For over two hundred years, abortion has been apart of the United States culture. During the 1700's, Americans viewed abortion merely as a means of ridding women of pregnancies that resulted from illicit relationships. Birthrates in the U.S. were extremely high at the end of the eighteenth century, so consequently the Americans wanted to lower birth rates. This social trend is best cited as "induced abortions became such a popular method of fertility control that it becomes a kind of epidemic" (qtd in Omran). Abortion went from a marginal practice of the desperate few to being a significant factor in the effort of American women to regulate their own fertility. In the 1830's the use of new contraceptive techniques became available, but for a short while, the abortion rate increases with the new introduction to contraceptives. This is due to the idea that people thought that they could have more sex, which they did, but most of the general public did not master the use of contraceptives, so many "mistakes" occurred. Even when contraceptives were used correctly, the quality of contraceptive devices was not very good. After contraception devices became more mainstream, the abortion rate lowered(Sachdev 150-151).
There are two important