Abortion Essay, Research Paper
Abortion
Abortion: Whose choice? Abortion in today’s society has become very political. You are
either pro-choice or pro-life, and there doesn’t seem to be a happy medium. As we look at
abortion and research its history, should it remain legal in the United States, or should it
be outlawed to reduce the ever growing rate of abortion. A choice should continue to
exist but the emphasis needs to be placed on education of the parties involved. James C.
Mohr takes a good look at abortion in his book Abortion in America. He takes us back in
history to the 1800s so we can understand how the practice and legalization of abortion
has changed over the year. In the absence of any legislation whatsoever on the subject of
abortion in the U.S. in 1800, the legal status of the practice was governed by the
traditional British common law as interpreted by the local courts of new American states.
For centuries prior to 1800 the key to the common law’s attitude towards abortion had
been a phenomenon associated with normal gestation as quickening. Quickening was the
first perception of fetal movement by the pregnant woman herself. Quickening generally
occurred during the mid-point of gestation, late in the fourth or early in the fifth month,
though it would and still does vary a good deal from one woman to another (pg.3). The
common law did not formally recognize the existence of a fetus in criminal cases until it
had quickened. After quickening, the expulsion and destruction of the fetus without due
case was considered a crime, because the fetus itself had manifested some semi-balance
of a separate existence: the ability to move (pg3). The even more controversial question:
Is the fetus alive? Has been at the forefront of the debate. Medically, the procedure of
removing a blockage was the same as those for inducing an early abortion. Not until the
obstruction moved would either a physician or a woman regardless of their suspicions be
completely certain that it was a “natural” blockage-a pregnancy-rather than a potentially
dangerous situation. Morally, the question of whether or not the fetus was “alive” had
been the subject of philosophical and religious debate among honest people for 5,000
years. Single pregnant woman used abortion as a way to avoid shame. The practice of
aborting unwanted pregnancies was, if not common, almost certainly not rare in the
United States. A knowledge of various drugs, potions and techniques was available from
home medical guides, from health books for woman, for mid-wives and irregular
practitioners, and trained physicians. Substantial evidence suggest that many American
women sought abortions, tried the standard techniques of the day, and no doubt
succeeded some proportions of the time in terminating unwanted pregnancies. Moreover,
this practice was neither morally nor legally wrong in the vast majority of Americans,
provided it was accomplished before quickening. The important early court cases all
involved single woman trying to terminate illegitimate pregnancies. As late as 1834 it
was axiomatic to a medical student at the University of Maryland, who wrote his
dissertation on spontaneous abortion, that woman who feigned dysmenorrhea in order to
obtain abortions from physicians were woman who had been involved in illicit
intercourse. Cases reported in the medical journals prior to 1840 concern the same
percentages (16,17). Samuel Jennings quoted Dr. Denman, one of the leading obstetrical
writers of the day to reassure his readers, “In abortions, dreadful and alarming as they are
sometimes it is great comfort to know that they are almost universally void of danger
either from hemorrhage, or any other account.” Again, the context was spontaneous by
the then induced abortion, but in a book with such explicit suggestions for relieving the
common cold, woman could easily conclude that the health risks involved in bringing on
an abortion were relatively low, or at least not much worse than childbirth itself in 1808,
when Jennings wrote in his book (18). Mohr continues with the first dealings with the
legal statues on abortion in the United States. The earliest laws that dealt specifically with
the legal status of abortion in the U.S. were inserted into Americans criminal code books
between 1821 and 1841. Ten states and one federal territory during that period enacted
legislation that for the first time made certain kinds of abortions explicit statute offenses
rather than leaving the common law to deal with them. The legislation 13, 14 and 15 read.
