The Rise Of Abortion

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Pages: 6

Since the Roe v. Wade court case, state legislatures have been doing everything in their power to restrict reproductive rights. In response, women look for ways to induce their own abortions. If legislators continue to restrict reproductive rights, especially abortion, women will continue to turn to abortion methods they find outside of a doctor’s office; in many cases these methods are unhealthy and/or unsafe. To end this cycle of women placing their safety in harm, we as a society need to understand how supporting pro-life laws are encouraging women to inflict harm upon themselves through unsafe abortion methods and encourage the use of safe methods of abortion through the education system. Women have been performing at home abortions long …show more content…
As Planned Parenthood points out, medical abortions are one of the most popular abortion methods for early pregnancies (“Abortion”). Women are given mifepristone to take in a doctor’s office and then they are given misoprostol to take the next day (“Abortion”). With the end goal of banning abortion, legislators banned misoprostol to discourage women from getting abortions at all. As Phoebe Zerwick’s article, “The Rise of DIY Abortions” points out, after misoprostol was banned women began to risk their lives by going to the black market, knowing that they can be sent to jail or receive a fake pill (Zerwick). She specially follows a young woman’s journey going to the black market to receive misoprostol since it has become illegal (Zerwick). Zerwick’s article does not disclose which state this young woman lives in, for privacy reasons (Zerwick). However, the Guttmacher Institute has accounted for 18 states that have banned the use of this pill and 41 states that require that medical abortions are performed by a licensed physician (“An Overview”). To clarify, by providing a patient a pill dosage, with the intent to cause an abortion, a person is “performing” an abortion. By enforcing that abortions must be performed by a licensed physician, clinics like Planned Parenthood, who are dependent on volunteers, are not able to legally perform any kind of abortion, unless their volunteer happens to be certified. By …show more content…
Individuals that disagreed with the legalization of abortion rights, protest at clinics known to provide abortions, the most extreme protest ended with clinics being either bombed or burned down. State legislators protested this court case by creating restrictions to limit how or when a woman can receive an abortion. For pro-life protestors, the support from their state legislators have fueled their enthusiasm. Since they know the law is on their side, protestors are more inclined to commit aggressive and invasive protest since their officials are taking their side by constructing these restrictive laws. Not only does a woman have to face protestors, chanting claims like “abortion is murder,” they must undergo restrictive laws that aim to discourage women from proceeding with their abortion. States have laws that mandate things like “waiting periods” where a woman comes in for an abortion and then is told she must go home and come back to the clinic between 24-72 hours later (Nash). The legal justification behind this law is to inform a woman about her options: abortion, adoption, or keeping the child. However, for a woman that had to build up the courage to walk into a clinic the first time, she may not be able to build up this same courage, especially if her experience with the protestors or even the doctor was