title: Happy Death Day

text: After a night of drunken partying, university student Theresa "Tree" Gelbman wakes up on her birthday in the dorm room of classmate Carter Davis. She ignores a phone call from her father and dismisses Carter, returning to her room. Her sorority housemate Lori Spengler gives her a cupcake, which she throws away. Tree meets with her married professor, Gregory Butler, with whom she is having an affair. That night, on her way to a party, Tree is lured into a tunnel and murdered by a figure wearing a mask of the school mascot.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Tree immediately wakes up back in Carter's bed, and is unnerved to find the previous day's events repeating themselves. Baffled, she relives the day, this time avoiding the tunnel and reaching the party. However, the masked killer follows her and murders her again. Tree again wakes up in Carter's bed, realizes she is in a time loop, and barricades herself in her room to avoid death. The killer, already hiding inside, murders her a third time.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Waking up, Tree explains the events to Carter. He suggests taking advantage of the loop to identify her killer. She spends the next several iterations trailing people she considers suspects but is killed each time. After waking from a loop where she is bludgeoned, Tree faints and awakens in the campus hospital. Her body shows evidence of recovery from multiple traumatic injuries, indicating she has retained physical damage from her previous deaths. When the killer shows up, Tree escapes the hospital in Gregory's car, only to be pursued and killed again.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Back in Carter's bed, Tree convinces him of her predicament by demonstrating her knowledge of the day's events. Tree admits to harboring tremendous self-loathing, particularly from pushing away her father after the death of her mother three years ago. Tree sees a local news report on John Tombs, a serial killer being held at the campus hospital. Concluding that Tombs is her killer, Tree rushes to the hospital to warn of his escape. Tombs breaks free and nearly kills Tree, but Carter follows and rescues her. Tombs kills Carter before chasing Tree to a nearby bell tower, where she subdues him with a crowbar. Before delivering a fatal blow, she realizes that if she kills Tombs and ends the loop, Carter will remain dead forever. She runs to the top of the tower and hangs herself from the bell rope.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Tree awakens in Carter's dorm room and finds him alive again. Now confident in solving her murder, she proceeds happily through the day. She ends her affair with Dr. Butler and meets her father for lunch, where the two begin to reconcile. That night, she goes to the hospital and traps and kills Tombs. Relieved to finally be free, she celebrates her birthday in Carter's room and eats the cupcake Lori gave her.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Tree wakes up still in the loop. Horrified, she returns to her room with the intent to run away, where Lori offers her the cupcake again. Tree realizes the previous loop was the only time she had ever eaten the cupcake, and she had died in her sleep. Tree realizes Lori is her true killer. Lori had poisoned the cupcake, but when Tree failed to eat it, Lori used her job as a nurse at the hospital to frame Tombs for Tree's murder. Tree threatens to take the cupcake to the police, but Lori attacks her. Lori admits to also having an affair with Dr. Butler, whose preference for Tree drove Lori mad with jealousy. In the ensuing fight, Tree stuffs the poisoned cupcake in Lori's mouth, then kicks her out of a second-story window to her death.


title: Happy Death Day

text: At a restaurant, Tree and Carter muse over the day's events and he offers her his room for the night. The next day, Tree wakes up believing she is still in the time loop, but Carter quickly reveals he was just playing a prank on her, and it is really the next day. Tree is too relieved to be angry at him, and the two kiss.


title: Happy Death Day

text: The film, initially entitled "Half to Death," is based on an original story created by screenwriter Scott Lobdell. It was first announced in June 2007, to be produced by Michael Bay and Rogue Pictures, and directed by Antti Jokinen. Christopher Landon was hired to rewrite Lobdell's original screenplay. Landon said, "The movie was in pre-production or soft production at the time, and I came on and I loved the concept of the movie. I loved the idea of a girl, trapped in a time loop who has to solve her own murder." The project was only revived years later, as original producer Angela Mancuso had lunch with Landon and remembered "Half to Death". Landon decided to send the script to Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions, with whom he had worked in the "Paranormal Activity" sequels, and he approved it, leading to a green-light by Universal Pictures. Blumhouse announced the project on October 11, 2016, with Landon directing and Jessica Rothe cast in the lead role of the film. On November 8, 2016, it was announced that Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken and Rachel Matthews had joined the cast, alongside Rothe and Israel Broussard. The film got eventually retitled "Happy Death Day" in June 2017.


title: Happy Death Day

text: The mask was constructed by Tony Gardner, the same man who built the "Ghostface" mask from every "Scream" film, and its design was personal. Landon explains, "During preproduction ... I was expecting my first son. I don't know if I just had babies on the brain, or if I was subconsciously scared to become a father, but that baby image was floating around in my head. Tony made us a pig mask, too, but when I wore the baby mask in the office, I scared a co-worker, and we thought ... yeah, this is it. This is the one." "Scream" itself was listed among the influences Christopher Landon took for the film, along with "Halloween" (1978), "Groundhog Day" and comedies of the 1980s such as "Sixteen Candles" and "Back to the Future", given he aimed to make a "fun, silly horror movie". He also aimed to emulate the protagonist's personal growth in "Groundhog Day" to comment on "this age of social media and all the crappy things that kids do to each other".


title: Happy Death Day

text: Comic book writer Scott Lobdell said he wanted to play with the tropes of the slasher genre, as according to him "every slasher film opens up with the mean girl getting killed and the good girl living till the end. And I thought, 'How can I make the mean girl and the good girl the same person?'" In the original draft, Lori and Dr. Butler were the killers together. Landon says, "They were a psycho couple murdering Tree together. That ultimately didn't work for me. I thought Gregory was a great opportunity to be a suspect. To make him a killer, it didn't help me. That was a change I really wanted to make." Also, in the original draft there was no birthday, and no romance, which Landon added to humanize Tree. Landon decided to shorten the protagonist's name Teresa into Tree, which also conveyed her character arc, as "trees need to grow and you see this character go from one person to another".


title: Happy Death Day

text: Filming took place at and around Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and it lasted 5 weeks. The scenes where Tree awakens in Carter's bed after her death were filmed back to back in a span of two days. The scene after Tree pushes Lori out of the window was supposed to be at the sorority house, but the filming permit was over before production was able to shoot there, forcing the location to be changed into a Los Angeles diner also featured in another Blumhouse production, "Split".


title: Happy Death Day

text: In the film's original ending, Tree is taken to the hospital after her encounter with Lori. The doctor instructs Tree to stay away from pain medication for at least a day due to the extent of her injuries. After he leaves, a nurse comes in and says she is giving Tree something for the pain. Tree informs the nurse of the doctor's orders. The nurse reveals herself to be Dr. Butler's wife, Stephanie, who says it is for her own pain. She then murders Tree in revenge for her husband's affair with the girl.


title: Happy Death Day

text: This version was shown in the test screenings for the film and was received negatively by the audience, which led the writers to come up with the theatrical ending. Director Christopher Landon also revealed Lori and Dr. Butler were the killers in the rough drafts, which later inspired the idea of the poisoned cupcake.


title: Happy Death Day

text: The film, which is set in New Orleans (and was filmed on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans), has the killer wearing a mask which is nearly identical to "King Cake Baby", the official mascot of the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team. Johnson Berticelli, the mascot's creator, sued Universal Pictures and Blunthouse for copyright infringement, demanding half of the movie's profits. As of 2019, the lawsuit had yet to be settled.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Bear McCreary composed the score of "Happy Death Day". Reflecting the film's blend of horror and comedy, McCreary stated that he wanted "a schizophrenic, dual personality, with light-hearted comedic scoring on one end, and genuinely terrifying soundscapes on the other." This approach is highlighted by the two main leitmotifs, an energetic theme for Tree evoking contemporary pop music, and one for the killer that consists of distorted vocals provided by McCreary's young daughter Sonatin. The percussion in the score are mostly sampled from college marching band drum lines to evoke the collegiate setting. While the film's trailer featured 50 Cent's "In Da Club" as Tree's ringtone, Landon said the film could not afford to use the track, but still preferred the eventual song music supervisor Andrea von Foerster improvised, the comedic "Busy Day Birthday".


title: Happy Death Day

text: "Happy Death Day" grossed $55.7million in the United States and Canada, and $69.8million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $125.5million, against a production budget of $4.8million.


