Although members of both major political parties are on both sides of the issue, the Republican Party is often seen as anti-abortion because the party`s official platform opposes abortion and believes that unborn fetuses have an inherent right to life. Republicans for Choice represent the minority of this party. In 2006, pollsters found that 9% of Republicans favor the availability of abortion under most circumstances. [153] Among delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2004, 13% believed abortion should be widely available, and 38% believed it should not be allowed. The same poll showed that 17 percent of all Republican voters thought abortion should be universally available to those who want it, while 38 percent thought it should not be allowed. [154] Rebecca Suzanne “Becky” Bell was the first known person to die from an illegal abortion. On September 16, 1988, the 17-year-old Indiana girl died of complications from a septic abortion after being barred from filing legal proceedings under Indiana`s parental consent law. In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest or when pregnancy would result in a woman`s permanent physical disability. Similar laws have been passed in California, Oregon and North Carolina. In 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions at the woman`s request,[42] and New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy.

Similar laws were quickly passed in Alaska and Washington. In 1970, Washington held a referendum on legalizing abortion and became the first state to legalize abortion by popular vote. [43] A Washington, D.C. law authorizing abortion to protect women`s life or health was challenged before the Supreme Court in United States v. Vuitch in 1971. The court upheld the law, ruling that “health” meant “mental and physical well-being,” which essentially allowed abortion in Washington, D.C. By the end of 1972, 13 states had laws similar to those in Colorado, while Mississippi only allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest, and Alabama and Massachusetts allowed abortion only in cases where the woman`s physical health was at risk. To obtain abortions during this period, women often traveled from a state where abortion was illegal to a state where it was legal. The Legal Position Before Roe v. Wade was that abortion was illegal in 30 states and, under certain circumstances, legal in 20 states. [44] A January 2003 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll asked a question about the legality of quarterly abortion with the following question: “Do you think abortion should be legal in general or generally illegal at each of the next stages of pregnancy?” [138] The same question was asked by Gallup in March 2000 and July 1996. [139] [140] Polls suggest general support for legal abortion in the first trimester, although support for abortion drops significantly in the second and third trimesters.

The pregnancy-related mortality rate for women giving birth to live births was 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. The mortality rate associated with induced abortions was 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions. The risk of death associated with childbirth is about 14 times higher than that associated with abortion. Telemedical abortion combines medical abortion, which uses pills to terminate a pregnancy, with telemedicine, which allows health care providers to meet with patients via videoconference or telephone. In the wake of COVID-19, advocates have increasingly questioned the FDA`s REMS restrictions on the abortion pill. These efforts have been facilitated by research into the safety of a no-test abortion protocol that allows doctors to examine patients by phone or video and then send them abortion pills directly. In Stenberg v. Carhart, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law that banned what anti-abortion advocates called “partial-birth abortion.” Although the term does not refer to a medical procedure, the law has been interpreted as prohibiting doctors from performing an intact dilation and extraction abortion, a procedure sometimes used for second-trimester abortions. In addition to monitoring and law enforcement, banning abortion will have a devastating impact on the health and well-being of women and their children.

Research shows that people who are denied a desired abortion have more serious health problems than those who have an abortion and are more likely to stay in contact with an abusive partner.