Every person who shall, willfully and maliciously, administer to, or cause to be
administered to, or taken by, any person or persons, any deadly poisons, or other noxious
and destructive substance, within an intention him/her/them, thereby to murder, or
thereby to cause or procure the miscarriage of any woman, then being quick with child,
and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall suffer imprisonment, in the newgate prison,
during his natural life, or for such other terms as the court having cognizance of the
offense shall determine (21). Consequently, it is not surprising that the period was not one
of vigorous anti-abortion activity in state legislation. One of the exceptions was Ohio. In
1834 legislators there made attempted abortion a misdemeanor without specifying any
stage of gestation, and they made the death of either the woman or the fetus after
quickening a felony (39,40), Alabama enacted a major code revision during the
1840/1841 session of its legislature that made the abortion of “any pregnant woman” a
statuate crime for the first time in that state, but pregnant meant quickened (40). A code
revision in Maine in 1984 made attempted abortion of any woman “pregnant with child”
an offense, whether such child be quick or not.” Regardless of what method was used
(41). The first wave of abortion legislation in American history emerged from the
struggles of both legislatures and physicians to control medical practice rather than from
public pressures to deal with abortion per se. Every one of the laws passed between 1821
and 1841 punished only the “person” who administered the abortifacients or performed
the operation; none punished the woman herself in any way. The laws were aimed, in
other words, at regulating the activities of apothecaries and physicians, not at dissuading
woman from seeking abortions (43). The major increase in abortion in the U.S. start in
the early 1840’s three key changes began to take place in the patterns of abortion in the
United States. These changes profoundly effected the evolution of abortion policy for the
next 40 years. First, abortion came out into the public view; by the mid-1840’s the fact
that Americans practiced abortion was an obvious social reality, constantly visible for the
population as a whole. The second overwhelming incident of abortion, according to the
commentary observers began to rise in the early 1840’s and remained at high levels
through the 1870’s. Abortion was no longer marginal practice whose incident probably
approximated that of illegitimacy, but rather a wide spread social phenomenon during that
period (46). Third, the types of woman having recourse to abortion seem to change; the
dramatic surge of abortion in the U.S. after 1840 was attributed not to the increase in
illegitimacy or a decline in marital fidelity, but rather to the increase use of abortion by
white, married, Protestants, native born woman of the mid and upper class who either
wished to delay their child bearing or already had all the children they wanted (46). The
increased public visibility of abortion as stated by Mohr may be attributed largely to a
process common enough in American history: commercializations. Several factors were
involved in the commercialization of abortion, but the continued compensation for clients
among members of the medical profession stood out because that compensation was so
intense many marginal practitioners began in the early 1840’s to try and attract patients by
advertising in popular press their willingness to treat the private ailments of woman in
terms that everybody recognized as significantly their willing to provide abortion services
(47). During the 1840’s Americans also learned for the first time not only that many
practitioners would provide abortion services, but that some practitioners had made the
abortion business their chief livelihood indeed, abortion became one of the first
specialties in American medical history. The popular press began to make abortion more
visible to the American people during the 1840’s not only in its advertisements, but also
in its coverage of a number of sensational trials alleged to involve botched abortions and
professional abortionists (47). One indication that abortion rates probably jumped in the
United States during the 1940’s and remained high for some 30 years thereafter was the
increased visibility of the practice. By the 1950’s, then, commercialization had brought
abortion into the public view in the United States, and the visibility it gained would effect
the evolution of abortion policy in American State Legislatures. At the same time, a
second key change was taking place: American woman began to practice abortion more
frequently after 1840 then they had earlier in the century (50). During the week of January
4, 1845, Boston Daily Times advertised Madame Restell’s Female Pills; Madame
Drunette’s lunar pills which were sold as “a blessing to mothers… and although very
mild and prompt in their operations, pregnant females should not use them, as they may
invariably produce a miscarriage”: A second piece of evidence for high abortion rates for