title: Happy Death Day

text: In the United States and Canada, "Happy Death Day" was released alongside "Marshall", "The Foreigner" and "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women", and was expected to gross $15–20million from 3,130 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $1million from Thursday night previews at 2,450 theaters, similar to fellow Blumhouse release "The Visit" ($1.05million in 2015) and $11.6million on its first day, increasing weekend projections to $26million. It went on to debut to $26million, topping the box office, making it the third Blumhouse Productions film of 2017 (after "Split" and "Get Out") to do so. It fell 64% in its second weekend to $9.4million, finishing in third behind newcomers "Boo 2! A Madea Halloween" and "Geostorm".


title: Happy Death Day

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 160 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Happy Death Day" puts a darkly humorous sci-fi spin on slasher conventions, with added edge courtesy of a starmaking performance from Jessica Rothe." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 52% "definite recommend".


title: Happy Death Day

text: Critics noted that although the film makes laudable attempts at merging genres—including romantic comedy, horror and "campus satire"—the end results were mixed. Chris Agar of Screen Rant said that the "fun, if silly, blending of genre tropes ... ends up being a double-edged sword."


title: Happy Death Day

text: The film was released on digital HD on January 2, 2018, and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 16, 2018. The home release also includes the original ending.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Distributor Shout! Factory released both "Happy Death Day" and "Happy Death Day 2U" on 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray on May 31, 2022. The releases included a new commentary track with director Christopher Landon and star Jessica Rothe.


title: Happy Death Day

text: On February 26, 2019, Blumhouse Books released a novelization written by Aaron Hartzler titled "Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U", to coincide with the second film's release.


title: Happy Death Day

text: Director Christopher Landon talked about the possibility of a sequel, focusing on why Tree went into a time loop. Jessica Rothe stated that while most horror sequels retread the original, Landon's pitch instead "elevates the movie from being a horror movie into a "Back to the Future" type of genre film where the sequel joins us right from where we left off, it explains a lot of things in the first one that didn't get explained, and it elevates everything."


