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Should Abortion Be Banned?

Introduction, arguments for banning of abortion, counterarguments and refutation, works cited.

The issue of abortion has led to divergent opinions in the US with the pro-life activists advocating its illegalization and their pro-choice counterparts arguing in its favor. Pro-choice crusaders assert that a pregnant woman ought to be accorded the right to either sire the child or carry out an abortion before birth. One rationale behind their argument is that such a lady might have been a rape victim who is not prepared to get a baby (Sedgh et al. 224). In contrast, pro-life activists affirm that options should be established instead of abortion, for example, presenting the child for adoption. The reason they give for their position is that if all women were to undertake abortion and not get any child, the continuity of human life would be threatened. Abortion is a contentious and divisive topic in the community, civilization, and politics of the United States, and numerous anti-abortion rules have been in effect in all states from around 1900.

Pro-life activists assert that other options might be preferable in place of abortion. They state that only fewer than 20% of all cases of abortion are associated with rape or even minors (Thomas et al. 358). Therefore, they maintain that among the most effective solutions to the avoidance of abortion is engaging in protected sex when is not prepared to rear a baby. A different practice would be to get the baby and present it to be cared for by other willing individuals rather than termination of its life. One might contact organizations dedicated to nurturing babies who lack proper parents or allow adoption as some amicable solutions against abortion. Some women strongly desire to have a child, which does not happen attributable to infertility. The existence of options for abortion shows that the practice is needless and condemnable regardless of the reason provided.

Pro-life crusaders state that abortion should be banned because in nearly all occurrences it makes the patient develop health complications. For example, many females have experienced hemorrhage, infections, and sometimes death during or even after abortion. Breast cancer is one of the most widespread risks of undertaking abortion attributable to the altered or disrupted structure of the mammary glands (Thomas et al. 359). Carcinogenic practices are apparent in transitional cells of females who have had an abortion. Each time a woman carries out an abortion, she increases the possibility of developing breast cancer. Furthermore, more than a quarter of the females who get abortion-associated cancer lose their lives. Irrespective of the short-lived relief following an abortion, nearly all the women and girls who carry it out report related psychological problems. Some of the signs of abortion-associated psychological problems include flashbacks, guilt, substance use/abuse, anger, suicidal thoughts, hallucination, and sexual dysfunction. Ensuing problems after abortion establishes that it is an unsafe and risky practice that ought to be banned.

Abortion should be illegalized because it is tantamount to murder as it entails the termination of the life of an already living creature. After four weeks of pregnancy, the developing embryo already has a pumping heart, and the appearance of mouth, ears, nose, limbs, and brain follows closely. During that time, there is the possibility of recording brainwaves and perception of heartbeat (White et al. 190). Additionally, there is the emergence of bones, and the unborn child begins to reflectively respond to stimuli. Since these processes are already in existence before the period of any likely abortion, it is evident that undertaking the practices should be illegal because it subjects the unborn baby to agonizing pain and suffering.

The pro-choice drive is established on the belief that no female should be compelled by the regulations in a country to have a baby contrary to her will whenever valid and substantial reasons are given. The argument provided is that siring a child should be a private familial affair, which should not be troubled. The pro-choice conviction is based on the notion that the life of a person begins after birth (Aiken et al. 396). Nevertheless, the American Life League marks a pro-life group that maintains that the right to life should be given to a human being from the fertilization phase hence the need to illegalize abortion.

Consistent with the affirmations of the pro-choice crusaders, bestowing on the embryo or fetus the sense of life infringes the rights of pregnant women for interfering with their independence. Additionally, banning abortion is a way of hindering girls from obtaining the help of health providers when they require tackling some medical concerns. Calling for the illegalization of abortion is being insensitive. For example, illegalization disregards how the education and later life of a teenager who becomes pregnant out of rape are irreparably damaged. This would lead to some female students becoming truants or school dropouts (Jones and Jerman 4). Another aspect that is ignored in the illegalization of abortion is the trauma that a family would suffer while nurturing an unwanted baby. Nonetheless, since there is only a small proportion of teenagers who become pregnant after incidences of rape, the illegalization of abortion would have an insignificant impact on adolescent girls.

The pro-choice movement is convinced that pro-life activists do not consider the fact that the law (such as the illegalization of abortion) will not prevent girls from becoming pregnant and clandestinely going for an abortion. Additionally, although most narcotic drugs are illegal, people are still using them secretly (Sedgh et al. 227). In the same way, enacting laws that illegalize abortion will result in many pregnant girls having abortions in unsafe settings that may leave them at the risk of death over and above the termination of the life of the embryo or fetus. The point is that if a pregnant woman or lady carries an unwanted pregnancy and has the determination of aborting it, they will still do it regardless of whether it is legal or banned. It is irrational for some people to put much significance on the need for an unborn child to live while overlooking the degree to which such a practice jeopardizes the mother’s life and welfare. However, it is imperative for laws to be enacted to control vices devoid of providing reasons for the irrelevance of such regulations.

Abortion leads to the intentional termination of a pregnancy prior to birth. It has elicited mixed feelings with one group establishing that pregnant girl should have the independence of either aborting or bearing the child. However, a different group asserts that options such as adoption should be practiced rather than abortion that denies the unborn child the right to life. Abortion is an argumentative and divisive subject in American civilization, community, and politics, and many anti-abortion guidelines have been in operation in all states since about 1900. Since the illegalization of abortion outshines the advocacy for its legalization, the practice should be banned.

Aiken, Abigail, et al. “Requests for Abortion in Latin America in the Wake of Zika Virus.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 375, no. 4, 2016, pp. 396-400.

Jones, Rachel, and Jenna Jerman. “Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2011.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 46, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3-14.

Sedgh, Gilda, et al. “Adolescent Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion Rates across Countries: Levels and Recent Trends.” Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 56, no. 2, 2015, pp. 223-230.

Thomas, Rachel, et al. “Anti-Legal Attitude toward Abortion among Abortion Patients in the United States.” Contraception, vol. 96, no. 5, 2017, pp. 357-364.

White, Kari, et al. “Women’s Knowledge of and Support for Abortion Restrictions in Texas: Findings from a Statewide Representative Survey.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 48, no. 4, 2016, pp. 189-197.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Abortion

How To Write A Persuasive Essay On Abortion

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Are you about to write a persuasive essay on abortion but wondering how to begin?

Writing an effective persuasive essay on the topic of abortion can be a difficult task for many students. 

It is important to understand both sides of the issue and form an argument based on facts and logical reasoning. This requires research and understanding, which takes time and effort.

In this blog, we will provide you with some easy steps to craft a persuasive essay about abortion that is compelling and convincing. Moreover, we have included some example essays and interesting facts to read and get inspired by. 

So let's start!

• 1. How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?
• 2. Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples
• 3. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion
• 4. Persuasive Topics about Abortion 
• 5. Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments. 

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay.

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing. 

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument. 

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both? 

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information. Additionally, understanding your audience will help you craft a focused thesis statement that clearly addresses their concerns and perspectives.

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Step 3: Make an Outline & Define Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and identified your audience, it’s time to craft your argument. Start by clearly defining your stance on the issue and outlining the reasons behind your belief. Use evidence to support each of your claims, such as facts, statistics, or expert opinions.

To organize your thoughts, create a persuasive essay outline that maps out the structure of your essay. 

For instance, your persuasive essay on abortion outline might include:

• Introduction: Present the topic and state your thesis.
• Body Paragraph 1: Explain your first supporting argument and provide evidence.
• Body Paragraph 2: Discuss your second supporting argument with additional evidence.
• Body Paragraph 3: Address opposing arguments and provide counterarguments to refute them.
• Conclusion: Summarize your main points and restate why your position is valid.

By outlining your essay, you ensure that your argument is logical and well-structured, making your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay , with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. 

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Here is another short persuasive essay about abortion:

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of short argumentative essays with an introduction, body, and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay. 

Let’s take a look at another short example:

Here are some PDF examples that you can download and read for free!

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Persuasive Topics about Abortion 

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

• Should abortion be legal in the United States?
• Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
• What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
• Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
• What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
• How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
• Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
• Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
• Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
• How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values? 

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you. 

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

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Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

• According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
• The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
• Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
• In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban abortion of most forms after 20 weeks gestation.
• Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
• In places where abortion is highly illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
• A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
• According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing. 

Need the services of a persuasive essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion. 

So, just ask our experts ' do my essay ' and get professional help.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to start a persuasive essay about abortion.

To start a persuasive essay about abortion, begin with a compelling introduction that grabs the reader's attention and clearly presents the topic. Provide some background information on the issue and state your thesis statement, which should outline your position on the matter. Ensure your introduction sets up the argument you will be making throughout the essay.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

What is a good hook for an essay about abortion?

A good hook for an essay might involve a thought-provoking question, a startling statistic, or a powerful quote. For example:

• "Did you know that nearly one in four women will have an abortion by age 45? This staggering statistic highlights the urgency of the abortion debate."
• "‘The right to choose is fundamental,’ argues many pro-choice advocates. But how does this stand against the moral objections of pro-life supporters?"

What is a persuasive speech about legalizing abortion?

A persuasive speech about legalizing abortion argues for the importance of granting individuals the right to make autonomous decisions regarding their reproductive health. It emphasizes that legalizing abortion ensures safe, regulated medical procedures, protects women's health, and supports personal autonomy. The speech often highlights the risks associated with illegal abortions, the need for access to healthcare, and the ethical consideration of allowing individuals to choose based on their unique circumstances.

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Should Abortion Be Legal Or Illegal?

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Article Contents

I. the hope that abortion bans will deter abortion, ii. the hope that abortion bans will send a message, iii. the hope that abortion bans will be competently implemented and enforced, iv. conclusion, acknowledgements, ethics approval statement.

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What will and won’t happen when abortion is banned

Katharine & George Alexander Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law.

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Michelle Oberman, What will and won’t happen when abortion is banned, Journal of Law and the Biosciences , Volume 9, Issue 1, January-June 2022, lsac011, https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsac011

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For the past 50 years, abortion opponents have fought for the power to ban abortion without little attention to how things might change when they won. The battle to make abortion illegal has been predicated on three nebulous assumptions about how abortion bans work. First, supporters believe banning abortion will deter it. Second, they hope bans will send a message about abortion—specifically, that abortion is immoral. And third, they expect bans to be competently implemented and enforced. Drawing on empirical work from within and outside of the U.S., this Article offers an evidence-based assessment of each of these assumptions. Part One examines the question of deterrence by exploring findings from countries with relatively high and relatively low abortion rates. After explaining why restrictive abortion laws alone do not reduce aggregate abortion rates, I consider the matter of individual deterrence. By identifying those most likely to be deterred by U.S. abortion bans, I illustrate how abortion bans intersect with structural inequalities to disproportionately impact poor women of color and their children. Part Two tests the idea that abortion bans send a message. I consider the bans’ meaning in context with U.S. laws and policies affecting families, exposing the difference between laws discouraging abortion, and those encouraging childbirth. Then, drawing from literature on the expressive function of the law, I assess the limits on the message-sending capacity of abortion bans in a society divided over abortion and over its commitment to children living in poverty. Part Three turns to the expectation that abortion bans will be competently enforced, noting the legitimacy struggles arising from law enforcement patterns, along with the administrative challenges inherent in overseeing the various exceptions to abortion bans. This article concludes by considering why the consequences and limitations of abortion bans should matter to supporters and opponents, alike.

For the past 50 years, abortion opponents have fought for the power to ban abortion without paying much mind to the details of how things might change when they won. The battle to make abortion illegal has been waged over a surprisingly nebulous assumption that banning abortion would, in itself, lead to meaningful changes in the practice of abortion in America. It has been a policy based on hopes and prayers, rather than on actual evidence about how restrictive abortion laws work in practice.

When the law on the ‘books’ changes in the United States, what might the law on the ground look like? Drawing on empirical work from within and outside of the USA, this article offers an evidence-based answer to the question of what will and would not happen where abortion is banned.

In the spirit of full disclosure, like almost everyone who engages with the abortion war, I have a bias: I am an unambivalent supporter of abortion rights. Nonetheless, I strive in this article to maintain a tone that I hope will permit readers who disagree with me to hear my message. I do so because those on all sides of our abortion war should care about it. For 50 years, the USA abortion war has been fought almost exclusively around the issue of legalization. 1 Yet all evidence suggests the changes likely to be wrought by banning abortion should leave even ardent supporters of abortion bans not just disappointed, but profoundly disturbed by their downstream consequences.

The question of how abortion bans work in practice is a live one among abortion-rights advocates, with many, (including myself), working to identify what happens, and to whom, so as to permit advocates and policy makers to mitigate their harsh impact on the vulnerable. 2 By contrast, anti-abortion Americans who have spent decades working to enact such laws have paid relatively little attention to how things actually change when abortion is illegal. Instead, they have rested their support for outlawing abortion on three general assumptions about how abortion bans will work. First, they believe banning abortion will deter it. 3 Second, they hope the bans will send a message about abortion—specifically, that abortion is immoral. 4 And third, they expect the laws will be competently implemented and enforced. 5

This article interrogates each of these expectations. Part One begins its consideration of the question of deterrence by exploring research from countries with relatively high and relatively low abortion rates. This comparison offers powerful evidence that restrictive abortion laws alone do not reduce abortion rates. But while outlawing abortion is unlikely to cause an aggregate decline in abortion rates, bans will cause some to carry to term pregnancies they might otherwise have aborted. 6 This section concludes with an examination of how abortion bans intersect with structural inequalities to disproportionately impact poor women of color and their children–already the most vulnerable and marginalized Americans.

Part Two tests the assumption that outlawing abortion will send a message that abortion is morally wrong, thereby helping to foster a culture that rejects abortion as an option. This section considers the messages sent by US abortion bans by placing them in context with our laws and policies that inform when and whether people seek abortions. Then, drawing from literature on the expressive function of the law, this section explores the practical and symbolic limits on the message-sending capacity of abortion bans in a society divided over abortion and over its commitments to children living in poverty.

Part Three moves to the expectation that abortion bans will be competently enforced. Here, I examine the legitimacy struggles arising from law enforcement patterns, along with the administrative challenges inherent in overseeing the various exceptions to abortion bans.

This article concludes with a consideration of why the consequences and limitations of abortion bans should matter to supporters and opponents, alike.

Abortion opponents anticipate that banning abortion will deter it. That said, they are not overly sanguine about this hope; anti-abortion advocates acknowledge that abortions will continue to take place, even if illegal. 7 But their support for abortion bans rests firmly on the expectation that there will be fewer of them, once abortion is a crime. 8 In this section, I explore the question of deterrence, first considering the population-wide impact of bans on abortion rates, and then describing the Americans most likely to be deterred by abortion bans.

I.A. Deterrence, in the Aggregate

To think about whether abortion can be deterred by outlawing it, we must begin by reflecting on what leads people to have abortions. Abortion demand is driven by a host of factors—health status, relationship status, job status—but the most commonly cited concern is lack of money. 9 Half of all US abortions go to the 13 per cent of Americans living below the poverty line–which in 2022, means living on less than $13,590. 10 Those living in poverty or near poverty make up a full 76 per cent of abortions every year. 11 These are people whose abortion decisions are motivated, at least in part, because they cannot afford the costs of child rearing. 12

Rather than focusing on reducing abortion demand by offsetting the costs of having children, abortion bans aim to deter abortion solely by reducing access to legal abortion. Even a cursory glance at worldwide abortion rates suggests that strategy might not work. Abortion rates vary dramatically by region. In Latin America, (home to countries with the world’s strictest abortion bans), we find some of the highest abortion rates in the world: 32 abortions for every 1000 women. 13 At the other end of the spectrum, Western Europe, (with relatively liberal abortion laws), has the world’s lowest abortion rates: only 12 abortions per 1000 women. 14

The variation in abortion rates is best understood as an artifact of variation in rates of unintended pregnancy. 15 The single biggest predictor of abortion rates is not the legal status of abortion, but rather, the percentage of pregnancies that occur among those who were not looking to have a baby. In 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, 44 per cent of pregnancies globally were unintended. 53 per cent of those unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. 16 Rates of both unintended pregnancy and abortion vary by a country’s wealth status. In the world’s wealthier nations, over the past quarter century, rates of unintended pregnancies dropped by 30 per cent, triggering a decline in abortion rates from 46 abortions per 1000 women of reproductive age to an average of 27. 17 By contrast, over the same time frame in the developing world, unintended pregnancy rates fell by only 16 per cent, while abortion rates remained static. 18

Like other wealthy countries, U.S. abortion rates have dropped significantly in recent decades. 19 The decline is evident across almost every demographic in the country—younger, older, Northern, Southern. With one exception: abortion rates have remained constant among the poorest Americans. 20 This finding underscores the significance of unintended pregnancy in driving abortion rates: nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended—a higher rate than in many other developed countries. 21 These rates vary dramatically by class: a poor woman in the USA is more than five times as likely as an affluent woman to have an unintended pregnancy. 22

The single most effective way to help people avoid unwanted pregnancies, thereby deterring abortion, is by increasing contraception rates. When the Affordable Care Act mandated insurance coverage for contraception, the unintended pregnancy rate dropped from 44.7 to 37.9 per cent. 23 And yet, the anti-abortion movement has opted to oppose efforts to increase access to contraception. 24 Indeed, abortion opponents vigorously fought the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate, which the Supreme Court ultimately struck down in 2014. 25

If the goal of banning abortions is to deter them, a strategy that fails to focus on reducing unintended pregnancy seems limited, at best. But even if one accepts that abortion opponents are too ambivalent about promoting contraception to center the goal of deterring abortion by reducing unwanted pregnancy, the plan to deter abortion by banning it is flawed for a second reason. Specifically, owing to the ready availability of abortion medicines, abortion bans cannot effectively restrict access to a safe, effective, and affordable means to end a pregnancy.

The widespread availability of abortion medicines has completely transformed the world of illegal abortion. Unlike the pre-Roe era, medication abortion solves the problem of finding a doctor to perform an illegal abortion, while simultaneously reducing the health risks. 26 The most common and widely available abortion medicine is misoprostol. 27 Although less effective than the FDA-approved combination of mifepristone and misoprostol typically used in medical abortions in the USA, misoprostol alone causes an abortion in approximately 90 per cent of cases. 28 Efforts to restrict access to misoprostol are complicated for two reasons. It is both cheap and easy to manufacture, costing only pennies to make, and it also is an important life-saving medicine. 29 Indeed, the World Health Organization lists misoprostol as an ‘essential medicine,’ owing in part to its vital role in reducing deaths from postpartum hemorrhages, miscarriages, and illegal abortions. 30

There is a robust international market in misoprostol across the world today—particularly in countries where abortion is strictly banned. 31 Even in Central America, which boasts the world’s strictest abortion bans, one in three pregnancies ends in abortion, largely induced by medicines purchased online or on the street. 32 Americans familiar with the black market in opioids should have little trouble imagining how a market in abortion medicines will proliferate, where abortion is banned. As is all too evident from the scope of the opiate problem, it is unrealistic to think the government can prosecute away the expanding market in abortion medicines. 33

Outlawing abortion may lead to a short-term decline in US abortion rates, while people adjust to new market conditions. 34 But as we learn from the experiences of countries throughout the world, this decline is unlikely to be sustained. If anything, given the availability of reliable online information and buying options, it should take far less time for people to adapt to accessing illegal abortion than was true for alcohol access after Prohibition. 35

I.B. Deterrence, in the Specific

Even if abortion bans are unlikely to cause an aggregate decline in abortion rates–at least not independently of other trends 36 –we can predict that they will cause some to carry to term pregnancies they might otherwise have aborted. 37 In fact, we have a surprisingly clear picture of those who the bans are most likely to deter: they will be disproportionately young, poor, Black, and brown women. Abortion bans come as one in a long list of factors that circumscribe the reproductive lives and life options of these Americans. 38 They are more likely to experience unintended pregnancy, and where abortion is outlawed, they are more likely to struggle with accessing abortion, whether by traveling to a legal jurisdiction, or by identifying reliable information about how to safely end an unwanted pregnancy with abortion medications. 39

Those who support abortion bans on deterrence grounds have yet to fully grapple with what happens to those for whom abortion, legal or otherwise, is out of reach. The standard response is to promote the solution of placing newborn babies for adoption. Justice Amy Coney Barrett nodded to this viewpoint at oral argument in the Dobbs case, correcting the assertion that abortion bans amount to ‘forced motherhood’ by noting that safe haven laws permit them to surrender their newborns without legal consequences. 40 Adoption proponents point to the ways in which open adoptions have become the norm, hopeful that the prospect of staying involved in their baby’s life will encourage more people to place them for adoption. 41 Banning abortion, as they see it, can be a ‘win-win-win’ situation, in which the baby survives, the mother gets to go on with her life, and a married couple or family gets to raise the child. 42

Yet all available evidence suggests that banning abortion is unlikely to transform adoption from an outlier into a commonplace response to unwanted pregnancy. Even in the years prior to Roe, when the stigma of unwed motherhood led some facing pregnancy to place their babies, only 9 per cent of women chose adoption. 43 Much of that rate was driven by white women, because the two-parent family norm was less entrenched among Black and brown Americans. Today, the stigma is gone: 40 per cent of all children are born out of wedlock. 44 When faced with an unintended pregnancy, fewer than 5 per cent of people seriously consider adoption, and of those, fewer than 2 per cent ultimately place their children with adoptive families. 45

The best indication of what is likely to happen to those unable to access abortion is found in the Turnaway study, a 10-year longitudinal investigation of the impact of being denied an abortion. 46 That study followed hundreds of women who sought abortions, but were turned away because they were beyond the clinic’s gestational limits. 47 Fully 91 per cent of them opted to raise their child. 48

The Turnaway study also tells us about the consequent intensification of poverty for these families:

[C]hildren of women who are denied an abortion had greater odds (72 vs 55%) of living in poverty compared to children of women who received a wanted abortion. Similarly, existing children were more likely (87 vs 70%) to live in a household in which their mother is not able to afford necessary living expenses such as food, housing, and transportation compared to children of women who received a wanted abortion. 49

As we look to understand what happens when an abortion ban ‘works’ by deterring abortion, the only question is how broad a lens to use. More than one in three single-mother families lived in poverty in 2016. 50 Poverty is not color-blind. Instead, far more women of color live in poverty than do their white counterparts: close to 25 per cent of all American Indian or Alaskan native and 20 per cent of all Black and Hispanic women live in poverty, compared to only 9 per cent of their white counterparts. 51

So severe are the downstream consequences for children born into poverty that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement decrying the short and long-term consequences of the ‘medicalization of poverty’:

Children who experience poverty, particularly during early life or for an extended period, are at risk of a host of adverse health and developmental outcomes through their life course. Poverty has a profound effect on specific circumstances, such as birth weight, infant mortality, language development, chronic illness, environmental exposure, nutrition, and injury. Child poverty also influences genomic function and brain development…. Children living in poverty are at increased risk of difficulties with self-regulation and executive function, such as inattention, impulsivity, defiance, and poor peer relationships. Poverty can make parenting difficult, especially in the context of concerns about inadequate food, energy, transportation, and housing. Child poverty is associated with lifelong hardship. Poor developmental and psychosocial outcomes are accompanied by a significant financial burden, not just for the children and families who experience them but also for the rest of society…. 52

We should read these statistics as a forecast. To the extent abortion bans deter abortion, we will likely see a disproportionate increase in the number of poor families of color experiencing the devastating consequences of living in poverty. Abortion bans work by leveraging existing inequalities. 53

Abortion opponents are of two minds about how to respond to the poor predicted outcomes for those who opt to raise children after being unable to access abortion. Small numbers of advocates–largely drawn from the volunteer ranks of pregnancy support or ‘crisis pregnancy’ centers–advocate helping women who are in desperate straits by offering housing, counseling, job training, and other support. 54 But the dominant voice of the anti-abortion movement–those advocates engaged in political activism and law reform, rather than direct service–focuses not on supporting poor mothers, but instead, on promoting adoption. 55

The suggestion that adoption is the optimal solution to a poorly timed pregnancy is as convenient as it is naïve. It allows abortion opponents to avoid a reckoning with consequences of having made the Republican party their political home. 56 The GOP’s historical and ongoing objection to family-friendly government policies 57 will make it hard, in the years to come, for abortion opponents to gain much traction for laws aimed at blunting the crushing impact of poverty on those whom the bans deter from having abortions.

