Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,

From biased religious teachings to false beliefs spat out by a failing sexual education system, the issue of abortion is shrouded in controversy and misunderstanding. If the health and wellbeing of women in America is to be ensured, it is essential that the population be taught the facts of the matter. Abortion is a (oft necessary) choice to be decided not by the government, but by a woman and her family. Uninformed pro-lifers are propagating myths such as the falsities that 'the fetus experiences pain in the process' and that 'abortion is murder'. Statements like these are nothing more than unneeded guilt funded by ignorance. As you will see, there are a multitude of reasons as to why abortion should be legal in all 50 states.

Those who grew up in a loving home don't seem to understand that if a woman does not want to have her child it's best that she terminate the pregnancy. The pregnant woman could be underaged, have been raped, be financially unstable, or physically/mentally unable to care for a child. According to the CDC, 82.8% of women who get abortions are unmarried. On one income, the costs of caring for a child (food, clothes, diapers, babysitting, etc) as well as supporting yourself could be too much for a single woman. My parents were never married, my mom has a minimum wage job, and she’s been unable to care for me my entire life. The Children’s Rights organization says there are approximately 415,000 children in foster care, where they can remain for years. Those less fortunate than I are left to flounder in this overcrowded and corrupt system. Stopping abortion can guarantee a life, though not necessarily a good one.

Many of the arguments against abortion are religious based, and since religion is a personal belief, it shouldn’t be used to govern law. Laws and public opinion were incredibly different thousands of years ago when these organized religions and their scriptures were created. People will cite the Bible only when it suits them, skipping over passages that don’t support their cause. While Republicans love to obsess over the Second Amendment, they also need to acknowledge the First: separation of church and state.

People are pro-life until it's the woman that will die if she carries on with the pregnancy. They would rather let a child go motherless than allow her to have an abortion. This is why late term abortions shouldn't be completely outlawed, though they are claimed to be 'murder', they can actually be life-saving surgeries. Besides, as reported by Forbes, only 1.3% of abortions occur after 20 weeks. A late term abortion is usually when the baby has severe birth defects, will hurt the mother if the pregnancy continues, or is not actually an abortion at all and the fetus is already dead.

Everyone needs to realize that making abortions illegal won't prevent people from performing them, it will only make them unsafe. Women will perform coathanger abortions or have them done by unlicensed doctors which can cause them to be injured, made unable to carry out future pregnancies, or even be killed. This primarily causes an increase in sterilization/death of lower class women because the upper class have the available means to travel to countries where abortion is legal and safe.

As I have shown, the decision to have an abortion is not up to the government or any other organization, only the woman herself. A vote to ban abortion is a vote against women's' rights.