The document discusses the history of abortion in the United States from ancient times to present day. It provides statistics on the number of abortions performed in the US since Roe v. Wade and discusses viewpoints on abortion from the Founding Fathers. While some like Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton supported abortion, most others like George Washington opposed it, believing life begins at conception. Today abortion remains a divisive issue, with roughly equal percentages of Americans identifying as pro-choice or pro-life.

1. Abortion
By: Jackson Cain
Matthew Johns
Bailey Shockome
Kaitlin Biehl
From 1973 to 2011, nearly 53
million legal abortions were
performed in the US – an average
of about 1.4 million per year.
2008 abortion
rates – three
in every ten
US women
will have an
abortion
before age 45.

2. How was it Developed?
• Abortion techniques were developed as early as 1550 BC. suggested that
the vaginal insertion of plant fiber covered with honey and crushed dates
could induce an abortion. Abortion was an accepted practice in ancient
Greece and Rome. Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that "when couples
have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life
have begun" In the later days of the Roman Empire, abortion was
considered not as homicide but as a crime against a husband who would
be deprived of a potential child.

3. America on Abortion
• A 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 46 percent of people
say abortion should be legal in all or most cases; on the other side, 44
percent say abortion should always or mostly be illegal.
• (Quote)-"Most Americans are troubled," They think there are too many
abortions, but they don't want to make it illegal."

4. Founding Fathers Thoughts
There is tremendous consistency in the founders’ support of contraception within
marriage, but objection to abortion. Family size and whether to create life in the first
instance are matters of choice. There is nothing unnatural in a couple taking
reasonable steps to prevent conception.
But in the view of the founders, once life has its start and conception has occurred, it
merits ongoing protection from that point on.

5. Founding Fathers Affects on
Abortion
One scholar researching fertility in the founding era found that birth rates dropped
significantly
after 1750 as compared to the rest of the world, and continued to drop throughout
the entirety of
the founding era. Specifically she found that more than half of the 56 signers of the
Declaration of Independence had 6 or fewer children. This was still a large family by
today’s
standards, but was a great reduction from the average family size prior to that time,
of about 10
to 12 children. Obviously, this reduction was due to contraception practices between
husband and wife during this era, but not abortion which was clearly unacceptable to
the
founding generation.

6. Ben Franklin
• Ben Franklin was one of the founding fathers
that actually tried to get his lover to have one.
• It was said that Ben tried having his lovers
have multiple abortions.
• Wrote about abortion in the newspaper.
17 kids total

7. John Adams
• John Adams said the following in a speech to the military in 1798:
• “Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of
contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and
religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break
the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a
net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred
obligations.” ((Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third
Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (October 11, 1798)

8. George Washington
“Making it lawful to execute the most
helpless forms of life this earth has
seen is cruel.”
- Wife had a stillborn
- Many believe that’s why he's
considered anti

9. Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton believed abortion should be
encouraged.
“I can agree with the other side, but we have to
see eye to eye here. Some of these crazy people
are parents.”

10. Thomas Jefferson
• Jefferson had no say on abortion.
• Didn’t want controversy or people to not get
along with him on it.
• Thomas Jefferson put no moral judgment on abortion, either. In his
Notes on the State of Virginia, he observed that for Native American
women, who accompanied their men in war and hunting parties,
“childbearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said,
therefore, that they have learnt the practice of procuring abortion by
the use of some vegetable, and that it even extends to prevent
conception for some time after.

11. Benjamin Rush
• Said the three month old embryo was
equivalent medically to what one might cough
up when ill with the flu.

12. Abortion’s Impact on Today
• This upcoming January is the 42nd year
abortion has been legal in the United States.
• Mostly legal today
• When illegal, women would do whatever they
had to do to have an abortion.
• In August of 2014, 9 states have made
abortion illegal.

13. Pro vs Anti Abortion
• Pro- US supreme court declared
abortion to be a “fundamental right”
guaranteed by the US Constitution.
• Reproductive choice empowers
women by giving them control over
their own bodies.
• Personhood begins after a fetus
becomes “viable” (able to survive
outside the womb) or after birth, not
a conception.
• Safe no harm to fetus (professionally
performed)
• Anti- abortion is murder
• Life begins at conception, so unborn
babies are human beings with a right
to life.
• Fetuses feel pain during the abortion
procedure
• Abortion is the killing of a human
being which defies the word of god.
Jeremiah 1:5 “before I formed thee in
the belly I knew thee; and before
thou camest forth out of the womb I
sacrificed thee. Six commandment
“thou shall not kill.”

14. What the Founding Fathers would think?
Determining what the founding fathers thought is a very interesting
question many people ask themselves today. While the founding fathers
wrote about believing in equality of human beings, they sure had some
blind spots. Women and people of other races being 2nd class compared to
white men was a given. So it would be a very interesting thing to do to.
Also, children died so frequently back then. There was a saying "two in the
hill for one in the home", which meant you would be burying two children
for every one that survived. Childhood death was common.
-But abortions are nothing new. Women used to drink all kinds of poison to
induce termination of their pregnancies. Of course, often it killed them
both. Seaweed was also used back then for abortions. The high salt content
of seaweed would cause the fetus to abort. It is only SAFE abortions that
are new. For years it existed and people just turned a blind eye, or they died
in the process.
-Most people believe that if the founding fathers had been pressed on their
ideas of equality, they would have stood tall and admitted their blind areas.
I think they would have believed in the right of women to control their own
bodies, safely, without the life-threatening things used when people are
ignorant of safe methods, or safe methods are banned.

15. Founding Fathers

16. Indiana Abortion Laws
• Penalty for unlawful abortion – Class C felony.
• Consent requirements – Written consent of mother, not applicable in emergency.
If unemanicipated minor under 18 years old.
• Some key points about Indiana’s abortion law:
• •Abortion is legal for the full nine months of pregnancy in Indiana.
• •Freestanding abortion centers may only do abortions legally in the first trimester.
• •Indiana maintains a ban on partial-birth abortion.
• •Indiana law maintains key informed consent provisions for women considering
abortion but is lacking in a requirement that the information be provided in
writing.
• •Indiana law requires parental consent for girls under 18-years of age.
• •Abortion counselors must inform a woman considering abortion about the ability
to see an ultrasound image of her baby and the ability to hear her baby’s
heartbeat.

17. Sources
• Spirits, R. (2012, April 6). American Creation. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2012/04/founding-fathers-and-abortion-in.html
• Ostler, D. (n.d.). Abortion: What the founding fathers thought about it. Retrieved October 20, 2014,
from https://www.smashwords.com/books/download/343758/1/latest/0/0/abortion-what-the-founding-
fathers-thought-about-it.pdf
• Kowalski, G. (2012, April 6). REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS: Faith, Politics, Opinion. Retrieved October
14, 2014, from http://revolutionaryspirits.blogspot.com/2012/04/founding-fathers-and-abortion-in.
html
• Abortion ProCon.org. (2014, June 27). Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://abortion.procon.org
• Roe v. Wade and Beyond: Forty Years of Legal Abortion in the United States | Dissent Magazine.
(2013, Winter). Retrieved October 21, 2014, from
• http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/roe-v-wade-and-beyond-forty-years-of-legal-abortion-in-the-
united-states
• US Election Atlas (2009, November 30). Alexander Hamilton quote. Retrieved October 20, 2014,
from http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=30528.55;wap2