Imagine it’s the 1900’s, you’re a woman and you’re married with the love of your life. Both you and your husband are setting up the crib for your future newborn baby, but when you go for your check-up at the Hospital, you’re told you can’t have the baby to full term, or else you’d die of health complications. Distraught, you ask the Doctor what you can do, and they can’t offer you anything because abortions are banned nationwide. All that’s left for you is to either get an abortion illegally and risk death, or wait to carry out the full term and then die also. What would you do?

Recently in Arizona, the Governor Katie Hobbs has signed a bill to remove the 160 year-old abortion ban that was set in since 1864. Many of Arizona’s residents have decided to ban together through petitioning to help get their voices heard to uplift the ban. Although Arizona’s Governor Katie Hobbs did sign to remove the ban, it has to be on hold for 90 days until it reaches Legislation, to see if they’ll agree or disagree and leave the ban in place. I, personally, hope they do remove the abortion ban because I firmly believe women should be able to be in charge of their bodies and be able to make decisions for themselves. Women from all over the world get abortions for various different reasons, and I’m going to get into disturbing reasons as to why some do get them.

First, what is abortion? Abortion is a medical procedure where you terminate a pregnancy or you remove the embryo or fetus. Women get them for different reasons, so I’ll describe some of them, so apologies in advance for the disturbing content. One of the reasons as to why women get abortions is due to being sexually harassed/abused. And by this I mean rape. This unwanted sexual encounter can leave a woman traumatized for life and in many cases, pregnant. Women should be able to terminate their unwanted pregnancies when they can, and in many cases like in Arizona, you aren’t able to easily obtain an abortion unlike in other States, where abortions are more accessible to those who want and need it.  

I asked this question to a student here at South; “Do you think Abortion should be accessible to everyone?”. The student, Julissa Perez replied, “Yes, I think abortion should be available for everyone because you never know what someone’s going through. Everyone has different situations and reasonings as to why they need abortion, so keeping it accessible for everyone is a good idea.” 

All in all, everyone’s entitled to their own opinions towards abortions, but in the end you never know what someone’s going through when they’re getting one. I think as a society we should all be more mindful of those who do want abortions. We need to be more humane and understanding.