title: Happy Death Day

text: The sequel was officially announced with filming scheduled to begin on May 10, 2018. Most of the original actors returned, including Rothe, Modine, Broussard, and Matthews. In addition, Suraj Sharma and Sarah Yarkin were cast. The sequel, titled "Happy Death Day 2U", was released on February 13, 2019.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Abortion in the United States and its territories is a divisive issue in American politics and culture wars, with widely different abortion laws in U.S. states. Since 1976, the Republican Party has generally sought to restrict abortion access based on the stage of pregnancy or to criminalize abortion, whereas the Democratic Party has generally defended access to abortion and has made contraception easier to obtain. The abortion-rights movement advocates for patient choice and bodily autonomy, while the anti-abortion movement maintains the fetus has a right to live. Historically framed as a debate between the pro-choice and pro-life labels, most Americans agree with some positions of each side. Support for abortion gradually increased in the U.S. beginning in the early 1970s, and stabilized during the 2010s.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The abortion rate has continuously declined from a peak in 1980 of 30 per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15–44) to 11.3 by 2018. In 2018, 78% of abortions were performed at 9 weeks or less gestation, and 92% of abortions were performed at 13 weeks or less gestation. By 2020, medication abortions accounted for more than 50% of all abortions. Almost 25% of women will have had an abortion by age 45, with 20% of 30 year olds having had one. In 2019, 60% of women who had abortions were already mothers, and 50% already had two or more children. Increased access to birth control has been statistically linked to reductions in the abortion rate.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Before the Supreme Court of the United States decisions of "Roe v. Wade" and "Doe v. Bolton" had decriminalized abortion nationwide in 1973, abortion was already legal in several states; the decision in the former case imposed a federally mandated uniform framework for state legislation on the subject. It also established a minimal period during which abortion is legal, with more or fewer restrictions throughout the pregnancy. That basic framework, modified in "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" (1992), remained nominally in place, although the effective availability of abortion varied significantly from state to state, as many counties had no abortion providers. "Casey" held that a law could not place legal restrictions imposing an undue burden for "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus". In December 2021, the FDA legalized telemedicine provision of medication abortion pills with delivery by mail, but many states have laws which restrict this option.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2022, "Roe" and "Casey" were overturned in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", ending protection of abortion rights by the United States Constitution and allowing individual states to regulate any aspect of abortion not preempted by federal law.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: As of 2022, California, Michigan, and Vermont are the only U.S. states to have explicit rights to abortion in their state constitutions. Other states have implicit rights to abortion subject to state judicial review, such as Kansas and Montana, or simply protect it via state law such as Colorado. The state constitutions of Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and West Virginia explicitly contain no right to an abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The abortion debate most commonly relates to the "induced abortion" of a pregnancy, which is also how the term is used in a legal sense. Some also use the term "elective abortion", which is used in relation to a claim to an unrestricted right of a woman to an abortion, whether or not she chooses to have one. The term elective abortion or voluntary abortion describes the interruption of pregnancy before viability at the request of the woman but not for medical reasons.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In medical parlance, "abortion" can refer to either miscarriage or abortion until the fetus is viable. After viability, doctors call an abortion a "termination of pregnancy".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Abortion has existed in North America since the European colonization of the Americas, was a fairly common practice, and was not always illegal or controversial. In the early 1800s, methods were published for accomplishing abortion early in pregnancy. By common law, abortion was legal, and only after quickening it was not allowed; quickening indicated the start of fetal movements, usually felt 14–26 weeks after conception, or between the fourth and sixth month. Its determination was generally at the discretion of the pregnant woman, but the rules were unstated or unclear in written statues. When the United States became independent, most U.S. states continued to apply English common law to abortion. According to legal scholar Sheldon Gelman, the right to bodily integrity including abortion can be traced back to the "Magna Carta" (1215), which was imported in the U.S. Constitution from English law. William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765) stated that life "begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb." This view was shared by James Wilson. As for legal penalties, Blackstone wrote they applied only "if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Within the context of a sex scandal, Connecticut was the first state to regulate abortion in 1821; it outlawed abortion after quickening and forbade the use of poisons to induce one post-quickening. In 1829, New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor. This was followed by 10 of the 26 states creating similar restrictions within the next few decades, in particular by the 1860s and 1870s. The first laws related to abortion were made to protect women from real or perceived risks, and those more restrictive penalized only the provider. According to several legal scholars, some of the early anti-abortion laws punished not only the doctor or abortionist but also the woman who hired them, and while women could be criminally tried for a self-induced abortion, they were rarely prosecuted in general; dating back to Edward Coke in 1648, whether abortion was performed before or after quickening determined if it was a crime. By 1859, abortion was not a crime in 21 out of 33 states, and was prohibited only post-quickening, while penalties for pre-quickening abortions were lower. This changed starting in the 1860s under the influence of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A number of other factors likely played a role in the rise of anti-abortion laws. As in Europe, abortion techniques advanced starting in the 17th century, and the conservatism of most in the medical profession with regards to sexual matters prevented the wide expansion of abortion techniques. Physicians, who were the leading advocates of abortion criminalization laws, appear to have been motivated at least in part by advances in medical knowledge. Science had discovered that fertilization inaugurated a more or less continuous process of development, which produced a new human being. Quickening was found to be not more or less crucial in the process of gestation than any other step. Many physicians concluded that if society considered it unjustifiable to terminate pregnancy after the fetus had quickened, and if quickening was a relatively unimportant step in the gestation process, then it was just as wrong to terminate a pregnancy before quickening as after quickening. Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the sanctity of life as an absolute played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion. Doctors were also influenced by practical reasons to advocate anti-abortion laws. For one, abortion providers tended to be untrained and not members of medical societies. In an age where the leading doctors in the nation were attempting to standardize the medical profession, these unlicensed were considered a nuisance to public health. The more formalized medical profession disliked the unlicensed because they were competition, often at a cheaper cost, and many of them were women.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Despite campaigns to end the practice of abortion, abortifacient advertising was highly effective and abortion was commonly practiced, with the help of a midwife or other women, in the mid-19th century, although they were not always safe. While the precise abortion rate was not known, James Mohr's 1978 book "Abortion in America" documented multiple recorded estimates by 19th-century physicians, which suggested that between around 15% and 35% of all pregnancies ended in abortion during that period. This era also saw a marked shift in the people who were obtaining abortions. Before the start of the 19th century, most abortions were sought by unmarried women, who had become pregnant out of wedlock and for which there was much less compassion compared to married women who got an abortion; many of them were wealthy and paid well. Out of 54 abortion cases published in American medical journals between 1839 and 1880, over half were sought by married women, and well over 60% of the married women already had at least one child.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The sense that married women were now frequently obtaining abortions worried many conservative physicians, who were almost exclusively men. In the Reconstruction era, much of the blame was placed on the burgeoning women's rights movement. Though the medical profession expressed hostility toward feminism, many feminists of the era were also opposed to abortion. In "The Revolution", a newspaper operated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, an 1869 opinion piece was published arguing that instead of merely attempting to pass a law against abortion, the root cause must also be addressed. The writer stated that simply passing an anti-abortion law would be "only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. ... No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh! thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime." To many feminists of this era, abortion was regarded as an undesirable necessity forced upon women by thoughtless men. The free love wing of the feminist movement refused to advocate for abortion and treated the practice as an example of the hideous extremes to which modern marriage was driving women. Marital rape and the seduction of unmarried women were societal ills, which feminists believed caused the need to abort, as men did not respect women's right to abstinence. Feminist opposition to abortion was much less prevalent by the 20th century, and it was feminists and physicians who came to question anti-abortion laws and raise public interest in the 1960s.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Physicians, one of the most famous and consequential being Horatio Storer, remained the loudest voice in the anti-abortion debate, and they carried their agenda to state legislatures around the country, advocating not only anti-abortion laws but also laws against birth control on racist and pseudoscientific grounds; religious groups were not particularly active within this movement, which presaged the modern debate over women's body rights. Though many of these laws indicated the woman as a co-criminal, she was rarely prosecuted. A campaign was launched against the movement and the use and availability of contraceptives. Criminalization of abortion accelerated from the late 1860s through the efforts of concerned legislators, doctors, and the American Medical Association influenced by Storer, and were facilitated by the press. In 1873, Anthony Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made it illegal to deliver through the U.S. mail any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material. It also prohibited producing or publishing information pertaining to the procurement of abortion, birth control, and venereal disease, including to medical students. The production, publication, importation, and distribution of such materials was suppressed under the Comstock Law as being obscene, and similar prohibitions were passed by 24 of the 37 states.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 1900, abortion was normally a felony in every state. Some states included provisions allowing for abortion in limited circumstances, generally to protect the woman's health or to terminate pregnancies arising from rape or incest. Most Americans did not abortion as a crime, and abortions continued to occur and became increasingly available. The American Birth Control League was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921; it would become Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. By the 1930s, licensed physicians performed an estimated 800,000 abortions a year.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the early 1960s, a controversy centered around children's television host Sherri Finkbine that helped bring abortion and abortion law more directly into the American public eye. Living in the area of Phoenix, Arizona, Finkbine had had four healthy children; during her pregnancy with her fifth child, she discovered the child might have severe deformities when born. This was likely because Finkbine had been taking sleeping pills that she was unaware contained thalidomide, a drug that increases the risk of fetal deformities during pregnancy. Though Finkbine wanted an abortion, the abortion laws of Arizona only allowed abortions if a pregnancy posed a threat to the woman's life. The situation gained public attention after Finkbine shared the story with a reporter from "The Arizona Republic", who disclosed her identity in spite of her requests for anonymity. On August 18, 1962, Finkbine traveled to Sweden to obtain a legal abortion, where it was confirmed that the fetus had severe deformities.