Abortion

By: Jackson CainMatthew JohnsBailey ShockomeKaitlin Biehl

From 1973 to 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions were performed in the US – an average of about 1.4 million per year.

2008 abortion rates – three in every ten US women will have an abortion before age 45.

How was it Developed?• Abortion techniques were developed as early as 1550 BC. suggested that

the vaginal insertion of plant fiber covered with honey and crushed dates could induce an abortion. Abortion was an accepted practice in ancient Greece and Rome. Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that "when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun" In the later days of the Roman Empire, abortion was considered not as homicide but as a crime against a husband who would be deprived of a potential child.

America on Abortion• A 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 46 percent of people

say abortion should be legal in all or most cases; on the other side, 44 percent say abortion should always or mostly be illegal.

• (Quote)-"Most Americans are troubled," They think there are too many abortions, but they don't want to make it illegal."

Founding Fathers ThoughtsThere is tremendous consistency in the founders’ support of contraception within marriage, but objection to abortion. Family size and whether to create life in the first instance are matters of choice. There is nothing unnatural in a couple taking reasonable steps to prevent conception.But in the view of the founders, once life has its start and conception has occurred, it merits ongoing protection from that point on.

Founding Fathers Affects on Abortion

One scholar researching fertility in the founding era found that birth rates dropped significantlyafter 1750 as compared to the rest of the world, and continued to drop throughout the entirety ofthe founding era. Specifically she found that more than half of the 56 signers of theDeclaration of Independence had 6 or fewer children. This was still a large family by today’sstandards, but was a great reduction from the average family size prior to that time, of about 10to 12 children. Obviously, this reduction was due to contraception practices betweenhusband and wife during this era, but not abortion which was clearly unacceptable to thefounding generation.

Ben Franklin

• Ben Franklin was one of the founding fathers that actually tried to get his lover to have one.

• It was said that Ben tried having his lovers have multiple abortions.

• Wrote about abortion in the newspaper.

17 kids total

John Adams

• John Adams said the following in a speech to the military in 1798:

• “Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations.” ((Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (October 11, 1798)

George Washington

“Making it lawful to execute the most helpless forms of life this earth has seen is cruel.”- Wife had a stillborn- Many believe that’s why he's

considered anti

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton believed abortion should be encouraged. “I can agree with the other side, but we have to see eye to eye here. Some of these crazy people are parents.”

Thomas Jefferson

• Jefferson had no say on abortion.• Didn’t want controversy or people to not get

along with him on it.• Thomas Jefferson put no moral judgment on abortion, either. In his

Notes on the State of Virginia, he observed that for Native American women, who accompanied their men in war and hunting parties, “childbearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said, therefore, that they have learnt the practice of procuring abortion by the use of some vegetable, and that it even extends to prevent conception for some time after.

Benjamin Rush

• Said the three month old embryo was equivalent medically to what one might cough up when ill with the flu.

Abortion’s Impact on Today

• This upcoming January is the 42nd year abortion has been legal in the United States.

• Mostly legal today • When illegal, women would do whatever they

had to do to have an abortion.• In August of 2014, 9 states have made

abortion illegal.

Pro vs Anti Abortion

• Pro- US supreme court declared abortion to be a “fundamental right” guaranteed by the US Constitution.

• Reproductive choice empowers women by giving them control over their own bodies.

• Personhood begins after a fetus becomes “viable” (able to survive outside the womb) or after birth, not a conception.

• Safe no harm to fetus (professionally performed)

• Anti- abortion is murder• Life begins at conception, so unborn

babies are human beings with a right to life.

• Fetuses feel pain during the abortion procedure

• Abortion is the killing of a human being which defies the word of god. Jeremiah 1:5 “before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sacrificed thee. Six commandment “thou shall not kill.”

What the Founding Fathers would think?Determining what the founding fathers thought is a very interesting question many people ask themselves today. While the founding fathers wrote about believing in equality of human beings, they sure had some blind spots. Women and people of other races being 2nd class compared to white men was a given. So it would be a very interesting thing to do to. Also, children died so frequently back then. There was a saying "two in the hill for one in the home", which meant you would be burying two children for every one that survived. Childhood death was common. -But abortions are nothing new. Women used to drink all kinds of poison to induce termination of their pregnancies. Of course, often it killed them both. Seaweed was also used back then for abortions. The high salt content of seaweed would cause the fetus to abort. It is only SAFE abortions that are new. For years it existed and people just turned a blind eye, or they died in the process.

-Most people believe that if the founding fathers had been pressed on their ideas of equality, they would have stood tall and admitted their blind areas. I think they would have believed in the right of women to control their own bodies, safely, without the life-threatening things used when people are ignorant of safe methods, or safe methods are banned.

Founding Fathers

Indiana Abortion Laws• Penalty for unlawful abortion – Class C felony.• Consent requirements – Written consent of mother, not applicable in emergency. If

unemanicipated minor under 18 years old.

• Some key points about Indiana’s abortion law:

• •Abortion is legal for the full nine months of pregnancy in Indiana.• •Freestanding abortion centers may only do abortions legally in the first trimester.• •Indiana maintains a ban on partial-birth abortion.• •Indiana law maintains key informed consent provisions for women considering

abortion but is lacking in a requirement that the information be provided in writing.• •Indiana law requires parental consent for girls under 18-years of age.• •Abortion counselors must inform a woman considering abortion about the ability to

see an ultrasound image of her baby and the ability to hear her baby’s heartbeat.

Sources• Spirits, R. (2012, April 6). American Creation. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2012/04/founding-fathers-and-abortion-in.html

• Ostler, D. (n.d.). Abortion: What the founding fathers thought about it. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from https://www.smashwords.com/books/download/343758/1/latest/0/0/abortion-what-the-founding-fathers-thought-about-it.pdf

• Kowalski, G. (2012, April 6). REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS: Faith, Politics, Opinion. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://revolutionaryspirits.blogspot.com/2012/04/founding-fathers-and-abortion-in.html

• Abortion ProCon.org. (2014, June 27). Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://abortion.procon.org

• Roe v. Wade and Beyond: Forty Years of Legal Abortion in the United States | Dissent Magazine. (2013, Winter). Retrieved October 21, 2014, from

• http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/roe-v-wade-and-beyond-forty-years-of-legal-abortion-in-the-united-states

• US Election Atlas (2009, November 30). Alexander Hamilton quote. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=30528.55;wap2