the period of was existent during that time of flourishing business and abortifacients
medicine (53). The East River Medical Association of New York obtained an affidavit
form the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1871 declaring that a single manufacturer
had produced so many packages of abortifacient pills “during the last twelve months” that
30,841 federal revenue stamps had been required of him(59). Beginning in 1840 several
Southern physicians drew attention to the fact that slave women used cotton root as a
abortifacient, and they considered it both mild and effective. Although regular physicians
never prescribed cotton root for any purpose in normal practice, druggists around the
country were soon beginning to stock it. By the late 1850’s, according to the Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, cotton root had “become a very considerable article of
sale” in New England pharmacies. In 1871 ” a druggist in extensive trade ” informed Van
de Warker “that the sales of extract of cotton-wood had quadrupled in the last five years”
(59). Judging by advertisements in the German-language press in New York after the
Civil War. Abortion was apparently on a commercialized and relatively open basis in the
German community by then. Female specialists, quite candidly announced their
willingness to provide for German women the services then touted so openly in the
English-language press. Many practitioners offered abortifacient preparations for sale and
several made less than subtle allusions to their willingness to operate. A Dr. Harrison, for
example, invited German women to his office with the promise that” all menstrual
obstructions, from whatever cause they might originate, will be removed in a few hours
without risk or pain”(91). Mohr advises us who was performing the abortions. Only the
affluent, generally speaking. Could offer temptations that were worth the risk to a regular
of being found out by his colleagues. The two groups of regulars most vulnerable to
proffered bonuses for abortions were young men struggling to break into the viciously
competitive laissez faire medical market of the 1840s and the 1850s and older
practitioners losing their skills and their reputations during the 1860s and 1870s, when
modern medicine took long strides forward and physicians unfamiliar with the new
breakthroughs began to fall behind (95). The founding of the American Medical
Association in 1847 may be taken as the beginning of this long-term effort, the goals of
which were not fully realized until the twentieth century. Mohr leads us to believe that the
physicians were launching a crusade against abortion for there own finical benefit. While
the founding of the AMA did not instantly alter the situation, it did provide an
organizational framework within which a concerted campaign for a particular policy
might be coordinated on a larger scale than ever before. Ten years after its creation a
young Boston physician decided to use that framework to launch an attack upon
America’s ambiguous and permissive policies toward abortion (147-148). The young
physician was Horatio Robinson Storer, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. Storer,
an activist who “kept things stirred up wherever he was, “sensed that his elders were
growing restive about abortion and that the time was right for a professionally ambitious
leaders to take advantage of the still unfocused opposition of regular physicians to
abortion. Horatio Storer laid the groundwork for the anti-abortion campaign he launched
later in the year by writing influential physicians all around the country early in 1857 and
inquiring about the abortion laws in each of their states (148-149). Reactions around the
country continued to bode well for the success of Storer’s national project. Still another
prominent professor of obstetrics, Dr. Jesse Boring of the Atlanta Medical School, who
was at the AMA meeting in 1857, when Storer called for action, came out publicly
against the ” prevalent laxity of moral sentiment of this subject, as evidenced by the
increasing frequency of induced abortions”(155). Between 1860 and 1880 physicians all
around the nation worked hard at the job of “educating up” the public attitude toward
abortion in the U.S., and by the end of that period they had made some significant
progress (171). Public opinion is turned to make abortion illegal the popular press and
church had joined with the leaders of the charge the physicians. Mohr continues to state
that the anti-obscenity movement rose to prominence during the 1870sunder the
leadership of Anthony Comstock, the well-known head of the New York Society for the
Suppression of Vice. In the 1873 Comstock persuaded Congress to pass ” and Act for the
Suppression of Trade in and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral
Use. ” As a result of that law, it became a federal offense to ?sell, or offer to sell,
or?give away for offer to give away, or ?have in?possession with intent to sell or give
away,?instrument, or other article of indecent or immoral nature, or any article or
medicine?for causing abortion, except on a prescription of a physician in good standing,