Those who support abortion bans do not rest their support solely on the expectation that such laws will deter abortion. Instead, abortion opponents often invoke the belief that changing the law will send a message, thereby promoting culture change. 58 This section first considers the nature of that message, and then turns to whether it will be received.

It is helpful, when considering the message sent by outlawing abortion, to note the difference between an anti-abortion message (one that condemns abortion) and a pro-natal message (one that urges people to have babies). This distinction is easiest to observe when contrasting U.S. laws with those of countries that actively encourage childbearing.

Consider the case of Israel, which makes abortion a crime unless the person can prove to an official ‘pregnancy termination committee’ that they qualify for one of the statute’s exceptions. 59 This law would send a message that, outside of exceptional circumstances, abortion is wrong. 60 But it also exists alongside a host of laws and policies that encourage people to have children. 61 In Israel, there is guaranteed paid maternity leave—you can leave your job for 26 weeks, still get paid, and your employer cannot fire you. 62 Parents enjoy access to local neighborhood, government-subsidized day care. 63 In addition to tax deductions, the Israeli government pays everyone—rich and poor alike—a small monthly allowance for each child under eighteen. 64

In addition to the ways in which these policies help offset some of the most immediate costs associated with having a child, they send a message about how the government feels not just about abortion but also about babies. Israel’s laws send a message that the government wants people to have babies.

By contrast, US laws reflect little interest in encouraging people to have babies, particularly ones they cannot afford to raise. There is no paid parental leave, and no job security at all beyond the first 12 weeks of unpaid leave. 65 There is no child allowance. The Covid-related child income tax break, which reduced child poverty by 30 per cent, was permitted to lapse after a single year. 66 The goal of providing universal access to quality day care and preschool remains a pipedream. 67 The federal assistance program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, is so under-funded that no state’s subsidy amounts to more than 60 per cent of the federal poverty line, with the result that even in states with relatively generous monthly allocations, families cannot afford modest rent. 68

Those who believe abortion bans promote a culture of life might do well to recognize that any message sent by an abortion ban is necessarily entwined with the messages sent by government laws and policies that set the price of having a child. The message of an abortion ban on its own says little about embracing life, and instead merely suggests that abortion is wrong. 69

As to whether that message will be received, the answer is complicated. For all that, it is common to suggest the law can send messages, there is surprisingly little evidence for how it might do so. Professor Richard McAdams, one of the leading authorities on the ‘expressive function’ of the law, posits that an expressive law reveals the lawmakers’ beliefs, which in turn causes individuals to update their beliefs and ultimately to change their behaviors, usually in the direction of compliance. 70 He points to the example of indoor smoking bans by way of illustration. In the face of mounting evidence on the harmfulness of secondhand smoke, lawmakers enacted indoor smoking bans that served, in part, to send the message that tobacco was dangerous. In turn, these bans helped shift the culture away from smoking. 71

According to McAdams, smoking bans succeeded because lawmakers had a clear, credible message. But government credibility is not automatic; rather, it is earned. To send a message, government actors must offer some reason why the public should trust their conclusions. McAdams suggests the government earned credibility by persuading the public they were acting on data showing that the hazards of secondary smoke inhalation required nothing less. 72

Unlike smoking bans, abortion bans address themselves to a question of morality—one that cannot be settled by aggregated data or special expertise. A government hoping to persuade the public that abortion is immoral will struggle simply because it lacks the expertise needed to settle the question. 73

The challenge of sending a message by banning abortion is intensified by the impact of the ongoing battle over abortion’s legality. When it comes to the law’s ability to send a message, Professor McAdams notes, background noise can be fatal:

Individuals are constantly being bombarded by information from sources other than the law: the print media, Internet, social acquaintances, etc. For expression to change beliefs, there must be some factor that makes the legal signal strong enough to stand out against this background. 74

To send a message, abortion bans must compete for air time with a world of counter-messages. After all, the fight over abortion does not end with abortion bans. Together with the likelihood that abortion remains commonplace, even where banned, and remains legal in almost half the country, the message-sending capacity of abortion bans is more akin to that of marijuana bans than to indoor smoking bans. 75

At the end of the day, perhaps the most that can be said for the message-sending capacity of abortion bans is that, where popularly embraced by an anti-abortion electorate, the bans might contribute to a broader cultural message that abortion is wrong. As Katrina Kimport forcefully demonstrates in her book, No Real Choice , the ‘abortion as killing’ narrative can combine with structural constraints like legal barriers and cost to render abortion ‘unchoosable.’ 76

The final set of expectations harbored by those who support outlawing abortion involves tacit baseline assumptions about how the law will work, in practice. Specifically, supporters assume that abortion bans will be competently implemented and enforced—that the laws will have integrity. Competent implementation and enforcement are not abstract ideals, but rather, are necessary preconditions for a law to be considered a legitimate exercise of state authority. The failure to competently implement an abortion ban will undercut its legitimacy, thereby undermining both the law’s capacity to deter abortion and also its ability to send a message.

To understand the practical considerations relevant to enforcing abortion bans, begin by noting what is required in order to implement them. The standard form of US abortion bans includes a general prohibition, accompanied by a small number of exceptions. 77 This structure gives rise to two implementation and enforcement questions, both of which will determine whether the laws are ultimately seen as legitimate exercises of government authority. When and how will prosecutors endeavor to enforce the bans, and by what mechanisms will states evaluate cases involving exceptions to the bans?

Let us examine each of these in turn.

III.A. Enforcing Abortion Bans

Supporters of abortion bans have given relatively little thought to the question of how abortion laws will be enforced. In late 2021, movement leader Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List (a nonprofit that supports pro-life politicians) explained how she views the question of enforcement:

[M]y view, and the view of the entire movement—without any exception that I’m aware of—is that the doctor, the one who has been planning to break the law, is the guilty party. The law is enforced against that person, not the woman. 78

But illegal abortion today need not involve a doctor or any third party besides an overseas pharmacy, outside the easy reach of US laws. 79 Given abortion medicines, the reality is that there are no doctors to prosecute.

When abortion becomes a crime, the question of who is the criminal will require an answer. And rather than being answered by movement leaders, the decision will rest in the hands of locally-elected prosecutors. No county can afford to prosecute every crime–far from it–so local District Attorneys set priorities when enforcing the law. 80 Their choices may be informed by many factors: staff resources, strength of evidence, heinousness of crime, perception of public will, or say, pro-choice or anti-abortion sentiment. As Judge Stephanos Bibas notes, there is no check on ‘idiosyncratic prosecutorial discretion.’ 81

A quick review of abortion prosecutions both historically and today helps us understand what idiosyncratic abortion prosecutions might look like. Historian Leslie Regan’s work documents the episodic nature of abortion prosecutions in the years prior to Roe , showing how they tended to be sporadic—an occasional crackdown, motivated by a zealous prosecutor, rather than a comprehensive effort at enforcement. 82

A similar pattern is seen today in places where abortion is outlawed. For example, consider El Salvador, which bans abortion without exception. In the 10 years from 2000–2010, there were 129 prosecutions. 83 This number suggests enforcement is relatively rare—just over 10 prosecutions per year—when, by the government’s own estimates, the country sees tens of thousands of abortions every year. 84 But there is a pattern to the prosecutions. Those charged with abortion crimes are drawn from the most vulnerable, marginalized sectors of society. 85 Almost half were illiterate; only a quarter had attended high school. 86

In the U.S. we already see a version of this pattern: abortion-related prosecutions are brought by zealous prosecutors 87 , and they disproportionately target Black and brown women. 88 The work of National Advocates for Pregnant Women helps us to understand the scope of abortion-related prosecutions in the years since Roe legalized abortion. They have tracked 1600 USA such cases since 1973. 89 These cases involve a range of allegations, linked by the common thread of alleged harm to a pregnancy. 90 The prosecutions overwhelmingly target poor people, and in particular, poor Black pregnant women. Of 413 cases arising from 1973 to 2005, 71 per cent involved low income women, of whom 59 per cent were women of color, with 52 per cent identifying as Black. 91

These patterns in abortion-related prosecutions tell us two important things. First, we can expect abortion bans to be enforced against those who end their own pregnancies. 92 And second, abortion prosecutions are likely to target the most marginalized, vulnerable members of society—those whom prosecutors view, or at least believe others will be willing to view, not as victims but rather, as villains. 93

Supporters of abortion should stop insisting that bans won’t be enforced against women, and should start figuring out what to do about the fact that, when abortion bans are enforced, the defendants will likely be Black and brown. It is, of course, unfair to make one subset of the population pay the price for acts that go unpunished when committed by others. Furthermore, as we learn from racial disparities in drug law enforcement, such patterns undermine the legitimacy of the law, and have downstream corrosive effects both on the people disproportionately targeted by the law and on society as a whole. 94

III.B. The Return of Conditional Abortion Access

Setting aside the question of prosecution, abortion laws also must be fully implemented in the regulatory sense of the word. A law that limits abortion access to patients with qualifying conditions presupposes an adjudicatory mechanism for determining eligibility. And barring a dramatic evisceration of the right to life for those who are pregnant, every state will have to make at least one exception to their abortion bans, for life-threatening pregnancies. 95

How will a patient establish their right to an abortion when they are experiencing a life-threatening pregnancy?

There are a variety of models by which states might screen such claims, ranging from relatively formal proceedings, such as those seen in cases involving termination of government benefits, to loosely structured processes like school disciplinary hearings. 96 Indeed, we already have a model for abortion-related adjudications in the judicial bypass system, by which minors can seek permission to end a pregnancy without parental involvement. 97

Each model is fraught, when it comes to screening for abortion eligibility. Formal judicial hearings pose challenges in terms of accuracy (there is surprisingly little agreement on what constitutes a life-threatening pregnancy) 98 and efficiency (given the urgent, technical nature of the inquiry). 99 A judge could not conceivably rule on such petitions without expert testimony, which raises numerous questions about process and evidence.

Prior to Roe , rather than ask judges to decide these cases, states delegated the determination to doctors, essentially leaving the medical profession to devise its own ways of complying with the law. 100 For reasons ranging from lack of consensus about qualifying conditions, 101 to concern over the legal implications of their decisions (which might trigger prosecution on the one hand, or a wrongful death suit if the pregnant patient dies, on the other), 102 doctors eschewed this responsibility. By the mid-20th century, hospitals around the country used so-called ‘therapeutic abortion committees’ to establish eligibility. 103 These committees were marked by inconsistent outcomes, stemming from a lack of consensus over what constituted a ‘valid’ reason for terminating a pregnancy, whether legally or morally. 104 Rather than standardizing the application of the law, the committee process facilitated ad hoc decision-making. 105

As states set about banning abortion, it is urgent that they erect a scientifically sound, impartial process by which to evaluate cases involving potentially life-saving abortions. Given that the vast majority of Americans support abortion in cases of life-threatening pregnancy, we can expect an enormous outcry from all quarters in the case of an incompetent oversight process, let alone a highly publicized death. 106

Yet the struggle to define what constitutes a life-threatening pregnancy, (or depending upon the law, a qualifying rape or fetal anomaly), is just the start. Which parties’ interests will be represented at these adjudicatory proceedings; however, they are configured? Will the pregnant patient be entitled to a lawyer? 107 Will the fetus? If unhappy with the outcome, can either side appeal? Will there be an expedited appeals process? By what criteria will adjudicators be chosen? Will these be adversarial proceedings, with experts from the state and from the pregnant patient’s medical team, or will the patient’s doctor’s testimony suffice? How will the government determine whose interests it represents: those of the patient in peril, or those of the fetus?

These are serious questions, made all the more so because they implicate vital interests and therefore trigger Constitutional due process rights. 108 Surely, there will be litigation over the answers in the years to come. But what is interesting about these questions is not so much their answers, but instead, the reality that they demand answers now. We are past the time when those who support banning abortion can respond to such questions about how the laws will be implemented with vague references to ‘traditional means of enforcement.’ 109 And the quality of those answers matters because inconsistent, incompetent or otherwise corrupt law enforcement cannot help but undermine the legitimacy of abortion bans.

We have spent half a century reckoning with abortion largely in abstractions, fighting over rights rather than focusing on the people whose lives are affected by those rights. If nothing else, the impact of abortion bans seems likely to put human faces on the abortion war. And if we stay true to the patterns laid out in this essay, those faces will be disproportionately poor, Black and brown women and children.

Abortion bans are not color blind.

It has become common for abortion opponents to invoke allegations of eugenics and racism when talking about abortion rates among Black Americans. 110 That rhetoric–already contested 111 –will become strained as the country witnesses the actual racist impact of abortion bans: their disparate impact on poor Black families, coupled with the disparate rates of prosecution of Black women for acts that go largely unpunished when committed by whites. 112

By bringing into focus the struggles facing the most vulnerable among us, abortion bans have the potential to transform the abortion war by forcing a direct engagement with the structural forces driving abortion, poverty, and racism. We are approaching a moment of truth for advocates on all sides of the abortion war.

For advocates of abortion rights, there will be a reckoning with the question of whether being pro-choice simply means supporting the right to abortion, rather than a commitment to working to offset the forces that constrain all reproductive options–including having a child. As Sister Song, a leading voice of the reproductive justice movement puts it, the commitment is to support, ‘the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.’ 113 As the impact of abortion bans brings structural inequality into sharp focus, will pro-choice movement leaders stay focused on legalizing abortion, or will the movement commit to this more robust understanding of reproductive autonomy?

For abortion opponents, the question is whether the term ‘pro-life’ has come to mean anything beyond one’s support for abortion bans. The years ahead likely will pose an existential challenge for people who have supported abortion bans, but who cannot help but be disturbed by the ways in which they fall short of expectations. Perhaps this result will embolden those who care deeply about deterring abortion, and find them laboring to craft policies that might actually help those contemplating abortion to continue their pregnancies. 114

Certainly, anti-abortion movement leaders are aware of the need to do something proactive in response to the impact of abortion bans on the poor. As Marjorie Dannenfelser, of the Susan B. Anthony Fund, put it: ‘Speaking for the pro-life movement, which is obviously attempting to lead Republicans, we absolutely, without question, have a responsibility to serve the needs of women and children as we pass ambitious laws. There’s no question about it.’ At the same time, Dannenfelser is aware that such policies are unlikely to fly, at least not in states dominated by a Republican party that has long opposed family-friendly government programs. 115

There’s a quote I keep on my desk these days: “How will we go when we’re faced with this? I don’t think it’s predetermined, and a great human moral drama is being played out in front of us.” 116 It is from a historian of pandemics, written in the early days of Covid-19. I keep it there because it speaks to me as we navigate the era of abortion bans. There is comfort in the invitation to step back and notice that we are in a time of high moral drama, in which things are in flux. But there is also, within it, a call to action. “How will we go when we’re faced with this?”

For helpful suggestions and conversation, I’m grateful to Diana Greene Foster, Julia Hejduk, Carole Joffe, Katrina Kimport, Larry Marshall, and my anonymous reviewers. I was particularly lucky to work with Jenai Howard (SCU Law, 2022), who provided outstanding research assistance. All errors are my own.

Human Subjects Research for this article was approved by Santa Clara University’s IRB, Protocol 17-03-950.

Research was funded in part by a Hackworth Grant (Santa Clara University, Markkula Ethics Center).

See Mary Ziegler, After Roe: The Lost History Of The Abortion Debate (2015), for a rich history of the anti-abortion movement in the early years after Roe v. Wade, illustrating among other things the way the anti-abortion movement shifted its focus from efforts to support pregnant women to the narrow issue of criminalization.

See generally Michelle Oberman, How Abortion Laws Do and Don’t Work , 36 Wis. J. L. Gender & Soc’y 163 (2022); see also Michelle Oberman, Her Body, Our Laws: On The Front Lines Of The Abortion War, From El Salvador To Oklahoma (2018); Diana Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, And The Consequences Of Having Or Being Denied An Abortion (2020) [hereinafter, greene foster, the turnaway study]; Ushma Upadhyay, Alice F. Cartwright, and Daniel Grossman, Barriers to Abortion Care and Incidence of Attempted Self-Managed Abortion Among Individuals Searching Google for Abortion Care: A National Prospective Study , 106 Contraception 49 (2021); Lizzie Widdecombe, What Does an At-Home Abortion Look Like in 2021 , The New Yorker (Nov. 11, 2021), https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-does-an-at-home-abortion-look-like-in-2021 (profiling self-managed abortion researcher, Abigail Aiken).

For example, see Ross Douthat, The Case Against Abortion , N.Y. Times (Nov. 30, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-dobbs-supreme-court.html (celebrating the impact of Texas’ S.B. 8, credited with causing a 93 per cent drop in the number of abortions taking place in the state).

See eg Richard Garnett, One Untrue Thing , Nat’l Rev. (Aug. 1, 2007), ( https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/08/one-untrue-thing-nro-symposium/ (‘The point of criminalization, after all, is not merely to put people in prison, or deter people from engaging in harmful behavior. It is, instead, to make a statement—a public statement, in the community’s voice—that certain actions, or certain harms caused, are morally blameworthy.’). See also Oberman, supra note 2, at 85–86 (quoting an anonymous Oklahoma state senator):

The purpose of the law is to stop abortion. To send a moral message. To get the message out via the law, to spark a debate in the population. The government’s responsibility is to give people education. It is up to the government to tell them that abortion is wrong. It’s not an acceptable solution.

This assumption is largely a tacit one, inherent in assertions about how abortion bans will be received by the public, and how they are likely to inspire others states to follow suit. See eg Issac Chotiner, The Pro-Life Movement Plans for a Future Without Roe , The New Yorker (Dec. 7, 2021), https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-pro-life-movement-plans-for-a-future-without-roe (interviewing Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, on her expectations for passing abortion bans in 30 states).

See Diane Greene Foster, Stop Saying That Making Abortion Illegal Won’t Stop People From Having Them , Rewire News Group (Oct. 4, 2018) [hereinafter Green Foster, Stop Saying ], https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2018/10/04/stop-saying-that-making-abortion-illegal-doesnt-stop-them/ ; see generally Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study, supra note 2.

See eg Stephanie Ranade Krider, Pro-life Advocates Focused on Legal Battles. They’re Not Enough to End Abortion , Wash. Post (Oct. 15, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/pro-life-after-roe/2021/10/15/7e2a059e-2cf8-11ec-985d-3150f7e106b2_story.html (Krider, an abortion opponent, acknowledges that while ‘the end of Roe would be a victory and a cause for celebration for those…who oppose abortion, [it] would not end the practice nationwide.’).

See Douthat, supra note 3.

See Biggs, M. Antonia, Heather Gould & Diana Greene Foster, Understanding why Women Seek Abortions in the US , 13 BMC Women’s Health 1–13 (2013); see also Sophia Chae et al., Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: A Synthesis of Findings From 14 Countries , 96 Contraception 233–41 (2017). (Analyzing data from 14 countries to identify the primary reasons given for seeking abortion, and finding that, although people often listed several reasons, the dominant reason involved socioeconomic concerns).

See Annual Update of the HHS Poverty Guideline, 87 Fed. Reg. 3315, 3316 (Jan. 21, 2021).

See Rachel K. Jones & Jenna Jerman, Population Group Abortion Rates and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion: United States, 2008–2014, 107 Am. J. Publ. Health 1904–909 (2017), https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304042 ; see also Abortion Rates by Income Level , Infographic , Guttmacher Inst. (Oct. 19, 2017), https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-income .

More accurately, because almost 60% of those having an abortion already have at least one child, they cannot afford the costs of another child. Jerman J, Jones RK & Onda T, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008 , Guttmacher Inst. (2016), https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014 .

Bearak J et al., Unintended pregnancy and abortion by income, region, and the legal status of abortion: estimates from a comprehensive model for 1990–2019 , 8 lancet global health 9 (2020).

An unintended pregnancy is one that occurred when a woman wanted to become pregnant in the future but not at the time she became pregnant (‘wanted later’) or one that occurred when she did not want to become pregnant then or at any time in the future (‘unwanted’). See Unintended Pregnancy in the United States , Guttmacher Inst. (Jan. 2017), https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states . In recent years, this frame has been problematized by calling into view the reality that, for many people, pregnancies are not so much planned as they are responded to. That is to say, the relevant question is not whether it was intended, but whether it is wanted or unwanted. See Abigail R.A. Aiken, et al., Rethinking the Pregnancy Planning Paradigm: Unintended Conceptions or Unrepresentative Concepts? , 48 Perspect Sex Reprod Health 147–151 (2016).

See generally Unintended Pregnancy Rates Declined Globally from 1990 to 2014 , Guttmacher Inst. (Mar. 5, 2018), https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/unintended-pregnancy-rates-declined-globally-1990-2014 .

Between the 1990s and 2020, abortion rates declined by almost 40%. See Sabrina Tavernise, Why Women Getting Abortions Now Are More Likely to Be Poor , N.Y Times (July 9, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/abortion-access-inequality.html . In the years since 2010 alone, rates have declined by almost 20%. Elizabeth Nash & Joerg Dreweke, The U.S. Abortion Rate Continues to Drop: Once Again, State Abortion Restrictions Are Not the Main Driver , Guttmacher Inst. (Sept. 18, 2019), https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/09/us-abortion-rate-continues-drop-once-again-state-abortion-restrictions-are-not-main . Scholars are divided in their explanations for the decline, which vary from increasingly effective contraceptive practices to declines in rates of sexual activity. See Pam Belluck, America’s Abortion Rate Has Dropped to its Lowest Ever , N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/health/abortion-rate-dropped.html ; see also Diana Greene Foster, Dramatic Decreases in US Abortion Rates: Public Health Achievement or Failure? , 107 Am J. Public Health 1860 (2017); Alia E. Dastagir, Fewer Women are having abortions. Why? , USA Today (June 13, 2019), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/13/abortion-law-fewer-women-having-abortions-why/1424236001/ ; Doug Stanglin, US Abortion Rate is at its Lowest, but Restrictive Laws aren’t the Likely Cause, Study Says , USA Today (Sept. 18, 2019), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/18/number-of-abortions-us-drops-guttmacher-institute-study/2362316001/ .

See U.S. Abortion Rate Continues to Decline, Hits Historic Low, Guttmacher Inst. (Jan. 17, 2017), https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/us-abortion-rate-continues-decline-hits-historic-low .

See Guttmacher Inst., supra note 15. Although poor Americans have higher rates of unintended pregnancy for a range of reasons, central among them is that they struggle to access contraception. See Michele Troutman, Saima Rafique & Torie Comeaux Plowden, Are Higher Unintended Pregnancy Rates Among Minorities a Result of Disparate Access to Contraception? , Contracept Reprod Med 5, no. 16 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1186/s40834-020-00118-5 (describing the factors underlying the disparate rates of unintended pregnancy by race and class). One finds evidence of this struggle in the data on contraceptive use among sexually active women not seeking pregnancy. While 90% of those covered by private health insurance and 87% of those covered by Medicaid use contraception, that figure drops to 81% for those who have no insurance coverage. Megan L. Kavanaugh & Emma Pliskin, Use of Contraception Among Reproductive-aged Women in the United States , 2014 and 2016 , Guttmacher Inst. (July, 2020). On the cost of contraception, see Eliana Kosova, How Much Do Different Kinds of Birth Control Cost Without Insurance? , Nat’l Women’s Health Network (Nov. 17, 2017), https://nwhn.org/much-different-kinds-birth-control-cost-without-insurance/ (noting that the most effective methods, long-acting implants and devices, cost upwards of $800, and that oral contraceptives can cost up to $600 per year).

Cost is not the only barrier to contraception, ranging from cost to personal preferences. For example, Black women tend to report higher rates of dissatisfaction with existing contraceptive options, putting them at further disadvantage in terms of risk of unwanted pregnancy. Andrea V. Jackson, Deborah Karasek, Christine Dehlendorf, and Diana Greene Foster, Racial and Ethnic Differences in Women’s Preferences for Features of Contraceptive Methods , 93 Contraception 406–411 (2016).

