Introduction
Abortion can be referred to as when pregnancy is terminated so that it does not lead to birth, and it can be done either by use of medicine or surgical process. Since time immemorial, the process has been debated, and laws and policies have been made and amended. Hence, the abortion issue has seen significant changes ranging from historical ones to current. In the past, abortion policies were too strict to allow women to undertake the process. These transitions have impacted women’s lives positively as the number of women aborting has significantly increased. Nevertheless, the rising cases of illegal abortions became a problem as they became rampant. In 2021 the US has seen a rapid increase in cases of abortion; as a result, some states, such as Texas, have enacted new laws to curb this practice. Therefore, this discussion is aimed at discussing abortion policies with regard to the Constitution, their history, current issues on abortion, and social workers’ roles.
Structure
The law requires a patient to seek abortion only from a certified physician. Nineteen states require abortions to be done in a hospital, while seventeen states stressed the need to seek the intervention of an additional physician. In estimation, almost a million illegal abortions are done annually in the United States (Sajadi-Ernazarova & Martinez, 2021, p. 2). The progressive growth of illegal abortion practitioners has negatively affected women as most of them seek help from illegal abortion providers due to lower prices. Illegal abortions have left many women in severe psychological states and, in addition, affected their physical health. Most illegal abortion providers, doctors, and those claiming to be doctors are most concerned about the payment services than the services they offer. Therefore, the law provided a mandatory requirement for a certified abortion practitioner (Mainey et al., 2020). More research and proper training for abortion practitioners are needed so that they provide exemplary abortion care. Furthermore, healthcare organizations should investigate person-centered abortion care approaches.
Late pregnancy stages mean that fetuses are physically developed to have the right to life. In the majority of states, with few exceptions, abortions are restricted after a defined point in pregnancy (Karletsos et al., 2021). However, the Supreme Court ruled that states might legally prohibit or restrict abortion after fetal feasibility, except for cases to protect a woman’s life. Therefore, different states adopted this law by imposing an abortion policy as per the gestation limits.
Most women have decided to acquire cheap abortions from untrained medical practitioners due to the lack of funds for safer abortions. The Constitution provides that 16 states rely on their funding to cover all necessary abortions for Medicaid patients (Daniel et al., 2018, p. 882). However, 33 states and the District of Columbia ban public finance for abortion services unless in emergencies where the mother’s life is at risk or the pregnancy is the consequence of rape or incest (Daniel et al., 2018, p. 877). Regrettably, such stringent measures may lead to an increase in prohibited abortions.
Some states promote regulations regarding the financial management of the issue in question. Twelve states prohibit private insurance companies from covering abortion; specifically, they restrict funding to situations where the patient’s safety would be at risk if the pregnancy were carried to term (Reingold & Gostin, 2019). The majority of states allow for the acquisition of supplemental abortion cover at a cost (Reingold & Gostin, 2019). While the federal law has no plans to fund abortion, states have the authority to implement legislation prohibiting all policies engaging in the state marketplace from funding abortions
According to the legislation, some regions have unique laws concerning the abortion ban. Twenty-one states have enacted legislation prohibiting partial-birth abortion (Hunter et al., 2021). Three of these statutes apply only to abortions performed after gestation. Partial abortion refers to removing the fetus intact from the mother. The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy is unalienable (Hunter et al., 2021). Therefore, a state cannot ban a client from having an abortion unless the abortion can encourage concern for potential human life.
Individual doctors are permitted to decline to perform abortions in 45 states. Forty-two states permit institutions to deny abortions, with 16 reserving the right of refusal to private or religious organizations (Manríquez et al., 2018, p. 102). They provided this since many were doing illegal abortions from private doctors (Manríquez et al., 2018). One of the main arguments is that illegal abortions are fraught with severe complications and deaths of pregnant women.
As provided by the law, the State-Mandated Counseling requires that patients receive guidance prior to having an abortion. According to Doan et al. (2018), the guidance must cover the alleged connection between abortion and breast cancer, the capacity of a fetus to feel pain in thirteen states, and the mental health consequences to the mother. Chronic illnesses can manifest themselves severely if a woman decides to have an abortion; therefore, pregnant women who have such diseases should avoid carrying out the practice (Wie et al., 2019). In addition, the law emphasizes that such women are to seek care from trained doctors before they undertake abortions.
The Constitution mandates that a woman seeking an abortion should wait a certain period, typically 24 hours, preceding therapy and the operation. Twelve of these states have enacted legislation requiring clients to seek two different visits to the clinic to obtain the treatment (Berer, 2017). Moreover, according to Berer (2017), the law ensures women’s mental health is stable to conduct an abortion. However, pregnancy from rape may have dire consequences for women as some undergo post-traumatic stress when they reminisce about the rape events (Sepeng & Makhado, 2018). The law may be too strict to females in such circumstances as some typically get abortions illegally.
Relevant History
Roe v. Wade
In this case, Roe brought the lawsuit against Henry Wade in 1970 (Roe v. Wade, 1973). The Supreme Court rejected Roe’s declaration of a definitive decision to end a pregnancy in any manner. Instead, it sought to draw a ratio between the woman’s protection of privacy and the state’s interest in limiting abortion (Romanis & Horn, 2020). The Court stated that credible reasons were needed to support the rules limiting fundamental rights, such as privacy, and that lawmakers were to write laws carefully to convey only the legitimate state interests at stake. The Court, therefore, endeavored to find a compromise between the state’s substantial interests in women’s health and the possible lives of fetuses. The gestational age was also set at which the fetus was considered a person with full rights – 24 weeks (Romanis, 2020). Thence, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that unreasonably stringent state regulation of abortion was unconstitutional (Roe v. Wade, 1973). The Court further ruled that the Texas law that undermined a woman’s right to abort violated the Constitution’s right to privacy and the liberty guarantee provided by The Fourteenth Amendment.