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Finkbine's story marked a turning point for women's reproductive rights and abortion law in the United States. Still, Finkbine was only able to get an abortion because she could afford to travel overseas for it, highlighting an inequality in abortion rights persisting to this day whereby many women cannot afford or otherwise do not have the resources to obtain a legal abortion; in such cases, women may turn to illegal abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 1964, Gerri Santoro of Connecticut died trying to obtain an illegal abortion, and her photo became the symbol of an abortion-rights movement. Some women's rights activist groups developed their own skills to provide abortions to women who could not obtain them elsewhere. As an example, in Chicago, a group known as "Jane" operated a floating abortion clinic throughout much of the 1960s. Women seeking the procedure would call a designated number and be given instructions on how to find "Jane".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court case "Griswold v. Connecticut" struck down one of the remaining contraception Comstock laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, "Griswold" only applied to marital relationships, allowing married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. It took until 1972, with "Eisenstadt v. Baird", to extend the precedent of "Griswold" to unmarried persons as well. Following the "Griswold" case, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a medical bulletin accepting a recommendation from six years earlier that clarified that "conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum", and consequently birth control methods that prevented implantation became classified as contraceptives, not abortifacients.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or in which pregnancy would lead to permanent physical disability of the woman. Similar laws were passed in California, Oregon, and North Carolina. In 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions on the request of the woman, and New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Similar laws were soon passed in Alaska and Washington. In 1970, Washington held a referendum on legalizing early pregnancy abortions, becoming the first state to legalize abortion through a vote of the people. A law in Washington, D.C., which allowed abortion to protect the life or health of the woman, was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1971 in "United States v. Vuitch". The court upheld the law, deeming that "health" meant "psychological and physical well-being", essentially allowing abortion in Washington, D.C. By the end of 1972, 13 states had a law similar to that of Colorado, while Mississippi allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest only and Alabama and Massachusetts allowed abortions only in cases where the woman's physical health was endangered. In order to obtain abortions during this period, women would often travel from a state where abortion was illegal to one where it was legal. The legal position prior to "Roe v. Wade" was that abortion was illegal in 30 states and legal under certain circumstances in 20 states.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the late 1960s, a number of organizations were formed to mobilize opinion both against and for the legalization of abortion. In 1966, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops assigned Monsignor James T. McHugh to document efforts to reform abortion laws, and anti-abortion groups began forming in various states in 1967. In 1968, McHugh led an advisory group which became the National Right to Life Committee. The forerunner of the NARAL Pro-Choice America was formed in 1969 to oppose restrictions on abortion and expand access to abortion. Following "Roe v. Wade", in late 1973, NARAL became the National Abortion Rights Action League.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Prior to "Roe v. Wade", 30 states prohibited abortion without exception, 16 states banned abortion except in certain special circumstances (e.g. rape, incest, and health threat to mother), 3 states allowed residents to obtain abortions, and New York allowed abortions generally. Early that year, on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court in "Roe v. Wade" invalidated all of these laws, and set guidelines for the availability of abortion. The decision returned abortion to its liberalized pre-1820 status. "Roe" established that the right of privacy of a woman to obtain an abortion "must be considered against important state interests in regulation". "Roe" also established a trimester framework, defined as the end of the first pregnancy trimester (12 weeks), as the threshold for state interest, such that states were prohibited from banning abortion in the first trimester but allowed to impose increasing restrictions or outright bans later in pregnancy.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In deciding "Roe v. Wade", the Court ruled that a Texas statute forbidding abortion except when necessary to save the life of the mother was unconstitutional. The Court arrived at its decision by concluding that the issue of abortion and abortion rights falls under the right of privacy in the United States (e.g. federal constitutionally-protected right), in the sense of the right of a person not to be encroached by the state. In its opinion, it listed several landmark cases where the court had previously found a right to privacy implied by the Constitution. The Court did not recognize a right to abortion in all cases, saying: "State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Court held that a right to privacy existed and included the right to have an abortion. The court found that a mother had a right to abortion until viability, a point to be determined by the abortion doctor. After viability a woman can obtain an abortion for health reasons, which the Court defined broadly to include psychological well-being. A central issue in the "Roe" case and in the wider abortion debate in general is whether human life or personhood begins at conception, birth, or at some point in between. The Court declined to make an attempt at resolving this issue, writing: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." Instead, it chose to point out that historically, under English and American common law and statutes, "the unborn have never been recognized ... as persons in the whole sense", and thus the fetuses are not legally entitled to the protection afforded by the right to life specifically enumerated in the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather than asserting that human life begins at any specific point, the Court declared that the state has a "compelling interest" in protecting "potential life" at the point of viability.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Under "Roe v. Wade", state governments may not prohibit late terminations of pregnancy when "necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother", even if it would cause the demise of a viable fetus. This rule was clarified by the 1973 judicial decision "Doe v. Bolton", which specifies "that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age—relevant to the well-being of the patient". It is by this provision for the mother's mental health that women in the U.S. legally choose abortion after viability when screenings reveal abnormalities that do not cause a baby to die shortly after birth.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the 1992 case of "Planned Parenthood v. Casey", the Court abandoned "Roe's" strict trimester framework but maintained its central holding that women have a right to choose to have an abortion before viability. "Roe" had held that statutes regulating abortion must be subject to "strict scrutiny"—the traditional Supreme Court test for impositions upon fundamental Constitutional rights. "Casey" instead adopted the lower, undue burden standard for evaluating state abortion restrictions, but re-emphasized the right to abortion as grounded in the general sense of liberty and privacy protected under the constitution: "Constitutional protection of the woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy derives from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It declares that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The controlling word in the cases before us is 'liberty'."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Supreme Court continues to make decisions on this subject. On April 18, 2007, it issued a ruling in the case of "Gonzales v. Carhart", involving a federal law entitled the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which President George W. Bush had signed into law. The law banned intact dilation and extraction, which opponents of abortion rights referred to as "partial-birth abortion", and stipulated that anyone breaking the law would get a prison sentence up to 2.5 years. The United States Supreme Court upheld the 2003 ban by a narrow majority of 5–4, marking the first time the Court has allowed a ban on any type of abortion since 1973. The opinion, which came from justice Anthony Kennedy, was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and the two recent appointees, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the case of "Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt", the Supreme Court in a 5–3 decision on June 27, 2016, swept away forms of state restrictions on the way abortion clinics can function. The Texas legislature enacted in 2013 restrictions on the delivery of abortions services that, it was argued by its opponents, created an undue burden for women seeking an abortion by requiring abortion doctors to have difficult-to-obtain "admitting privileges" at a local hospital and by requiring clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities. The Court supported this argument and struck down these two provisions "facially" from the law at issue—that is, the very words of the provisions were invalid, no matter how they might be applied in any practical situation. According to the Supreme Court, the task of judging whether a law puts an unconstitutional burden on a woman's right to abortion belongs with the courts, and not the legislatures.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Supreme Court ruled similarly in "June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo" on June 29, 2020, in a 5–4 decision that a Louisiana state law, modeled after the Texas law at the center of "Whole Woman's Health", was unconstitutional. Like Texas' law, the Louisiana law required certain measures for abortion clinics that, if having gone into effect, would have closed five of the six clinics in the state. The case in Louisiana was put on hold pending the result of "Whole Woman's Health", and was retried based on the Supreme Court's decision. While the District Court ruled the law unconstitutional, the Fifth Circuit found that unlike the Texas law, the burden of the Louisiana law passed the tests outlined in "Whole Woman's Health", and thus the law was constitutional. The Supreme Court issued an order to suspend enforcement of the law pending further review, and agreed to hear the case in full in October 2019. It was the first abortion-related case to be heard by President Donald Trump's appointees to the Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court found the Louisiana law unconstitutional for the same reasons as the Texas one, reversing the Fifth Circuit. The judgment was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts who had dissented on "Whole Woman's Health" but joined in judgment as to upholding the court's respect for the past judgment in that case.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Supreme Court granted "certiorari" to "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" in May 2021, a case that challenges the impact of "Roe v. Wade" in blocking enforcement of a 2018 Mississippi law (the Gestational Age Act) that had banned any abortions after the first 15 weeks. Oral arguments to "Dobbs" were held in December 2021, and a decision was expected by the end of the 2021–22 Supreme Court term. On September 1, 2021, Texas passed the Texas Heartbeat Act, one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, banning most procedures after six weeks. On May 2, 2022, a leaked draft majority opinion for "Dobbs", written by Samuel Alito, set to overturn "Roe" was reported by "Politico".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overruled both "Roe" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" in the "Dobbs" case on originalist grounds that a right to abortion cannot be found in the U.S. Constitution. John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, concurred in the decision to upheld the law at question as constitutional, by a 6–3 vote, and did not support overrulling both "Roe" and "Casey". This enabled trigger laws, which had been passed in 13 states, to effectively ban abortions in those states.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Abortion-related initiatives were placed on the 2022 ballot in at least six states, the most ever in a single year. California, Michigan, and Vermont's would enshrine the right to an abortion in their respective state constitutions, while Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana's would place restrictions on abortion. During the August primaries, nearly 60 percent of Kansas voters rejected their state's "Value Them Both Amendment", which would have removed the right to an abortion from the Kansas Constitution.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the wake of state abortion bans and restrictions in the United States, Americans have started traveling to Mexico for abortions, and Mexico has expressed a willingness to help.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: At least partly due to a unanimous 2021 Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation decision that penalties for abortion violate women's rights, abortion-providers are not prosecuted even in states where abortion remains illegal under state law; there are also legal exemptions for rape and medical reasons, and a police report is not required for a rape exemption. Providers openly treat American travelers in several states where abortion remains technically illegal, such as Nuevo Leon, which neighbors Texas. Following the Supreme Court ruling, abortion is being gradually legalized at the state level, and as of 2022 is legal during the first trimester (before the 13th week after implantation) in nine states and Mexico City. In an additional two states, abortion is legal for economic reasons if a woman already has 3 children; this is during the first trimester for one (Michoacan) and with no set limit for the other (Yucatán).


