Abortion
In, 1973, 615,831 legal abortions were performed in the United States. That year is significant because before then, abortion-unless necessary to save a womans life was considered a criminal act in most states. All that changed on January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court (pg.15)

In 1899, every state had passed laws to ban abortion. Mosty states, however, allowed abortion to save the mother’s life.(abortion conflict page 8 cited 10)
The ban continued well into the twentieth century. Abortions were not done in hospitals. Women, however, still wanted abortions. Some of them found doctors who did safe, illegal abortions in secret. Rich women could travel to Europe for safe abortions. The rest were left in the hands of untrained abortionists. They went to dingy motel rooms or dirty back-alley offices for their abortions. Many of these women bled to death. Some died of infection. Others suffered injuries that would prevent them from ever having children. (page 8 abortion conflict)
Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, many people fought for women’s rights, including the right to choose an abortion. When the case that would change the law reached the supreme court, it became known as one woman against the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas. Jane Roe v. Wade, however, would actually bring the abortion issue before the court on behalf of all women. (abortion conflict, page 10-11)
More than 50 percent of pregnancies amng American women are unintended; half of these are terminated by abortion.
Six out of ten women who have abortions experienced contraceptive failure.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, 1999, http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html April 20, 2000
The supremes courts descision concluded that “the right to personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but, at some point, the state interest as to protection of prenatal life, becomes dominate. (Page 16, the abortion conflict cited 10). Which ultimantly means that they will protect a fetus when it is stable enough to live outside the womans body.