Abortion-rights movement
Abortion-rights movements, also self-styled as pro-choice movements, are movements that advocate for legal access to induced abortion services, including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pregnancy without fear of legal or social backlash. These movements are in direct opposition to anti-abortion movements.
The issue of induced abortion remains divisive in public life, with recurring arguments to liberalize or restrict access to legal abortion services. Some abortion-rights supporters are divided as to the types of abortion services that should be available under different circumstances, including periods in the pregnancy such as late term abortions, in which access may or may not be restricted.
Terminology
Many of the terms used in the debate are political framing terms used to validate one's stance while invalidating the opposition. For example, the labels pro-choice and pro-life imply endorsement of widely held values such as liberty and freedom, while suggesting that the opposition must be "anti-choice" or "anti-life".These views do not always align along a strict binary. In one poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, the ambiguity of the terms led 70% of Americans to identify as 'pro-choice,' while nearly two-thirds simultaneously identified as "pro-life". It was found that, in polling, respondents would label themselves differently when given specific details about the circumstances around an abortion including factors such as rape, incest, viability of the fetus, and survivability of the mother.
The Associated Press favors the terms "abortion rights" and "anti-abortion" instead.
History
Abortion practices date back to 1550 BCE, based on the findings of practices recorded on documents. Abortion has been an active practice since Egyptian medicine. Centuries later, abortion was a topic taken up by feminism.According to historian James C. Mohr, there was an earlier acceptance of abortion, and opposition to abortion, including anti-abortion laws, only came into being in the 19th century. It was not always a crime and was generally not illegal until quickening, which occurred between the fourth and sixth months of pregnancy. In the 19th century, the medical profession was generally opposed to abortion. Mohr argues that the opposition arose due to competition between men with medical degrees and women without one, such as Madame Drunette. The practice of abortion was one of the first medical specialities, and was practiced by unlicensed people; well-off people had abortions and paid well. The press played a key role in rallying support for anti-abortion laws.
The ideas of the legalization of abortion in the late 19th century were often opposed by feminists, seeing it as a means of relieving men of responsibility. In The Revolution, which was an official published newspaper of women's rights that went out weekly, operated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, an anonymous contributor signing "A" wrote in 1869 about the subject, arguing that instead of merely attempting to pass a law against abortion, the root cause must also be addressed. The Revolution newspaper highly impacted the women's rights movement, and for the first time, it seemed like women's voices were being heard through the proclamations of these unacknowledged subjects regarding women and their everyday rights and safety as citizens. The writer wrote that simply passing an anti-abortion law would "be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains.... No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh! thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."
Between 1900 and 1965, there were not any anti-abortion movements or rallies because states had already passed a law banning abortions at all levels, including prescriptions and procedures. The only exception for a woman to get an abortion without fear of legal retribution was if a licensed physician determined the abortion would protect the mother's life. Physicians who provide abortions and women who have abortions were constantly harassed by courts and prosecutors. In the 1960s, some states began to request changes with the abortion law. In 1959, a group of experts set up a model enactment that supported the advancement of the abortion laws. These experts suggested that the abortion laws should provide exemptions for women that were sexually assaulted or for a baby that may not have a good quality of life. The abortion-rights movement became a controversial topic in the United States regarding abortion and reproduction.
United Kingdom
The movement towards the liberalization of abortion law emerged in the 1920s and 1930s in the context of the victories that had been recently won in the area of birth control. Campaigners including Marie Stopes in England and Margaret Sanger in the US had succeeded in bringing the issue into the open, and birth control clinics were established that offered family planning advice and contraceptive methods to women in need. Birth control is a method of pregnancy prevention through controlled contraception.In 1929, the Infant Life Preservation Act was passed in the United Kingdom, which amended the law so that an abortion carried out in good faith, for the sole purpose of preserving the life of the mother, would not be an offense. Many citizens had mixed opinions on this, but ultimately started protesting this as child destruction. Child destruction was known as taking the life of a viable unborn child during a pregnancy or at birth, before it is independent of its mother. If there is an intent of death and no good faith is carried out in the process in order to protect the mother's livelihood, the offense carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. The Infant Life Preservation Act defines the difference between murder and abortion-the causing of a miscarriage.
Stella Browne was a leading birth control campaigner, who increasingly began to venture into the more contentious issue of abortion in the 1930s. Browne's beliefs were heavily influenced by the work of Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter and other sexologists. She came to strongly believe that working women should have the choice to become pregnant and to terminate their pregnancy while they worked in the horrible circumstances surrounding a pregnant woman who was still required to do hard labor during her pregnancy. In this case she argued that doctors should give free information about birth control to women that wanted to know about it. This would give women agency over their own circumstances and allow them to decide whether they wanted to be mothers or not.
In the late 1920s, Browne began a speaking tour around England, providing information about her beliefs on the need for accessibility of information about birth control for women, women's health problems, problems related to puberty and sex education and high maternal morbidity rates among other topics. These talks urged women to take matters of their sexuality and their health into their own hands. She became increasingly interested in her view of the woman's right to terminate their pregnancies, and in 1929, she brought forward her lecture "The Right to Abortion" in front of the World Sexual Reform Congress in London. In 1931, Browne began to develop her argument for women's right to decide to have an abortion. She again began touring, giving lectures on abortion and the negative consequences that followed if women were unable to terminate pregnancies of their own choosing such as: suicide, injury, permanent invalidism, madness and blood-poisoning.
Other prominent feminists, including Frida Laski, Dora Russell, Joan Malleson and Janet Chance began to champion this cause – the cause broke dramatically into the mainstream in July 1932 when the British Medical Association council formed a committee to discuss making changes to the laws on abortion. On February 17, 1936, Janet Chance, Alice Jenkins and Joan Malleson established the Abortion Law Reform Association as the first advocacy organization for abortion liberalization. The association promoted access to abortion in the United Kingdom and campaigned for the elimination of legal obstacles. In its first year ALRA recruited 35 members, and by 1939 had almost 400 members.
The ALRA was very active between 1936 and 1939 sending speakers around the country to talk about Labour and Equal Citizenship and attempted, though most often unsuccessfully, to have letters and articles published in newspapers. They became the most popular when a member of the ALRA's Medico-Legal Committee received the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been raped, and received a termination of this pregnancy from Dr. Joan Malleson, a progenitor of the ALRA.
In 1938, Joan Malleson precipitated one of the most influential cases in British abortion law when she referred a pregnant fourteen-year old rape survivor to gynaecologist Aleck Bourne. He performed an abortion, then illegal, and was put on trial on charges of procuring abortion. Bourne was eventually acquitted in R v. Bourneas his actions were "...an example of disinterested conduct in consonance with the highest traditions of the profession". This court case set a precedent that doctors could not be prosecuted for performing an abortion in cases where pregnancy would probably cause "mental and physical wreck".
The Abortion Law Reform Association continued its campaigning after the Second World War, and this, combined with broad social changes brought the issue of abortion back into the political arena in the 1960s. President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists John Peel chaired the committee advising the British Government on what became the Abortion Act 1967, which allowed for legal abortion on a number of grounds, including to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the woman or her existing child if the pregnancy was still under 28 weeks.