Abortion is one of the most disputed topics in the nation. In this world, there are two primary stances in this debate: pro-life activists who believe abortion should be illegal under all circumstances due to the baby's rights, and pro-choice activists who believe women should be able to have the right to choose if they want an abortion or not. The big question in this debate is often: who has more rights, the mother or the unborn child? Abortion is controversial because some people find it to be immoral and may even consider it as murder. However, pro-life activists have not yet come up with a good long term substitution for this practice if it were to be made illegal. Abortion is a needed medical procedure that has many misconceptions but has been proven to be helpful for many women. By taking away abortion, one takes away the mother's' rights to choose how to proceed with their right to choose when and how they become a parent. Furthermore, the decision to make abortions illegal has and will lead to many women having illegal and unsafe abortions performed by untrained medical personels. These are the desperate measures that women turn to when they feel they have no other solution and these illegal and unsafe procedures often result in long term health issues and even death in many cases. .
In medicine, abortion is defined as "the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost" (Medicinenet). A big misconception associated with the word pro-choice is that people think it means pro abortion. Pro-choice, as stated before, is the belief that the government should allow all women to be able to have the right to choose whether or not they want to have an abortion. People who are pro-choice are not necessarily saying that they are for abortions, but rather that they respect the mother's choice and what she chooses.