Abortion decreases the functionality of government as an institution. Institutions in sociology are the ways that social groups, along with their roles are interconnected. Abortion decreases the functionality of government because there is an unknown idea of what is politically correct and what should be done for the benefit of the country. Public opinion is completely split which affects politicians and their views. Should abortion be made legal everywhere or just in some places or not legal at all?
In the Roe v. Wade case forty years ago, abortion was made that it had to be safer by law. “According to the most recent available data, approximately 1.2 million women obtain safe, legal abortions from skilled clinicians in the United States every year.” Even if contraceptives were made more available to women in place of abortion, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports that the intrauterine devices, one of the most effective contraceptives available today, have a failure rate of 1.5 to 3%. This means that if all married women in the United States could and did use these contraceptives, there would still be about 350,000 to 700,000 unwanted pregnancies a year among married women alone. Even sterilization is not a 100% effective method of contraception; some operations fail. Therefore, in order to insure a complete and thorough birth control program, abortion must be made available as a legal right to all women who request it."
However, there are other laws that have made abortion more difficult to attain. “In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment banning federal Medicaid funding for abortion.” If some women only have Medicaid for healthcare and it wont pay for it, it makes it more difficult for women to get abortions if they don’t have the money to pay out of pocket for it. Though there are still many people opposed to the Roe v. Wade decisions and “According to the Pew survey, more than twice as many people support keeping Roe vs. Wade in place as want it overturned. Among those who want it overturned, 38% said they consider the issue “critical.” An additional 36% see abortion as one of many important issues facing the country and 25% see the issue as not that important.” There’s still a larger amount of people in the country that will protest against abortion and that can influence politicians greatly.
The government is in gridlock trying to make or not make laws on abortion. Is it constitutional? Is it part of private life that cannot be regulated by the government? The outcomes are unknown. There are many