Abortion has been perhaps the most controversial moral, legal and political issue in the U.S. since the late 20th century. In technical terms, abortion is a method of preventing the birth of an unwanted child by inducing a miscarriage. Although the procedure itself is relatively simple when practiced by a qualified medical person, the issue of whether abortion is an appropriate means of ending a pregnancy is one fraught with emotional and philosophical repercussions.
Advocates of legalized abortion, who regard themselves as "pro-choice," claim that a fetus is not a person and that a woman should have the right to make her own reproductive decisions; government regulation of abortion is seen as an unconstitutional intrusion of government into a private matter. Abortion rights advocates also cite the high incidence of serious injury or death from illegal abortions performed under unsanitary conditions by unskilled abortionists. In the U.S. and Western Europe, the demand for the legalization of abortion was led by the Women's Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In asserting the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court invoked the right to privacy implicit in the Constitution and affirmed earlier in Griswold v. Connecticut.
Opponents of abortion, mainly Roman Catholics and Protestant fundamentalists who regard themselves as "pro-life," rely largely on moral and religious arguments. Many abortion opponents believe that human life begins at the moment of conception, or at least that a fetus is more than a mere collection of tissues; in this view, abortion is therefore murder. Some opponents of abortion claim that if abortion can be justified, any means can be used to justify any end. For them, the fact that a baby is unwanted is not sufficient cause to justify abortion. Antiabortion activists have sought to protect the rights of the unborn, but most U.S. courts' ruling on the issue have ruled in favor of the woman's rights over those of the fetus. The Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) neither upheld nor overturned the ruling in Roe v. Wade but gave states the right to regulate abortion. Subsequently, abortion again became a major issue in state and local elections.
Public opinion polls in the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s showed that the American population was almost evenly divided over the issue. Despite the polarized views on abortion, most Americans believed that abortions should not be undertaken lightly or encouraged as a routine method of birth control; on the other hand, few believed that prohibitions on abortion should be absolute, but rather that exceptions may be made in cases in which the fetus is deformed, the mother's health is at risk, or of rape. Abortion laws were liberalized in the United Kingdom in 1967, and abortion is currently legal, to various degrees, in all the nations of Western Europe.
Abortion remained a contentious political issue throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. Repeated controversy followed congressional Republican efforts to ban partial-birth abortions during the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. President Bush also supported a May 2004 ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban over-the-counter sales of Plan B, a morning-after contraception.
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Essay, Research Paper: 
