Each year, nearly eight hundred women will die giving birth in the United States alone. Many die because they are too young or because they cannot afford a standard pregnancy. This is why abortion is legal and many doctors perform abortions. The history of abortion is long and problematic, but overall, women who are victims of rape, who are not financially stable enough to support a child, or who are not yet ready to having a child should not have to undergo painfully laborious ordeals, not to mention the dangerous task of carrying and giving birth to a fetus. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay To understand what abortion is and how it came to be in America, look at its origin story in the country. Abortion had become a common practice, both legal and illegal, in America, first appearing in the 18th century. Abortion originally began with herbs planted in a garden and was done orally. With advancements in technology, more alternatives have also been created for abortion. A popular alternative, mainly from advertising, was the manufacture of different drugs that would facilitate abortion. Many would soon discover that this option was very deadly. Therefore, in the 19th century, a myriad of advances in technology and understanding of how the body worked resulted in the most widely used method of abortion, the intervention of an experienced physician. On the contrary, many doctors rejected the practice of abortion when it began surgically. Ironically, these same doctors assisted in more than two million abortions per year in the 19th century alone. This represents eight times more abortions being performed today. After such an increase, lawmakers made abortion illegal except in certain cases until 1973, when Roe v. Wade went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decriminalized it (Cates et al). At the moment, you can now have an abortion legally in many US states. One last important thing to note is that the abortion process is quite simple. The first thing the doctor will do is examine the uterus, then inject a numbing medication near the cervix, stretch the cervix if necessary, and insert a suction catheter that will suck out tissue from the uterus . The fetus does not feel any pain. Following abortion's extremely controversial past and present, the debate over whether abortion is ethically and morally right arises. Many factors will determine whether the answer is “yes” or “no”. Factors such as rape, being too young, or health problems support the assertion that abortion should be illegal regardless of the circumstances. If Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortion became illegal again, many women would put their lives in danger. Consider the case of the nine-year-old Brazilian girl whose life was saved after having an abortion. The nine-year-old was repeatedly raped by her stepfather and eventually conceived his child, putting her life in danger as she became pregnant at a very young age. Without the abortion, this little girl would have died. Therefore, rape has lasting traumatic effects on its victims. It appears that women who are raped, become pregnant and decide to keep the fetus are at higher risk of perinatal mortality and postpartum complications. Mothers who have been raped are also more likely to.