Blog Stage 7: Abortion

"We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children."

 -Joycelyn Elders

 Abortion has been performed for thousands of years, and in every society that has been studied. It was legal in the United States from the time the earliest settlers arrived. At the time the Constitution was adopted, abortions before "quickening" were openly advertised and commonly performed. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1800s when states began passing laws that made abortion illegal. The criminalization of abortion did not reduce abortion rates, but instead increased maternal and infant mortality rates during childbirth. Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions. These laws prohibiting abortion were finally overturned by the decision of Roe V. Wade in 1973. Still to this day however, the court's decision is debated. The main question at hand is whether or not to grant rights to the fetus, and deciding when a fetus enters person-hood. The problem with granting rights to the fetus, is that it strips grown women of their constitutional and god-given rights. . The specific right of a woman to make the decision to terminate her own pregnancy is generally classified as a privacy right implicit in the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, but there are other constitutional reasons why a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy. The Fourth Amendment, for example, specifies that citizens have "the right to be secure in their persons"; the Thirteenth specifies that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ... shall exist in the United States." Even if the privacy right cited in Roe v. Wade were dismissed, there are numerous other constitutional arguments that imply a woman's right to make decisions about her own reproductive process.