Many legal battles have been fought in the United States over the issue of abortion. Merz states that the earliest American law on abortion was based on the British common law. In addition, Merz says until 1803 the British common law did not view abortion as a crime if it was performed before the fetus “quickened”. Since a fetus is not yet a baby, does the unborn child have the capacity to feel pain? Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain (Reagan 31). In the 1800 time period abortions were legal but in the 1900’s they became illegal in t

Bender states, “Of the 1.5 million abortions performed in the United States annually, nearly one-third are on minors, many without parental consent or even knowledge”. According to Illsley and Hall, it is estimated that less than two percent of abortions were performed for maternal health reasons (Burtchaell 62). On the other hand, in the 1980’s teenage abortions

remained in the low forties per 1,000 females of the age fifteen to nineteen. The number of teenage abortions in the early 1900’s were forty per 1,000 females of the age fifteen to nineteen, thirty-eight in 1991, and thirty-six in 1992. Furthermore, Allan Gullmacher Institution reports that of the total number of births in the United States thirteen percent are from teens. The United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies than any other country. Statistics show that unmarried teenage girls fifteen to nineteen years of age in the 1950’s had an estimated number of rate of 56,000 births. In 1970, 190,000 births were reported. Additionally, in 1990 there were 350,000 to 361,000 births including girls under age fifteen. About thirty percent of teenage girls choose to have abortions rather than give birth to a child. Abortion is a moral, not a medical problem, according to psychiatrist Thomas Szaszo (Burtchaell 67).

solve her personal problems, but in all, women are abandoning abortion because it weakens their great strengths: creation, compassion, and ability to choose. Maybe soon the abortion issue will reverse and people will see the rights of the unborn as greater in importance than that of a personal right.

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