See Colleen L. MacCallum-Bridges & Claire Margerison, The Affordable Care Act Contraception Mandate & Unintended Pregnancy in Women of Reproductive Age: An Analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth, 2008–2010 v. 2013–2015 , 101 Contraception 34–39 (2020) (Overall, the odds of experiencing unintended pregnancy decreased 15% from the pre-mandate to post-mandate period); See also Susan Christiansen, The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Contraceptive Mandate on Fertility and Abortion Rates (Dec. 2020) (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University), https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/63939 (last visited Jan. 28, 2022).

See Molly Jong-Fast, The Anti-Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement , Vogue (July 1, 2021), https://www.vogue.com/article/anti-birth-control-movement .

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014) (striking down the ACA’s contraception mandate because it ‘created a substantial burden’ on Hobby Lobby’s religious freedom and it was not the ‘least restrictive means of satisfying the government’s interests.’) . See eg Tom Cohen, Hobby Lobby Ruling Much More Than Abortion , Cnn Politics (July 2, 2014), https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/politics/scotus-hobby-lobby-impacts/index.html (describing anti-abortion advocates opposition to contraception mandates).

See Carole Joffe, Failing to Embed Abortion Care in Mainstream Medicine Made it Politically Vulnerable , Wash. Post (Jan. 11, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/11/failing-embed-abortion-care-mainstream-medicine-made-it-politically-vulnerable/ (describing the range in quality of abortion providers when abortion was illegal).

See Elizabeth G. Raymond et al., Efficacy of Misoprostol Alone for First-Trimester Medical Abortion: A Systematic Review , 133 Obstet Gynecol 133–147 (2019).

Id. (This consolidated report of existing research finds that misoprostol alone successfully terminates a pregnancy in 93% of cases).

See How to Buy Abortion Pills That Are Safe and Effective , https://www.ipas.org/our-work/abortion-self-care/abortion-with-pills/how-to-buy-abortion-pills-that-are-safe-and-effective/ (Noting that manufacturers sell the pills to pharmacies for very little cost—less than $0.05 per pill—and that the highest sales price found in a recent study was $2 per pill).

See eg Celina Schocken, Business Case: Investing in Production of High Quality Misoprostol for Low-Resource Settings , Concept. Found. (Dec. 2014), https://www.conceptfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/BusinessCase_Misoprostol_web.pdf (describing misoprostol’s vital role in treating postpartum hemorrhage); see also Essential Medicines List includes Misoprostol tablets for use during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum care , World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/essential-medicines-list-includes-misoprostol-tablets-for-use-during-pregnancy-childbirth-and-postpartum-care .

Beverly Winikoff & Wendy Sheldon, Use of Medicines Changing the Face of Abortion , Guttmacher Inst. (Sept. 2012), https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/ipsrh/2012/09/use-medicines-changing-face-abortion . For a description of the misoprostol market in countries where abortion is illegal, see Michelle Oberman, What Happens When Abortion is Banned? , N.Y. Times (May 31, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/opinion/sunday/abortion-banned-latin-america.html .

See Gilda Sedgh et al., Induced Abortion: Incidence and Trends Worldwide from 1995 to 2008 , 379 The Lancet 625, 625 (2012) (comparing the one out of three pregnancies in Central America end in abortion with one out of five in the United States); see also Susheela Singh et al., Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress , Guttmacher Inst. (Oct. 2009), http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Abortion-Worldwide.pdf .

There is evidence of an expanding market in misoprostol in the U.S. See Caroline Kitchener, Self-Managed Abortion Could be the Future—But it’s Very Hard to Talk About , The Lily (Dec. 20, 2021), https://www.thelily.com/self-managed-abortion-could-be-the-future-but-its-very-hard-to-talk-about/ . See also, Erica Hellerstein, The Rise of the DIY Abortion in Texas , The Atlantic (June 27, 2014), https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-rise-of-the-diy-abortion-in-texas/373240/ .

Kari White et al., Initial Impacts of Texas’ Senate Bill 8 on Abortions in Texas and at Out-of State Facilities , Texas Policy Evaluation Project (Oct. 2021), http://sites.utexas.edu/txpep/files/2021/11/TxPEP-brief-SB8-inital-impact.pdf .

In the immediate aftermath of Prohibition–evidenced by mortality rates, mental health, and crime statistics–alcohol consumption fell to approximately 30% of its pre-Prohibition level. But this drop in alcohol consumption was short-lived. Within a few years after Prohibition, alcohol consumption had increased to 60–70% of its pre-Prohibition level. See Annika Nekalson, Prohibition was a Failed Experiment in Moral Governance, The Atlantic (Jan. 16, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/prohibition-was-failed-experiment-moral-governance/604972/ .

See Nash & Dreweke, supra note 19, regarding the various reasons behind declining abortion rates.

See Greene Foster, Stop Saying , supra note 6; see also Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study, supra note 2.

Hence the insistence of the reproductive justice movement that advocates center the goals of racial justice. RJ Squared. For a detailed description of the ways in which structural inequities circumscribe the reproductive choices of poor women and women of color, see Jamila K. Taylor, Structural Racism and Maternal Health Among Black Women , 48 Journal Of Law, Medicine & Ethics 506–517 (2020).

See generally, Katrina Kimport, No Real Choice: How Culture And Politics Matter For Reproductive Autonomy (2021) (positing that for the most marginalized Americans faced with an unwanted pregnancy, the question is not whether to have an abortion or have a baby, but rather, whether they can actually get an abortion or not).

At oral argument, Justice Barrett said, “Both Roe and Casey emphasized the burdens of parenting, and insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which the forced parenting, forced motherhood would hinder women’s access to the workplace and to equal opportunities, it’s also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?” Transcript of Oral Argument at 56, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, No. 19–1392. For a compelling analysis and indictment of safe haven laws, see Laury Oaks, Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, And Reproductive Justice (2015); see also Lizzie Widdicombe, The Baby-Box Lady of America , The New Yorker (Dec. 18, 2021) https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-baby-box-lady-of-america .

See Mardie Caldwell, Open Adoption is a Win-Win Situation (Apr. 7, 2018), https://mardiecaldwell.com/open-adoption-is-a-win-win-situation/ ; see also Julia D. Hejduk, Gift Motherhood, the Prius, and the Peace Corps: Reducing Abortion by Incentivizing Adoption , The Public Discourse (Sept. 27, 2017), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/09/20054/ .

Id . On the merits, what limited scholarly evidence there is on adoption runs counter to this rosy characterization of adoption’s outcomes, at least for birth mothers. See eg Are Birth Mothers Satisfied with Decisions to Place Children for Adoption? , Science Daily (June 8, 2018), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180608131605.htm (a longitudinal study of birth mothers that found women reported a mean satisfaction of 3.11 on a scale of 1–5). See also Gretchen Sisson, ‘Choosing Life’: Birth Mothers on Abortion and Reproductive Choice , 25 Women’s Health Issues 349–54 (2015) (a study involving in-depth interviews with 40 women who had placed infants for adoption from 1962 to 2009. The majority of the participants–many of whom placed their babies in closed adoptions, which are less typical today–described their adoption experiences as ‘predominantly negative,’ a response that Sisson attributes in part to the reality that adoption is not a preferred course of action, but rather, something chosen by those who feel they have no other options).

Olga Khazan, Why So Many Women Choose Abortion Over Adoption , The Atlantic (May 20, 2019). ( https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/why-more-women-dont-choose-adoption/589759 ; S ee also Olga Khazan, The New Question Haunting Adoption , The Atlantic (Oct. 22, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/ (‘Since the mid-1970s—the end of the so-called baby-scoop era, when large numbers of unmarried women placed their children for adoption—the percentage of never-married women who relinquish their infants has declined from nearly 9% to less than 1%.’).

See Elizabeth Wildsmith, Jennifer Manlove et al., Dramatic Increase in the Proportion of Births Outside of Marriage in the United States from 1990 to 2016 , Child Trends (Aug. 8, 2018), https://www.childtrends.org/publications/dramatic-increase-in-percentage-of-births-outside-marriage-among-whites-hispanics-and-women-with-higher-education-levels#:∼:text=Recent%20estimates%20show%20that%20about , worldwide%20(Chamie%2C%202017). The most rapid growth is among white women: as of 2016, 28% of all births to white women were non-marital. See also Khazan , supra note 43 (Starting in the 1970s, single white women became much less likely to relinquish their babies at birth: nearly a fifth of them did so before 1973; by 1988, just 3% did).

Khazan, Id .

The Turnaway Study is a longitudinal study examining the effects of unintended pregnancy on women’s lives. For the study and its findings, see Greene Foster, The Turnaway Study, supra note 2.

See id . See also Diana Greene Foster, What Happens When It’s Too Late to Get an Abortion , N.Y. Times (Nov. 22, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/opinion/abortion-supreme-court-women-law.html .

See Gretchen Sisson, Lauren Ralph, Heather Gould & Diana Greene Foster, Adoption Decision Making among Women Seeking Abortion, 27 Women’s Health Issues 136 (2017).

See Women’s Access to Abortion Improves Children’s Lives , Ansirh (Jan. 2019), https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/womens_access_to_abortion_improves_childrens_lives.pdf .

See generally Kayla Patrick, National Snapshot: Poverty Among Women & Families , National Women’s Law Center, https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Poverty-Snapshot-Factsheet-2017.pdf . (The poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 36.5%, compared to 22.1% for male-headed families with children and 7.5% of families headed by married couples with children).

Robin Bleiweis, Diana Boesch & Alexandra C. Gaines, The Basic Facts About Women in Poverty , American Progress (Aug. 3, 2020), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/basic-facts-women-poverty/ .

See American Academy of Pediatrics, Council on Community Pediatrics, Poverty and Child Health in the United States , Pediatrics 137 no. 4 (2016): e20160339.

See kimport, supra note 39, at 37, and generally.

See Leah Outten, Birth Mothers and the Adoption Option , Focus On The Family (Nov. 9, 2021), https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life/the-adoption-option-birth-mothers-need-your-support/ ; Stephanie McCrummen, A Maternity Ranch is Born: How Evangelical Women in Texas are Mobilizing for a Future Without Abortion , Wash. Post (Nov. 16, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/16/evangelical-women-texas-abortion/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F354c967%2F6193e9909d2fdab56b8e7f16%2F5a1f90909bbc0f4d5203bb72%2F8%2F73%2F6193e9909d2fdab56b8e7f16 . see also Michelle Oberman, The Women the Abortion War Leaves Out , N.Y. Times (Jan. 11, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/sunday/abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers.html (describing Oklahoma City’s Rose Home, a pro-life organization that houses up to five pregnant women and their children at any given time).

See Outten, supra note 54. See also Eleanor Bartow, 12 Pro-Life Truths to Counter Every Abortion Myth , The Federalist (Oct. 11, 2021) https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/11/12-pro-life-truths-to-counter-every-abortion-myth/ (where Bartow asserts adoption is ‘a better option than killing an unborn child’ because there are many ‘loving, screened, financially stable parents [who] are waiting to adopt babies.’).

See Sue Halpern, How Republicans Became Anti-Choice , The N.Y. Rev. (Nov. 8, 2018), https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/11/08/how-republicans-became-anti-choice/ (reviewing Reversing Roe , a documentary film directed and produced by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg).

See Robert Reich, Republicans, So Called party of Family Values, Do Not Support Needy Families , The Guardian (Jul. 18, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/18/child-allowance-payments-american-rescue-plan-republicans

See eg Richard Garnett, supra note 4. See also Hadley Arkes, in One Untrue Thing , Nat’l Rev. (Aug. 1, 2007), https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/08/one-untrue-thing-nro-symposium/ , (‘[T]he law does not need to invoke the harshest penalties for the sake of teaching moral lessons.’).

§315, Penal Law, 5737–1977, LSI Special Volume (1977), as amended (Isr.),

https://knesset.gov.il/review/data/eng/law/kns8_penallaw_eng.pdf [ https://perma.cc/N9QZ-8JEV ].

Or at least it would do so if the law were interpreted in a way that strictly limited abortion access. Instead, as I explain elsewhere, the committees close to 100% of the requests they receive, making legal abortion readily available in the country. See Oberman, supra note 2, at 172.

And they do. Recall that Israel has the highest fertility rates of any country in the OECD. Families have an average of 3.1 children. See Family Database: Fertility Rates , Org. Econ. Coop. Dev., https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_2_1_Fertility_rates.pdf [ https://perma.cc/5J2Y-YGWG ] (last updated June 2021).

See Maternity Leave , Kol Zchut, https://www.kolzchut.org.il/en/Maternity_Leave [ https://perma.cc/Q29Q-T6Q6 ] (last visited June 19, 2021).

See Childcare in Israel , Expat.Com (Sept. 18, 2017) https://www.expat.com/en/guide/middle-east/israel/15420-childcare-in-israel.html [ https://perma.cc/2Z7S-SJCK ] (describing the relative level of state support that young Israeli families receive, compared to the U.S.). See also, Register to State Recognized Daycare and Afternoon Care, and Request State Participation in Tuition Fees , Gov. IL, https://www.gov.il/en/service/registration_for_day_care_centers_and_nurseries1 (last updated Feb. 7, 2020) (Israeli government website describing eligibility for state supported day care). Rates of enrollment in both day care and preschool are among the highest in the developed world. Indeed, preschool enrollment rates are double that of the OECD average. https://issuu.com/bernardvanleerfoundation/docs/publication_taub_center_early_childhood_education_ (at 27).

See, eg Children , Nat’l Ins. Inst. Of Isr., https://www.btl.gov.il/English%20Homepage/Benefits/Children/Pages/default.aspx [ https://perma.cc/8KE2-3K8L ] (last visited on Dec. 19, 2021). Although these policies may not significantly offset the costs of having a child, surely, they are a benefit to Israel’s poorest families.

The only government support for those who have babies lies in family medical leave, which promises twelve weeks of unpaid leave time after the birth of a child. See Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), 29 U.S.C. § 2612.

Ben Casselman, Child Tax Credit’s Extra Help Ends, Just as Covid Surges Anew , N.Y. Times (last updated Jan. 3, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/business/economy/child-tax-credit.html .

Ali Safawi & Cindy Reyes, States Must Continue Recent Momentum to Further Improve TANF Benefit Levels , Cntr on Budget & Pol’y Priorities (updated Dec. 2, 2021), https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/states-must-continue-recent-momentum-to-further-improve-tanf-benefit .

For signs that anti-abortion advocates are beginning to grapple with the need to take systemic realities into account, see Tish Harrison Warren, The Systemic Realities Created by Legal Abortion , N.Y. Times (Jan. 22, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/opinion/roe-legal-abortion.html .

See Richard H. McAdams , A Focal Point Theory of Expressive Law, 86 V.A. L. Rev.1649, 1713–28 (2000) (applying expressive law theory to smoking bans and landlord liability law). See generally Richard H. McAdams, The Expressive Powers Of Law: Theories And Limits (2015).

He offers little evidence, by way of proof. However, numerous studies both domestically and worldwide document an association between smoking bans and an overall decline in smoking rates, including a reduction in smoking by smokers. See eg Thomas W. Carton, Michael Dardon, et al., Comprehensive Indoor Smoking Bans and Smoking Prevalence: Evidence from the BRFSS , 2 J Health Econ. 535–56 (2016); see also Silke Anger, Michael Kvasnicka, Thomas Seidler, One Last Puff? Public Smoking Bans and Smoking Behavior , 30 J Health Econ. 591–601 (2011).

See McAdams, supra note 70, at 197.

These lawmakers also must contend with considerable public opposition to their position. As of 2020, 79% of Americans say that the decision to have an abortion is best left to women, not lawmakers, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study from 2020. See Ariana Eunjung Cha & Emily Guskin, Most Americans Want Abortion to Remain Legal, but Back S ome State Restrictions , Wash. Post (Jan. 22, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/22/most-americans-want-abortion-remain-legal-back-some-state-restrictions/ .

See McAdams, supra note 70, at 180.

Recreational cannabis is legal in 18 states, while 11 states criminalize it. (See https://disa.com/map-of-marijuana-legality-by-state for a breakdown of the various jurisdictions’ laws). Experts estimate that at least 15 states will keep abortion legal, and perhaps even expand abortion rights, regardless of the absence of a Constitutional right. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-policy-absence-roe .

Kimport, supra note 37, at 28 and 62–69.

See eg Anna North, All the Near-Total Abortion Bans Passed This Year Have Now Been Blocked in Court, Vox (updated Oct. 29, 2019), https://www.vox.com/2019/10/2/20895034/alabama-abortion-ban-blocked-georgia-law ; see also Sean Murphy, Oklahoma Supreme Court Blocks 3 New Anti-Abortion Laws, ABC News (Oct. 25, 2021), https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/oklahoma-supreme-court-blocks-anti-abortion-laws-80779946 .

See Chotiner, supra note 5. See also O. Carter Snead, in One Untrue Thing , Nat’l Rev. (Aug. 1, 2007), https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/08/one-untrue-thing-nro-symposium/ (Offering a pragmatic justification for not punishing self-abortion: ‘[T]he public is more willing to accept a law that punishes doctors rather than mothers. Pro-lifers can thus achieve their goal of ending abortion without provoking a political backlash.’).

Although there are legal strategies a government might employ in response to overseas entities that sell abortion medicines to U.S. consumers (eg border patrol agents or diplomatic pressure), we learn from both the heroin and the fentanyl epidemics that the government’s options in the face of high demand are limited. See Claire Felter, Backgrounder: The U.S. Opioid Epidemic , The Council on Foreign Relations, (Sept. 8, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-opioid-epidemic .

Stephanos Bibas, Prosecutorial Regulation Versus Prosecutorial Accountability , 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 959 (2009).

Stephanos Bibas, The Need for Prosecutorial Discretion , 19 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. Rev. 369, 371 (2010).

See Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was A Crime: Women, Medicine, And Law In The United States, 1867–1973 (1997), at 114, 164.

See From Hospital to Jail: The Impact on Women of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion , 22 Repr. Health Matters 52–60 (2014); see also Oberman, supra note 2 , at 8–10 and 49–55 (describing similar patterns in Chile and El Salvador).

See Oberman , supra note 2, at 44.

See Repr. Health Matters, supra note 83.

See eg Chelsea Becker’s prosecution for murder, following stillbirth allegedly caused by methamphetamine use. Judge Dismisses Murder Charge Against Califronia Mother After Stillbirth , N.Y. Times (May 21, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/chelsea-becker-stillbirth-murder-charges-california.html .

They may also conscript doctors into law enforcement. See Michelle Oberman, Abortion Bans, Doctors, and the Criminalization of Patients ,48 Hastings Ctr. Rep.5 (2018); see also Oberman, Her Body Our Laws, supra note 2, at 43–67 for a discussion of how reports from doctors to police in El Salvador overwhelmingly involve poor, marginalized women.

Priscilla Thompson & Alexandra Turcios Cruz, How an Oklahoma Women’s Miscarriage Put a Spotlight on Racial Disparities in Prosecutions , Nbc News (Nov. 5, 2021), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woman-prosecuted-miscarriage-highlights-racial-disparity-similar-cases-rcna4583 . For a detailed discussion of these cases, see Lynn M. Paltrow & Jeanne Flavin, Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health , 38 J. Health Pol., Pol’y And L. 299, 304–05 (2013) (discussing these findings and the limitations of the research which led the authors to conclude that their findings represent a substantial undercount of cases). See also Michele Goodwin, Policing The Womb: Invisible Women And The Criminalization Of Motherhood (2020).

See Arrests and Prosecutions of Pregnant Women, 1973–2020 , Napw (Sept.18, 2021), https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/arrests-and-prosecutions-of-pregnant-women-1973-2020/ (summarizing the range of cases). See also Lynn M. Paltrow, Constitutional Rights for the ‘Unborn’ Would Force Women to Forfeit Theirs , Ms. Magazine (Apr. 15, 2021), https://msmagazine.com/2021/04/15/abortion-constitutional-rights-unborn-fetus-14th-amendment-womens-rights-pregnant/ (The rate of arrests and prosecutions is increasing. ‘From 2006–2020, we have documented over 1000 such arrests—more than double in half as many years. Black, Brown and low-income, rural white women are the typical targets of these arrests.’).

Thompson & Turcios Cruz, supra note 85 (noting that the Black defendants were also significantly more likely to be charged with felonies than white women, with 85% of Black women receiving felony charges compared to 71% of white women); see also Lynn M. Paltrow, Roe v. Wade and the New Jane Crow: Reproductive Rights in the Age of Mass Incarceration , 103 Am. J. Pub. Health 17, 19 (2013). Note that healthcare experts object strenuously to these prosecutions on the grounds that they deter people from seeking treatment essential both to their own welfare and to that of the fetus. See eg Katherine C. Arnold, Viewpoint: Criminalizing Young Women is not the Way to Improve Birth Outcomes , The Oklahoman (Dec. 26, 2021, 5:00 AM), https://www.oklahoman.com/story/opinion/2021/12/26/viewpoint-prosecuting-oklahoma-women-who-miscarry-wrong/8930865002/ .

While beyond the scope of this Article, it bears noting the range of options that state lawmakers have given prosecutors, when it comes to abortion crimes, outlawing things like purchasing abortion medicine, or aiding and assisting an abortion. See eg Emily Bazelon, A Mother in Jail for Helping her Daughter Have an Abortion , N.Y. Times (Sept. 22, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/magazine/a-mother-in-jail-for-helping-her-daughter-have-an-abortion.html . See also Sabrina Tavernese, Citizens, not the State, Will Enforce New Abortion Law in Texas , N.Y. Times (Nov. 1, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/us/abortion-law-regulations-texas.html (Describing the ways that Texas S.B. Eight criminalizes all those who aid and assist abortion, and quoting Prof. Melissa Murray, ‘If the barista at Starbucks overhears you talking about your abortion, and it was performed after six weeks, that barista is authorized to sue the clinic where you obtained the abortion and to sue any other person who helped you, like the Uber driver who took you there.’).

See Paltrow , supra note 91. See generally Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Invisible Women: Mass Incarceration’s Forgotten Casualties , 94 Tex. L. Rev. (2015).

See Race & Justice News: Eliminating Crack/Cocaine Sentencing Disparity The Sentencing Project (July 27, 2021), https://www.sentencingproject.org/news/race-justice-news-senate-hearing-crack-cocaine-sentencing-disparity/ (summarizing the ongoing work toward sentencing equality in drug crimes, starting with the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act). On the negative downstream consequences of race bias in drug law enforcement, Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson noted that racial disparities, “undermined community confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system. I talked with drug task force officers and front-line agents at the DEA who said this sense of injustice had a real impact in the fight against illegal drugs; it made it more difficult for agents to build trust and work with informants in the areas most impacted by the crack epidemic. The disparity in sentencing led to more harm than help in our federal anti-crime efforts.” ( Gov. Asa Hutchinson: It’s Time to Fix an Old Wrong and End the Disparity Between Crack and Cocaine Offenses , Fox News (June 8, 2021)), https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/end-crack-cocaine-offenses-gov-asa-hutchinson .

See Caroline Kitchener, The Texas Abortion ban has a Medical Exception. But some Doctors Worry it’s too Narrow to use, The Lily, Oct. 22, 2021 (describing existing legal protections and the limitations of Texas S.B. 8’s ‘medical emergency’ exception to its abortion ban), https://www.thelily.com/the-texas-abortion-ban-has-a-medical-exception-but-some-doctors-worry-its-too-narrow-to-use/ .

See Michael Asimow, Federal, Administrative Adjudication Outside The Administrative Procedure Act 3–4 (2019) (classifying these hearings into three categories, according to level of formal process).

See Kari White, Subasri Narasimhan, Sophie A. Hartwig, Erin Carroll, Alexandra McBrayer, Samantha Hubbard, Rachel Rebouché, Melissa Kottke & Kelli Stidham Hall, Parental Involvement Policies for Minors Seeking Abortion in the Southeast and Quality of Care , Sexuality Rsch. & Soc. Pol’y (Jan. 18, 2021), https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13178-021-00539-0.pdf .

