Running Head: Should Abortion be legal or illegal? 1
Should Abortion be legal or illegal?
Vanisha Mcclamy
ENG 101 H
Mrs. Flora Giacci
11/13/12
Should Abortion be legal or illegal? 2
Abortion has become a popular topic over the years. An abortion is the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy (Daum, 2012). Some people are Pro-abortionist, meaning that they believe it should be legal. Others are Anti-abortionist; they believe it should be illegal. The ongoing debate of whether abortion should remain legal or illegal aroused in the 1970’s during the Roe vs. Wade case. In 1969, Norma L. McCorvey known as Jane Roe discovered she was pregnant with her third child. Abortion was only legal in cases of rape or incest in Texas at the time. For this reason, Roe falsely stated that she was raped in order to obtain a legal abortion. However, this scheme failed due to the lack of evidence and police reports. Jane Roe then filed suit in a U.S District Court in Texas, alleging that the abortion law in Texas violated her constitutional rights and the rights of other women. The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. The Supreme Court sided with Roe and in 1973 “the US Supreme Courts declared the procedure of abortion a fundamental right” (Lewis, 2012), legalizing abortion throughout the US. Jane Roe was able to provide the US Supreme Court with enough reasoning on why abortion should be legal, but does that necessarily means her claim is right? Is abortion murder? Many Pro-abortionist think that abortion is not murder, but in fact “Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard Medical School, referenced medical textbooks that claimed that human life begins at conception” (Rose, 2009). Therefore, the fetus or embryo is actually a human. When a woman gets an abortion, it stops the life and growth of a human being, killing them. In cases of rape or...