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Since 1995, led by congressional Republicans, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have moved several times to pass measures banning the procedure of intact dilation and extraction, commonly known as "partial birth abortion". Such measures passed twice by wide margins, but President Bill Clinton vetoed those bills in April 1996 and October 1997 on the grounds that they did not include health exceptions. Congressional supporters of the bill argue that a health exception would render the bill unenforceable, since the "Doe v. Bolton" decision defined "health" in vague terms, justifying any motive for obtaining an abortion. Congress was unsuccessful with subsequent attempts to override the vetoes.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) was enacted August 5, 2002, by an Act of Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush. It asserts the human rights of infants born after a failed attempt to induce abortion. A "born-alive infant" is specified as a "person, human being, child, individual". "Born alive" is defined as the complete expulsion of an infant at any stage of development that has a heartbeat, pulsation of the umbilical cord, breath, or voluntary muscle movement, no matter if the umbilical cord has been cut or if the expulsion of the infant was natural, induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On October 2, 2003, with a vote of 281–142, the House approved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act to ban intact dilation and extraction, with an exemption in cases of fatal threats to the woman. Through this legislation, a doctor could face up to two years in prison and civil lawsuits for performing such a procedure. A woman undergoing the procedure could not be prosecuted under the measure. On October 21, 2003, the United States Senate passed the bill by a vote of 64–34, with a number of Democrats joining in support. The bill was signed by President George W. Bush on November 5, 2003, but a federal judge blocked its enforcement in several states just a few hours after it became public law. The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on the procedure in the case "Gonzales v. Carhart" on April 18, 2007, signaling a substantial change in the Court's approach to abortion law. The 5–4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act does not conflict with previous decisions regarding abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The judicial interpretation of the U.S. Constitution regarding abortion, following the Supreme Court of the United States's 1973 landmark decision in "Roe v. Wade", and subsequent companion decisions, is that abortion is legal but may be restricted by the states to varying degrees. States have passed laws to restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate the disclosure of abortion risk information to patients prior to the procedure.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The official report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, issued in 1983 after extensive hearings on the Human Life Amendment (proposed by Senators Orrin Hatch and Thomas Eagleton), stated: "Thus, the [Judiciary] Committee observes that no significant legal barriers of any kind whatsoever exist today in the United States for a mother to obtain an abortion for any reason during any stage of her pregnancy."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: One aspect of the legal abortion regime now in place has been determining when the fetus is "viable" outside the womb as a measure of when the "life" of the fetus is its own (and therefore subject to being protected by the state). In the majority opinion delivered by the court in "Roe v. Wade", viability was defined as "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks". When the court ruled in 1973, the then-current medical technology suggested that viability could occur as early as 24 weeks. Advances over the past three decades allow survival of some babies born at 22 weeks.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: , the youngest child to survive a premature birth in the United States was a girl born at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, at 21 weeks and 3 days gestation. Because of the split between federal and state law, legal access to abortion continues to vary by state. Geographic availability varies dramatically, with 87 percent of U.S. counties having no abortion provider. Moreover, due to the Hyde Amendment, many Medicaid state programs do not cover abortions; as of 2022, 17 states including California, Illinois, and New York offer or require such coverage.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The legality of abortion is frequently a major issue in nomination battles for the U.S. Supreme Court. Nominees typically remain silent on the issue during their hearings, as the issue may come before them as judges.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, commonly known as Laci and Conner's Law, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on April 1, 2004, allowing two charges to be filed against someone who kills a pregnant mother (one for the mother and one for the fetus). It specifically bans charges against the mother and/or doctor relating to abortion procedures. Nevertheless, it has generated much controversy among pro-abortion rights advocates who view it as a potential step in the direction of banning abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2021, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into federal law, was introduced by Judy Chu. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives but was rejected by the U.S. Senate.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: After the "Dobbs" decision, Merrick Garland, the U.S. Attorney General, asserted that under federal law, states do not have the right to restrict access to FDA-approved abortion pills, but Louisiana passed a law to ban mailing them.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Legal experts cited as a potentially persuasive precedent the 2014 district decision in "Zogenix v. Patrick", in which the court ruled that under the doctrine of federal preemption, Massachusetts could not ban the opioid Zohydro because it had been approved by the FDA.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On September 13, 2022, Republican senator Lindsey Graham introduced legislation that would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the patient, named the "Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act". Graham had previously introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which set the period at 20 weeks.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Currently, 13 states have criminal penalties for performing abortions, regardless of gestational age. The penalties in states that have made abortion illegal vary, as outlined below.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: This chart lists only the penalties authorized specifically by the state laws which explicitly restrict (or ban) abortions. The chart does not address the risk of being prosecuted for violating any other law because of the abortion. The jurisprudence surrounding this question - whether laws such as "fetal-personhood laws", or laws originally intended to protect pregnant women and their pregnancies from external aggressors, can now also be used to prosecute women who obtain abortions, or who terminate their own pregnancies, deliberately or unintentionally - is unsettled, variable, and, in some states, unclear.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: States with criminal penalties that are blocked by a court, have yet to take effect, or are unenforced are denoted by a grey background.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Prior to 2022 abortion was legal in all U.S. states, and every state had at least one abortion clinic. Abortion is a controversial political issue, and regular attempts to restrict it occur in most states. Two such cases, originating in Texas and Louisiana, led to the Supreme Court cases of "Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt" (2016) and "June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo" (2020) in which several Texas and Louisiana restrictions were struck down.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The issue of minors and abortion is regulated at the state level, and 37 states require some parental involvement, either in the form of parental consent or in the form of parental notification. In certain situations, the parental restrictions can be overridden by a court. Mandatory waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds and scripted counseling are common abortion regulations. Abortion laws are generally stricter in conservative Southern states than they are in other parts of the country.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2019, New York passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), which repealed a pre-"Roe" provision that banned third-trimester abortions except in cases where the continuation of the pregnancy endangered a pregnant woman's life.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Alabama House Republicans passed a law on April 30, 2019, that will criminalize most abortion if it goes into effect. Dubbed the "Human Life Protection Act", it offers only two exceptions: serious health risk to the mother or a lethal fetal anomaly. Amendments that would have added cases of rape or incest to the list of exceptions were rejected It will also make the procedure a Class A felony. Twenty-five male Alabama senators voted to pass the law on May 13. The next day, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law, primarily as a symbolic gesture in hopes of challenging "Roe v. Wade" in the Supreme Court.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Since Alabama introduced the first modern anti-abortion legislation in April 2019, five other states have also adopted abortion laws including Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and most recently Louisiana on May 30, 2019.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In May 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Indiana state law that requires fetuses which were aborted be buried or cremated. In a December 2019 case, the court declined to review a lower court decision which upheld a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before abortions.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On June 29, 2020, previous Supreme Court rulings banning abortion restrictions appeared to be upheld when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Louisiana anti-abortion law. Following the ruling, the legality of laws restricting abortion in states such as Ohio was then called into question. It was also noted that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who agreed that the Louisiana anti-abortion law was unconstitutional, had previously voted to uphold a similar law in Texas which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In May 2021, Texas lawmakers passed the Texas Heartbeat Act, banning abortions as soon as cardiac activity can be detected, typically as early as six weeks into pregnancy, and often before women know they are pregnant due to the length of the menstrual cycle (which usually lasts a median of four weeks and in some cases can be irregular). In order to avoid traditional constitutional challenges based on "Roe v. Wade", the law provides that any person, with or without any vested interest, may sue anyone that performs or induces an abortion in violation of the statute, as well as anyone who "aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise." The law was challenged in courts, though had yet to have a full formal hearing as its September 1, 2021, enactment date came due. Plaintiffs sought an order from the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the law from coming into effect, but the Court issued a denial of the order late on September 1, 2021, allowing the law to remain in effect. While unsigned, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer wrote dissenting opinions joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor that they would have granted an injunction on the law until a proper judicial review.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On September 9, 2021, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General and head of the United States Department of Justice, sued Texas over the Texas Heartbeat Act on the basis that "the law is invalid under the Supremacy Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, is preempted by federal law, and violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity". Garland further noted that the United States government has "an obligation to ensure that no state can deprive individuals of their constitutional rights." The Complaint avers that Texas enacted the law "in open defiance of the Constitution". The relief requested from the U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas includes a declaration that the Texas Act is unconstitutional, and an injunction against state actors as well as any and all private individuals who may bring a SB 8 action. The idea of asking a federal court to impose an injunction upon the entire civilian population of a state is unprecedented and has drawn eyebrows.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Colorado passed into law its Reproductive Health Equity Act in April 2022, which assures abortion rights for all citizens of the state. While the bill as passed maintained the "status quo" for abortion rights, it assures that "every individual has a fundamental right to make decisions about the individual's reproductive health care, including the fundamental right to use or refuse contraception; a pregnant individual has a fundamental right to continue a pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion and to make decisions about how to exercise that right; and a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state" regardless of changes that may happen at the federal level.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On May 25, 2022, Oklahoma imposed a ban on elective abortions after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 4327. The bill bans elective abortion beginning at conception. The law also permits private citizens to file lawsuits against abortion providers who knowingly provide, perform, or induce elective abortions on a pregnant woman. Abortion in cases of rape, incest, or high-risk pregnancies continue to be permitted. A lawsuit was immediately filed by the ACLU in opposition to the bill. At the time of enactment, Oklahoma was the only U.S. state to have passed a bill imposing such restrictions; the law made Oklahoma the first U.S. state to ban elective abortion procedures since prior to the ruling and implementation of "Roe" in 1973.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: After the Supreme Court overturned "Roe" on June 24, 2022, Texas and Missouri immediately banned abortions with the exception only if the pregnancy was deemed to be particularly life-threatening.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-abortion government officials in several American states enacted or attempted to enact restrictions on abortion, characterizing it as a non-essential procedure that can be suspended during the medical emergency. The orders have led to several legal challenges and criticism by human rights groups and several national medical organizations, including the American Medical Association. Legal challenges on behalf of abortion providers, many of which were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, successfully stopped most of the orders on a temporary basis.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: One challenge was made against the FDA's rule on the distribution of mifepristone (RU-486), one of the two-part drug regimen to induce abortions. Since 2000, it is only available through health providers under the FDA's ruling. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, access to mifepristone was a concern, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists along with other groups sued to have the rule relaxed to allow women to be able to access mifepristone at home through mail-order or retail pharmacies. While the Fourth Circuit issued a preliminary injunction against the FDA's ruling that would have allowed wider distribution, the Supreme Court ordered in a 6–3 decision in January 2021 to put a stay on the injunction, maintaining the FDA's rule.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Since 2019, the anti-abortion movement in the United States has sought declarations of "sanctuary cit[ies] for the unborn". In June 2019, the city council of Waskom, Texas, voted to outlaw abortion in the city, declaring Waskom a "sanctuary city for the unborn" (the first such city to designate itself as such), as state governments elsewhere in the United States were also drafting abortion bans. , there is no abortion clinic in the city. The Waskom ordinance has led other small cities in Texas, and as of April 2021 in Nebraska, to vote in favor of becoming "sanctuary cities for the unborn".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On April 6, 2021, Hayes Center, Nebraska, became the first city in Nebraska to outlaw abortion by local ordinance, declaring itself a "sanctuary city for the unborn." The city of Blue Hill, Nebraska, followed suit and enacted a similar ordinance outlawing abortion on April 13, 2021. In May 2021, Lubbock, Texas, with a population of less than 270,000, voted to ban abortion with the "sanctuary city for the unborn ordinance", becoming the largest city in the U.S to ban abortion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Abortion rights movements have also pushed for similar counterpart legislation in other cities. In February 2017, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed 17-10 Board Bill 203. The bill, sponsored by alderwoman Megan Green, made it illegal for landlords and employers to discriminate against individuals who are pregnant, use contraceptives, and are having or have had abortions. This law was subsequently challenged, with plaintiffs including the St. Louis Archdiocese along with private citizens filing a lawsuit against the city in "Our Lady's Inn et al v. City of St Louis" on May 22, 2017, In the US District Court of Eastern Missouri, resulting in the ordinance being enjoined against the city.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: On December 16, 2021, the FDA approved access to abortion pills by mail, permanently lifting the in-person requirement on mifepristone. In states that ban abortion, women will still be able to order abortion pills online from sources outside the USA.<ref name="cnbc/abortion-pills-online-from-overseas"></ref> "Red Necesito Abortar", founded in 2016 by Sandra Cardona in Monterrey, Mexico sends misoprostol, "to women who ask for it, and helps house some of them when undergoing the procedure at their headquarters in the northern state of Nuevo Leon". Marea Verde<ref name="msmagazine/marea-verde"></ref> Chihuahua is among a network of US-Mexico-border organizations that help women access abortions.<ref name="bbc/news/61874921"></ref><ref name="dallasnews/influx-of-us-women"></ref><ref name="diario.mx/1934398"></ref>


