Abortion And Politics Essays - Abortion, Sexual Revolution

Abortion And Politics a?bor?tion: n. 1. Induced termination of a pregnancy and expulsion of an embryo or fetus that is incapable of survival. 2. A miscarriage. 3. Cessation of normal growth, esp. of a body part, prior to full development or maturation. 4. An aborted organism. 5. Something malformed or incompletely developed; a monstrosity. ?We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.? So wrote the founders of our country: the authors of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They stated that one of our most undeniable rights, as a citizen in this country, is the right to life. But when does life begin? It is the question that has fueled the debate over abortion since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Although the controversy regarding the issue has traditionally fallen to a more religious and moral debate, it still has powerful political implications and can easily stir great amounts of emotion in the political arena. Women had been obtaining abortions illegally for countless years before Roe, and the public was calling for change. The political fervor led to a climax when ?Jane Roe? entered the courts challenging the abortion law in her state of Texas. The Texas State law regarding abortion had remained virtually unchanged since its establishment in 1857. The law stated that it was a crime to ?procure an abortion? except in the event that it was ?procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.? Jane Roe (a pseudonym since she wanted to remain anonymous) brought her case that challenged the law to the Supreme Court. Roe's lawyers realized that by the time the lawsuit would be heard, the plaintiff would no longer be pregnant; therefore, they brought the suit on behalf of all women with unwanted pregnancies. The Supreme Court Justices heard the case and the outcome is one of the most memorable rulings in the history of the Court's rulings. The judgement, which the Justices by a 7-2 vote declared the law unconstitutional, voided any state law that restricted a woman's right to obtain an abortion. Under the new decision, a woman is permitted to terminate her pregnancy for any reason provided tha t the fetus in not viable. After viability, states can prevent abortion except if it is necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother. The decision to declare the law unconstitutional was made by a mostly liberal, Democratic panel of Justices. Some analysts have suggested that the decision should have been made by a demographically elected legislature instead of ?appointed for life? Supreme Court Justices. As public opinion polls showed, the court's determination of the value of embryonic life differed completely with that of the masses. Antiabortion groups were outraged by the decision. These same groups often equated the legalization of abortion to the Nazi holocaust and the case was compared to that of Dred Scott v. Samford, the infamous 1857 case that declared that blacks had no rights. In both instances, the court ruled that a group of ?people? (slaves in Dred and human embryos in Roe) to be ?nonpersons.? It was also argued that both rulings were made to invalidate certain instances: in Dred, the Missouri Compromise was voided and in Roe, it ?invalidated the efforts of state legislatures to reform their abortion laws without surrendering state jurisdiction over abortion.? In the years following Roe, several new laws were introduced and rejected. For instance, a law requiring parental consent for minors to obtain an abortion in all cases was argued and struck down. In another trial, the court ruled that the father could not override a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy. However, pro-life groups won some victories, as federal funding of abortions was greatly restricted. Those opposed to abortion were given a glimmer of hope when Congress attempted to overturn the now eight-year-old decision with a new piece of legislature. In April of 1981, Senator Jesse Helms (R, N.C.) and Representative Henry J. Hyde (R, Ill.) proposed a controversial statute that