Methods To Legalize Abortion In The United States

In the United States of America, and most of the world, women are for the most part free to choose if they want to keep their pregnancy or terminate the pregnancy. Women from all over the world have been aborting pregnancies for several centuries, meaning the practice of abortion is nothing new to our society. There are two basic categories of abortion, medical abortion and surgical abortion. There are many different methods a woman can choose to terminate her pregnancy, and there are time periods when a certain method can be used. These methods are broken down into three time sensitive sections of when they can be used. The three sections are first trimester, second trimester, and third trimester. Most methods are limited to a certain trimester
Seventy-five percent of women who died from the effects of an illegal abortion were women of color in the year 1969. In that same year ninety percent of all the legal abortions performed were received by the rich private women. The government began to legalize abortion in certain cases including if the pregnancy was the result of incest, rape, or if the woman was under fifteen years of age. In 1970, New York state passed a law stating that a woman could receive an abortion within twenty-four weeks gestation if the procedure was done in a medical facility by a trained doctor. One by one states began to pass similar laws, although many were not fond of the idea. Women who could afford or had the mobility to get to the few places in the country where abortions were legal got the legal and safe abortions that they desperately needed. For the women who could not get there, they were stuck with having the baby or having an illegal abortion and take the risk associated with the procedure. The illegal abortions were still happening and were very common throughout the United States. There were many feminist groups that would help women by giving them loans to pay for the abortions, emotional support, and they would fight to keep the price of abortion low so all women could get the abortion that would potentially cost them their life.
There are three types of methods that can used in the second trimester. Those being dilation and curettage, dilation and evacuation, and induction abortion. Dilation and curettage can be used up to sixteen weeks and they cut up the baby and pull the fetus out piece by piece. Dilation and evacuation can be used after sixteen weeks gestation, but has the same basic procedure as aspiration and dilation and curettage. Then there is induction abortion, this method is rarely used. The doctor has to inject salt water, urea, and potassium chloride into the amniotic sac, where the fluid that surrounds the baby is. Prostaglandins are then inserted into the vagina. Then the woman ingests pitocin to intravenously be given to the baby. (http://americanpregnancy.org/unplanned-pregnancy/abortion-procedures/) Potassium chloride is the same medication prisoners on death row are injected with to stop their