One of the most debated issues of all time is, abortion, which the Oxford English Dictionary denotes as “the termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy” (Oxford English Dictionary 2018). An abortion may be performed one of two ways; medically using the abortion pill or surgically which requires a minor operation that may be done with local anesthetic, with sedation or rarely with general anesthetic. Women should be allowed to have abortions because it is a fundamental right to choose whether to become a parent, whether to carry fetuses diagnosed with anomalies to full term and whether to end a pregnancy that threatens her health and life.
On January 22, 1973 during the landmark abortion case
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No woman should be forced to have a child that she is unwilling to have, especially in cases of rape, incest or contraception failure. The choice of deciding when and whether to become a parent is a very private and important decision a woman must make. The ability to control such decisions offers independence and control over their own destiny, making reproductive choice a fundamental right. Women who are unable to take control of their own body are often forced to live a life they would not have chosen for themselves. If a pregnancy will affect work, education or another part of life it is her reproductive right to determine to keep the baby or not. According to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) undue restrictions on abortion infringe upon “a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” Similarly, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” as she wrote in the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Choice is