See David S. Cohen & Carole Joffe, Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle To Get An Abortion In America 209 (2020) (quoting Ohio doctor Chrisse France, decrying this standard in U.S. practice today; ‘She cannot be seen at our public hospital unless pretty much she’s going to die today or maybe tomorrow’).

See Kari White, Subasri Narasimhan, Sophie A. Hartwig, Erin Carroll, Alexandra McBrayer, Samantha Hubbard, Rachel Rebouché, Melissa Kottke & Kelli Stidham Hall, Parental Involvement Policies for Minors Seeking Abortion in the Southeast and Quality of Care , Sexuality Rsch. & Soc. Pol’y (Feb., 2021) (noting the impact of these policies in delaying access to early abortion among those ultimately deemed eligible to end their pregnancies).

See Herbert L. Packer & Ralph J. Gampell, Therapeutic Abortion: A Problem in Law and Medicine , 11 Stan. L. Rev. 417, 418, 421 (1959). (Explaining that hospitals developed protocols at least in part as a defensive measure: to protect themselves from potential downstream criminal or civil liability). See also, Carole Joffe, Doctors Of Conscience 31 (1995) (describing how doctors who performed abortions illegally would do so outside of the hospital setting, but legal abortions that met the test of necessary to save life would necessarily have been performed in a hospital, thereby implicating both medical and hospital oversight).

See generally Packer & Gampell, id . at 418 . (Noting these questions, among others: Is the procedure limited to cases where its purpose is to avoid shortening the pregnant woman’s life? If so, how do we determine whether carrying the child to term will shorten life? If not, what other considerations are relevant? Is a threat to health necessarily a threat to life? Must the threat to life (or health) be on account of a somatic illness? Or is the woman’s mental condition also to be considered? If so, is a probability that suicide will ensue a justification for therapeutic abortion?). For a searing indictment of U.S. therapeutic abortion committee practices in the mid-twentieth century, see Rickie Solinger, ‘A Complete Disaster:’ Abortion and the Politics of Hospital Abortion Committees, 1950–1970 , 19 Feminist Stud. 241 (1993).

See Packer & Gampell, supra note 100, at 449. (‘[R]eputable members of the medical profession may well find it galling that their freedom from criminal and civil liability turns merely on the nonenforcement of provisions of the law which, on their face, appear to embrace the conduct in question.’). Texas’s S.B. 8 law employs such a threat by way of subjecting doctors who provide abortions after six weeks to civil suit. See Sabrina Tavernese, supra note 75.

Id. at 421 (citing Alan F. Guttmacher, The Shrinking Non-Psychiatric Indications for Therapeutic Abortion , in Therapeutic Abortion 12 (Rosen, ed. 1954)).

Id . at 430. Their study concluded with a call for law reform—a call that was echoed by their Canadian counterparts in the 1977 Badgley report, which found “gross inequities existed in the availability of therapeutic abortion to the women of Canada.” W.D.S. Thomas, The Badgley Report on the Abortion Law, 116 Can. Med. Ass’n. J. 966, 966 (1977).

See Carole Joffe and Jody Steinauer, Evan Texas Allows Abortions to Protect a Woman’s Life. Or Does It? , N.Y. Times (Sept. 12, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/abortion-texas-roe.html (describing how contemporary abortion bans will likewise challenge medical integrity).

See Oberman, supra note 2, at 13–42 (describing the highly public Salvadoran case of Beatriz, a woman forced to continue a life-threatening pregnancy until her doctors agreed that death was imminent, which then triggered her right to self-defense, permitting doctors to end her pregnancy).

For a thoughtful consideration of the constitutional protections owed to one who is pregnant, when abortion is illegal, see Meghan Boone, Reproductive Due Process , 88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 511, 526 (2020) (‘Beyond its flexibility and ability to evolve, a third feature of due process is simply its function as a catchall constitutional backstop for determining the fairness of government action’).

See Matthews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976) (“Identification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors: first, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and, finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirements would entail.”). See also Simona Grossi, Procedural Due Process , 13 Seton Hall Cir. Rev. 155, 158 (2017) (‘[A]…procedural law that is not supported by logic, fairness, and efficiency considerations,…violates due process.’).

See Chotiner, supra note 5, (citing Marjorie Dannenfelser).

See eg Box v. Planned Parenthood, 139 S. Ct. 1780 at 1783 (Thomas, J., concurring) (supporting an Indiana law banning abortion on grounds of fetal anomaly by invoking the state’s ‘compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.’).

See eg Eli Rosenberg, Clarence Thomas Tried to Link Abortion to Eugenics. Seven Historians Told the Post He’s Wrong , Wash. Post (May 30, 2019, 9:50 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/31/clarence-thomas-tried-link-abortion-eugenics-sevenhistorians-told-post-hes-wrong [ https://perma.cc/5DNR-PJT5 ]; Imani Gandy, When It Comes to Birth Control and Eugenics, Clarence Thomas Gets It All Wrong , Rewire (May 29, 2019, 5:11 PM), https://rewire.news/ablc/2019/05/29/when-it-comes-to-birth-control-and-eugenics-clarencethomas-gets-it-all-wrong [ https://perma.cc/3HZ3-689B ]; Lydia O’Connor, What Justice Clarence Thomas Gets Wrong About Eugenics and Abortion , Huff. Post (May 29, 2019, 5:50 PM), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarence-thomas-eugenics-abortion_n_5ced6c87e4b0356205a07182 [ https://perma.cc/6AHJ-MS5U ].

See Melissa Murray, Race-ing Roe: Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, and the Battle for Roe v. Wade , 134 Harv. L. Rev. 2025 (2021) (providing a compelling response to the eugenics charge); see also Jennifer L. Holland, Tiny You: A Western History Of The Anti-Abortion Movement (2020) (arguing that the goals of the anti-abortion movement are deeply entwined with those of the white supremacy movement). Indeed, one might find evidence of racism in the suggestion that adoption is the best solution for poor Black and brown babies, which echoes the U.S. Indian Adoption Project of 1958–1967, under which as many as one-third of indigenous children were separated from their families. 85% of those children were placed in non-native homes or institutions. See Stephanie Woodward, Native Americans Expose The Adoption Era and Repair Its Devastation , Indian Country Today (updated Sept. 13, 2018), https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/native-americans-expose-the-adoption-era-and-repair-its-devastation .

Reproductive Justice–Sister Song   https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice . See also, Mission and Vision , If, When, How, https://www.ifwhenhow.org/about/mission-vision/ [ https://perma.cc/3RRJ-LKT5 ] (last visited Dec. 21, 2021) (A leading reproductive justice organization, their vision statement reads: ‘We envision a transformation of the legal systems and institutions that perpetuate oppression into structures that realize justice, and a future when all people can self-determine their reproductive lives free from discrimination, coercion, or violence.’).

They might begin by looking to Germany. Not, as Chief Justice Roberts suggested in the Dobbs oral argument, because its law restricting abortion to 12 weeks’ gestation is a good compromise. (Transcript of Oral Argument at 53–55, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, No. 19-1392). Rather, because of the story of how anti-abortion German lawmakers concluded that the best way to deter abortion was to enact, along with a partial ban, “a suite of services that had to be made available to women and families as part of any law regulating abortion: financial assistance for stay-at-home parents; a guaranteed return to a parent’s prior job if he or she took off up to three years to care for a child; extended day care and extensive tax credits for day care costs; increases for child support payments; extended paid leave to care for sick children; reemployment guarantees for empty nesters; sex education services; and a host of other measures relating to adoption, housing and taxation.” Jamal Greene, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart 130 (2021).

See Chotiner interview, supra note 5. (“We make sure there’s child care in the first few years of that child’s life that’s cheap or free. That’s going to look very different in Minnesota than it does in Georgia. In Minnesota, there very well may be a political appetite for passing more state-supported aid…. There is not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to…how the needs of women will be met. That is vital work for the pro-life movement, and the Republican Party.”).

See Isaac Chotiner, How Pandemics Change History , The New Yorker (Mar. 3, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history (quoting Frank M. Snowden).

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Comparison/Contrast Essays: Two Patterns

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First Pattern: Block-by-Block

By Rory H. Osbrink

Abortion is an example of a very controversial issue. The two opposing viewpoints surrounding abortion are like two sides of a coin. On one side, there is the pro-choice activist and on the other is the pro-life activist.

The argument is a balanced one; for every point supporting abortion there is a counter-point condemning abortion. This essay will delineate the controversy in one type of comparison/contrast essay form: the “”Argument versus Argument,”” or, “”Block-by-Block”” format. In this style of writing, first you present all the arguments surrounding one side of the issue, then you present all the arguments surrounding the other side of the issue. You are generally not expected to reach a conclusion, but simply to present the opposing sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined) Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Block-by-Block Format

One of the most divisive issues in America is the controversy surrounding abortion. Currently, abortion is legal in America, and many people believe that it should remain legal. These people, pro-choice activists, believe that it is the women’s right to chose whether or not to give birth. However, there are many groups who are lobbying Congress to pass laws that would make abortion illegal. These people are called the pro-life activists.

Explains pro-choice

Abortion is a choice that should be decided by each individual, argues the pro-choice activist. Abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet fully human, therefore, it is not in defiance against God. Regardless of the reason for the abortion, it should be the woman’s choice because it is her body. While adoption is an option some women chose, many women do not want to suffer the physical and emotional trauma of pregnancy and labor only to give up a child. Therefore, laws should remain in effect that protect a woman’s right to chose.

Explains pro-life

Abortion is an abomination, argues the pro-life activist. It makes no sense for a woman to murder a human being not even born. The bible says, “”Thou shalt not kill,”” and it does not discriminate between different stages of life. A fetus is the beginning of life. Therefore, abortion is murder, and is in direct defiance of God’s will. Regardless of the mother’s life situation (many women who abort are poor, young, or drug users), the value of a human life cannot be measured. Therefore, laws should be passed to outlaw abortion. After all, there are plenty of couples who are willing to adopt an unwanted child.

If we take away the woman’s right to chose, will we begin limiting her other rights also? Or, if we keep abortion legal, are we devaluing human life? There is no easy answer to these questions. Both sides present strong, logical arguments. Though it is a very personal decision, t he fate of abortion rights will have to be left for the Supreme Court to decide.

Second Pattern: Point-by-Point

This second example is also an essay about abortion. We have used the same information and line of reasoning in this essay, however, this one will be presented in the “”Point-by-Point”” style argument. The Point-by-Point style argument presents both sides of the argument at the same time. First, you would present one point on a specific topic, then you would follow that up with the opposing point on the same topic. Again, you are generally not expected to draw any conclusions, simply to fairly present both sides of the argument.

Introduction: (the thesis is underlined)

Explains the argument

The Abortion Issue: Compare and Contrast Point-by-Point Format

Point One: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Supporters of both pro-life and pro-choice refer to religion as support for their side of the argument. Pro-life supporters claim that abortion is murder, and is therefore against God’s will. However, pro-choice defenders argue that abortion is not murder since the fetus is not yet a fully formed human. Therefore, abortion would not be a defiance against God.

Point Two: Pro-life and Pro-choice

Another main point of the argument is over the woman’s personal rights, versus the rights of the unborn child. Pro-choice activists maintain that regardless of the individual circumstances, women should have the right to chose whether or not to abort. The pregnancy and labor will affect only the woman’s body, therefore it should be the woman’s decision. Pro-life supporters, on the other hand, believe that the unborn child has the right to life, and that abortion unlawfully takes away that right.

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There Are More Than Two Sides to the Abortion Debate

Readers share their perspectives.

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Earlier this week I curated some nuanced commentary on abortion and solicited your thoughts on the same subject. What follows includes perspectives from several different sides of the debate. I hope each one informs your thinking, even if only about how some other people think.

We begin with a personal reflection.

Cheryl was 16 when New York State passed a statute legalizing abortion and 19 when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. At the time she was opposed to the change, because “it just felt wrong.” Less than a year later, her mother got pregnant and announced she was getting an abortion.

She recalled:

My parents were still married to each other, and we were financially stable. Nonetheless, my mother’s announcement immediately made me a supporter of the legal right to abortion. My mother never loved me. My father was physically abusive and both parents were emotionally and psychologically abusive on a virtually daily basis. My home life was hellish. When my mother told me about the intended abortion, my first thought was, “Thank God that they won’t be given another life to destroy.” I don’t deny that there are reasons to oppose abortion. As a feminist and a lawyer, I can now articulate several reasons for my support of legal abortion: a woman’s right to privacy and autonomy and to the equal protection of the laws are near the top of the list. (I agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg that equal protection is a better legal rationale for the right to abortion than privacy.) But my emotional reaction from 1971 still resonates with me. Most people who comment on the issue, on both sides, do not understand what it is to go through childhood unloved. It is horrific beyond my powers of description. To me, there is nothing more immoral than forcing that kind of life on any child. Anti-abortion activists often like to ask supporters of abortion rights: “Well, what if your mother had decided to abort you?” All I can say is that I have spent a great portion of my life wishing that my mother had done exactly that.

Steven had related thoughts:

I have respect for the idea that there should be some restrictions on abortion. But the most fundamental, and I believe flawed, unstated assumptions of the anti-choice are that A) they are acting on behalf of the fetus, and more importantly B) they know what the fetus would want. I would rather not have been born than to have been born to a mother who did not want me. All children should be wanted children—for the sake of all concerned. You can say that different fetuses would “want” different things—though it’s hard to say a clump of cells “wants” anything. How would we know? The argument lands, as it does generally, with the question of who should be making that decision. Who best speaks in the fetus’s interests? Who is better positioned morally or practically than the expectant mother?

Geoff self-describes as “pro-life” and guilty of some hypocrisy. He writes:

I’m pro-life because I have a hard time with the dehumanization that comes with the extremes of abortion on demand … Should it be okay to get an abortion when you find your child has Down syndrome? What of another abnormality? Or just that you didn’t want a girl? Any argument that these are legitimate reasons is disturbing. But so many of the pro-life just don’t seem to care about life unless it’s a fetus they can force a woman to carry. The hypocrisy is real. While you can argue that someone on death row made a choice that got them to that point, whereas a fetus had no say, I find it still hard to swallow that you can claim one life must be protected and the other must be taken. Life should be life. At least in the Catholic Church this is more consistent. I myself am guilty of a degree of hypocrisy. My wife and I used IVF to have our twins. There were other embryos created and not inserted. They were eventually destroyed. So did I support killing a life? Maybe? I didn’t want to donate them for someone else to give birth to—it felt wrong to think my twins may have brothers or sisters in the world they would never know about. Yet does that mean I was more willing to kill my embryos than to have them adopted? Sure seems like it. So I made a morality deal with myself and moved the goal post—the embryos were not yet in a womb and were so early in development that they couldn’t be considered fully human life. They were still potential life.

Colleen, a mother of three, describes why she ended her fourth pregnancy:

I was young when I first engaged this debate. Raised Catholic, anti-choice, and so committed to my position that I broke my parents’ hearts by giving birth during my junior year of college. At that time, my sense of my own rights in the matter was almost irrelevant. I was enslaved by my body. One husband and two babies later I heard a remarkable Jesuit theologian (I wish I could remember his name) speak on the matter and he, a Catholic priest, framed it most directly. We prioritize one life over another all the time. Most obviously, we justify the taking of life in war with all kinds of arguments that often turn out to be untrue. We also do so as we decide who merits access to health care or income support or other life-sustaining things. So the question of abortion then boils down to: Who gets to decide? Who gets to decide that the life of a human in gestation is actually more valuable than the life of the woman who serves as host—or vice versa? Who gets to decide when the load a woman is being asked to carry is more than she can bear? The state? Looking back over history, he argued that he certainly had more faith in the person most involved to make the best decision than in any formalized structure—church or state—created by men. Every form of birth control available failed me at one point or another, so when yet a 4th pregnancy threatened to interrupt the education I had finally been able to resume, I said “Enough.” And as I cried and struggled to come to that position, the question that haunted me was “Doesn’t MY life count?” And I decided it did.

Florence articulates what it would take to make her anti-abortion:

What people seem to miss is that depriving a woman of bodily autonomy is slavery. A person who does not control his/her own body is—what? A slave. At its simplest, this is the issue. I will be anti-abortion when men and women are equal in all facets of life—wages, chores, child-rearing responsibilities, registering for the draft, to name a few obvious ones. When there is birth control that is effective, where women do not bear most of the responsibility. We need to raise boys who are respectful to girls, who do not think that they are entitled to coerce a girl into having sex that she doesn’t really want or is unprepared for. We need for sex education to be provided in schools so young couples know what they are getting into when they have sex. Especially the repercussions of pregnancy. We need to raise girls who are confident and secure, who don’t believe they need a male to “complete” them. Who have enough agency to say “no” and to know why. We have to make abortion unnecessary … We have so far to go. If abortion is ruled illegal, or otherwise curtailed, we will never know if the solutions to women’s second-class status will work. We will be set back to the 50s or worse. I don’t want to go back. Women have fought from the beginning of time to own their bodies and their lives. To deprive us of all of the amazing strides forward will affect all future generations.

Similarly, Ben agrees that in our current environment, abortion is often the only way women can retain equal citizenship and participation in society, but also agrees with pro-lifers who critique the status quo, writing that he doesn’t want a world where a daughter’s equality depends on her right “to perform an act of violence on their potential descendents.” Here’s how he resolves his conflictedness:

Conservatives arguing for a more family-centered society, in which abortion is unnecessary to protect the equal rights of women, are like liberals who argue for defunding the police and relying on addiction, counselling, and other services, in that they argue for removing what offends them without clear, credible plans to replace the functions it serves. I sincerely hope we can move towards a world in which armed police are less necessary. But before we can remove the guardrails of the police, we need to make the rest of the changes so that the world works without them. Once liberal cities that have shown interest in defunding the police can prove that they can fund alternatives, and that those alternatives work, then I will throw my support behind defunding the police. Similarly, once conservative politicians demonstrate a credible commitment to an alternative vision of society in which women are supported, families are not taken for granted, and careers and short-term productivity are not the golden calves they are today, I will be willing to support further restrictions on abortion. But until I trust that they are interested in solving the underlying problem (not merely eliminating an aspect they find offensive), I will defend abortion, as terrible as it is, within reasonable legal limits.

Two readers objected to foregrounding gender equality. One emailed anonymously, writing in part:

A fetus either is or isn’t a person. The reason I’m pro-life is that I’ve never heard a coherent defense of the proposition that a fetus is not a person, and I’m not sure one can be made. I’ve read plenty of progressive commentary, and when it bothers to make an argument for abortion “rights” at all, it talks about “the importance of women’s healthcare” or something as if that were the issue.

Christopher expanded on that last argument:

Of the many competing ethical concerns, the one that trumps them all is the status of the fetus. It is the only organism that gets destroyed by the procedure. Whether that is permissible trumps all other concerns. Otherwise important ethical claims related to a woman’s bodily autonomy, less relevant social disparities caused by the differences in men’s and women’s reproductive functions, and even less relevant differences in partisan commitments to welfare that would make abortion less appealing––all of that is secondary. The relentless strategy by the pro-choice to sidestep this question and pretend that a woman’s right to bodily autonomy is the primary ethical concern is, to me, somewhere between shibboleth and mass delusion. We should spend more time, even if it’s unproductive, arguing about the status of the fetus, because that is the question, and we should spend less time indulging this assault-on-women’s-rights narrative pushed by the Left.

Jean is critical of the pro-life movement:

Long-acting reversible contraceptives, robust, science-based sex education for teens, and a stronger social safety net would all go a remarkable way toward decreasing the number of abortions sought. Yet all the emphasis seems to be on simply making abortion illegal. For many, overturning Roe v. Wade is not about reducing abortions so much as signalling that abortion is wrong. If so-called pro-lifers were as concerned about abortion as they seem to be, they would spend more time, effort, and money supporting efforts to reduce the need for abortion—not simply trying to make it illegal without addressing why women seek it out. Imagine, in other words, a world where women hardly needed to rely on abortion for their well-being and ability to thrive. Imagine a world where almost any woman who got pregnant had planned to do so, or was capable of caring for that child. What is the anti-abortion movement doing to promote that world?

Destiny has one relevant answer. She writes:

I run a pro-life feminist group and we often say that our goal is not to make abortion illegal, but rather unnecessary and unthinkable by supporting women and humanizing the unborn child so well.

Robert suggests a different focus:

Any well-reasoned discussion of abortion policy must include contraception because abortion is about unwanted children brought on by poorly reasoned choices about sex. Such choices will always be more emotional than rational. Leaving out contraception makes it an unrealistic, airy discussion of moral philosophy. In particular, we need to consider government-funded programs of long-acting reversible contraception which enable reasoned choices outside the emotional circumstances of having sexual intercourse.

Last but not least, if anyone can unite the pro-life and pro-choice movements, it’s Errol, whose thoughts would rankle majorities in both factions as well as a majority of Americans. He writes:

The decision to keep the child should not be left up solely to the woman. Yes, it is her body that the child grows in, however once that child is birthed it is now two people’s responsibility. That’s entirely unfair to the father when he desired the abortion but the mother couldn’t find it in her heart to do it. If a woman wants to abort and the man wants to keep it, she should abort. However I feel the same way if a man wants to abort. The next 18+ years of your life are on the line. I view that as a trade-off that warrants the male’s input. Abortion is a conversation that needs to be had by two people, because those two will be directly tied to the result for a majority of their life. No one else should be involved with that decision, but it should not be solely hers, either.

Thanks to all who contributed answers to this week’s question, whether or not they were among the ones published. What subjects would you like to see fellow readers address in future installments? Email [email protected].

By submitting an email, you’ve agreed to let us use it—in part or in full—in this newsletter and on our website. Published feedback includes a writer’s full name, city, and state, unless otherwise requested in your initial note.

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Pro and Con: Abortion

To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether abortion should be legal, go to ProCon.org .

The debate over whether abortion should be a legal option has long divided people around the world. Split into two groups, pro-choice and pro-life, the two sides frequently clash in protests.

A June 2, 2022 Gallup poll , 55% of Americans identified as “pro-choice,” the highest percentage since 1995. 39% identified as “pro-life,” and 5% were neither or unsure. For the first time in the history of the poll question (since 2001), 52% of Americans believe abortion is morally acceptable. 38% believed the procedure to be morally wrong, and 10% answered that it depended on the situation or they were unsure.

Surgical abortion (aka suction curettage or vacuum curettage) is the most common type of abortion procedure. It involves using a suction device to remove the contents of a pregnant woman’s uterus. Surgical abortion performed later in pregnancy (after 12-16 weeks) is called D&E (dilation and evacuation). The second most common abortion procedure, a medical abortion (aka an “abortion pill”), involves taking medications, usually mifepristone and misoprostol (aka RU-486), within the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy to induce an abortion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 67% of abortions performed in 2014 were performed at or less than eight weeks’ gestation, and 91.5% were performed at or less than 13 weeks’ gestation. 77.3% were performed by surgical procedure, while 22.6% were medical abortions. An abortion can cost from $500 to over $1,000 depending on where it is performed and how long into the pregnancy it is.

• Abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives.
• Abortion bans endangers healthcare for those not seeking abortions.
• Abortion bans deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.
• Life begins at conception, making abortion murder.
• Legal abortion promotes a culture in which life is disposable.
• Increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary.

This article was published on June 24, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org , a nonpartisan issue-information source.

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The meaning, history and political rhetoric surrounding the term abortion ‘ban’

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A supporter holds up a sign during Missourians for Constitutionals Freedom petition drive on Feb. 6, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP)

Ban: Merriam-Webster defines it as "a legal or formal prohibition." But in the 2024 election cycle — the first general election since Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that enshrined a constitutional right to an abortion, was overturned — the term has morphed into polarizing political rhetoric. "Ban" has become synonymous with abortion and the wave of anti-abortion laws enacted in states across the country. For example, on President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign website, the abortion policy page’s title reads: "Donald Trump wants to ban abortion nationwide. Re-elect Joe Biden to stop him and protect reproductive freedom." 