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The abortion debate has also been extended to the question of who pays the medical costs of the procedure, with some states using the mechanism as a way of reducing the number of abortions. The cost of an abortion varies depending on factors such as location, facility, timing, and type of procedure. In 2005, a non-hospital abortion at 10 weeks' gestation ranged from $90 to $1,800 (average: $430), whereas an abortion at 20 weeks' gestation ranged from $350 to $4,520 (average: $1,260). Costs are higher for a medical abortion than a first-trimester surgical abortion. A variety of resources from support organizations are available to contribute to the costs of the procedure, as well as travel expenses.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A variety of organizations offer financial support for people seeking abortions, including travel and other expenses. Access Reproductive Care–Southeast (ARC Southeast), the Brigid Alliance, the Midwest Access Coalition (MAC), and the National Network of Abortion Funds are examples of such groups.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The Hyde Amendment is a federal legislative provision barring the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions except for rape and incest. The provision, in various forms, was in response to "Roe v. Wade", and has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since 1976, and represented the first major legislative success by the pro-life movement. The law requires that states cover abortions under Medicaid in the event of rape, incest, and life endangerment.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Under this policy, U.S. federal funding to NGOs that provide abortion is not permitted. The policy was first announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. It has been rescinded by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican presidents. The policy was rescinded in 2021 by President Joe Biden.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Qualifying requirements for performing abortions vary from state to state. Vermont has allowed physician assistants to do some first-trimester abortions since the mid-1970s. More recently, several states have changed their requirements for abortion providers, anticipating that the Supreme Court would overturn "Roe v. Wade"; now that the court has done so, more states are expanding eligibility to provide abortions. , California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington allow mid-level practitioners such as nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and physicians assistants, to do some first-trimester abortions. In other states, non-physicians are not permitted to perform abortions.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Because reporting of abortions is not mandatory, statistics are of varying reliability. Both the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute regularly compile these statistics.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The annual number of legal induced abortions in the U.S. doubled between 1973 and 1979, and peaked in 1990. There was a slow but steady decline throughout the 1990s. Overall, the number of annual abortions decreased by 6% between 2000 and 2009, with temporary spikes in 2002 and 2006.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: By 2011, abortion rate in the nation dropped to its lowest point since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure. According to a study performed by Guttmacher Institute, long-acting contraceptive methods had a significant impact in reducing unwanted pregnancies. There were fewer than 17 abortions for every 1,000 women of child-bearing age. That was a 13%-decrease from 2008's numbers and slightly higher than the rate in 1973, when the Supreme Court's "Roe v. Wade" decision legalized abortion. The study indicated a long-term decline in the abortion rate.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 623,471 abortions, a 2% decrease from 636,902 in 2015.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A Guttmacher Institute survey of abortion providers estimated that early medical abortions accounted for 17% of all non-hospital abortions and slightly over one-quarter of abortions before 9 weeks gestation in the United States in 2008. Medical abortions voluntarily reported to the CDC by 34 reporting areas (excluding Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) and published in its annual abortion surveillance reports have increased every year since the September 28, 2000 FDA approval of mifepristone (RU-486): 1.0% in 2000, 2.9% in 2001, 5.2% in 2002, 7.9% in 2003, 9.3% in 2004, 9.9% in 2005, 10.6% in 2006, 13.1% in 2007, 15.8% in 2008, 17.1% in 2009 (25.2% of those at less than 9 weeks gestation). Medical abortions accounted for 32% of first-trimester abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics in 2008. By 2020, medication abortions accounted for more than 50% of all abortions.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A majority of abortions are obtained by religiously identified women. According to the Guttmacher Institute, "more than 7 in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation (37% protestant, 28% Catholic, and 7% other), and 25% attend religious services at least once a month. The abortion rate for protestant women is 15 per 1,000 women, while Catholic women have a slightly higher rate, 20 per 1,000."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Abortion rates tend to be higher among minority women in the U.S. In 2000–2001, the rates among black and Hispanic women were 49 per 1,000 and 33 per 1,000, respectively, vs. 13 per 1,000 among non-Hispanic white women. Note that this figure includes all women of reproductive age, including women that are not pregnant. In other words, these abortion rates reflect the rate at which U.S. women of reproductive age have an abortion each year.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2004, the rates of abortion by ethnicity in the U.S. were 50 abortions per 1,000 black women, 28 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women, and 11 abortions per 1,000 white women.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. In 1972, 41% of abortions were performed on women outside their state of residence, while in 1973 it declined to 21%, and then to 11% in 1974.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In the decade from 2011 to 2020, during which many states increased abortion restrictions, the percentage of women nationwide who traveled out of state for an abortion increased steadily, from 6% in 2011 to 9% in 2020. Out of state travel for an abortion was much more prevalent in the 29 states hostile to abortion rights, with percentages in those states rising from 9% in 2011 to 15% by 2020, while in states supportive of abortion rights, out of state travel for abortions rose from 2% to 3% between 2011 and 2020.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Gutttmacher has released data about abortions by "state of occurrence" and "state of residence." In some states, these numbers can be tremendously different, for example in Missouri, a state very hostile to abortion rights, the "abortion rate by state of occurrence" dropped from 4 in 1000 women aged 15–44 for 2017 to 0.1 for 2020, because 57% of abortion recipients went out of state in 2017, while 99% did so in 2020. In contrast, from 2017 to 2020, the "abortion rate by state of residence" for Missourians went up by 18% from 8.4 to 9.9.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Some out of state travel pertains to locations of population centers in states; if large cities are close to state borders it may be common to cross borders for an abortion. For example, Delaware, which is generally supportive of abortion rights, saw 44% of residents obtain their abortions in neighboring states.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2019, 60% of women who had abortions were already mothers, and 50% already had two or more children.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A 1998 study revealed that in 1987 to 1988, women reported the following as their primary reasons for choosing an abortion:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The source of this information takes findings into account from 27 nations including the United States, and therefore, these findings may not be typical for any one nation.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: According to a 1987 study that included specific data about late abortions (i. e., abortions "at 16 or more weeks' gestation"), women reported that various reasons contributed to their having a late abortion:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A 2004 study by the Guttmacher Institute reported that women listed the following amongst their reasons for choosing to have an abortion:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A 2008 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) shows that rates of unintended pregnancy are highest among Blacks, Hispanics, and women with lower socio-economic status.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2011, most (64.5%) abortions were performed by ≤8 weeks' gestation, and nearly all (91.4%) were performed by ≤13 weeks' gestation. Few abortions (7.3%) were performed between 14 and 20 weeks' gestation or at ≥21 weeks' gestation (1.4%). From 2002 to 2011, the percentage of all abortions performed at ≤8 weeks' gestation increased 6%.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The risk of death from carrying a child to term in the U.S. is approximately 14 times greater than the risk of death from a legal abortion. The risk of abortion-related mortality increases with gestational age, but remains lower than that of childbirth through at least 21 weeks' gestation.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Increased access to birth control has been statistically linked to reductions in the abortion rate. As an element of family planning, birth control was federally subsidized for low income families in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty program. In 1970, Congress passed Title X to provide family planning services for those in need, and President Richard Nixon signed it into law. Funding for Title X rose from $6 million in 1971 to $61 million the next year, and slowly increased each year to $317 million in 2010, after which it was reduced by a few percent.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2011, the Guttmacher Institute reported that the number of abortions in the U.S. would be nearly two-thirds higher without access to birth control. In 2015, the Federation of American Scientists reported that federally mandated access to birth control had helped reduce teenage pregnancies in the U.S. by 44 percent, and had prevented more than 188,000 unintended pregnancies.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Americans have been equally divided on the issue; a May 2018 Gallup poll indicated that 48% of Americans described themselves as "pro-choice" and 48% described themselves as "pro-life". A July 2018 poll indicated that 64% of Americans did not want the Supreme Court to overturn "Roe v. Wade", while 28% did. The same poll found that support for abortion being generally legal was 60% during the first trimester, dropping to 28% in the second trimester, and 13% in the third trimester.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Support for the legalization of abortion has been consistently higher among more educated adults than less educated, and in 2019, 70% of college graduates support abortion being legal in all or most cases, compared to 60% of those with some college, and 54% of those with a high school degree or less.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In January 2013, a majority of Americans believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a poll by NBC News and "The Wall Street Journal". Approximately 70% of respondents in the same poll opposed "Roe v. Wade" being overturned. A poll by the Pew Research Center yielded similar results. Moreover, 48% of Republicans opposed overturning "Roe", compared to 46% who supported overturning it.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Gallup declared in May 2010 that more Americans identifying as "pro-life" is "the new normal", while also noting that there had been no increase in opposition to abortion. It suggested that political polarization may have prompted more Republicans to call themselves "pro-life". The terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" do not always reflect a political view or fall along a binary; in one Public Religion Research Institute poll, seven in ten Americans described themselves as "pro-choice" while almost two-thirds described themselves as "pro-life". The same poll found that 56% of Americans were in favor of legal access to abortion in all or some cases.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A 2022 study reviewing the literature and public opinion datasets found that 43.8% of survey respondents in the U.S. consistently support both elective and traumatic abortion, whereas only 14.8% consistently oppose abortion irrespective of the reason, and others differ in their degree of support for abortion depending on the circumstances of the abortion. 90% approve of abortion when the health of the woman is endangered, 77.4% when there is a strong chance of defects in the baby that could result from the pregnancy, and 79.5% when the pregnancy is the result of rape.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Pew Research Center polling shows little change in views from 2008 to 2012; modest differences based on gender or age.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Support for the legalization of abortion is significantly higher among more educated adults than less educated, and has been consistently so for decades. In 2019, 70% of college graduates support abortion being legal in all or most cases, as well as 60% of those with some college education, compared to 54% of those with a high school degree or less.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A January 2003 CBS News/"The New York Times" poll examined whether Americans thought abortion should be legal or not, and found variations in opinion which depended upon party affiliation and the region of the country. The margin of error is +/– 4% for questions answered of the entire sample (overall figures) and may be higher for questions asked of subgroups (all other figures).


