Most of America opposess the overturning of abortion rights, it’s just republican politicians are pushing for anti-abortion rhetoric to the public media.

“Abortion is one of the most divisive topics among American media” is the propaganda American right-wing, out-of-touch politicians want you to think. There plenty of actual things that spark division in America: pineapple on pizza, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, was the dress blue or gold (it’s blue), sopranos vs altos, soda or pop.

Americans aren’t divided on the idea that abortion should be legal and that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.

According to PlannedParenthoodAction.org CNN polling (Conducted Jan, 13-18, 2022) shows:

• Nearly 70% of Americans didn’t want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
• 85% of Democrats, 72% of Independents, and 44% of Republicans do not want to Suprmeme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

According to Fox News Polling (Conducted Dec. 15, 2021):

• Nearly two-thirds (65%) wanted Roe v. Wade to remain the law of the land.
• Over half of Republicans (53%) joined majorities of Democrats (77%) and Independents (64%) in saying Roe v. Wade should remain the law of the land.
• Seven in ten white Catholics (72%) and about half of white evangical Christians (49%) also said the decicion shoud stand.

Washington Post-ABC Polling (Conducted Nov. 7 to 10, 2021):

• Americans say by a roughly 2-to-1 margin that the Supreme Court should uphold its landmark abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, and by a similar margin the public opposes a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
• 75% say decision on abortions should be left to the woman and her doctor, including 95% of Democrats, 81% of Independents and 35% of Republicans.

Gallup Poll Polling (Conducted May 3-18, 2021):

• 80% of the American public think abortion should be legal.

The polls don’t lie. This propoganda that Americans oppose abortion is false.

Let’s start with a premise that should be as uncontroversial as saying water is wet: competent adults have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. You wouldn’t expect a panel of strangers to vote on your appendix removal or your root canal or force you to give blood. Yet, when the medical procedures in question is abortion, this fundamental principle of bodily autonomy suddenly gets tossed out the window and replaced with a megaphone for uniformed opinions.

The blunt truth is abortion is standard healthcare. It’s a medical decicion made beteween a patient and their doctor. The fact that it’s a national political football, often debated by people who can’t locate the uterus on a diagram, is a testament to how far we’ve strayed from the reason and evidence. So, since, we’re here, let’s ground this in some cold, hard facts and credibility.

The Medical Consensus: This Isn’t a “Both Sides” Issue

Let’s establish an ethical foundation. The most compelling philosophical argument for abortion rights comes from Judith Harvis Thomson’s 1971 paper, “A Defense of Abortion.” Thomson, brilliantly, grants the oppostite its most extreme premise for the sake of argument: let’s say the fetus is a person from the moment of conception.

Even then, she argues, the right to life does not include the right to use another person’s body against their will.

Her famous analogy goes like this: You wake up one day in a hospital bed, connnected to an unconscious world-renowned violinist. A music society has plugged him into your kidneys because you alone have the right blood type to filter his toxins and keep him alive for nine months. Do you have a moral obligation to stay connected?

While it might be charitable of you to stay, Thomson argues that it would be a profound injustice to force you. The violinist’s right to life does not supersede your right to decide what happens to and inside your own body. Pregnancy, even when wanted, is a profound physical undertaking; it is the literal use of one’s internal organs, blood, and nutrients to sustain another. To compel this service is to reduce a person to a state of involuntary biological servitude, a concept fundamentally at odds with the liberal tradition of self-ownership.

This philosophical right to bodily autonomy is precisely why the medical community champions patient self-determination. The leading professional medical organization in the United States are unequivocal. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the very experts dedicated to women’s health, states clearly: “Abortion is a safe, essential component of comprehensive health care.”

Let’s break down “safe.” The risk of major complications from an abortion is incredibly low; less than 0.05%, according to ACOG. To put that in perspective, you have a significantly higher risk of major complications from a wisdom tooth extraction or from carrying a pregnancy to term. The narrative of abortion being a dangerous procedure is political fiction, not a medical reality.

The Real-World Fallout: Enter the Post-Roe Era

This brings us to the seismic event that proved this wasn’t just a theoretical debate: the overturning of Roe v. Wade. When the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, it didn’t end in abortion. It ended safe and equitable access to abortion, creating a brutal real-world experiment that had confirmed the worst fears of both doctors and philosophers.

The data on the consequences in already stark and damning:

• The Guttmacher Institute reports that in the first six months post-Dobbs, nearly one in five abortion patients traveled out of their home state to get care. This isn’t a simple road trip; it’s a costly, logistically complex, and emotionally draining barrier that disproportionately impacts poor, young people, and those already marginalized.
• As of 2024, 14 states have total abortion bans in effect, These laws often lack clear, workable exceptions for rape, and incest, or health of the pregnant person, leading to harrowing headlines about women suffering preventable, near-fatal sepsis or being forced to carry non-viable pregnancies to term; a direct violation of the principle that no one should be used as a means to an end.
• Let’s be brutally clear: denying abortion care increases maternal mortality. A landmark study, the Turnway Study, conducted by the University of California, San Francisco, found that women who were denied an abortion had worse physical health and were more likely to live in poverty years later. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already ranks the U.S. as the worst among developed nation for maternal morality. Forcing more people to carry pregnancies, especially in states with poor healthcare infrastructure, is a policy choice that will worsen this crisis.

The “debate” over abortion isn’t a fair fight. It’s a clash between medical science, centuries of philosophical thought and self-determination, and individual bodily autonomy on one side, and personal religious or moral beliefs being legislated for everyone else on the other.

You are, of course, entitled to your personal belief that you, yourself, would not choose an abortion. What you are not entitled to is to impose your belief through law, stripping away a fundamental healthcare right and plunging half the population into a state where their bodies are no longer their own. This philosophy confirms it, the data proves the harm, and the post-Roe reality is the chilling evidence. The only thing that’s murky is why we’re still debating it.