Trump appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe. After years of inconsistency, Trump most recently has said that laws on abortion should be left to the states and that he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban. Many Democrats and abortion rights activists have also zeroed in on down-ballot Republicans, accusing them of supporting abortion "bans," even if their positions allow for some access.

"Yesterday, we celebrated Mother’s Day. Today, I remind you that politicians like Bernie Moreno, who supports a national abortion ban, don’t want moms making their own healthcare decisions. Abortion rights are on Ohio's ballot again in 2024," Ohio Democrat Allison Russo wrote May 13 on X . 

Moreno, who has Trump’s support, is a Republican running for Senate in Ohio against Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown. Moreno has said that he would vote for a 15-week national abortion ban.

Political discourse experts say "ban" has emerged as shorthand for nearly all abortion prohibitions. The blunt term, nuanced in its myriad interpretations, often leaves room for political spin.

"Ban" is not a medical term; people across the political spectrum on abortion define it differently. 

The word has two main rhetorical functions, political discourse experts said. When people talk to like-minded people about a particular issue, it can reinforce the group’s beliefs. Or, it can label opponents as "extreme."

"For example, when Joe Biden talks about an assault weapon ban, he’s not trying to convert skeptics — he’s signaling to people who already agree with them that they’re on the same team," said Ryan Skinnell, an associate professor of rhetoric and writing at San Jose State University. "But the other way ‘ban’ works is to identify someone you disagree with as extreme. Groups who want to keep certain books out of libraries, for instance, rarely describe themselves as in support of book banning. Their opponents adopt that language."

This dual usage reflects in the abortion fight. Abortion-rights activists use "ban" to signal an infringement on personal freedom and autonomy over medical decisions. Anti-abortion proponents may use "ban" to signal a protection of fetal life. For example, when introducing legislation that bans abortion at various stages, Republican politicians have often framed the bills as moral imperatives that protect unborn life.

Peter Loge, a George Washington University professor who directs the school’s Project on Ethics in Political Communication, said ban has historically meant "to eliminate" or "not have," but politicians employ a strategic ambiguity that allows listeners to assign their own meaning. Loge, who served as a senior adviser in former President Barack Obama’s Food and Drug Administration, said Obama did this with one of his campaign slogans: "Change We Can Believe In." 

"Well, what does ‘change’ mean? Clearly, it means whatever he thinks it means, but as a listener you will ascribe it to mean whatever you think it means," Loge said. "So, if I think most abortions should be illegal and in some cases it's OK, I can support a ban, because it's a ban with exceptions. The listener plugs in whatever caveats they prefer and ascribes them to the speaker. This is a technique as far back as Aristotle, who wrote that the listener provides the reasoning for themselves."

Loge, like Skinnell, said "ban" is often used in politics to showcase extremism and the threat of something being taken away.

"It’s the rhetoric of anger. ‘They want to take your rights from you. … Now it’s an ideological divide and it works because we’re going to be more motivated to vote," Loge said. "People are more concerned about losing something they have than they are interested in getting something new. We are risk-averse." Nathan Stormer, a rhetoric professor at the University of Maine and an expert in abortion rhetoric, said the term usually shows up when people refer to making abortion illegal in pregnancy’s earlier stages. But, he added, although common usage typically refers to a first trimester threshold, there is "no set of rules."

"Because it is not a consistently used term, I think when people do not specify what they are referring to, others may take them to mean at conception or very early, but one has to inquire about context," Stormer wrote in an email. 

Before the 1970s, there was little discussion about abortion bans. Although legal abortion existed in various states at various stages before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, the ruling’s enshrinement of abortion rights across the country, helped galvanize opposition and mobilize anti-abortion groups. "There were book bans, pornography bans, dancing bans, and so on. But even most conservative politicians and church groups weren’t especially concerned with abortion as an issue, and there was virtually no concerted political interest in bans," Skinnell, from San Jose University, said. "That began to change with Richard Nixon." Skinnell said the former president’s advisers, in coordination with evangelical Christian church leaders, determined they could connect abortion to left-wing social movements, such as feminism, by linking them consistently in speeches and campaign materials. 

"The idea of abortion bans came directly out of that partnership," Skinnell said, "and it gathered steam in right-wing and conservative circles throughout the next few decades." Republicans further popularized the term in the mid-1990s, when they advocated for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003. The campaign to pass that legislation, experts said, introduced the term "ban" as the abortion restriction’s "stated intent."  

Political rhetoric experts said much of the medical literature and media coverage before Roe v. Wade often used terms such as "illegal" because abortion was considered a criminal act in most states. 

"Even in the early stages of criminalizing abortion in the U.S., I don't think ban was a common term," Stormer said. "When a restriction is being put in place where before there was not one, people tend to resort to the word ban."

Emily Winderman, a University of Minnesota professor specializing in the rhetorical study of health and medicine, said that over time abortion "bans" have manifested  as "incremental" restrictions throughout gestational development to the complete prohibitions seen in multiple states today.

For instance, she said, "heartbeat bills," which typically refer to laws that make abortion illegal as early as six weeks of pregnancy, were controversial when they emerged around 2010, but have become more prevalent since the Trump administration and Roe’s overturning. 

Winderman also said bans can appear via code and ordinance restrictions, such as banning  the type of use for a particular piece of real estate — making abortion clinics impossible to place.

"It's important to understand bans as a complex strategy that includes gestational limits as well as limitations on who can provide care and where," she said. 

Shifting abortion laws across the U.S. have made "ban" an increasingly common term. Forty-one states now ban abortion at different points in pregnancy — 14 enforce total bans, three enforce six-week bans and others restrict abortion before fetal viability.

Stormer, from the University of Maine, pointed to Arizona’s Supreme Court reinstating an 1864 law that completely banned abortion. (It has since been repealed. ) At the time the law was written, conception was not well understood, and there was no clear sense of fertilization or how it worked.

"Reinstating that law was a great example of how the conflict over abortion has remained steady and largely recognizable, but its terms and understandings have been constantly moving, which says something," Stormer said. "So, specific words do important work, but they do not capture what is happening rhetorically, in my opinion. The moving terminologies are the waves crashing, but the tides are the thing."

RELATED: The top claims about abortion, fact-checked  

RELATED: All abortion bans include exceptions for a mother’s life. But are they working?

Our Sources

JoeBiden.com, Abortion , accessed May 13, 2024 

X post , May 13, 2024

X post , May 10, 2024 

Politico, Trump said it’s up to the states to decide abortion. Here’s everything else he didn’t say , April 9, 2024  

WBUR, The Rhetoric That Shaped The Abortion Debate , June 28, 2010 

Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetorical strategies for retrieving abortion rights , September 2022 

Merriam-Webster, Ban definition and meaning, Accessed May 1, 2024 

Justia.com, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)   

Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health, A Brief History of Abortion in the U.S. , 2022

Guttmacher Institute, State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy , Updated May 1, 2024 

Email interview, Emily Winderman, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in the rhetorical study of health and medicine, April 15, 2024

Email interview, Nathan Stormer, rhetoric professor and expert in abortion rhetoric at the University of Maine, May 6, 2024

Email interview, Ryan Skinnell, associate professor of rhetoric and writing at San José State University, May 10, 2024

Phone interview, Peter Loge,a professor at George Washington University and director of the school’s Project on Ethics in Political Communication, May 10, 2024

Email interview, Lisa Corrigan, professor of communication at the University of Arkansas, May 13, 2023  

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• America’s Abortion Quandary
• 1. Americans’ views on whether, and in what circumstances, abortion should be legal

Table of Contents

• Public views of what would change the number of abortions in the U.S.
• A majority of Americans say women should have more say in setting abortion policy in the U.S.
• How do certain arguments about abortion resonate with Americans?
• In their own words: How Americans feel about abortion 
• 3. How the issue of abortion touches Americans personally
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

As the long-running debate over abortion reaches another  key moment at the Supreme Court  and in  state legislatures across the country , a majority of U.S. adults continue to say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. About six-in-ten Americans (61%) say abortion should be legal in “all” or “most” cases, while 37% think abortion should be  illegal  in all or most cases. These views have changed little over the past several years: In 2019, for example, 61% of adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 38% said it should be illegal in all or most cases.    Most respondents in the new survey took one of the middle options when first asked about their views on abortion, saying either that abortion should be legal in  most  cases (36%) or illegal in  most  cases (27%). 

Respondents who said abortion should either be legal in  all  cases or illegal in  all  cases received a follow-up question asking whether there should be any exceptions to such laws. Overall, 25% of adults initially said abortion should be legal in all cases, but about a quarter of this group (6% of all U.S. adults) went on to say that there should be some exceptions when abortion should be against the law.

One-in-ten adults initially answered that abortion should be illegal in all cases, but about one-in-five of these respondents (2% of all U.S. adults) followed up by saying that there are some exceptions when abortion should be permitted. 

Altogether, seven-in-ten Americans say abortion should be legal in some cases and illegal in others, including 42% who say abortion should be generally legal, but with some exceptions, and 29% who say it should be generally illegal, except in certain cases. Much smaller shares take absolutist views when it comes to the legality of abortion in the U.S., maintaining that abortion should be legal in all cases with no exceptions (19%) or illegal in all circumstances (8%). 

There is a modest gender gap in views of whether abortion should be legal, with women slightly more likely than men to say abortion should be legal in all cases or in all cases but with some exceptions (63% vs. 58%). 

Younger adults are considerably more likely than older adults to say abortion should be legal: Three-quarters of adults under 30 (74%) say abortion should be generally legal, including 30% who say it should be legal in all cases without exception. 

But there is an even larger gap in views toward abortion by partisanship: 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 38% of Republicans and GOP leaners.  Previous Center research  has shown this gap widening over the past 15 years. 

Still, while partisans diverge in views of whether abortion should mostly be legal or illegal, most Democrats and Republicans do not view abortion in absolutist terms. Just 13% of Republicans say abortion should be against the law in all cases without exception; 47% say it should be illegal with some exceptions. And while three-in-ten Democrats say abortion should be permitted in all circumstances, half say it should mostly be legal – but with some exceptions. 

There also are sizable divisions within both partisan coalitions by ideology. For instance, while a majority of moderate and liberal Republicans say abortion should mostly be legal (60%), just 27% of conservative Republicans say the same. Among Democrats, self-described liberals are twice as apt as moderates and conservatives to say abortion should be legal in all cases without exception (42% vs. 20%).

Regardless of partisan affiliation, adults who say they personally know someone who has had an abortion – such as a friend, relative or themselves – are more likely to say abortion should be legal than those who say they do not know anyone who had an abortion.

Views toward abortion also vary considerably by religious affiliation – specifically among large Christian subgroups and religiously unaffiliated Americans. 

For example, roughly three-quarters of White evangelical Protestants say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. This is far higher than the share of White non-evangelical Protestants (38%) or Black Protestants (28%) who say the same. 

Despite  Catholic teaching on abortion , a slim majority of U.S. Catholics (56%) say abortion should be legal. This includes 13% who say it should be legal in all cases without exception, and 43% who say it should be legal, but with some exceptions. 

Compared with Christians, religiously unaffiliated adults are far more likely to say abortion should be legal overall – and significantly more inclined to say it should be legal in all cases without exception. Within this group, atheists stand out: 97% say abortion should be legal, including 53% who say it should be legal in all cases without exception. Agnostics and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” also overwhelmingly say that abortion should be legal, but they are more likely than atheists to say there are some circumstances when abortion should be against the law.

Although the survey was conducted among Americans of many religious backgrounds, including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, it did not obtain enough respondents from non-Christian groups to report separately on their responses.

Abortion at various stages of pregnancy 

As a  growing number of states  debate legislation to restrict abortion – often after a certain stage of pregnancy – Americans express complex views about when   abortion should generally be legal and when it should be against the law. Overall, a majority of adults (56%) say that how long a woman has been pregnant should matter in determining when abortion should be legal, while far fewer (14%) say that this should  not  be a factor. An additional one-quarter of the public says that abortion should either be legal (19%) or illegal (8%) in all circumstances without exception; these respondents did not receive this question.

Among men and women, Republicans and Democrats, and Christians and religious “nones” who do not take absolutist positions about abortion on either side of the debate, the prevailing view is that the stage of the pregnancy should be a factor in determining whether abortion should be legal.

Americans broadly are more likely to favor restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy than earlier in pregnancy. Many adults also say the legality of abortion depends on other factors at every stage of pregnancy. 

Overall, a plurality of adults (44%) say that abortion should be legal six weeks into a pregnancy, which is about when cardiac activity (sometimes called a fetal heartbeat) may be detected and before many women know they are pregnant; this includes 19% of adults who say abortion should be legal in all cases without exception, as well as 25% of adults who say it should be legal at that point in a pregnancy. An additional 7% say abortion generally should be legal in most cases, but that the stage of the pregnancy should not matter in determining legality. 1

One-in-five Americans (21%) say abortion should be  illegal  at six weeks. This includes 8% of adults who say abortion should be illegal in all cases without exception as well as 12% of adults who say that abortion should be illegal at this point. Additionally, 6% say abortion should be illegal in most cases and how long a woman has been pregnant should not matter in determining abortion’s legality. Nearly one-in-five respondents, when asked whether abortion should be legal six weeks into a pregnancy, say “it depends.” 

Americans are more divided about what should be permitted 14 weeks into a pregnancy – roughly at the end of the first trimester – although still, more people say abortion should be legal at this stage (34%) than illegal (27%), and about one-in-five say “it depends.”

Fewer adults say abortion should be legal 24 weeks into a pregnancy – about when a healthy fetus could survive outside the womb with medical care. At this stage, 22% of adults say abortion should be legal, while nearly twice as many (43%) say it should be  illegal . Again, about one-in-five adults (18%) say whether abortion should be legal at 24 weeks depends on other factors. 

Respondents who said that abortion should be illegal 24 weeks into a pregnancy or that “it depends” were asked a follow-up question about whether abortion at that point should be legal if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger or the baby would be born with severe disabilities. Most who received this question say abortion in these circumstances should be legal (54%) or that it depends on other factors (40%). Just 4% of this group maintained that abortion should be illegal in this case.

This pattern in views of abortion – whereby more favor greater restrictions on abortion as a pregnancy progresses – is evident across a variety of demographic and political groups. 

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say that abortion should be legal at each of the three stages of pregnancy asked about on the survey. For example, while 26% of Republicans say abortion should be legal at six weeks of pregnancy, more than twice as many Democrats say the same (61%). Similarly, while about a third of Democrats say abortion should be legal at 24 weeks of pregnancy, just 8% of Republicans say the same. 

However, neither Republicans nor Democrats uniformly express absolutist views about abortion throughout a pregnancy. Republicans are divided on abortion at six weeks: Roughly a quarter say it should be legal (26%), while a similar share say it depends (24%). A third say it should be illegal. 

Democrats are divided about whether abortion should be legal or illegal at 24 weeks, with 34% saying it should be legal, 29% saying it should be illegal, and 21% saying it depends. 

There also is considerable division among each partisan group by ideology. At six weeks of pregnancy, just one-in-five conservative Republicans (19%) say that abortion should be legal; moderate and liberal Republicans are twice as likely as their conservative counterparts to say this (39%). 

At the same time, about half of liberal Democrats (48%) say abortion at 24 weeks should be legal, while 17% say it should be illegal. Among conservative and moderate Democrats, the pattern is reversed: A plurality (39%) say abortion at this stage should be illegal, while 24% say it should be legal. 

Christian adults are far less likely than religiously unaffiliated Americans to say abortion should be legal at each stage of pregnancy.  

Among Protestants, White evangelicals stand out for their opposition to abortion. At six weeks of pregnancy, for example, 44% say abortion should be illegal, compared with 17% of White non-evangelical Protestants and 15% of Black Protestants. This pattern also is evident at 14 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, when half or more of White evangelicals say abortion should be illegal.

At six weeks, a plurality of Catholics (41%) say abortion should be legal, while smaller shares say it depends or it should be illegal. But by 24 weeks, about half of Catholics (49%) say abortion should be illegal. 

Among adults who are religiously unaffiliated, atheists stand out for their views. They are the only group in which a sizable majority says abortion should be  legal  at each point in a pregnancy. Even at 24 weeks, 62% of self-described atheists say abortion should be legal, compared with smaller shares of agnostics (43%) and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” (31%). 

As is the case with adults overall, most religiously affiliated and religiously unaffiliated adults who originally say that abortion should be illegal or “it depends” at 24 weeks go on to say either it should be legal or it depends if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger or the baby would be born with severe disabilities. Few (4% and 5%, respectively) say abortion should be illegal at 24 weeks in these situations.

Abortion and circumstances of pregnancy 

The stage of the pregnancy is not the only factor that shapes people’s views of when abortion should be legal. Sizable majorities of U.S. adults say that abortion should be legal if the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant woman (73%) or if pregnancy is the result of rape (69%). 

There is less consensus when it comes to circumstances in which a baby may be born with severe disabilities or health problems: 53% of Americans overall say abortion should be legal in such circumstances, including 19% who say abortion should be legal in all cases and 35% who say there are some situations where abortions should be illegal, but that it should be legal in this specific type of case. A quarter of adults say “it depends” in this situation, and about one-in-five say it should be illegal (10% who say illegal in this specific circumstance and 8% who say illegal in all circumstances). 

There are sizable divides between and among partisans when it comes to views of abortion in these situations. Overall, Republicans are less likely than Democrats to say abortion should be legal in each of the three circumstances outlined in the survey. However, both partisan groups are less likely to say abortion should be legal when the baby may be born with severe disabilities or health problems than when the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape. 

Just as there are wide gaps among Republicans by ideology on whether how long a woman has been pregnant should be a factor in determining abortion’s legality, there are large gaps when it comes to circumstances in which abortions should be legal. For example, while a clear majority of moderate and liberal Republicans (71%) say abortion should be permitted when the pregnancy is the result of rape, conservative Republicans are more divided. About half (48%) say it should be legal in this situation, while 29% say it should be illegal and 21% say it depends.

The ideological gaps among Democrats are slightly less pronounced. Most Democrats say abortion should be legal in each of the three circumstances – just to varying degrees. While 77% of liberal Democrats say abortion should be legal if a baby will be born with severe disabilities or health problems, for example, a smaller majority of conservative and moderate Democrats (60%) say the same. 

White evangelical Protestants again stand out for their views on abortion in various circumstances; they are far less likely than White non-evangelical or Black Protestants to say abortion should be legal across each of the three circumstances described in the survey. 

While about half of White evangelical Protestants (51%) say abortion should be legal if a pregnancy threatens the woman’s life or health, clear majorities of other Protestant groups and Catholics say this should be the case. The same pattern holds in views of whether abortion should be legal if the pregnancy is the result of rape. Most White non-evangelical Protestants (75%), Black Protestants (71%) and Catholics (66%) say abortion should be permitted in this instance, while White evangelicals are more divided: 40% say it should be legal, while 34% say it should be  illegal  and about a quarter say it depends. 

Mirroring the pattern seen among adults overall, opinions are more varied about a situation where a baby might be born with severe disabilities or health issues. For instance, half of Catholics say abortion should be legal in such cases, while 21% say it should be illegal and 27% say it depends on the situation. 

Most religiously unaffiliated adults – including overwhelming majorities of self-described atheists – say abortion should be legal in each of the three circumstances. 

Parental notification for minors seeking abortion

Seven-in-ten U.S. adults say that doctors or other health care providers should be required to notify a parent or legal guardian if the pregnant woman seeking an abortion is under 18, while 28% say they should not be required to do so.  

Women are slightly less likely than men to say this should be a requirement (67% vs. 74%). And younger adults are far less likely than those who are older to say a parent or guardian should be notified before a doctor performs an abortion on a pregnant woman who is under 18. In fact, about half of adults ages 18 to 24 (53%) say a doctor should  not  be required to notify a parent. By contrast, 64% of adults ages 25 to 29 say doctors  should  be required to notify parents of minors seeking an abortion, as do 68% of adults ages 30 to 49 and 78% of those 50 and older. 

A large majority of Republicans (85%) say that a doctor should be required to notify the parents of a minor before an abortion, though conservative Republicans are somewhat more likely than moderate and liberal Republicans to take this position (90% vs. 77%). 

The ideological divide is even more pronounced among Democrats. Overall, a slim majority of Democrats (57%) say a parent should be notified in this circumstance, but while 72% of conservative and moderate Democrats hold this view, just 39% of liberal Democrats agree. 

By and large, most Protestant (81%) and Catholic (78%) adults say doctors should be required to notify parents of minors before an abortion. But religiously unaffiliated Americans are more divided. Majorities of both atheists (71%) and agnostics (58%) say doctors should  not  be required to notify parents of minors seeking an abortion, while six-in-ten of those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” say such notification should be required. 

Penalties for abortions performed illegally 

Americans are divided over who should be penalized – and what that penalty should be – in a situation where an abortion occurs illegally. 

Overall, a 60% majority of adults say that if a doctor or provider performs an abortion in a situation where it is illegal, they should face a penalty. But there is less agreement when it comes to others who may have been involved in the procedure. 

While about half of the public (47%) says a woman who has an illegal abortion should face a penalty, a nearly identical share (50%) says she should not. And adults are more likely to say people who help find and schedule or pay for an abortion in a situation where it is illegal should  not  face a penalty than they are to say they should.

Views about penalties are closely correlated with overall attitudes about whether abortion should be legal or illegal. For example, just 20% of adults who say abortion should be legal in all cases without exception think doctors or providers should face a penalty if an abortion were carried out in a situation where it was illegal. This compares with 91% of those who think abortion should be illegal in all cases without exceptions. Still, regardless of how they feel about whether abortion should be legal or not, Americans are more likely to say a doctor or provider should face a penalty compared with others involved in the procedure. 

Among those who say medical providers and/or women should face penalties for illegal abortions, there is no consensus about whether they should get jail time or a less severe punishment. Among U.S. adults overall, 14% say women should serve jail time if they have an abortion in a situation where it is illegal, while 16% say they should receive a fine or community service and 17% say they are not sure what the penalty should be. 

A somewhat larger share of Americans (25%) say doctors or other medical providers should face jail time for providing illegal abortion services, while 18% say they should face fines or community service and 17% are not sure. About three-in-ten U.S. adults (31%) say doctors should lose their medical license if they perform an abortion in a situation where it is illegal.

Men are more likely than women to favor penalties for the woman or doctor in situations where abortion is illegal. About half of men (52%) say women should face a penalty, while just 43% of women say the same. Similarly, about two-thirds of men (64%) say a doctor should face a penalty, while 56% of women agree.

Republicans are considerably more likely than Democrats to say both women and doctors should face penalties – including jail time. For example, 21% of Republicans say the woman who had the abortion should face jail time, and 40% say this about the doctor who performed the abortion. Among Democrats, far smaller shares say the woman (8%) or doctor (13%) should serve jail time.  

White evangelical Protestants are more likely than other Protestant groups to favor penalties for abortions in situations where they are illegal. Fully 24% say the woman who had the abortion should serve time in jail, compared with just 12% of White non-evangelical Protestants or Black Protestants. And while about half of White evangelicals (48%) say doctors who perform illegal abortions should serve jail time, just 26% of White non-evangelical Protestants and 18% of Black Protestants share this view.

• Only respondents who said that abortion should be legal in some cases but not others and that how long a woman has been pregnant should matter in determining whether abortion should be legal received questions about abortion’s legality at specific points in the pregnancy.  ↩

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In the intense debate over abortion, precise language doesn’t mean taking sides

As nearly one third of the state legislatures in the United States consider enacting “fetal heartbeat bills” — the movement by lawmakers to outlaw abortion as early as six weeks gestation — the debate over abortion has become a war of words and their meaning.

At six weeks gestation, a fertilized and dividing egg is called an embryo, according to the Cleveland Clinic and other medical sources. Fetus is the accurate medical term eight weeks into gestation and up until birth. And that shoosh-shoosh sound? That’s not really a heartbeat, because there’s no heart yet. Instead, it’s an electrical impulse that will eventually become the heartbeat.

Language around abortion is designed to manipulate emotions rather than facilitate a dialogue for journalists and for their readers.

