Why Abortion is so extensively debated in America?

Just as Trump takes the presidential seat next week, a swarm of anti-abortion laws have been issued nation over. Calls are being made in demand to stop the federal funding to the country’s leading abortive service, just as they were been made in 2012, when Mick Romney attacked then President Obama on the issue of defunding State sponsored abortive services. Meanwhile he did defend himself again; just like Trump when he backed out off his claims that women seeking abortive services must be punished is some way”.

Regardless, pregnancy termination has once again taken the center stage of discussion in the American presidential politics. This has been in line, following thirty years more or less.

Nevertheless, this is a difficult ethical issue that connects with almost every person in the country, so it is understandable that is discussed in the political, social and legal sphere. However, abortive topics are always mentioned in the corner of the political spheres in other developed countries. So why are things different in the US?

American Culture

American hosts one of the most religious populations in the West and with the US history in Puritanism, their political discourse particularly holds a moral tone. However this reason can only hold up so far, as even its cultural neighbours Britain and Canada have sizable anti-abortion movements, yet the topic ever makes headlines in the parliament or the president campaign trail. This is because aborting has not only been a significant topic in the country’s cultural sphere but political as well.

Powerful Supreme Court

The Supreme Court in the US is uniquely powerful as it has the authority to rule and act in contrast to the majority of opinion. At the end of the 60’s, Britain, Canada and United States, all had made pregnancy termination legal and available, while the parliament enacted in the two others, it was the Supreme Court that provided the American one. The Justices (who are appointed for life) were less attuned to the public need and opinion than the elected legislators. Therefore they went further than what the then public desired, when they defined abortion as a privacy rights and allowed terminations on request.

Now women in different states of America can buy online abortion pill and access services, with most of them supporting pro-choice, however it was not so in the end of 60’s and at beginning of 70’s. Nevertheless, the American reform was much more controversial than the other two countries which did not allow abortion at a level, as broad as the US. It was made more so controversial by the fact that the Supreme Court was made by non-elected officials.

In politics and social sphere

Furthermore the political parties successfully moved the abortion debate over to the electoral agendas. Even if all three countries regarded it as a topic of social movements, the other two were fairly successful in keeping the topic off the political agenda.

Additionally the American decentralized political system makes the topic debatable in all the branches of the government. This gives the abortion battle a lot of room of opportunities to be debated.