to their positions than before. Last month marked the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade. Prior to the case filed by Jane roe, the state of Texas made it a crime to perform a crime unless a child’s life was at stake. Jane Roe was an unmarried woman who wanted to safely and legally end her pregnancy end her pregnancy. The Supreme Court ruled that: (1) A woman and her doctor may freely decide to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester. (2) State governments can restrict abortion access after the first trimester with laws intended to protect the woman’s health. (3) Abortions after fetal viability must be available if the women’s health or life is at risk; state governments can prohibit other abortions. The reason the Roe vs. Wade case was so important was because it has come to be known as the case that legalized abortion nationwide. At the time of the Roe vs. Wade decision, nearly two-thirds of the states outlawed abortion except to save a woman’s life. Before abortion was made legal to the majority of the states, many women lost their lives due to illegal abortion. In 1965 seventeen percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were due to illegal abortion. The film If These Walls Could Talk portrays injuries such as this in the time period. In fact, by the time Roe restored the right to abortion, from 200,000 to1.2 million illegal abortions were performed annually and hundreds of women died every year to end unwanted pregnancies.