Several news organizations have acknowledged the flawed terminology and recently started to replace the more headline-esque “fetal heartbeat” language with more cumbersome but accurate phrases like, “embryonic pulsing” as the Daily Beast recently wrote or “after the pulsing of what becomes the fetus’ heart” as The New York Times noted. Both stories were about Louisiana’s legislation, the latest state to pass such a bill.

Language use is tricky and often fails us as we attempt informed conversations about abortion. Indeed, most Americans have made up their minds, and the general breakdown of support for legal abortion has been consistent over the last 40 years , since the Supreme Court issued the historic ruling. Roughly half of Americans believe abortion should be legal in some circumstances. Another 30% say it should be legal in all cases. Twenty percent of the American public support outlawing it.

Abortion opponents have a successful track record of introducing terms that summon emotion and thus shape our public debate. Their argument that a fertilized egg is a human life and thus deserves the same human rights and protections as every other human is less effective when using sterile scientific language.

Introduce words like baby, heartbeat and child, and the argument gains a certain moral gravity. Combine those warm words with alarming, albeit inaccurate, terms like infanticide and partial-birth abortion, and the scales start to tip. It’s a triumph in which abortion opponents take great pride and attribute to their legislative successes. As abortion opponents told The New York Times, “saving a baby with a beating heart” is powerful.

In response, activists working to keep abortion legal have introduced their own weaponized language, including “forced births” and “forced pregnancy.” Those might not have quite the emotional pull of a baby’s heartbeat, but the imagery is efficient.

Social media has also changed the debate, allowing many women to collectively reject the shame and stigma associated with abortion and tell their stories, surfacing the fact that one out of every four women in the United States will have an abortion by age 45.  But those who support legal abortion, despite being in the majority, still mostly find themselves debating an issue framed by opponents.

“There are not that many people you see doing this well,” said Mary Zeigler, reproductive historian, law professor and author of two books on the history of Roe v. Wade. “But also, no one’s doing it badly, either. It’s getting even harder.”

The Florida State University law professor said she faces the same challenges as journalists when she interviews people about their views on abortion.

“I try to use neutral scientific language, but often that choice is perceived as supporting legal abortion,” she said. “But when I’m reflecting someone’s views, I try to do it in their language.”

She said the journalists she’s observed covering the debate struggle to appropriately use the language of abortion opponents.

“Some reporters have a hard time getting certain abortion opponents to talk to them,” Zeigler said. “There’s an assumption that the media is pro-choice. That makes it hard (for journalists) to get information from abortion opponents.”

There’s probably no getting away from the loaded language. News organizations, like NPR , have issued memos and warnings encouraging reporters to find neutral language. And critics suggest there is no neutral language — that choosing science and rejecting rhetoric is actually taking sides.

So what are we to do, those of us who believe in civil debate, who want to consume informed opinions and scientifically sound journalism? Here’s my advice for both journalists and news consumers:

• Since we probably can’t get rid of the language, the most we can do is notice it. Pay attention to the words and how they’re being used. Are the words chosen by a neutral narrator or a passionate partisan? In both cases the words might be loaded, although the motive for using the words is likely different. The activist seeking to outlaw abortion will use words designed to give the argument weight. Often a narrator who desires neutrality is searching for words the audience will find familiar, even if those words aren’t scientifically accurate.
• Video is a particularly powerful medium in shaping the debate because the words and images combine to tap into powerful concepts. In this recent NBC Nightly News story, images of an ultrasound showing movement and a state senator declaring, “We should look at when the heart starts beating to determine when life starts ,” compete against a much shorter snippet of an unnamed woman declaring the law “blatantly unconstitutional.”
• Give more weight to voices that reflect true expertise. Everyone is an expert in his or her own story. So a woman telling her story of getting a needed abortion or regretting an abortion is a true expert. So is a gynecologist describing abortion procedures, or a religious leader discussing theology. But those voices are often hard to find, overshadowed by politicians and activists assuming expertise they do not have.
• Describe religious beliefs and theology accurately and with respect. The religious views on the definition of human life are well-established. While they vary from faith to faith and denomination to denomination, it’s not hard to find an expert who can accurately describe them.
• No matter what your personal views on whether abortion should be legal, accept that there is definitive science that uses a common and accurate language.

The best news stories about abortion find a way to bridge the gap between the rhetoric and the science, giving sources a way to authentically express their views, and allowing those views to be heard by those who hold a different view. This OnBeing podcast interview with Francis Kissling, president of Catholics for Choice, is the best example of this approach. The interview originally aired in 2011 and was rebroadcast last year.

Among the many brilliant observations Kissling makes:

“You have got to approach differences with this notion that there is good in the other and that if we can’t figure out how to do that and there isn’t a crack in the middle where there are some people on both sides who absolutely refuse to see the other as evil, this thing is going to continue.”

Journalists should consider it their mission when covering abortion to help the audience see people with different viewpoints as human, and not evil.

Kelly McBride is the chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at The Poynter Institute

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Comments are closed.

You use the daily beast to define the heart beat? That is not fact checking that is fact choices. Why not use the Cleveland clinic like you did already and share what they call 4 week heart tube that beats. It’s a shame that you claim to be non partisan fact checkers.

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Reproductive rights in America

7 persistent claims about abortion, fact-checked.

Jaclyn Diaz

Koko Nakajima

Nick Underwood

Anti-abortion demonstrators watch as abortion rights protestors chant in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 5. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Anti-abortion demonstrators watch as abortion rights protestors chant in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 5.

Since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision ruled that women have a constitutional right to end their pregnancies, proponents and opponents of abortion rights have worked to own the conversation over the issue.

In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 629,898 legal induced abortions were reported across the United States.

Lingering claims circulate about abortion, including about the safety of it, who gets abortions and even who supports or opposes access to abortion.

Below, seven popular claims surrounding abortion get fact-checked.

According to the Pew Research Center's polls , 37% of Americans want abortion illegal in all or most cases.

But an even bigger fraction — around 6 in 10 Americans — think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Current abortion rates are lower than what they were in 1973 and are now less than half what they were at their peak in the early 1980s, according to the Guttmacher Institute , a reproductive health research organization that supports abortion rights.

In 2017, pregnancy rates for females age 24 or below hit their lowest recorded levels, reflecting a long-term decline in pregnancy rates among females 24 or below.

Overall, in 2017, pregnancy rates for females of reproductive age hit their lowest recorded levels, with 87 pregnancies per 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The annual number of deaths related to legal induced abortion has fluctuated from year to year since 1973, according to the CDC.

An analysis of data from 2013 to 2018 showed the national case-fatality rate for legal induced abortion was 0.41 deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions, lower than in the previous five years.

The World Health Organization said people obtaining unsafe abortions are at a higher risk of death. Annually, 4.7% to 13.2% "of maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortion," the WHO said. In developing regions of the world, there are 220 deaths per 100,000 unsafe abortions.

Trans and nonbinary people have undergone abortions as well.

The Guttmacher Institute estimates in 2017 an estimated 462 to 530 transgender or nonbinary individuals in the U.S. had abortions. That same year, the CDC said, 609,095 total abortions were carried out in the country.

The Abortion Out Loud campaign has collected stories from thousands of people who have had an abortion. Included are stories from trans and nonbinary people who have had an abortion — such as Jae, who spoke their experience.

"Most abortions in 2019 took place early in gestation," according to the CDC . Nearly 93% of abortions were performed at less than 13 weeks' gestation.

Abortion pills, which can typically be used up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, made up 54% of abortions in 2020. These pills were the primary choice in the U.S. for the first time since the Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion drug mifepristone more than 20 years ago.

State legislatures have been moving to adopt 20-week abortion bans, with abortion opponents claiming fetuses can feel pain at that point. Roughly a third of states have implemented an abortion ban around 20 weeks .

But this contradicts widely accepted medical research from 2005. This study , published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , concluded that a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks.

Researchers wrote that fetal awareness of pain requires "functional thalamocortical connections." Those thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 and 30 weeks' gestational age, but the capacity for pain perception comes later.

The argument against abortion has frequently been based on religion.

Data shows that the majority of people who get an abortion have some sort of religious affiliation, according to the most recent Guttmacher Institute data , from 2014.

The Pew Research Center also shows that attitudes on whether abortion should be legal vary among evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics.

Roe v. Wade and the future of reproductive rights in America

Here's what could happen now that roe v. wade is overturned.

• Supreme Court
• Roe v. Wade

Answers to Common Questions About Abortion Access

Here are answers to some of the fundamental questions surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

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By The New York Times

The United States Supreme Court overruled the landmark Roe v. Wade case on June 24, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion in a monumental recasting of abortion laws.

The decision, which echoed a draft that was leaked in May , strikes down Roe’s standard, which did not allow states to ban the procedure before the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, which experts say is about 22 to 23 weeks of pregnancy .

The ruling has abolished the constitutional right to abortion and leaves each state to set its own abortion laws. More than a dozen Republican-led states have legislation in place that would outlaw abortion in most cases immediately, while some states where Democrats are in power have moved to retain and strengthen existing abortion rights or expand on them.

Here are answers to some of the fundamental questions surrounding the latest changes, including where abortion will become illegal and where it will remain accessible by law.

Where is abortion illegal now that Roe is overturned?

With the states now able to regulate abortion access, several states — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin — have prohibited abortion, and most of these states do not have exceptions for victims of rape and incest.

Another four states — Georgia, Ohio, Idaho and Tennessee — now ban abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant.

More bans are expected, and a tug of war over the future of abortion access is playing out in courts across the United States, adding to a legal landscape defined by uncertainty, confusion and rapid change. Tennessee and Idaho are expected this week to enact trigger laws that would prohibit all abortions with limited exceptions, though Idaho faces a legal challenge from the Biden administration. In North Dakota and Wyoming, judges temporarily blocked bans on nearly all abortions in each state.

— Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz

What states will retain or expand abortion access?

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, have laws that preserve access to abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights.

Some states have also been positioning themselves as “refuges” for abortion rights, by offering support and legal aid to women who travel to their state for an abortion.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has said California would offer tax breaks to companies seeking to move from states where abortion may become illegal. In Oregon, the Legislature approved $15 million in March to help pay for abortion expenses for patients coming from outside the state. In New York, Democratic lawmakers have been working on a package of bills that would strengthen the state’s already robust abortion access laws. Some of those efforts have been focused on shielding providers from liability for patients coming from states where abortion has been criminalized. Others seek to help patients who travel to New York for reproductive health care.

— Fahima Haque

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What are the effects of new ‘trigger’ bans in Tennessee, Idaho and Texas?

Tennessee, Idaho and Texas began enforcing so-called trigger laws on Thursday, placing new restrictions on access to abortion for millions of women and in some cases adding punishments for doctors who perform the procedures.

The took effect weeks after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion in June. But they are known as trigger laws as the states had each previously passed legislation explicitly intended to ban abortion in the event of the court overturning Roe v. Wade .

Similar laws in other states — like one in South Dakota — took effect immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision, but most required some sort of sign-off from state leaders, either from the attorney general or state lawmakers, or a combination of both.

In all, 13 states with Republican-led legislatures had passed some form of a trigger law, either to outlaw abortion entirely or to allow it only up to about six weeks gestation, a time at which many women do not know they are pregnant. In a few states, including North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, judges have blocked those bans.

Here are the states where new laws were set to take effect this week.

Shortly after the Supreme Court lifted the hurdle of Roe, a judge ruled that a 2020 Tennessee law prohibiting abortion after six weeks could take effect.

But the state also had a separate trigger law that prohibited abortion, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Both the six-week ban and the trigger law include an exemption for cases where the mother is in immediate danger of death or severe injury.

Abortion became illegal after six weeks in the state this month, when a law passed in April went into effect. But the state’s trigger law goes further, prohibiting all abortions, except to save the life of a pregnant woman — but not to protect her health — or in cases of rape or incest that were previously reported to the authorities.

Parts of Idaho’s trigger law faced a challenge from abortion advocates and the Justice Department. The lawsuit argued that the law would prevent emergency room doctors from performing abortions necessary to stabilize the health of women facing medical emergencies.

On Wednesday, Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the Federal District Court in Idaho ruled in favor of the Biden administration , temporarily blocking a part of the law that could have punished doctors in the state for acting to protect the health of endangered mothers.

But he emphasized the narrow scope of the decision, leaving intact most of the bill’s other provisions, which constitute a near-total prohibition on the procedure.

The Texas Supreme Court last month ruled that a 1925 law that banned abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest could take effect.

Even before that ruling resurrected the 20th-century law in Texas, the state enacted a six-week ban in 2021 by deputizing civilians with potential bounties of at least $10,000 to sue anyone who helped a woman get an abortion.

The state’s trigger law raises the penalties for abortion providers.

Under the new statute, anyone who provides or attempts to provide an abortion will face felony charges and fines of at least $100,000. There is a provision that allows doctors to perform abortions in a medical emergency, but states with similar medical exceptions have already struggled with a chilling effect on doctors who questioned whether they would face punishment if a patient did not meet the standard of a “medical emergency.”

North Dakota

A judge on Thursday granted a request for a preliminary injunction against North Dakota’s trigger ban, which would prohibit nearly all abortions and was scheduled to take effect Friday. It was the second time this month that a judge temporarily blocked the law after the state’s sole abortion provider filed a lawsuit.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

How are gestational weeks calculated?

A current Texas law bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and other states like Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina have passed legislation with the intent of prohibiting abortion after six weeks. These bills use the six-week mark as the point when an ultrasound may be able to detect the pulsing of what will become the fetus’s heart .

However, at six weeks many women have no idea they are pregnant.

Doctors measure the beginning of a pregnancy as being the first day of a woman’s last period. Why? They are tracking the length of pregnancy using a nearly 200-year-old calculation called Naegele’s Rule, named after Franz Karl Naegele, the German obstetrician who is credited with creating it in the 1800s.

The rule is somewhat confusing because conception usually does not occur until around 14 days after the first day of a woman’s period, assuming she has a 28-day cycle (which many women do not for a variety of reasons). The reason doctors still use the last menstrual cycle as a benchmark is because it is difficult to know exactly when the sperm fertilized the egg.

So when doctors say a woman is six weeks pregnant, it typically means the embryo started developing about four weeks earlier.

The heart, which can be seen flickering on an ultrasound, is still maturing and cannot be heard until several weeks later.

Perhaps this is the simplest way to say it: Six weeks pregnant is two weeks after a woman misses her period.

Is birth control still legal?

Yes, birth control remains legal everywhere in the United States, though several states allow doctors and pharmacists to refuse to prescribe or dispense contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade does not indicate that the court would revisit past decisions about birth control.

However, some legal experts have raised concerns that justices could apply the argument for overturning Roe to limiting access to contraceptives. As a result, those who support birth control access worry that legislators could use a ban on abortion to make birth control less available.

“We’ve seen folks falsely equating emergency contraceptives and IUDs with abortion,” said Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth control access and senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “That’s certainly something I’m concerned about.”

One concern that has been raised is whether laws, like one in Oklahoma, that ban abortion from the moment of fertilization would also outlaw intrauterine devices, or IUDs, which are designed to prevent fertilization but also can stop a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. (The Oklahoma law specifies that it does not apply to contraception, including Plan B or morning-after pills.)

The two forms of emergency contraception pills, Plan B and Ella, work in a different way to prevent fertilization from occurring. Both delay or prevent ovulation and allow sperm in the reproductive tract to die out.

— Dani Blum and Nicole Stock

Is it legal for women to travel out of state for an abortion?

There are currently no abortion bans that attempt to prosecute women who cross state lines to seek an abortion.

However, states could try in the future, said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “There is no guarantee that an aggressive prosecutor might try to stretch the law as much as they can.”

In his concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that women who travel to neighboring states to receive an abortion would be protected by the constitutional right to interstate travel.

People who assist a woman seeking an abortion in a neighboring state could also be at risk of prosecution.

“It’s hard to tell at this point, but I think it’s likely that [the prosecutors] will go after the people that help the woman get the abortion,” Mr. Cohen said. “The person who drives them, the doctor who sees them.”

Both Texas and Oklahoma recently passed abortion bans that allow private citizens to sue people who perform abortions or who otherwise help someone get one.

Many organizations are still encouraging patients who cannot seek an abortion in their home state to travel across state lines to receive care, including a handful of companies that have pledged to cover travel expenses for employees who need abortions .

“People should travel, people should get care wherever they can,” said Mr. Cohen. “But it’s not a simple answer.”

Are abortion medications delivered by mail illegal?

It is still legal in most states to receive abortion medication by mail, which has been allowed since December 2021, when the Food and Drug Administration lifted a restriction that required patients to obtain the pills from a certified provider.

There are 19 states that had already prohibited the use of telehealth to prescribe abortion medication by requiring prescribers to be present when the drugs are administered.

The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, found that in 2020, medication abortion — a two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol — accounted for over half of all abortions.

The end of Roe v. Wade will make little immediate difference on access to these medications, though legal experts say that could change as more trigger laws are certified.

Some telemedicine companies are bracing for anti-abortion trigger laws to take effect, but vow to continue mailing medication in the interim.

Dr. Julie Amaon, medical director of Just The Pill, a company that delivers abortion medication to people in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Minnesota, said they will continue to serve clients in all four states until Wyoming’s trigger law is certified. If that happens, their clients in Wyoming will need to travel to receive care.

“The way it will work is if your state of residence bans access to medication abortion, you can travel to another safe state to have a telehealth appointment,” Dr. Amaon said. “You would then get the medication by pick-up at our mobile clinic or if you are in a state without mobile clinics, you would wait 1-2 days to have the medication mailed to a pick-up location.”

Aid Access, a European service that has continued to send pills to women in the U.S. regardless of the laws in their state, is likely to be unaffected by the recent decision. Anti-abortion lawmakers are generally wary of punishing individuals seeking an abortion, said Mary Zeigler, a law professor at University of California Davis. They tend to focus on clinicians and prescribers who aid the patient seeking an abortion, but overseas providers operate in extralegal channels outside the reach of state lawmakers.

“There’s not going to be an easy enforcement mechanism there,” said Ms. Ziegler “But it’s worth emphasizing, whatever answers I’m giving for today, may not be true tomorrow, the bans are just the tip of the iceberg.”

Will the decision change how ectopic pregnancy is treated?

Women’s health care providers say the ruling has raised questions about their ability to treat ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening complication that occurs when a fertilized egg implants in the wrong place in a woman’s body instead of attaching to the lining of the uterus.

More than 90 percent of the time, in an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized egg implants in one of a woman’s fallopian tubes, which connect the ovaries to the uterus. The fallopian tubes are thin and full of blood vessels. If they burst open, as can happen when a fertilized egg grows in the tube, that can cause major internal bleeding and put a woman’s life at risk.

Ectopic pregnancies are never viable, as a fertilized egg cannot survive outside of the uterus. In rare cases, the body will expel an ectopic pregnancy on its own. But for the vast majority of women, the only options are medication to remove the pregnancy or surgery.

The 13 states with abortion trigger laws that took effect after the Supreme Court’s decision, or soon will, allow exemptions if an abortion is needed to prevent a pregnant woman from dying. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has warned that abortion bans — even those with an exception for ectopic pregnancies — can create confusion and impede a patient’s timely access to care.

— Catherine Pearson

I’m covered by my employer’s plan. Will my benefits change with the end of Roe?

That will depend on where you live, the type of insurance plan your employer uses and their stance on coverage.

Basically, if a company pays for its employees’ health care from its own coffers, workers, even those in states where abortion is illegal, may have broader access to benefits. But employers that buy insurance policies for workers could be further restricted.

Large employers are often self-insured , which means they collect a share of their workers’ premiums and pay for their health care (though an insurer or administrator usually processes claims). These plans generally follow federal rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, known as ERISA , which provide broad flexibility in designing a health care plan.

Other employers buy insurance on behalf of their workers, and the insurer is responsible for costs. Health insurers are regulated by the states and must follow their rules — if abortion is banned there, you’re unlikely to receive any coverage, even if you travel out of state.

Many larger employers are providing travel benefits for workers who would need to cross state lines for abortion. This is often an extension of existing policies. Typically these plans have offered travel benefits for people seeking cancer treatments, transplants or other specialized therapies if they don’t have access to a provider in their state or have to travel a certain number of miles to reach one, benefits lawyers said.

But there are still concerns about employers’ criminal and civil liability, particularly in states with laws that would call for criminal prosecution of anyone in the state who “aids and abets” an abortion, even if it occurs in another state where abortion is legal.

Health plans governed by federal ERISA regulations may have additional protections against legal actions brought under state law, benefits experts said, as long as the services are legal in the state where they are provided. Benefits lawyers also point to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Dobbs, in which he said states with abortion bans could not stop women from seeking the procedure elsewhere. But while ERISA regulations often supersede state laws that may apply to plans, that doesn’t extend to state criminal laws.

“This issue will likely be the subject of continuing litigation and debate,” according to the reproductive rights task force at Morgan Lewis, a law firm in Washington.

Can marketplace insurance plans still cover abortion?

The health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act has restrictions that are similar to those on Medicaid. Plans offered within the marketplace are not required to cover abortion, and federal money — including premium subsidies in the form of tax credits — cannot be used to pay for them. Here, too, there are exceptions for rape, incest and life endangerment, but they are not universal.

There are 26 states that ban marketplace plan coverage of abortions, said Alina Salganicoff , director of women’s health policy at Kaiser . But a few states don’t make exceptions for rape or incest, and some states make no exceptions at all, she added.

In contrast, insurers in seven states are required to include abortion coverage in all plans sold on the marketplace, according to Kaiser, but no federal dollars are used.

For example, in states like New York , where abortion is legal under state law, policy holders with subsidized marketplace plans have $1 of their monthly premium held separately to be used for abortion and other services.

But if an individual with a marketplace plan lives in a state where abortion is banned, it’s likely their policy won’t provide coverage in their own state or across state lines.

— Tara Siegel Bernard

Will Medicaid cover abortion following the Dobbs decision?

Just like before the ruling, that largely depends on where you live.

Medicaid, a public health program largely for low-income households that is administered by the states, is financed by federal and state money. Even before the Dobbs decision, federal law — known as the Hyde Amendment — didn’t allow federal funds to pay for abortions, except in limited circumstances: if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest or caused a life-endangering condition for the woman. States could choose to use their own money to pay for abortions beyond those situations, and 16 states had such policies last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (though nine were ordered by courts to have them).

The vast majority of states don’t pay for anything beyond those limited circumstances — and South Dakota, in violation of federal law, covers abortions only in the case of life endangerment, according to a 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office.

Like South Dakota, a growing list of states that ban abortions — including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri — make exceptions only when the woman’s life is endangered. That puts them in conflict with federal law that also requires abortion coverage in cases of rape or incest.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it would notify states when they were out of compliance with federal requirements, and added that the Department of Health and Human Services was taking steps to expand access to medication abortion in those limited circumstances. Details on how that will happen are still vague .

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Qualitative analysis of anti-abortion discourse used in arguments for a 6-week abortion ban in South Carolina

Victoria c. lambert.

Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States

Emily E. Hackworth

Deborah l. billings, associated data.

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: Video files of the hearings were downloaded from the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network's Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/WomensRightsandEmpowermentNetwork ) and the South Carolina legislature video archives website ( https://www.scstatehouse.gov/video/archives.php ).

On June 24, 2022, The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion legislation entirely up to states. However, anti-abortion activists and legislators have organized for decades to prevent abortion access through restrictive state-level legislation. In 2019, South Carolina legislators proposed a bill criminalizing abortion after 6 weeks gestation, before most people know they are pregnant. The current study examines the anti-abortion rhetoric used in legislative hearings for this extreme abortion restriction in South Carolina. By examining the arguments used by anti-abortion proponents, we aim to expose their misalignment with public opinion on abortion and demonstrate that their main arguments are not supported by and often are counter to medical and scientific evidence.

We qualitatively analyzed anti-abortion discourse used during legislative hearings of SC House Bill 3020, The South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act. Data came from publicly available videos of legislative hearings between March and November 2019, during which members of the public and legislators testified for and against the abortion ban. After the videos were transcribed, we thematically analyzed the testimonies using a priori and emergent coding.

