The Morality Of Abortion Legal In The United States

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Referring to the textbook I gathered some information on abortion the laws and where its illegal .Abortion has been legal in United States since 1973 .Around the world abortion is permitted without restriction as to reason in fifty six countries and is completely illegal in thirty two countries with no exception for rape or to save the life of the women. Thirty six countries allow abortion only if it will save the life of the mother or in exceptional cases such as when the women has been raped or there is fetal impairment .In recent years there have been around one million abortions performed annually in the united states with the abortion rate slowly declining in 1980’s.Much of the contemporary debate about abortion is concerned with whether the law ought to permit abortion and, if so, what, if any, legal regulations ought to be placed on it. The relationship between morality and the law is often ignored in these debates. This equivalence between morality and the law is questionable. …show more content…
Following the teachings of Augustine and Aquinas, the Church held that the fetus was not human until sometime after conception when the matter was suitable for the reception of a human soul. In the first half of the twentieth century, most U.S. states passed laws regulating or making abortion illegal, except in certain cases such as a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when the pregnant woman’s life or health was threatened. However, women continued to have abortions illegally and under dangerous conditions. (The most notorious of these “back alley” abortion methods involved the use of a coat hanger to scrape the uterine lining, which became a symbol used by the movement to legalize