Abortion Essay Example

In the United States of America, abortion rights have never been more peril than in the last two years. States like Texas have moved to restrict legal access to abortion. Mississippi and other states are directly challenging Roe vs. Wade in an effort to overturn the ruling. The threat to the constitutional right afforded by Roe vs. Wade is in danger due to nearly 100 new restrictive pieces of legislation that have been passed in the last year alone. 

For almost 50 years, Roe vs. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling, has affirmed access to this problem as a “fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.”  In 1973, this ruling allowed pregnant women to terminate their pregnancies within the first two trimesters. Roe vs. Wade has safeguarded women’s right to seek a safe abortion, preventing illegal abortions and saving millions of lives.

Proponents of abortion rights say that legislation like Texas’s Heartbeat Act acutely curtails women’s reproductive rights. As per the new bill, abortion is illegal after six weeks’ gestation when fetal cardiac activity can be detected on the ultrasound. Anyone seeking abortion can be legally prosecuted under the act.

Moreover, any person who aids and assists a pregnant woman in getting an abortion can also be criminally charged. Women’s rights activists have been up in arms to defend abortion rights in the country. A repeal of Roe vs. Wade could lead to a total abortion ban in 21 states. Most of these states are Republican states with a big Christian population. 

With a majority conservative Supreme Court, abortion rights are at enormous risk. The US Supreme Court announced in May 2021 that it would hear the case “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” which challenged Mississippi’s 15-week abortion prohibition. Again in September 2021, the Supreme Court approved the implementation of Texas’s Heartbeat Act. If this pattern continues, there is a big possibility that access to safe abortions will be dismantled in the coming years.

The ideological divide between pro-choice and pro-life sections has been wider. 

Abortion access is an essential health and reproductive right. While pro-lifers believe that banning abortion will actually stop abortions, the reality is far more convoluted. It’s more likely that restricting abortion access will endanger women’s health as more people will seek illegal and unsafe abortions to end their pregnancies. 

These restrictions will disproportionately impact low-income Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities, LGBTQIA youth, and immigrants- demographics who already suffer from systemic discrimination. Access to healthcare is a current issue in these communities. The new restrictions will severely impair their ability to seek safe abortions. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, several women from conservative states like Mississippi and Missouri will have to go to other places for abortions, making the operation even more difficult for poor, Black, and Hispanic women.

The ongoing attempts to restrict abortion at the state level are part of a more extensive campaign to deny people the freedom to make their own personal medical decisions. It’s being spearheaded by pro-life groups who view deliberate termination as murder. Restricting access to abortion jeopardizes people’s health and safety. Although abortion prohibitions and limitations differ by state, they are all part of a larger push to criminalize abortion entirely in the United States.

States like Oklahoma, Arizona, Soth Dakota, South Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, and others have brought in their own trigger laws aimed at criminalizing abortion. Protecting abortion rights means protecting women’s reproductive rights and the right to choose. While most Americans agree that abortion should be legal, it now rests on the American lawmakers whether they maintain this status quo or revise the existing laws to satiate conservative Christian voters and their anti-abortion stance.

Note: Also, do check out our academic essay examples as your reference for more samples.