Testifiers (Anti-abortion proponents) defended the ban using scientific disinformation and by citing advances in science to redefine “life.” A central argument was that a fetal “heartbeat” (i.e., cardiac activity) detected at 6 weeks gestation indicates life. Anti-abortion proponents used this to support their argument that the 6-week ban would “save lives.” Other core strategies compared anti-abortion advocacy to civil rights legislation, vilified supporters and providers of abortion, and framed people who get abortions as victims. Personhood language was used across strategies and was particularly prominent in pseudo-scientific arguments.

Abortion restrictions are detrimental to the health and wellbeing of people with the potential to become pregnant and to those who are pregnant. Efforts to defeat abortion bans must be grounded in a critical and deep understanding of anti-abortion strategies and tactics. Our results reveal that anti-abortion discourse is extremely inaccurate and harmful. These findings can be useful in developing effective approaches to countering anti-abortion rhetoric.

1. Introduction

On June 24, 2022, in a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortion through the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and leaving states to decide on and enact their own abortion legislation. Since then, abortion access has become increasingly difficult and confusing within a fragmented and polarized abortion landscape. Many states in which Republicans control state legislatures have passed extreme abortion restrictions or complete bans ( 1 , 2 ).

Overturning the right to abortion granted by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was the result of decades of organizing by fundamentalist conservatives in the United States, who worked strategically over time through state-by-state actions to pass restrictive legislation. The past decade has seen a sharp rise in state abortion restrictions, with a record 108 state restrictions on abortion enacted in 2021 alone ( 3 ). At the same time, efforts to reverse antiquated legislation, known as trigger laws, were unsuccessful or not pursued, thereby making abortion illegal when Roe v. Wade was overturned ( 3 ).

Since 2011, multiple state legislatures have proposed or enacted legislation that bans abortion after a fetal “heartbeat” is detected ( 4 ). These bills promote misinformation that life is indicated by the detection of a “heartbeat” (more accurately described as electrical activity of cells) ( 5 ), which can occur as early as 6 weeks gestation, before most people know they are pregnant ( 6 ). A surge of 6-week abortion bans began in 2019 ( 7 ), with five states successfully enacting 6-week bans in 2019 alone, including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Ohio ( 8 ).

Only one other study has analyzed the anti-abortion rhetoric around a 6-week abortion ban. Evans and Narasimhan conducted a narrative analysis of the legislative testimony around the 2019 6-week ban in the state of Georgia ( 9 ). They report that anti-abortion advocates in Georgia promoted fetal personhood and legal protection of fetuses by using “heartbeat” as a proxy for life. They also framed this protection as a matter of states' rights. Furthermore, these anti-abortion advocates misrepresented scientific findings and appropriated progressive successes, such as civil rights legislation ( 9 ).

In the current study, we replicate the approach used by Evans and Narasimhan to examine the anti-abortion rhetoric used by anti-abortion proponents in South Carolina (SC) in 2019, who aimed to pass a 6-week abortion ban. The South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act, House Bill 3020 (H.3020) was introduced to the SC House on January 8, 2019 ( 10 ). It required “testing for a detectable fetal heartbeat before an abortion is performed on a pregnant woman and to prohibit the performance of an abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected.” Unlike the bill in Georgia, H.3020 did not pass in SC during the 2019 legislative session. However, a practically identical bill (S.1) was introduced to the SC state Senate during the 2021 legislative session, passed both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by Governor Henry McMaster on February 28, 2021. While it was initially struck down by a federal judge, this 6-week ban went into effect again soon after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. It was subsequently enjoined by the SC Supreme Court, which on January 5, 2023, ruled the 6-week ban was unconstitutional based on the right to privacy, which was added to the state Constitution in 1971 ( 11 ).

Roe v. Wade no longer exists to overrule state-level bans on abortion. In this historical moment, it is critical to deconstruct and understand the strategies and tactics that aim to restrict abortion access and to position these strategies within the context of a post-Roe world. Further, it is important to illuminate the consequences of restrictive abortion legislation, especially in terms of deepening abortion-related stigma and the detrimental impact on the health and lives of South Carolina residents, especially those marginalized by racism, poverty, and anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant sentiment and policies. By examining the arguments used by anti-abortion advocates, we aim to expose their misalignment with public opinion on abortion ( 12 ) and demonstrate that their main arguments are not supported by and often are counter to medical and scientific evidence.

2.1. Design and participants

We utilized publicly available videos of meetings of the SC House Judiciary Constitutional Law Subcommittee and the SC Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee, during which members of the public provided testimony for H.3020. The meetings took place between March and September 2019, with video footage posted on the South Carolina legislature video archives website and the Women's Rights Empowerment Network Facebook page. We analyzed arguments from anti-abortion proponents, including 19 South Carolina legislative representatives as well as 22 community members who made anti-abortion arguments in support of the bill or demanding even stricter abortion legislation.

2.2. Procedure

Video files of the hearings were downloaded from the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network's Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/WomensRightsandEmpowermentNetwork ) and the South Carolina legislature video archives website ( https://www.scstatehouse.gov/video/archives.php ) and transcribed using Happy Scribe, a virtual transcription service. The transcripts were then fidelity checked by the research team and imported into NVivo, where they were thematically coded. Researcher-perceived demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, race) of the testifiers were noted when testifiers did not provide characteristics in their testimony. We also conducted a word count of terminology used in the testimonies to characterize fetuses.

We used a combination of a priori and emergent codes. The a priori codes were developed based on a codebook from a previous analysis of Georgia's “heartbeat” bill hearings, conducted by Evans and Narasimhan ( 9 ). Authors 1 and 2 began by independently double-coding each transcript. After initial coding of each transcript, a coding comparison query was conducted to assess coder agreement for each code. Agreement ranged from 83%-100% across all transcripts.

We implemented a constant comparison approach, where we coded the data then paused to review the codebook, examples of individual codes, and overlap between the codes. All three authors met to discuss the codes after each initial coding of a transcript. We reviewed coding of themes for which there was lower reliability (i.e., 90% or lower) and clarified any questions about the codebook that arose while coding. We also discussed any new codes or other changes we thought should be made to the codebook. When changes were made to the codebook, each of the previously coded transcripts was recoded by one of the first two authors based on extensive discussion about the codes among all three researchers. Additionally, the research team regularly communicated with colleague researchers Evans and Narasimhan, who analyzed 6-week ban hearings in Georgia. Through this process, the codebook was frequently reevaluated and refined to best represent the South Carolina data.

We expanded the codebook used in the analysis of Georgia's 6-week ban to include new themes that arose in South Carolina. First, we added codes to characterize scientific misinformation, including codes identifying different types of evidence (e.g., anecdotal, statistics, quotes, health professional credentials) and codes around specific arguments used to promote misinformation (e.g., abortion is harmful, advances in science and technology). We also added codes that characterized moral arguments against abortion, including limiting government overreach, racism, abortion clinic profit, carry to term coercion, abortions for convenience or burden, equating abortion with murder, organized responses to abortion, and value of life. Finally, we expanded a single code for rape used in the Georgia codebook by adding more specific codes, such as arguments for and against exceptions for rape, abortion as evidence of rape, descriptions of rape victims, and responsibility of rape victims to report.

2.3. Study ethics

The Institutional Review Board at the University of South Carolina reviewed the study protocol and determined this study did not meet the criteria for human subjects research. Although quotes can be matched with video footage, throughout this article, we do not directly identify any individual who provided testimony except the primary legislative sponsor. Given that all testimony analyzed is part of the public record, our approach respects research ethics related to privacy and confidentiality.

Researcher-perceived and self-identified characteristics of the anti-abortion proponents who gave testimony are summarized in Table 1 . We analyzed testimonies from 41 individuals, including 19 SC legislators, four physicians or nurses, six anti-abortion advocates, six religious figures, two crisis pregnancy center employees, one student, and four people who did not provide their occupation in their testimony. Twenty of the anti-abortion proponents who testified identified as “Christian” as part of their testimony. While we were unable to obtain self-identified socio-demographic information about the community members who testified, we estimated most to be 30–54 years old ( n  = 12) or 55 or older ( n  = 16), white ( n  = 34), and male ( n  = 28). 1

Perceived characteristics of anti-abortion speakers at 2019 H.3020 hearings.

3.1. Argument frames

In our analysis, we found that arguments could be classified into two major argument frames: scientific disinformation and moral arguments, with some anti-abortion proponents using both frames to build their case for supporting H.3020.

3.2. Scientific disinformation

Throughout the testimonies, proponents of H.3020 framed arguments using claims based in scientific disinformation. These types of claims misrepresented scientific findings and used scientific and medical terms and explanations of pregnancy and abortion in inaccurate or misleading ways to justify the ban. Both individuals with medical backgrounds and those without scientific training used scientific arguments to support the ban. Arguments that relied on scientific disinformation can be classified into four themes: (1) Arguments from biased medical professionals; (2) Arguments that misrepresented science; (3) Arguments that attempted to redefine life from a scientific perspective; and (4) Arguments using value or logic statements to connect scientific and moral arguments.

3.2.1. Medical professionals supporting the ban were biased and used coercion

Four supporters of H.3020 from the 2019 hearings were medical professionals. Each began their statements by describing their training and credentials in detail, with only one claiming to specialize in obstetrics. The other three mentioned that their training in obstetrics was outdated or not extensive, yet they felt they could serve as experts despite their “limited experience.” One even stated, “I don't have the level of expertise and experience of my obstetrical colleagues,” yet continued to share his testimony about refusing to refer pregnant people seeking abortions to abortion providers. All the medical professionals mentioned the Hippocratic Oath, referring to it as their “oath to protect the life of the born and the unborn,” and their duty “to speak on behalf of the unborn.”

The medical professionals with experience working in family medicine or obstetrics shared stories of coercing pregnant people to listen to and view their ultrasounds. 2 One stated:

“We have a look at the ultrasound and have the mother see the heartbeat. Upon seeing the heartbeat, she realizes this is a child and it's her child … Most of the women who have an opportunity simply to see truth—that this is their child they’re carrying—decide to continue with the pregnancy.”

In a later testimony, this same physician stated that he would “never coerce,” yet he described how he would offer free ultrasounds to pregnant people who had made it clear they wanted an abortion and then use that ultrasound as an opportunity to convince them to continue their pregnancies:

“We'd put the ultrasound probe on and see this teeny little peanut of a fetus—or an embryo, really– and then hung around a little bit further and then see this teeny little fluttering, which comprised a kind of a rapid beat that you could see. And almost invariably– not all the time, but almost invariably– I would point that out and the lady would say, ‘Is that my baby's heartbeat?’ Almost invariably, that was a comment that was made. … And then after that, the vast majority of those women who would see that heartbeat would then decide to keep their pregnancies. Not all, but many of them did decide to keep them.”

Medical professionals also used medical terminology in biased ways to bolster their claims. One described fetal development by saying:

“At 6 1/2 weeks, the teeny little baby is about a little bit less than an inch long; has very incipient eyes, head, chest, a two chambered heart; has limb buds with teeny little buds that will eventually become fingers at the time of the average time for elective abortion.”

Another physician stated, “We can discuss all day long here today whether the fluttering, the pulsation and cardinal vessels of a tiny embryo comprise a heartbeat or two chamber for chamber heart.” Despite his medical expertise, he went on to say, “When a mother says that it is a heartbeat, that's a heartbeat.”

Intertwining their anti-abortion opinions with their medical “expertise” and “experience,” the medical professionals who testified in support of the 6-week ban made grandiose claims about how wrong they believe abortion to be. One stated, “Any medical procedure that interrupts or terminates that developing human life for whatever reason constitutes the taking of a human life.” Another said:

“There is no circumstance, no matter how desperate or difficult, that justifies the killing of innocent unborn children with beating hearts. And trust me, as a family doctor, I have dealt with all of these desperate and difficult circumstances that surround the conception of unborn children.”

Another obstetrician and medical director at a crisis pregnancy center stated, “I have lots of patients and I don't tell them, ‘I’m a Christian, I don’t believe in abortion, you can’t have an abortion’ … I talk to them about their options.”

3.2.2. Anti-abortion proponents misrepresented science

Many anti-abortion proponents relied heavily on data, statistics, or numbers to bolster their claims. However, they rarely referred to actual sources and often misrepresented the statistics they cited. Representative John McCravy, the primary legislative sponsor of H.3020 stated, “If that heartbeat's detected, there's a 90 percent chance of that baby's survival” and “we know from medical science that that's about 90 to 95 percent now.” Fetal cardiac activity – what supporters of this bill call a “heartbeat” – can be detected as early as 6 weeks gestation, which is long before the possibility of a viable birth. While viability is a complex medical concept determined by more than gestational age, leading experts in the field of fetal and maternal medicine do not consider births before 20 weeks gestation to be near the threshold of viability (i.e., periviable) ( 13 ). Furthermore, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that 95% of births before 23 weeks gestation result in fetal death ( 14 ).

Other speakers made erroneous statements about the consequences of abortion, such as “the statistics show that 10% of women who have abortions never have another child” and “there is no data to support the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth.” These speakers did not provide sources for these claims. However, even if the former statement were true, 90% of people who get abortions would go on to have a child, which is high given the fact that nearly 17% of older adults in the United States do not have biological children ( 15 ). There are not reliable studies that follow people for the rest of their reproductive years to ascertain if they have a biological child after getting an abortion; however, most people who have abortions already have at least one child ( 16 ). Furthermore, compared to people denied an abortion, people who receive an abortion are more likely to become pregnant again in the subsequent 5 years ( 17 ). Regarding the safety of abortions, many studies have found that legal abortions are much safer than childbirth ( 18 – 20 ). Considering mortality alone, abortions are significantly safer than giving birth. In the United States in 2019, there were 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births ( 21 ). In contrast, the rate of abortion-related deaths from 2013 to 2017 was 0.44 legal induced abortion-related deaths per 100,000 reported legal abortions ( 22 ).

Some speakers used anecdotal evidence to generalize about the experiences of patients, displaying that they lacked the ability (or desire) to differentiate between their subjective experiences and scientific evidence. A registered nurse referred to a “brief survey” that she conducted of obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYNs) at the hospital where she worked. She said her sample consisted of “a handful of doctors” but she used research terminology and drew generalized conclusions. She stated that, “All but one [doctor] admitted to seeing multiple women in the emergency room with abortion complications,” and that there were “frequent diagnoses of retained products of conception, punctured uterus and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening condition.” She followed up by stating, “That is when a woman has had an abortion without having an ultrasound to determine the location of the pregnancy.” Similarly, an obstetrician, who was also the medical director at a crisis pregnancy center, claimed to see patients who reported physical and mental harm from abortions. Another medical doctor recounted his experience with patients seeking abortions, stating, “The vast majority of those women who would see that heartbeat would then decide to keep their pregnancies.” These speakers misrepresented anecdotal experience as scientific evidence, describing experiences that contradict research showing that abortions are very safe ( 18 – 20 , 23 ) and that most people do not regret getting them ( 24 ).

Disregard for scientific evidence was also demonstrated when anti-abortion proponents stated that the scientific backing for the bill was obvious without providing data or evidence to support this claim. For example, one person stated, “Obviously, the scientific case for life has been made. We've all been through middle school [and] high school biology.” He went on to say, “We know that organisms that reproduce sexually when the sperm fertilized egg, there's a unique, genetically unique organism.”

Table 2 outlines the most common false claims made by anti-abortion proponents as well as scientific evidence refuting these claims.

Scientific and medical disinformation.

3.2.3. Anti-abortion proponents attempted to redefine life and personhood

Another prominent strategy of anti-abortion proponents was attempting to redefine life and personhood from an ostensibly scientific perspective. One way they did this was through use of various words and phrases to promote a new standard of life and personhood. Throughout all the anti-abortion testimonies we analyzed, the term “heartbeat” was used 97 times when not referring to the bill itself; “baby” was used 62 times; “unborn” was used 45 times; “unborn child” was used 16 times; “personhood” was used eight times; and “pre-born” was used six times.

The word “heartbeat” was particularly instrumental to the anti-abortion arguments trying to redefine life from a scientific perspective, with many supporters of the bill framing their arguments around the heartbeat being the new standard for life. The primary legislative sponsor of the bill stated in his opening testimony, “…the heartbeat is a definite marker and a predictability of survival.” One pastor stated, “While not the beginning of life, the heartbeat is a universally recognized indicator of life.” Another speaker, the executive director of an anti-abortion non-profit, stated, “The absence of a heartbeat indicates death, then logically the presence of a heartbeat indicates life.”

Anti-abortion proponents also suggested that advances in science and technology have changed the standard for fetal viability and how the medical field understands life. For example, representative McCravy, H.3020's primary legislative sponsor, stated:

“There's also a consensus among medical experts, scientists, lawyers and ethicists that the standard of viability has changed. That we now know many more things about the unborn child that we did not know in the 1970s. So we've had so many advances in medical and scientific technology that have expanded our knowledge of prenatal life.”

Neither this representative nor anyone else making similar arguments cited evidence for the claim that advances in scientific technology had redefined the medical standards of viability or life. However, though there have been advances in care for pre-term deliveries, fetal viability occurs long after 6 weeks gestation. Births between 20 and 26 weeks are considered “periviable,” with viability depending on various factors surrounding a pregnancy ( 13 ).

In contrast to those who tried to redefine life and personhood at a fetal “heartbeat,” some anti-abortion proponents refused to use this as the new standard for life. For example, a medical professional in favor of the bill stated, “My expert medical testimony is that human life begins at conception. That was what I was told in medical school 40 years ago. That was true then. That's true now. Nothing has changed in the ensuing 40 years.” One anti-abortion proponent, who opposed the bill in favor of stricter legislation, stated:

“The heartbeat bill does not establish justice for all human beings at fertilization but chooses the biological benchmark which may occur and be detected for a month and a half or later after fertilization and allows all human beings in the womb prior to that point to be exterminated.”

3.2.4. Anti-abortion proponents used value or logic statements to connect science and morality

Many supporters of H.3020 intertwined scientific claims with value or logic statements as the basis of moral arguments. Since science provided a new standard for detecting life, anti-abortion proponents argued it was clear that abortion after a “heartbeat” is detected is taking a life, which is immoral. Some who used this line of reasoning referred to it as “logical,” “rational,” or “common sense” when making their arguments. A pastor said, “Science and common sense tells us that a heartbeat signifies life,” while not following up with an explanation of what he meant by either “science” or “common sense.” Another speaker, a family physician, stated:

“You are logical and rational people, and I trust that you make your decisions based on good rationale and good logic and not on emotion. Life begins at conception and there is a heartbeat in every unborn child. Nothing changes that fact. That's logical, that's rational. And I trust that you make your decisions based on good logic and good rationale.”

The framing of H.3020 as the heartbeat bill provided an opportunity for anti-abortion advocates to claim a novel scientific standard for life, which made it easier for supporters of H.3020 to claim that their connection of scientific and moral arguments was logical.

3.3. Moral arguments

Supporters of H.3020 made various arguments that framed abortion and those providing or seeking abortions as immoral. Moral arguments across the testimonies could be classified into five themes: (1) Promoting the (perceived) righteous cause of protecting the unborn; (2) Religion as the basis of morality; (3) Vilifying and stigmatizing the pro-choice movement; (4) Vilifying healthcare providers; and (5) Vilifying and stigmatizing people who get abortions.

3.3.1. Anti-abortion proponents promoted the perceived righteous cause of “protecting the unborn”

Based on the assumptions that a “heartbeat”– or some other indicator of fetal development– signified human life, anti-abortion proponents argued that abortion after 6 weeks is murder. While many simply used the word murder (or related terms) to describe abortion, others attempted to explain why they believed abortion was equivalent to killing a person. Some supporters of the bill believed that life begins at conception and, hence, abortion before 6 weeks gestation should also be defined as murder. However, many argued that, since absence of a heartbeat is an indication of death, presence of a heartbeat indicates life. Hence, in “civilized” societies, abortion after detection of a fetal “heartbeat” is taking a life. Many promoted the fetal “heartbeat” as the new standard for life in a modern or “civilized society” that does not allow innocent humans to be killed. One person who provided testimony, the director of an anti-abortion non-profit, summarized this line of thinking:

“Another fact-based saying is if the absence of a heartbeat indicates death, then logically the presence of a heartbeat indicates life. In a civilized society, we should all agree that the human heartbeat is the objective scientific proof of life. In a civilized culture, we can all agree that it is barbaric and a savage act to kill an innocent, innocent member of the human family with a beating heart.”

Supporters of the bill called abortion genocide and both directly and indirectly compared it to historical injustices and atrocities. In their view, just as society's morals have progressed regarding historical atrocities, society must progress by adopting this new standard of life–the fetal “heartbeat.” One white male proponent of the bill said the following:

“If nothing else, history tends to judge people harshly based on the standards of the current day. Not at the time of the actual event. I never hear anyone try to justify slavery based on the standards of today. Women not having the right to vote seems ludicrous. The Jim Crow laws of the South seem cruel by today's standards. But what will we tell our grandkids about abortion when they ask why we had the chance to stop it? But we fell prey to political pressure and let the carnage continue. How would they judge us? Some will justify it as a right the mother has to do with her body as she wants, never once considering the future mother she may be carrying.”

To further demonstrate the morality of H.3020 and its advocates, supporters of the bill framed the unborn as a targeted and vulnerable group in need of special protections. To do this, they co-opted language and ideas from human rights movements, suggesting abortion is an inhumane practice that violates universal principals of morality. Human rights language, including terms such as “intrinsic value” and “dignity of human life,” was used to extend the rights of humans to embryos (which anti-abortion proponents refer to as “fetuses”). Thus, supporters framed this bill and its advocates as the true champions of morality and human rights. Indeed, many supporters touted their own commitment to the “value of life.” They urged representatives listening to do the same, adding that they believed the government is responsible for protecting life through banning abortions. One speaker co-opted human rights language by saying:

 “Unlike pro-abortion advocates, the pro-life movement firmly believes in the value and dignity of each human life. That includes every single person in this room. And I want to tell each of you in this room, your life matters. Your life has intrinsic and immeasurable value because you are human.”

A legislative representative more explicitly framed abortion as a human rights issue:

“The U.S. Constitution, which all our laws must pursue, states in the Fourteenth Amendment: No state shall deprive any person of life without due process of law and order, not to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws regardless of the age, size, or dependent status. A child with a heartbeat should be treated with dignity. These unborn men and unborn women have human rights too. And yes, even children conceived through the terrible crime of rape have a right to life and justice. They have a right not to have their bodies mutilated, their choices eliminated, and their heartbeats stopped. I stand against abortion so passionately because it is the chief example in our time of the callous violation of human rights. It is our job in government to defend against this. Human children deserve to be defended.”

3.3.2. Anti-abortion proponents used religion as the basis of morality

While religious rhetoric was sparse across the testimonies, some anti-abortion proponents used their primarily evangelical Christian religious beliefs as the foundation for their moral arguments about the value and definition of life. For example, speakers stated they supported the bill because they believed in the value and sanctity of life of the unborn, a belief informed by their religion. In addition to claiming to respect the “value of life,” speakers making religious arguments used multiple adjectives with moral implications to describe life, such as “precious,” “sacred,” and “dignity.” The following quote exemplifies many of the adjectives used to discuss their view on the “value of life” as well as the seamless connection speakers made between religious beliefs and morality:

“We want the heartbeat bill because we want to protect the God-given value and dignity of all human life, including our own. Unlike pro-abortion advocates, the pro-life movement firmly believes in the value and dignity of each human life. … Your life has intrinsic and immeasurable value because you are human. If we believe we can discard human life at its most helpless and most vulnerable, it cheapens the innate and immeasurable value that God bestowed upon each one of us at that very first moment of our own existence. Tiny, precious, and innocent lives are at stake in this legislation. But so is our very own worth and dignity.”

