Abortion_Trends_in_the_Us

Abortion trends in the US. ”Getting an abortion in America is, in some places, harder today than at any point since it became a constitutionally protected right 40 years ago this month”. The number of abortion providers nationwide shrank from 2,908 in 1982 to 1,793 in 2008. Why is it so hard to get an abortion in the US now, why has it developed in this direction and what are the abortion trends today' In 1972, Roe v Wade was decided. It gave women extended rights to have an abortion. However, the right needed to be balanced against the state’s two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and women’s healt. Hence each state has the ability to regulate abortion. Dozens of states have made it hart to get abortions. According to Huffington Post, 17 states set new limits on abortion in 2012, and 24 in 2011. Some of the states with the toughest laws are spread across a big middle swath of the country, stretching all the way from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In South Dakota, North Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi there is only one abortion clinic. ¾ of Americans believe abortion should be legal under some or all circumstances, just 41% identified themselves as prochoice in a Gallup survey conducted in May 2012 (According to Time Magazine) Many people’s views are nuanced. Nearly as many voters consider them selves ”pro-life” as those who say they are ”pro-choice”. More than 30 new abortion laws were enacted in 2012, and most states (41) ban abortion after a certain stage of pregnancy, generally around 20 weeks, unless the mother’s life or health is in danger. The bans are often based on the premise that fetuses can early feel pain. Pre-abortion counseling is required in 35 states, and 25 require waiting periods after counceling. (http://www.mccl.org/us-abortion-stats.html) As one can see on this chart, one can see that after Roe v Wade was decided, the abortions flourished over the nation; in fact it got more and more popular. That is probably when the states (since it is a federal law) decided to restrict the abortion rights. There have been almost 55 million abortions in the US in the period between 1972 and 2011, which constitutes an average of about 1.5 million each year. Now there are fewer providers and more regulations that have made accessing abortion services more difficult than earlier. The goal should be to widen access to a procedure most Americans believe should be restricted – and no one wants to ever need. Sources: http://www.mccl.org/us-abortion-stats.html (The Alan Guttmacher Institute (a special affiliate to Planned Parenthood), which actively collects the abortion data directly from providers.  All numbers reported are voluntary; there are no laws requiring abortionists to report to any national agency the numbers of abortions they perform. 2009-2011 are estimates of 1,212,400 annually.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/dozens-of-states-make-it-_n_1992774.html Time Magazine, January 14, 2013.