given in good faith?(196). Under the law of 1873 Comstock himself became a special
agent of the national government empowered to enforce the act’s provisions. In this
capacity Comstock became the country’s best known pursuer of abortionists for the
remainder of the 1870s. In early spring of 1878 he finally succeed in arresting Madame
Restell herself, after purchasing abortifacient preparations from her. The popular press
trumpeted the arrest loudly, and when Madame Restell committed suicide on the day
before her trial the story became an instant national even international, sensation. As a
symbolic act, the Restell suicide of April 1878 may well have marked a turning point in
public opinion in the United States (197). The anti-abortion legislation begins Mohr tells
us. Between 1860 and 1880 the regular physicians’ campaign against abortion in the
Untied States produced the most important burst of anti-abortion legislation in the
nation’s history. At least 40 anti-abortion statutes of various kinds were placed upon state
and territorial law books during that period. Some 13 jurisdictions formally outlawed
abortion for the first time, and at least 21 states revised their already existing statutes on
the subject. More significantly, most of the legislation passed between 1860 and 1880
explicitly accepted the regulars’ assertions that the interruption of gestation at any point in
a pregnancy should be crime and that ate state itself should try actively to restrict the
practice of abortion (200). Consequently, after four decades of rapid change, American
abortion policy re-estabilized during the final two decades of the nineteenth century while
legislative responses typical to the 1860s and 1870s wove themselves deeply into the
fabric of American law. There they would remain through the first two thirds of the
twentieth century (245). The Roe vs. Wade case is told by Mohr so bring up to today’s
law in practice. A single, pregnant woman, assigned the pseudonym Jane Roe by the court
to protect her privacy, took action in 1970 against Henry Wade, the district attorney of
Dallas County, Texas, where Jane Roe lived, in an effort to prevent him from enforcing
the Texas state anti-abortion statute on the grounds that it violated the United States
Constitution. The law that Jane Roe wanted struck down dated form the 1850s. After
hearing the case argued in December 1971, and reargued in October 1972, the Supreme
Court finally rendered its decision in January 1973. Jane Roe “won” the case in a
technical sense, for the majority ruled that Texas anti-abortion sense, for the majority
ruled that the Texas anti-abortion statue was indeed unconstitutional as drafted.
Moreover, all similar statues then in effect in other stated were likewise declared to be
unconstitutional. By itself this portion of the decision would not only have undone all that
the physicians’ crusade of the nineteenth century had brought about, but would have left
the nation with an abortion policy considerably more tolerant of the practice than the
common law had been two hundred years earlier (247). Roger Rosenblatt gives us his
opinion on abortion. My stand on abortion is conventionally. Pro-choice: Every woman in
America, in my opinion, ought to have the legal right to choose an abortion. The belief
that a clear-cut intellectual or moral compromise is available to the issue, is wrong. If
abortion is considered murder, how can it ever be entirely acceptable to those who oppose
it, even though they may allow certain exceptions to the rule. If it’s not considered
murder, on what grounds would those who favor abortion rights want them restricted?
Nor do I believe that the question of when life begins, over which there is so much
scientific and spiritual haggling, is pertinent or useful to the debate. I would be perfectly
willing to concede that life begins at conception, yet I would still advocate a system in
which the killing of an unborn child is preferable to forcing an unwilling mother to give
birth. And I do not believe that community rights in this matter are equal to individual
rights. While the rights of the community are not to be ignored, the final decision should
be the individual woman’s no matter how misguided she may be thought or how strongly
the rest of society disapproves (1-10). Dr. Hodgson said that she did not think abortion
constituted killing at all. The obstetrician said, ” I think I have done a humane service for
lots of women in this world. I don’t look upon (abortion) as killing, because I do not
consider that any embryo or fetus is a person. It is a potential person “(24). The killer of
women is illegal abortion and that is why women should have a choice. The question is,
when you have a woman’s life and her needs and her health on the one side and the
developing fetus on the other, a choice has to be made. And the choice should be left to
the individual. Father McBrien stated his personal and religious morality forbade his
approving of abortion in any situation, but even in this he was willing to accept his role as
an American citizen, which requires people to live with several things they dislike (28).