Anti-abortion proponents who discussed religion also used other tactics to connect their religious beliefs to the immorality of abortion. Some quoted biblical scripture as evidence that “life” in the womb is determined and created by God, with some speakers explicitly stating that life begins at conception. Others used anecdotes and personal stories. Some of these stories were about pregnant people who considered abortion yet decided to carry to term because of their religious beliefs. Other stories centered people whose mothers considered aborting them but did not. While religious speakers described the inherent value of “pre-born” life as bestowed by God in scripture, they often tied the worth of the people in these stories to their potential to advance Christianity.

3.3.3. Anti-abortion proponents vilified the pro-choice movement

In contrast to their portrayals of themselves and other advocates of H.3020, supporters of the bill framed the pro-choice movement and opponents of the bill as immoral. They framed the unborn as a vulnerable group, thereby claiming that pro-choice advocates were not only discriminatory but also proponents of child sacrifice and genocide. They further claimed pro-choice advocates devalue life and human rights and strategically dehumanize the unborn to achieve their goals. One supporter of the bill—a male physician and medical director for a crisis pregnancy center—compared societal approval of abortion to historical acceptance of chattel slavery and the Holocaust.

“So you think about throughout history to make something to be able to commit atrocities against a group of people. What society has done is dehumanized them. United States with slavery and Nazi Germany with the Jews. That's what they did. They said, 'Well, they're not human', right? That's what we did. Right. Shameful. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing with the unborn child. … I think this is a blight on our nation. And I think there's a genocide, to which we're all going to be called by our maker.”

3.3.4. Anti-abortion proponents vilified healthcare providers who perform abortions

Supporters of the bill also vilified healthcare providers and clinics providing abortions, claiming they make exorbitant incomes from abortions while providing inadequate care and coercing people into getting abortions. One pastor questioned the motives and morality of a nearby healthcare provider offering abortions:

“This past weekend, I was at [name of medical center], which is one of the busiest abortion clinics in the southeast. One of the reasons it is, is because it's the cheapest. … But I quickly asked, how much money do they make off this one center? They own three. And the answer is four to five million dollars a year. And I was thinking, man, are they really here for women? Or are they here to line their pockets? …  Our battle is against the evil. Our battle is against not anybody that's against this bill. Our battle is for flesh and blood. It's not against flesh and blood.”

Another speaker—a physician and medical director at a crisis pregnancy center—attacked Planned Parenthood:

“And one of the main reasons we're here today is money. This is money. And power. This is a multi-billion dollar business, abortion. And I'm telling you, I have so many patients who come to me and said ‘they didn't tell me about the risk of depression. They didn't tell me the risk I would get a perforated uterus and have a hysterectomy.’ I've seen that happen. ‘They didn't tell me about any of the risk of the suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideation.’ I have family members who have had an abortion who've never gotten over the depression from that. So we need to–if we're going to provide safe abortion–we need to make sure that people like Planned Parenthood who are making billions of dollars—half a billion of our tax dollars are going to Planned Parenthood– we need to make sure that they are properly counseling women on the not only physical risk of abortion, but the mental risk.”

In 2019, Planned Parenthood's total revenue, including both government funding and private donations, was $1.6 billion while its expenses were $1.5 billion ( 28 ). However, Planned Parenthood is prohibited from using any federal funding it receives on abortion services, and abortions account for only 3% of the total medical services provided at Planned Parenthood health centers ( 28 ). Furthermore, there is ample evidence that abortions are safer than childbirth ( 18 , 19 ) and other common medical procedures ( 29 ) and that people seeking an abortion who are able to get one fair better in terms of their short-term mental health ( 30 ) and longer-term physical health and financial well-being than people denied abortions ( 31 ).

3.3.5. Anti-abortion proponents vilified people who receive abortions

Anti-abortion proponents used multiple tactics to both stigmatize abortion and malign people who receive abortions. They characterized people who receive abortions as lazy and irresponsible or selfish and immoral and stated their objections to “abortions of convenience,” defined by multiple speakers as having an abortion for social or economic reasons and not for the life of the pregnant person or because of rape or incest. While many of these speakers stated or implied that most abortions are done for “convenience,” none cited evidence for this claim.

Supporters of the bill described their aversion to “abortions of convenience” with statements like this from a legislative representative:

“Over 90% of the abortions that are done in the United States are what? They are done for the manner of convenience. Not because of life of the mother. Not because a rape or incest. But because of convenience issues.”

Another example came from a testifier who was an educator at a Christian university and the president of an anti-abortion non-profit: “The vast majority of abortions are obtained for social and economic reasons, not rape, incest, or life of mother. … Studies indicate that over 90% of women seek abortion for social and economic reasons.”

Some anti-abortion proponents who described people who get abortions as selfish also described them as victims. They claimed abortions are mentally, emotionally, and physically harmful to people who receive them. For example, one person described her own abortion as selfish, yet said that she and other people who get abortions are unaware of (what she perceived as) emotional repercussions of abortion:

“I got an abortion, and it was a heartless, selfish act of snuffing out a precious life for my convenience. Women don't know, nor are they told about, the guilt and the shame that they will carry the rest of their lives. Abortion doesn't just end the life of a baby. It hurts women, and it scars them for life. I have heard hundreds of testimonies, and I know many women will deny what I just said. They claim there have been no repercussions. However, even if they hide their guilt and their shame from themselves, or they deny it or bury it so deep that they don't feel anything anymore, they still live with it the rest of their lives.”

In contrast to this quote, researchers have found that, among people seeking abortions, those denied an abortion are more likely in the short-term to experience adverse mental health outcomes, such as anxiety, low self-esteem, and low life satisfaction compared to people who receive abortions ( 30 ). The person who said the previous quote went on to describe her husband's disdain for her past abortion, revealing the potential source of the guilt she felt for getting an abortion:

“Yesterday, my husband said to me, ‘You can be forgiven, but you have still taken a life.’ Heartless. For women who have had an abortion, those are fighting words because it's difficult to face the reality that we have taken a life. Abortion is a heartless act and the argument that women have a right to their own bodies is a smokescreen to hide the reality that they can't face.”

Another anti-abortion proponent who was an educator at a Christian university and the president of an anti-abortion non-profit implied that people who get abortions are victims because healthcare providers do not inform them of the risks of having an abortion. She used this argument to advocate for the new bill, which would require informed consent and provision of information about the “harms” of abortion to anyone seeking an abortion:

“For many of these women, abortion is not an act of liberation. Rather, it is a violent act of despair. Many of these women have indicated they would carry their child if they were not abandoned by the father, pressured by employers, or rejected by parents. Further, many women in the United States, unlike those in South Carolina, have not been guaranteed informed consent. … They undergo abortions with no knowledge of fetal development, or knowledge of alternatives, or knowledge of the risk involved. For many women, abortion is a skillfully marketed product to prey on the fears of women in crisis. When women discover the physical, mental, and emotional scars that often surface, it is too late. I’ve met many of these women myself.”

As demonstrated in the quote above, supporters of the bill framed people who get abortions as desperate victims by associating abortions with abuse and coercion. In legislative sessions on the inclusion of an exception in the bill for rape and incest, speakers focused more intently on actual victims of abuse seeking abortions. Some against the exception claimed abortion protects rapists because a baby is evidence of rape and that abortion perpetuates the trauma of victims. Conversely, they claimed that carrying a pregnancy to term provides deliverance, healing, and vindication to victims of rape and incest. This discourse around victims of rape, incest, and coercion served to stigmatize abortion as associated with abuse. A quote from one speaker–the founder and president of an anti-abortion organization–exemplifies this discourse:

“And the younger a girl is, the more likely it's someone in her household, family member who's been raping her. And the more likely that it's been going on for years. And guess who reveals the rape? The baby. Her baby is ultimately her hero who can deliver her out of that abusive situation. But we see time and time again how oftentimes it's her own mother who's trafficking her, who takes her to the abortion clinic where they cover up the rape and then send her right back for repeated abortion, after abortion, after abortion. … And it is absolutely absurd to suggest that somehow more violence brings healing, more violence in the exact place where she was traumatized is somehow going to bring healing. But babies do have a way of bringing healing. … And I am so concerned when people say that somehow, you know, she's going to be better off after an abortion, when studies show that she's four times more likely to die within the next year after the abortion. They have a higher rate of murder, suicide, overdose because, again, more violence doesn't bring healing”

As stated in previous sections, there is no evidence that abortions are associated with negative mental health outcomes. Indeed, people who are denied an abortion are more likely to experience poor mental health than people who get an abortion ( 30 ).

4. Discussion

Our analysis of legislative testimony in support of H.3020, both by SC legislative representatives and the public, reveals that anti-abortion advocates primarily used scientific disinformation and moral arguments–based in their concepts of morality–to promote this bill. The only prior study to investigate anti-abortion arguments used in legislative hearings for a 6-week abortion ban came out of Georgia's 6-week ban, which was introduced in 2019, around the same time as SC H.3020. Many of the anti-abortion arguments and tactics we found in South Carolina were similar to those reported in the analysis of Georgia's ban ( 9 ), including misrepresenting scientific and medical findings, redefining life and personhood with the use of “fetal heartbeat” language, and comparisons of abortion to historical atrocities while framing opposition to abortion as defending human rights. However, anti-abortion proponents in South Carolina employed several arguments and strategies that were not found in the analysis of legislative hearings in Georgia. Findings unique to South Carolina included descriptions of biased and coercive care from medical professionals, use of value and logic statements based on scientific disinformation, use of religious rhetoric, and vilification of healthcare professionals and people seeking abortions.

In the current study, we found that blatant misrepresentation of science was commonly employed, with some speakers claiming there were scientific justifications for the ban without explaining these justifications and other speakers presenting opinions and anecdotal evidence as factual. This emphasis on medical and scientific arguments is consistent with anti-abortion arguments reported in an analysis of Georgia's 6-week ban. However, prior studies have found an historic lack of science-based arguments from anti-abortion activists, even within the last decade ( 32 ). The framing of this legislation as the “heartbeat bill” and the related scientific rationale used to ban abortions at 6 weeks may have allowed advocates of abortion restrictions to expand their rhetorical strategies by incorporating more scientific framing.

Though their scientific framing may have been relatively novel, anti-abortion advocates in the current study used scientific arguments as the basis for anti-abortion moral arguments that have long been used to promote abortion restrictions. Moral framing was prominent in the current analysis, with defenders of the bill providing arguments for why abortion was immoral and banning abortion was moral. This finding reflects a recent analysis of legislative discourse about anti-abortion policies, which found that morality frames were more common in discourse on abortion bans compared to discourse on other types of abortion restrictions ( 32 ).

The claim that fetal cardiac activity–which supporters of SC H.3020 inaccurately called a “heartbeat”–indicates life was fundamental to many of the moral arguments used by anti-abortion speakers. Using cardiac activity as a proxy for life and personhood, defenders of the ban asserted that abortion after detection of fetal cardiac activity is murder. Supporters of a similar 6-week abortion ban in Georgia in 2019 also used cardiac activity as a proxy for life and personhood ( 9 ). Advocates of abortion restrictions have long defended fetal personhood and “right to life” and claimed that abortion is murder ( 32 ). However, this novel and extreme legislation–deceptively named a “heartbeat bill”–gave anti-abortion advocates a new way to frame fetal personhood and connect supposedly scientific and moral arguments.

Anti-abortion advocates also endorsed the so-called morality of the 6-week ban by co-opting civil and human rights language and explicitly comparing their efforts to eradicate abortion to historical civil and human rights movements. This rhetorical strategy was also prominent in an analysis of public testimonies in support of a similar 6-week abortion ban in Georgia in 2019 ( 9 ). Co-option of and comparison to progressive, including civil rights, discourse have become common tactics in the anti-abortion space over the past decade ( 33 , 34 ). Prior studies have found that anti-abortion organizations and advocates appropriate the language of social justice organizations and movements, such as Black Lives Matter; they also frame abortion restrictions as moral by comparing abortion to slavery, eugenics, and genocide and equating their advocacy to the historical efforts to eradicate those atrocities ( 33 , 34 ).

Another tactic used by anti-abortion speakers in the current study was to frame the ban as sensible legislation by using phrases like “logical” and “common sense.” This type of language was not found in anti-abortion testimony for Georgia's 6-week ban ( 9 ). However, similar language was used during a congressional hearing for the 2014 federal Women's Health Protection Act, during which anti-abortion senators defended state abortion restrictions by referring to them as “common sense” legislation and claiming a majority of American people supported the restrictions ( 35 ). In an analysis of those hearings, Duffy (2015) argued that use of “common sense” language appeals to populist ideals by framing abortion restrictions as policies supported by and aligned with the values of sensible, average Americans. This rhetoric thus positions those opposing the “common sense” policies (in this case, abortion restrictions) as enemies of the American people. Duffy contends that this populist rhetoric in abortion policy discourse masks the damaging effects of anti-abortion legislation by focusing on conventional conservative talking points (e.g., arguments around states' rights and federal government overreach) rather than the actual impact of these bans on people's health ( 35 ).

Another theme in the current analysis that was not found in anti-abortion arguments for Georgia's 6-week ban ( 9 ) was negative portrayals of people involved in abortions, including providers and patients. Foundational to these negative portrayals was the claim that abortions are dangerous, which has been a common claim among U.S. anti-abortion advocates at least since the U.S. Supreme Court's Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision in 1992 ( 32 , 36 ). Anti-abortion proponents have used this false claim to frame abortion restrictions as benefitting rather than harming women ( 32 , 36 – 38 ). Claiming that abortions were harmful allowed proponents of the 6-week ban in South Carolina to both argue that abortion providers were deceiving patients about the risks of abortion and that abortion patients were being victimized.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision in 1992, abortion opponents have strategically vilified abortion providers, claiming that they mislead people about the risks of abortion ( 36 ). This theme remains prominent in anti-abortion discourse today ( 33 , 37 ). In the current study, we found explicit negative portrayals of abortion providers, with anti-abortion proponents endorsing inaccurate claims about the physical and psychological consequences of abortion and claiming that abortion providers were nefarious for not disclosing these supposed harms and for ostensibly profiting off people who get abortions. In contrast, anti-abortion healthcare providers who testified in support of SC H.3020 described situations in which they provided biased or coercive care to patients seeking abortions. This finding suggests anti-abortion medical professionals are the providers who are actually harming patients.

In the current study, anti-abortion proponents making moral arguments also vilified people who get abortions by describing them as either lazy, selfish, and immoral or desperate victims of poverty, abusive relationships, and healthcare providers. They claimed these people are duped or forced into having abortions. Some speakers also claimed that abortions further traumatized victims of abuse, leading to a downward spiral of other harmful behaviors, including drug use and suicide. This discourse on the circumstances and effects of abortion both stigmatized abortion and allowed supporters of the abortion ban to claim it would protect women.

Prior research has reported that anti-abortion advocates commonly promote lies about the harms of abortion in order to claim that abortion restrictions protect women, with some even declaring abortion opposition as a feminist stance ( 32 , 36 , 37 ). This rhetoric is part of what has been termed “mother-child” framing, a relatively recent strategy through which abortion opponents assert abortion restrictions promote the wellbeing of both babies (fetuses) and pregnant people ( 36 , 37 ). Claims that abortion restrictions protect women, are feminist, and are compatible with the wellbeing of mother and child have become more common in the post-Casey era ( 36 ). Before the 1992 Casey decision, anti-abortion proponents explicitly promoted fetal rights over the bodily autonomy of pregnant people; however, in recent decades, they have adopted a more “pro-woman” approach, in part to make abortion restrictions seem less radical ( 36 – 38 ). The recent rise of extreme abortion bans and the rhetoric promoting them (e.g., fetal “heartbeat” language) may suggest that anti-abortion strategies are regressing, with a renewed emphasis on fetal rights and personhood ( 37 ). Indeed, the current study and the analysis of anti-abortion rhetoric around Georgia's 6-week ban ( 9 ) suggest that personhood rhetoric is becoming more prominent among advocates of extreme abortion bans.

Claims that abortions are dangerous are false. Legal abortions are much safer than childbirth ( 18 , 19 ) and other common medical procedures ( 29 ). Furthermore, people seeking an abortion who are able to get one experience better short-term mental health ( 30 ) and longer-term physical health ( 20 ) and financial well-being ( 39 ) than people denied abortions. Negative experiences related to abortion (which appear to be infrequent) can likely be attributed to inequitable social systems that oppress the most vulnerable abortion patients and not due to abortion itself ( 40 , 41 ).

Religious arguments in the current study were sparse yet notable given their absence from anti-abortion arguments in legislative hearings for Georgia's 6-week abortion ban ( 9 ). In South Carolina, anti-abortion proponents used religion as the foundation of personal and societal morals by expressing how much they valued “life” in the womb, often tying this value and their definition of life to their Christian faith. Recent studies are mixed on the prominence of religious rhetoric in anti-abortion discourse. A 2013 analysis of anti-abortion discourse from anti-abortion forums, organizations, and parliamentary representatives in Canada found that religious arguments were not common ( 38 ); indeed, activists explicitly discouraged people from making religious arguments to support abortion restrictions, and scientific arguments appear to have replaced religious arguments for the basis of fetal personhood arguments ( 38 ). However, this analysis from Canada is dated, and the abortion landscape in Canada differs substantially from that in the United States. A more recent study of abortion discourse on Twitter found religious arguments were prominent in anti-abortion Tweets ( 42 ). Hence, the prominence of religious discourse may vary by platform. Additional investigation of the prevalence and effects of anti-abortion religious discourse in the United States is needed and may help abortion advocates counteract these arguments and develop their own messaging for religious audiences.

Our analysis had several limitations. We were unable to collect self-reported demographic information of anti-abortion proponents other than the legislators, so our estimation of participants' demographic characteristics is based on our perceptions of their race, gender, and age, which may be inaccurate. Furthermore, this analysis focused only on anti-abortion arguments, and further research is needed to analyze pro-abortion rhetoric used by those opposing abortion restrictions.

5. Conclusions

Restricting abortions has detrimental impacts on the health and well-being of people who can become pregnant ( 43 ). At this moment when reproductive rights are being stripped away in the United States, analyses of the discourse and strategies used to promote abortion restrictions are critical. In the current study, we found that arguments used during public legislative hearings to promote a 6-week abortion ban in South Carolina were characterized by scientific disinformation and stigmatizing language around the morality of abortion. More research is needed to determine the optimal tactics to counter this rhetoric; However, advocates for reproductive rights, health, and justice may use findings on current anti-abortion tactics to inform their own strategies, including by explaining to the public and policymakers that current anti-abortion rhetoric is extremely harmful and inaccurate. As the struggle for reproductive rights and justice continues in the United States, abortion advocates must continue to document the dangerous strategies used by abortion opponents and learn from the global pro-abortion movement to develop strategies that will restore these rights.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dabney Evans and Subasri Narasimhan at Emory University for providing their codebook and helping guide development of our initial codebook; We also thank the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network for recording and making available all the legislative sessions and Abby Askins for assistance with checking the accuracy of transcriptions.

1 These estimates are based both on video footage as well as familiarity the third co-author has with the anti-abortion proponents providing testimony, based on her decades-long participation in abortion access hearings in the SC legislature.

2 A SC law passed in 2016 (S.C. CODE ANN. § 44-41-330(A)(1)(a)) requires people seeking abortions who have an ultrasound be given the opportunity to see their ultrasound image. However, it does not mandate that people seeking abortions have an ultrasound or view the ultrasound image if they do have one.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement, author contributions.

VL was responsible for the codebook development, data coding and analysis, and manuscript development. EH was responsible for the codebook development, data coding and analysis, and contributed to manuscript development. DB was responsible for study design and contributed to the development of the codebook and the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Supreme Court rejects bid to restrict access to abortion pill

In a blow for anti-abortion advocates, the  Supreme Court  on Thursday rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone , meaning the commonly used drug can remain widely available.

The court  found unanimously  that the group of anti-abortion doctors who questioned the Food and Drug Administration’s decisions making it easier to access the pill did not have legal standing to sue. 

President Joe Biden said in a statement that while the ruling means the pill can remain easily accessible, “the fight for reproductive freedom continues” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling two years ago that overturned abortion rights landmark Roe v. Wade.

“It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states,” he added.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court, wrote that while plaintiffs have “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” that does not mean they have a federal case.

The plaintiffs failed to show they had suffered any injury, meaning that “the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions,” he added.

“The plaintiffs may present their concerns and objections to the president and FDA in the regulatory process or to Congress and the president in the legislative process,” Kavanaugh wrote. “And they may also express their views about abortion and mifepristone to fellow citizens, including in the political and electoral processes.”

The legal challenge was brought by doctors and other medical professionals represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court did not reach the merits of the FDA’s lawless removal of commonsense safety standards for abortion drugs,” said Erin Hawley, one of the group’s lawyers. She told reporters she is hopeful the underlying lawsuit can continue because three states — Idaho, Missouri and Kansas — have brought their own claims and have different arguments for standing.

By throwing out the case on such grounds, the court avoided reaching a decision on the legal merits of whether the FDA acted lawfully in lifting various restrictions, including one making the drug obtainable via mail, meaning the same issues could yet return to the court in another case.

Another regulatory decision left in place means women can still obtain the pill within 10 weeks of gestation instead of seven. 

Likewise a decision to allow health care providers other than physicians to dispense the pill will remain in effect.

The court’s decision to roll back abortion rights two years ago led to a wave of new abortion restrictions in conservative states.

Then, the court suggested it was removing itself from the political debate over abortion, but with litigation continuing to rage over abortion access, the justices are continuing to play a pivotal role. 

Abortion rights supporters welcomed the ruling, with Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, saying she was relieved at the outcome but angered about the case lingering in the court system so long.

“Thank goodness the Supreme Court rejected this unwarranted attempt to curtail access to medication abortion, but the fact remains that this meritless case should never have gotten this far,” she said in a statement.

Danco Laboratories, manufacturer of Mifeprex, the brand version of mifepristone, praised the ruling too, saying it was good for the drug approval process writ large.

In rejecting the challenge, the court “maintained the stability of the FDA drug approval process, which is based on the agency’s expertise and on which patients, health care providers and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry rely,” company spokeswoman Abigail Long said.

Anti-abortion groups expressed disappointment, saying that the ruling highlighted the importance of this year’s election in which Democrat Biden, who has pledged to defend abortion rights, faces off against Republican Donald Trump, who has the strong backing of conservatives who oppose abortion.

“Joe Biden and the Democrats are hell-bent on forcing abortion on demand any time for any reason, including DIY mail-order abortions, on every state in the country,” Marjorie Dannenfeiser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said.

If Trump were to win the election, his appointees to the FDA would be a position to impose new restrictions on mifepristone. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez-Rodriguez, alluded to the possibility in a call with reporters after the ruling. Calling the case “one tactic in a broader, relentless strategy” by anti-abortion activists, Chavez-Rodriguez said if Trump is elected, his advisers and allies would try to ban abortion nationwide “without the help of Congress or the court,” and also restrict access to contraception — a threat, she said, to blue as well as red states.

The mifepristone dispute is not the only abortion case currently before the court. It is also due to decide whether  Idaho’s strict abortion ban  prevents doctors in emergency rooms from performing abortions when a pregnant woman is facing dangerous complications.

Mifepristone is used as part of a two-drug FDA-approved regimen that is now the most common form of abortion in the United States.

Abortion is effectively banned altogether in 14 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that backs abortion rights.

The FDA had the backing of the pharmaceutical industry, which has warned that any second-guessing of the approval process by untrained federal judges could  cause chaos and deter innovation.

Last year, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a sweeping ruling that completely invalidated the FDA’s approval of the pill, leading to panic among abortion-rights activists that it would be banned nationwide.

The Supreme Court last April put that ruling on hold, meaning the pill remained widely available while litigation continued.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August then narrowed Kacsmaryk’s decision but left in place his conclusion that the FDA’s move to lift restrictions starting in 2016 was unlawful.

Both sides appealed to the Supreme Court. The court in December took up the Biden administration’s appeal in defense of the later FDA decisions, but it opted against hearing the challenge to the original approval of mifepristone in 2000. 

The Supreme Court focused solely on the later FDA action, including the initial 2021 decision that made the drug available by mail, which was finalized last year.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com .

Lawrence Hurley covers the Supreme Court for NBC News Digital.

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