ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

United States abortion rights movement

Okay kiddo, so let me tell you about the abortion rights movement in the United States. Do you know what abortion is? It’s when a woman decides she doesn’t want to have a baby growing in her tummy anymore, so she goes to a doctor to have the baby taken out.

Now, not everyone thinks that women should have the right to do this. Some people think that it’s wrong to have an abortion, and that women should be forced to have the baby even if they don’t want it. Other people think that women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and whether or not to have a baby.

The people who think that women should have the right to choose started a movement to try to make sure that women could get abortions if they needed to. This movement started in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was called the abortion rights movement.

At first, it was really hard for women to get abortions. It was illegal in a lot of places, and even if it wasn’t, doctors might not be willing to do the procedure. So women who wanted an abortion might have to go to a different state, or even to another country, to get one.

The abortion rights movement worked hard to change this. They organized protests and marches, they talked to the government, and they even went to court to fight for women’s rights. Eventually, they won some big victories.

In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States made a decision called Roe v. Wade. This decision said that women have the right to choose to have an abortion in the first trimester, or three months, of pregnancy. This made it legal for women to get abortions in every state, as long as it was in the first trimester.

But the fight wasn’t over. There were still a lot of people who didn’t want women to have this right. If you can imagine, it’s still a hot-button issue nearly 50 years later. So the abortion rights movement kept fighting. They worked to make sure that women could actually get the abortions they wanted, by making sure there were enough doctors and clinics to do the procedures, and to make sure that women didn’t have to pay too much money to get them.

So, that’s the story of the abortion rights movement in the United States. It’s all about the fight to make sure that women can make their own choices about their own bodies.