People's attitudes toward abortion are more complicated than simply pro or con (Lee, Kleinbach, Hu, Peng, & Chen, 1996, pp. 131-148). The reason for this attitudinal complexity is that these topics involve various issues such as cultural and religious values, politics, ethics/morality, economy, medicine, and law.
Americans ideologically emphasize human values or rights for every individual (Corey, 1996, p. 46). It is the definition of "individual" that often leads to problems. When the individual is viewed as a sentient being, a woman's right to an abortion is typically justified. When a fetus also is viewed as an individual, however, the rights of two individuals clash. When a woman is viewed as a free individual with the right to make choices that affect her body, a woman's right to an abortion is typically justified. When a woman is viewed as subservient to a man, however, the right of a woman to an abortion is abridged to allow the sperm donator the right of veto.
United States law did not recognize any legal duties to an unborn child until relatively recently (Merton, 1993, pp. 369-451). Killing a fetus in utero was not a crime. Abortion only became widely illegal by about 1900. Now, eighteen states have "feticide" statutes, and it is the rule in every state that negligent or intentional injury to a fetus may, under certain circumstances, give rise to an action in tort by or on behalf of the child, after its live birth. Some jurisdictions still purport to require proof that the fetus was viable at the time of the injury, but that requirement has been soundly criticized and largely abandoned in practice.
The essential character of abortion is a dividing point between the pro-life and pro-choice camps (Hoyt, 1994, pp. 4-6). For most in the pro-choice camp, the product of conception is no more than a mostly featureless group of cells of no greater significance than one should apply to a carbuncle. When this argum...