The ending of a pregnancy by surgical or chemical removal of the fetus from the woman. The intense political debate caused in the United States by the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Roe v. Wade (1973), which decriminalized abortion but placed restrictions on when during pregnancy the procedure could be performed, has been compared to that over abolition of slavery in the early 1800s. Positions on the abortion issue revolve around the pro-choice view that a fetus is part of the woman's body, not a separate human being, and that, therefore, government laws should not prevent her from aborting or disposing of it; and the pro-life view that the preborn fetus is a human being in development with rights to continued life and that, therefore, abortion is the murder of innocent human life, requiring legal protection.

Both sides agree that abortion is a moral issue but dispute whether the individual woman or society at large should make the decision whether or not abortion is allowed. Liberal Democrats, women's rights groups, and mainline ProtestantT churches in the United States (Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran) have tended to be "pro-choice"; conservative Republicans, the Catholic Church, and Evangelical Christians have tended to be "pro-life." As the U.S. Supreme Court became increasingly conservative in the 1980s and 1990s, its rulings on abortion allowed greater restrictions on abortions by state legislatures. The social debate over abortion continues to be intense. . .

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