title: Abortion in the United States

text: A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll in January 2003 asked about the legality of abortion by trimester, using the question, "Do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during each of the following stages of pregnancy?" This same question was also asked by Gallup in March 2000 and July 1996. Polls indicates general support of legal abortion during the first trimester, although support drops dramatically for abortion during the second and third trimester.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: According to Gallup's long-time polling on abortion, the majority of Americans are neither strictly "pro-life" or "pro-choice"; it depends upon the circumstances of the pregnancy. Gallup polling from 1996 to 2021 consistently reveals that when asked the question, "Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?", Americans repeatedly answer "legal only under certain circumstances". According to the poll, in any given year 48–57% say legal only under certain circumstances, 21–34% say legal under any circumstances, and 13–19% illegal in all circumstances, with 1–7% having no opinion.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: According to the aforementioned poll, Americans differ drastically based upon situation of the pregnancy, suggesting they do not support unconditional abortions. Based on two separate polls taken May 19–21, 2003, of 505 and 509 respondents respectively, Americans stated their approval for abortion under these various circumstances:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Another separate trio of polls taken by Gallup in 2003, 2000, and 1996, revealed public support for abortion as follows for the given criteria:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Gallup furthermore established public support for many issues supported by the anti-abortion community and opposed by the abortion rights community:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: An October 2007 CBS News poll explored under what circumstances Americans believe abortion should be allowed, asking the question, "What is your personal feeling about abortion?" The results were as follows:


title: Abortion in the United States

text: In 2003, the U.S. Congress outlawed intact dilation and extraction when it passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. A Rasmussen Reports poll four days after the Supreme Court's opinion in "Gonzales v. Carhart" found that 40% of respondents "knew the ruling allowed states to place some restrictions on specific abortion procedures." Of those who knew of the decision, 56% agreed with the decision and 32% were opposed. An ABC poll from 2003 found that 62% of respondents thought "partial-birth abortion" should be illegal; a similar number of respondents wanted an exception "if it would prevent a serious threat to the woman's health".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: After "Roe", there was a national political realignment surrounding abortion. The abortion-rights movement in the United States initially emphasized the national policy benefits of abortion, such as smaller welfare expenses, slower population growth, and fewer illegitimate births. The abortion-rights movement drew support from the population control movement, feminists, and environmentalists. Anti-abortion advocates and civil-rights activists accused abortion-rights supporters of intending to control the population of racial minorities and the disabled, citing their ties to racial segregationists and eugenicist legal reformers. The abortion-rights movement subsequently distanced from the population control movement, and responded by taking up choice-based and rights-oriented rhetoric similar to what was used in the "Roe" decision. Opponents of abortion experienced a political shift. The Catholic Church and the Democratic Party supported an expansive welfare state, wanted to reduce rates of abortion through prenatal insurance and federally funded day care, and opposed abortion at the time of "Roe". Afterwards, the anti-abortion movement in the United States shifted more to Protestant faiths that saw abortion rights as part of a liberal-heavy agenda to fight against, and became part of the new Christian right. The Protestant influence helped make opposition to abortion part of the Republican Party's platform by the 1990s. Republican-led states enacted laws to restrict abortion, including abortions earlier than "Casey"s general standard of 24 weeks.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Into the 21st century, although members of both major U.S. political parties come down on either side of the issue, the Republican Party is often seen as being anti-abortion, since the official party platform opposes abortion and considers fetuses to have an inherent right to life. Republicans for Choice represents the minority of that party. In 2006, pollsters found that 9% of Republicans favor the availability of abortion in most circumstances. Of Republican National Convention delegates in 2004, 13% believed that abortion should be generally available, and 38% believed that it should not be permitted. The same poll showed that 17% of all Republican voters believed that abortion should be generally available to those who want it, while 38% believed that it should not be permitted. The Republican Party was supportive of abortion rights prior to 1976 Republican National Convention, at which they supported an anti-abortion constitutional amendment as a temporary political ploy to gain more support from Catholics; this stance brought many more social conservatives into the party resulting in a large and permanent shift toward support of the anti-abortion position. The Democratic Party platform considers abortion to be a woman's right. Democrats for Life of America represents the minority of that party. In 2006, pollsters found that 74% of Democrats favor the availability of abortion in most circumstances. Of Democratic National Convention delegates in 2004, 75% believed that abortion should be generally available, and 2% believed that abortion should not be permitted. The same poll showed that 49% of all Democratic voters believed that abortion should be generally available to those who want it, while 13% believed that it should not be permitted.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The position of U.S. third political parties and other U.S. minor political parties is diverse. The Green Party supports legal abortion as a woman's right. While abortion is a contentious issue and the Maryland-based Libertarians for Life opposes the legality of abortion in most circumstances, the Libertarian Party platform (2012) states that "government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration." The issue of abortion has become deeply politicized. In 2002, 84% of state Democratic platforms supported the right to having an abortion while 88% of state Republican platforms opposed it. This divergence also led to Christian right organizations like Christian Voice, Christian Coalition of America, and Moral Majority having an increasingly strong role in the Republican Party. This opposition has been extended under the Foreign Assistance Act; in 1973, Jesse Helms introduced an amendment banning the use of aid money to promote abortion overseas, and in 1984 the Mexico City policy prohibited financial support to any overseas organization that performed or promoted abortions. The policy was revoked by President Bill Clinton and subsequently reinstated by President George W. Bush. President Barack Obama overruled this policy by Executive Order on January 23, 2009, and it was reinstated on January 23, 2017, by President Donald Trump. On January 28, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a Presidential Memorandum that repealed the restoration of Mexico City policy and also called for the United States Department of Health and Human Services to "suspend, rescind or revoke" restrictions made to Title X.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: The risk of death due to legal abortion has fallen considerably since "Roe v. Wade" (1973) legalized it; this was due to increased physician skills, improved medical technology, and earlier termination of pregnancy. From 1940 through 1970, deaths of pregnant women during abortion fell from nearly 1,500 to a little over 100. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of women who died in 1972 from illegal abortion was thirty-nine. The Roe effect is a hypothesis suggesting that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base by having fewer children, the practice of abortion will eventually lead to the restriction or illegalization of abortion. The legalized abortion and crime effect is another controversial theory that posits legal abortion reduces crime because unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Since "Roe", there have been numerous attempts to reverse the decision. In the 2011 election season, Mississippi placed an amendment on the ballot that redefined how the state viewed abortion. The personhood amendment defined personhood as "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof"; if passed, it would have been illegal to get an abortion in the state. On July 11, 2012, a Mississippi federal judge ordered an extension of his temporary order to allow the state's only abortion clinic to stay open. The order was to stay in place until U.S. District Judge Daniel Porter Jordan III could review newly drafted rules on how the Mississippi Department of Health would administer a new abortion law. The law in question came into effect on July 1, 2012.


