The National Abortion Federation is the professional association of doctors and other health care professionals who provide abortion services. Abortion was legal in America until the middle of the 1800s, when states passed laws that outlawed abortion except when needed to save the life of the pregnant woman. In 1973 in Roe v. Wade , the Supreme Court struck down these laws, declaring that Constitutional guarantees of privacy give women the right to decide whether and when to have children, including the right to abortion. Roe does not give women an unlimited right to abortion throughout pregnancy. Most states have laws that ban abortion except for health reasons after fetal viability, and very few abortions take place after the point when fetuses become viable.
Most abortions take place early in pregnancy, when the fetus is very immature.
Another 6 percent take place in the early second trimester. Abortions late in pregnancy are very rare. In fact, there are only a handful of doctors in the United States who provide abortions at this point in pregnancy. These abortions are done because the fetus has an abnormality that makes it incapable of surviving or because the pregnant woman has a health problem severe enough that the pregnancy threatens her life or health and the fetus cannot be safely delivered early. It is important to remember that women who choose to give birth also face the possibility of serious physical complications like hemorrhage, infection, diabetes, embolism, heart damage, severe high blood pressure, and impaired liver and kidney functioning.