AllStances™: How Should Abortion Be Regulated?

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Background

Abortion has always been a controversial practice in America. In the early 1800s, abortion was not regulated largely until “quickening,” when a mother could feel fetal movement. This changed in the 1850s as the newly established American Medical Association pushed large political campaigns for a ban on abortion and defining life as beginning at conception.

For the next 90 years, abortion procedures would be pushed underground. States would begin passing more liberal abortion laws in the 1960s. These included legalization for early term abortions and exemptions for health concerns or birth defects. In 1973, the landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade created legal protections for abortion providers and their patients. These protections were later weakened by the Supreme Court in the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which found that states could pass abortion regulations that did not create an undue burden on patients seeking them.

Despite political and legal pressure from pro-life groups, national abortion rights were held to the standards of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. In 2022, the Supreme Court repealed both of these cases in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health Organization. Many advocate for Congress to pass a bill that would restrict states from passing abortion regulations much like Roe v. Wade had done before. Others believe that individual states should receive the ability to regulate abortion within their own borders.

Click here or scroll down to view the stances, or jump down to our glossary of terms.

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Stance 1: Congress Should Codify Roe v. Wade

Core argument: Codifying Roe v. Wade as federal law would create federal protections against state restrictions on abortion, protecting women's access to vital healthcare and control over their own bodies. Abortion is a human rights and moral issue, not merely an issue of good or bad policy.

• “The ability to decide whether and when to become pregnant and start parenting is crucial to determining one’s own life’s path, pursuing personal and professional goals, and safeguarding economic security.”
• Women decide to have abortions for many reasons, such as contraceptive failure, barriers to contraceptive use and access, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, fetal anomalies, illness during pregnancy, and exposure to teratogenic medications. Therefore, abortion is healthcare and should be federally protected.
• The best healthcare is a patient-physician relationship, not a political issue.
• "In countries where abortion is legal… 9 out of 10 abortions happen safely. But if you look at countries where abortions are most restricted then only 1 out of 4 abortions happens safely." 
•  Bans on abortion “negatively impact women and other pregnant people’s economic prospects, their mental health, their physical health, and ultimately their lives.”
•  A federal law codifying abortion will help to remove the constant confusion and chaos surrounding accessing one. 
• Restrictive abortion bans have second-order consequences to healthcare overall; physicians are leaving restrictive states, contributing to a shortage of healthcare providers overall. 
• “Only people with the resources to take off work, arrange transportation, secure childcare, and navigate abortion restrictions can access care” in states that restrict it.
•  “Abortion restrictions have led to a significant uptick in intimate partner violence”; abusive partners will sometimes control their victims by preventing them from accessing birth control. 
• “Pregnancy in the lowest-risk circumstances is higher risk than abortion care in the first trimester.”
• “Children may end up in foster care because parents can't afford to keep them or aren't able to safely care for them.”
• Codifying Roe ensures women can make their own choices about how many kids to parent. 
• “The right to access abortion care is essential for reproductive autonomy.”
• “Dobbs further raised the risk level associated with health data held by non-HIPAA-covered entities and highlighted the lack of privacy controls” in many period-tracking apps.
• “The Supreme Court’s watershed reproductive rights cases… grounded reproductive rights in federal constitutional rights of privacy and liberty.”
• Per Roe, “On the merits, the District Court held that the 'fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose where to have children' is protected by the Ninth Amendment, through the 14th Amendment.”

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Stance 2: States Should Set Their Own Abortion Policies

Core Argument: Allowing statewide abortion policies would preserve federalism and allow voters to decide what’s best for their communities.

• “One of the benefits of living in a federal republic is the states’ freedom to take a variety of approaches to difficult and controversial issues”.

• Making abortion a state-level issue could be the surest way for Americans to ensure they are living under governments that best reflect their values.

• State- level policies give more power to the people through voting for the state legislatures. Individual citizens have little influence in federal elections, which makes them prefer state elections.

• Allowing states to decide would allow some states to become “safe states” where abortion is allowed at any time, satisfying the desires of abortion rights advocates and also allowing anti-abortion advocates safe places as well.

• “It is not the role of the Supreme Court to substitute the policy preferences of its members for those expressed in laws enacted by the people's elected representatives.”

