Childbearing Controversy: Abortion in America.
In the past twenty years, abortion rates have climbed significantly. More and more women are exercising their choice, and with it their rights, to have what has become the most common surgical procedure American women undergo (Tompkins 145). The simple operation is undertaken by one out of every five women over the age of 15, a quarter of which are teenagers. These 1.6 million women come from many disparate backgrounds, from all races, creeds, and classes, but they share one common trait: for one reason or another, they feel unready for the burdens of motherhood. This bucking of the tradition of becoming a wife and mother alarms many conservatives, and so, as has any issue of import, abortion has become a highly political and emotionally charged topic. But though it is extremely controversial, when one takes into account the social, medical, and legal aspects it is strikingly apparent that women need the right to personally choose to have an abortion.
Abortion became an outrage in this country only after the Civil War. It was then that the American Medical Association, seeking to bolster the authority of physicians over that of midwives, pushed for anti-abortion legislation to limit outside consultation (Garrett 18). Up to this point, abortion had been legal up until "quickening", or the first signs of movement in the womb (Lader 1). Nearly all state courts in the early to mid-nineteenth century had upheld this view that abortion with the woman's consent was not punishable by law. Far from the intended effect of increasing confidence in medical authority, however, the prohibition of abortion led many women to back-alley quacks, putting their lives in mortal peril from these homeopathic "surgeons". By seeking to reinforce their political standing, the AMA was actually endangering lives. .
Endangering the mother's life, however, seemed to be entirely acceptable to the so-called "moral majority".