Doe v. Bolton
The US Court found in the 1973 case Doe v. Bolton (1973) that a Georgia law restricting abortion was unlawful. Women desiring abortions in Georgia were needed to acquire permission from their doctor, consulting physicians, and a committee at the admission clinic. Moreover, only females who had been raped and their lives were endangered due to the baby or carrying infants who were likely to be chronically deformed were allowed to have abortions under the law. The US Supreme Court decided that Georgia’s regulations infringed on the right to privacy guaranteed by the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment (Doe v. Bolton, 1973). Doe v. Bolton (1973) was decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade (1973) and increased women’s access to abortion by overturning legislation that limited the grounds for which women could have abortions.
Bellotti v. Baird
In the Bellotti v. Baird (1979) case, the Supreme Court ruled that states might require a child to acquire guardian approval to obtain an abortion. However, the Court mandated that states issued a court’s override option through which minors could request a court for approval to do an abortion. That is minus informing their parents if they could demonstrate and act mature and make sound decisions on to abort or not to this law impacted lives of young girls under parents’ care. Some died due to an unsafe abortion due to parental permission regulation (Yogi et al., 2018). As a result, those states had to rethink the legislation; therefore, the law was enacted for parents to duly inform courts in case of abortion of an underage girl.
The presented cases make it possible to assess how the legislation on abortion was formed and what challenges women faced at the stage of the inception of the relevant laws. The litigation reviewed reveals the complex nature of the assessment of abortion legitimacy and underlines the importance of all the criteria that should be taken into account for the issuance of specific verdicts. In addition, these cases have become significant precedents in judicial practice and allowed forming a stable regulatory framework for proceedings in subsequent similar situations.
Currency
The gestational limit policy on abortion only permits it at some period after which carrying it out is illegal. Such laws align with the new Texas law that requires abortion to be performed within eight weeks of confirmed pregnancy. Moreover, the time to abort is fundamental for the mother’s survival (Hall et al., 2020). Furthermore, early abortion is less costly, safer, and more straightforward than when undertaken later. Concerning this, the ideal time to abort should primarily depend on the mother, considering all the safety measures are accounted for, and the mother’s survival is guaranteed. With regard to current policies, the Texas law may be considered rather punitive than preventive because, as Berer (2017) argues, abortion practices have become much safer than before. According to Charo (2021), the law requires an initial visit for an ultrasound, followed by the operation SB 8 to ensure one is inside the new legal limit for abortion care in Texas. If the second ultrasound reveals that one has the new permissible age, they can still obtain abortion care outside the state. Therefore, within social norms, abortion is not considered a unique procedure.
Social Workers’ Core Values
A social worker advocates and ensures that the rights of people are upheld, and their concerns are aired. They do this by ensuring every individual has access to social services such as family planning and abortion. Notably, the abortion issue has triggered hot debates and controversies. As social workers, this is inevitable to advocate against such laws as the Waiting Period Law, which requires one to wait for a specific period before being allowed to abort (Austin & Harper, 2018). This is also vital to advocate for access to proper abortion for women in Miami-Dade County as the statistics of safe abortion have increased in recent years.
Statistics in Miami-Dade County have depicted that chemical abortions have been increased quickly; the rise in the county abortions has never been among solely first trimester abortions. Whereas the spike is not as substantial as those of chemical abortions, delayed abortions have risen as well (Zhang et al., 2021). According to Longbons (2021), “there were 255 abortions at 19 weeks, 190 at 20 weeks, and 219 at 21 weeks or later, for a total of 923 abortions after 18 weeks post-fertilization” (para. 12). Consequently, abortions at 18 weeks have increased by 3% since 2017 (Longbons, 2021). In 2021, the Florida legislature discussed a bill that restricted abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy (Longbons, 2021). However, the committee did not pass the bill since it would have undermined the Constitution, and thus women’s rights would have been deprived (Fine et al., 2017). Involving in illegal abortions is detrimental and hazardous to the mother’s health as it can cause death or further future mental problems.
While summarizing social workers’ core values, one can associate them with the issue of abortion. In Table 1, the key values are presented along with their manifestations in the context of the topic under consideration.
Table 1. Social workers’ values and their relation to abortion.
Conclusion
In conclusion, abortion is not a crime as some may portray it but rather a lifesaving process. Therefore, abortion policies might have created controversies in society, which has led to the emergence of both supporters and opponents of this procedure. The gradual abortion amendments have helped shape the strict policies into more democratic ones (Karol & Thurston, 2020). However, one should note that the new policies, such as the Texas one, should be readjusted because the time limit should be the mother’s choice, provided their safety is guaranteed (Taylor et al., 2020). Social workers’ duties of towards ensuring safe abortions cannot be underestimated; they analyze and collect data on issues, which helps gain a comprehensive picture of current situations in communities. They develop ideas on how to tackle such issues or give out possible solutions by doing extensive research. The policies and laws presented are useful to me as a professional social worker. I have access to relevant legal frameworks and can influence the existing regulations by promoting appropriate initiatives to improve the abortion legislation not only at the local but also at the state and federal levels.
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