• States should be allowed to make necessary exceptions for “rape or incest,” rather than being forced into an an all-or-nothing format by the federal government.

• “Elected officials were eventually able to respond to the wishes of the public and move the abortion policy "temperature" toward the level set by the mass attitude.”

• Keeping abortion policy at the state level allows the states to implement policy that respects the diverse range of religious and cultural beliefs in that geographic area.

• “Abortion isn’t an issue like marginal tax rates, where you can average the asks from both sides.”

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Stance 3: Congress Should Restrict Abortion Nationwide

Core Argument: Fetuses are people, and states should not be left to decide if killing an entire class of people is acceptable. Abortion is a human rights and moral issue, not merely an issue of good or bad policy. Thus, Congress should establish some level of national abortion prohibition.

• “A generally good rule of thumb in distinguishing state from federal issues is whether or not people can escape bad policies by voting with their feet. The problem with leaving abortion to the states is simply that unborn babies can’t vote with their feet. They are completely at the mercy of others. It would do them no good for pro-lifers to change states; if anything, that would mean even fewer people around to stick up for a pro-abortion state’s unborn inhabitants.”
• Medical and other authorities now know more about human prenatal development than ever before. By at least 12 weeks gestation, an unborn child has taken on ‘‘the human form’’ in all relevant aspects; pain receptors begin forming at 7 weeks, an unborn child first moves and reacts to touch at 8 weeks; by 8 to 9 weeks gestation, he or she has detectable brain waves; at 9 weeks gestation an unborn child’s diaphragm is developing, and he or she may even hiccup. Congress’ purpose is to “assert a legitimate governmental interest in protecting the lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that they are capable of feeling pain.”
• Abortion carries significant physical and psychological risks to the pregnant woman, and these physical and psychological risks increase with gestational age.
• The majority of abortion procedures performed after 15 weeks gestation are dismemberment abortion procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear an unborn child apart before removing the pieces of the dead child from the womb.  
• Abortion represents a failure to recognize the sanctity of human life and promotes a culture in which human life in its most vulnerable moment is perceived as disposable.
• Abortion targets poor women as needing an expedient solution to the problem.

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Glossary of Terms

Abortion - a medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy

American Medical Association - A political advocacy group composed of doctors

Planned Parenthood - A nonprofit institution that provides various reproductive health services, including abortion

Roe v. Wade - Supreme Court case that restricted government authority to regulate pre-viability abortion based on a patient’s medical privacy

Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Pennsylvania v. Casey - A 1993 Supreme Court case that gave legislators limited ability to regulate abortions. States were restricted from any regulation that would create an “undue burden” for seeking a legal abortion

Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health Organization - 2022 Supreme Court case that repealed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, finding that there is “no constitutional right to abortion.” 

Fetal Heartbeat Law - A law that forbids abortions at the stage of pregnancy when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which  usually occurs around 6 weeks

Crisis Pregnancy Centers - Centers, usually religiously affiliated, that provide resources and counseling to pregnant women and usually discourage abortions 

Hyde Amendment - Legislative provision barring the federal government from paying for any abortion that is not life-threatening; Primarily applies to Medicaid, Medicare, and CHIP programs

Back Alley Abortion - An abortion carried out by someone not accredited as a doctor or in unsafe conditions

Safe State - a state that guarantees access to abortion

14th Amendment - US constitutional amendment that protects citizens’ “life, liberty, and property with equal protection under the law for all citizens”; in Roe v. Wade, abortions were implicit and protected under the right to privacy 

Zygote - A cell formed when an egg is fertilized

Fetus - The unborn young of any vertebrate animal, once it develops a basic form and structure 

Trimester - A period of three months. Used to measure the duration of a pregnancy

Viability - The point during a pregnancy in which a fetus might be able to survive outside the womb. There is no single formally recognized clinical definition of when a fetus becomes “viable,” but estimates range from 23 to 26 weeks.  

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Developed by:

AllSides Editor-in-chief Henry A. Brechter (Center bias)

University of California-Riverside public policy students Divya Bharadwaj, Andrew Shannon, and Samuel Shroff (all Left bias)

 

Reviewed by:

Director of Media Bias Ratings Julie Mastrine (Lean Right bias)

Content Designer Joseph Ratliff (Lean Left bias)

Bias Analyst Johnathon Held (Lean Right bias)