Brian Elroy Mc, tells us the abortion stance of most Christians is one sided. In reality
there is merely evidence that most people will listen to their pastors and to Christian radio
broadcaster. They merely listen to others who quote a verse to support a view they heard
from someone else. By definition, most Christians, rather than reading for themselves,
follow the beliefs of a Culture of Christianity – and many of the Culture’s beliefs are based
on one or two verses of the Bible, often taken out of context (5-1). Lets take a look at
what God has to say in the Bible. The commandment against murder. Psalms 139:13-16,
has been used by Christians and taken out of text to serve the point of ant-abortion. These
are used to try and state that the fetus is a human and that abortion is murder. A lot of
verses in the Bible can be taken out of text Palms 10:1, could be used to state that God
has abandoned us. Also Job 10:18-19, could be used to state that the Bible supports
ending a pregnancy in the face of a life without quality. According to Elroy, it’s time to
stop the one-sided view of abortion being proclaimed by Christian leaders. These leaders
do not despite their claims have a biblical mandate for their theologies. It is time to stop
preaching that the Bible contain and undeniable doctrine against abortion doctors and
upon women who have abortions, especially when it’s done in the name of a God who has
no written such condemnations in his Bible. It is time to stop, because the act of making a
judgement against people in God’s name, when God is not behind the judging, is nothing
short of claiming that our own beliefs are more important than God’s. We must stop,
because if we don’t, then indeed the very type of theological argument being used against
abortion can be turned around and used to proclaim that abortion is biblical (18). Effects
on an abortion and their ridicule that goes along with it can leave scars that can last a
lifetime. These are a lists of questions asked to an unnamed woman who has become a
victim of the anti-abortion propaganda. Lets take a look at how her decision to have an
abortion has changed her life. Q: Why did you have an abortion? A: I was too young, and
pressured by parents to have an abortion as their religion did not accept premarital
intercourse and the child would be considered illegitamate, even if she and the father
were to have wed. Q: How does it effect you now? A: I’ve got emotional scars, it’s not a
quick fix, it’s a burden that you carry for life. I still think about it. Q: How often do you
think about it? A: Once or twice a month, especially in June, which was the month I had
it done. Q: Do you remember the day? A: Yes, June 7th, 1988. Q: How did you feel right
after it was over? A: Well, after I woke up and came around, I felt like a huge burden had
been lifted off my shoulders and I remember my Dad saying “That’s my Tiger, she’s back”
I was back to my old bubbly self, or so I thought. Q: What kind of advice would you give
a young girl in the same situation? A: Think long and hard, you will always have a sense
of doubt, did I make the right choice or I wonder if I didn’t. Q: Which way would you
lean towards in trying to direct this girl in the same situation? A: I would not influence
her, it’s her decision. I would tell her my story and how it’s effected my life. Q: When did
you realize it would never go away? A: When my current child was born. Q: Did you
think it was a fetus or a live child? A: A fetus, because there was no heart beat. Q: Are
you going to tell your children about it to change their views on premarital sex? A: When
they are old enough to understand, yes, so they won’t be pressured into the same situation.
The suffering caused by abortion can be about many different feelings, such as anger,
grief, guilt, shame and spiritual injury. The interview with the victim has clearly shown
that these feelings may last a lifetime. This is even more reason why education before
conception, pre and post abortion is so important. There’s a book called Peace after
Abortion that can help heal some of these feelings she might be experiencing. A word
about Pro-Life from Rosenblatt, the effort to reduce the necessity of abortion, which is the
same as an effort to improve much that needs improving in this country, is to choose life
as whole-heartedly as it is to be “Pro-life.” By such an effort one is choosing life for
millions who do not want to be, who do not deserve to be, forever hobbled by an
accident, a mistake, or by miseducation. By such an effort one is also choosing a different
sort of like for the country as a whole-a more sympathetic life in which we acknowledge,
privileged and unprivileged alike, that we have the same doubts and mysteries and hopes
for one another (179). We’ve got to eliminate the cause of unwanted pregnancies, and if
we can work together, liberals and conservatives, religious people and non religious
people alike, to eliminate the reasons why young women feel that they must have an
abortion when they don’t want to have an abortion, then we can, together, do something
constructive and stop this useless and endless debate about whether there’s a baby there
with a personality or whether or not it’s simply a woman’s right. It is right that we have
the choice, but it would be better if we did not have to make it. [ Work Cited Elroy, Brian
Mc. The Bible and Abortion, Why abortion is Biblical www.elroy.com/her/abortion.html
The Every day Bible, ( New century version ) 87-51673. Peace after abortion, an internet
site that offers help for women. www.peacesafterabortion.com Mohr, James C. Abortion
in America. New York: Oxford university Press,1978. Rosenblatt, Roger. Life Itself
Abortion in American Mind. New York: Random House,1992. Unnamed Interview. A
women who experienced abortion first hand.