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Between 2008 and 2016, the Turnaway Study followed a group of 1,000 women, two of whom died after giving birth, for five years after they sought an abortion, and compared their health and socio-economic consequences of receiving an abortion or being denied one. The study found that those who were provided with abortion performed better, and those who were denied one suffered negative consequences. "Scientific American" described it as landmark. A follow-up Turnaway Study was confirmed to determinate the health and economic impact of "Roe" being overturned, which other scholars also analyzed. According to a 2019 study, were "Roe" reversed and abortion bans implemented in states with trigger laws, including states considered highly likely to ban abortion, "increases in travel distance are estimated to prevent 93,546 to 143,561 women from accessing abortion care."


title: Abortion in the United States

text: For the "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" case, which confirmed the May 2022 leaks obtained by "Politico" and overruled "Roe" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" in June 2022, among the over 130 "amici curiae" briefs, hundreds of scientists provided evidence, data, and studies, in particular the Turnaway Study, in favor of abortion rights and to rebuke arguments made to the Court that abortion "has no beneficial effect on women's lives and careers—and might even cause them harm". The American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) were among those who signed an "amici curiae" brief for "Dobbs", and were cited, among others, by "Reason", "Syracuse University News", and "The Washington Post". AHA and OAH jointly issued a statement against the Supreme Court's decision, which was reported by "Anchorage Daily News", "Inside Higher Ed", "Insight Into Diversity", and the "Strict Scrutiny" podcast from Crooked Media, saying they have "declined to take seriously the historical claims of our [amicus curiae] brief". Joined by at least 30 other academic and scholarly institutions, they condemned "the court's misinterpretation about the history of legalized abortion" and said it has "the potential to exacerbate historic injustices and deepen inequalities in our country".


title: Abortion in the United States

text: Although it is uncommon, women sometimes give birth in spite of an attempted abortion. Reporting of live birth after attempted abortion may not be consistent from state to state, but 38 were recorded in one study in upstate New York in the two-and-a-half years before "Roe v. Wade". Under the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, medical staff must report live birth if they observe any breathing, heartbeat, umbilical cord pulsation, or confirmed voluntary muscle movement, regardless of whether the born-alive is non-viable "ex utero" in the long term because of birth defects, and regardless of gestational age, including gestational ages which are too early for long-term viability "ex utero".


title: School shooting

text: A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings have taken place elsewhere in the world.


title: School shooting

text: According to studies, factors behind school shooting include easy access to firearms, family dysfunction, lack of family supervision, and mental illness among many other psychological issues. Among the topmost motives of attackers were: bullying/persecution/threatened (75%) and revenge (61%), while 54% reported having numerous reasons. The remaining motives included an attempt to solve a problem (34%), suicide or depression (27%), and seeking attention or recognition (24%).


title: School shooting

text: Especially in the United States, school shootings have sparked a political debate over gun violence, zero tolerance policies, gun rights and gun control.


title: School shooting

text: The United States Secret Service published the results from a study regarding 37 school shooting incidents, involving 41 individuals in the United States from December 1974 through May 2000. In a previous report of 18 school shootings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), they released a profile that described shooters as middle-class, lonely/alienated, awkward, Caucasian males who had access to guns. The most recent report cautioned against the assumption that a perpetrator can be identified by a certain 'type' or profile. The results from the study indicated that perpetrators came from differing backgrounds, making a singular profile difficult when identifying a possible assailant. For example, some perpetrators were children of divorce, lived in foster homes, or came from intact nuclear families. The majority of individuals had rarely or never gotten into trouble at school and had a healthy social life. Some, such as Alan Lipman, have warned against the dearth of empirical validity of profiling methods.


title: School shooting

text: Almost all perpetrators of school shootings were born male and identified as male at the time of the shooting.


title: School shooting

text: According to Raine (2002), immaturity is one of many identified factors increasing the likelihood of an individual committing criminal acts of violence and outbursts of aggression. This fact is supported by findings on brain development occurring as individuals age from birth.


title: School shooting

text: According to the Australian-based Raising children network and Centre for Adolescent Health (and other sources): the main change occurring in the developing brain during adolescence is the (so-called) "pruning" of unused connections in thinking and processing. While this is occurring within the brain, retained connections are strengthened. Synaptic pruning occurs because the nervous system in humans develops by firstly, the over-producing of parts of the nervous system, axons, neurons, and synapses, to then later in the development of the nervous system, make the superfluous parts redundant, i.e. "pruning" (or apoptosis, otherwise known as "cell death"). These changes occur in certain parts of the brain firstly; the pre-frontal cortex, the brain location where decision-making occurs, is the concluding area for development.


title: School shooting

text: While the pre-frontal cortex is developing, children and teenagers might possibly rely more on the brain part known as the amygdala; involving thinking that is more emotionally active, including aggression and impulsiveness. As a consequence each individual is more likely to want to make riskier choices, and to do so more frequently.


title: School shooting

text: One assumption into the catalytic causes of school shootings comes from the "non-traditional" household perspective, which focuses on how family structure and family stability are related to child outcomes. Broadly speaking, proponents of this hypothesis claim that family structures such as single mothers, same-sex parents, extended family, or cohabitation are more harmful to the development of a child's mental well-being, than heterosexual, married parents (often equated with the idea of a nuclear family). This perspective is found to back federal efforts such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 and US federal tax incentives.


title: School shooting

text: However, these assumptions on the detrimental effects of "non-traditional" family structures have repeatedly been shown to be false, with the true issues lying within socio-economic realities. Longitudinal research has shown the robust, positive effects of higher incomes and higher education levels on child well-being and emotional development, which reflects on the family "stability", and not family structure. Further, proponents of this hypothesis often cite family statistics for those who commit crimes, but leave out how these compare to other populations, including the general population. For example, a 2009 survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) revealed that substance abuse amongst children raised by single mothers was higher than children raised by their biological parents. However, the percentage of substance abuse amongst children raised by single-mothers was not only remarkably low (5.4%), but also only 1.2% higher than children raised by both their parents. Those rates reveal to be even smaller when compared to other demographics of the same time period. According surveys commissioned by to the National Institute on Drug Abuse between 20 and 30% of teenagers used/abused illicit substances, a much higher rate than single-mother households. Another example of poorly cited statistics to further this narrative can be found in children who have lost at least one parent. In the U.S., the rate of parental death before age 16 is 8%. The rate of parental death is disproportionately high for prisoners (30–50%), however, it is also disproportionately high for high-performing scientists (26%) and US presidents (34%). Harvard's Baker Foundation Professor, Emerita, Dr. Teresa M. Amabile states, "Those kinds of events can crush a child, they can lead to a lot of problems; they can lead to substance abuse, they can lead to various forms of emotional illness. They can also lead to incredible resilience and almost superhuman behaviors, seemingly, if people can come through those experiences intact. I don’t know if we—we being the field in general—have discovered what the keys are, what makes the difference for kids." Understanding that socio-economic factors have greater effects on child development and emotional stability have led many to argue that single-parent and other non-traditional households should be afforded equivalent incentives by the state, as are afforded married households, and that focussing on family structure rather than family stability derails efforts to understand the realities of mass-shooters.


title: School shooting

text: “Studies have found that within offenders’ families, there is frequently a lack of supervision, low emotional closeness, and intimacy”. In a 2018 publication, Dr. George S. Everly, Jr, of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health outlined an accumulation of seven, recurring themes that warrant consideration regarding school shooters. One factor is that school shooters tended to isolate themselves, and "exhibited an obsessive quality that often led to detailed planning, but ironically they seemed to lack an understanding of the consequences of their behavior and thus may have a history of adverse encounters with law enforcement." A criticism in the media of past shooters was questioning how so much planning could commence without alerting the parents or guardians to their efforts. However, this has proven to be as difficult of a question to answer as anticipating any of the past school shootings.