the perfect job essay

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The Perfect Job

Updated 30 June 2021

Subject Emotions , Work

Downloads 47

Category Life

Topic Happiness , Job

Many mainstream advertising events change the way we think about a “Perfect Job.” To that effect, many humans are left to believe that a perfect job is one that is associated with excessive salaries. The majority of people may claim that a well-paid job is the solely perfect job, but have we ever thought for a moment that while seeking a perfect job we discover happiness too. In life, efforts are supposed to bring the joy. What happens if we find a well-paid job, however we are not happy in our workplace? Do we still name that a perfect job? Do we still call a well-paid job that offers employees no opportunity to learn and boost their goals a perfect one? In my opinion, as much as people work to earn money, talking about “a perfect job,” one should look at the issue from different angles instead of basing the argument on money only. A perfect job goes beyond money. A perfect job is one that provides comfort and peace of mind. If you have a well-paid job, you can view that as a perfect job; however, a perfect job involves various impeccable attributes. In my perspective, a perfect job is when you sit in your workplace or office and establish your own rules and schedule.

This creates flexibility and independence. For instance, one can employ a respectable secretary and he or she can make your tasks much more relaxed and comfortable. Nowadays techniques and practices can be used for everything. Therefore, it is essential to have high technological know-how at work that will make work even easier. With the inventions of computers and office machines, you can make your job perfect by ensuring that you embrace the technologies to provide efficiency at workplace. A perfect job is one that does not affect the health, nurtures growth and development, and creates work-life balance. Currently, it is common to work eight hours each day. Nonetheless, some individuals try to labor longer to increase their salary. To that effect, the idea of working for more hours to get a higher salary has adverse consequences on the health and can even make people spend less time with their families. One can not call this a perfect job even if there are high compensation benefits. For a “perfect job” it is essential to have an open schedule that allows for family time and any other domestic tasks. A perfect job would also allow for an employee to learn, grow, progress, and eventually contribute to the organization.

Furthermore, a perfect job allows for teamwork and excellent communication between colleagues within an organization. I recently spent some time with my friend who was not long ago hired by a particular company. The company pays its employees well; however, on occasion, my friend and his other colleagues have to spend more than ten hours per day working. They do not have time for their families and always feel fatigued at work. At first, my friend saw this as a perfect job for him because of the salary, but now he wants to resign. People struggle to find a perfect job by focusing on the salary compensations.

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As for me, I never regarded a well-paid job as a perfect job. A perfect job is one that brings happiness through team working with colleagues, taking initiative, excellent communication between colleagues, and availing opportunities to learn new ideas, grow, and progress. Therefore, one must look at a combination of different aspects that make up an excellent job to be regarded as a “perfect one.”

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How to Write a Job Application Essay

Last Updated: September 24, 2023 References

This article was co-authored by Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Shannon O'Brien is the Founder and Principal Advisor of Whole U. (a career and life strategy consultancy based in Boston, MA). Through advising, workshops and e-learning Whole U. empowers people to pursue their life's work and live a balanced, purposeful life. Shannon has been ranked as the #1 Career Coach and #1 Life Coach in Boston, MA by Yelp reviewers. She has been featured on Boston.com, Boldfacers, and the UR Business Network. She received a Master's of Technology, Innovation, & Education from Harvard University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 195,503 times.

Many employers now require a writing sample, or job application essay , to accompany all applications or résumés — even if writing is not a significant part of the position. The goal of the job application essay is to ensure that applicants have the right communication skills for the position offered. Sometimes, potential employers will provide a specific topic or series of questions for your essay to respond to. However, you may also be asked to provide an essay with no guidance whatsoever. Either way, approach the essay seriously so that it highlights the skills and assets you could bring to the company. [1] X Research source

Outlining Your Essay

Step 1 Read the job listing and essay description carefully.

If you don't know much about the company, do a little research on it before you start writing. You might look at their website or do a general internet search with the name of the company to see if any news articles or other reports come up. Go beyond the four corners of the job listing so that you understand who will likely be reading your essay.
If there's anything in the job listing or essay requirements that you don't understand, contact the employer and ask about them. Employers are often impressed by applicants who clarify the employer's intent rather than making assumptions.

Step 2 State your theme or thesis statement upfront.

For example, if you're applying for a position in sales, you might want to write an essay about your ability to tailor your pitch to specific clients and close the deal. If you have the ability to be more creative, you might tailor your essay to "sell" yourself directly to the employer.

Step 3 Brainstorm 3 or 4 points that support your thesis statement.

For each of your points, think of a specific example you can relate briefly that illustrates the point. For example, if you've described yourself as a "team player," you might include an example of how you came in on your day off to complete some of the more monotonous tasks that no one else wanted to do so a project could be completed ahead of schedule.
It's a good idea to have more than one example in your outline for each point, even if you only end up using one. That way, if you start writing something and it ends up not working as well as you thought it would, you'll have a back-up handy.
Brainstorming can be difficult. If you find yourself churning over the same thoughts, stand up and take a break for a few minutes. Step outside or go for a walk to clear your head, then come back to it.

Step 4 Gather documents and information to fill out your points.

For example, if you want to describe how you increased sales in a specific quarter, you would want to state specifically how much you increased sales. Your former employer may have sales figures that you could ask them for. You might also have that information in your records.
Wherever possible, use specific numbers and dates rather than making general statements. It's okay to estimate, but make sure your estimate is conservative. Saying you led your sales team to the highest sales in a quarter is impressive — but only if it's true.

Completing Your Rough Draft

Step 1 Start with an introductory paragraph that describes you and your essay.

Think of this paragraph as telling the hiring manager what you're going to tell them in the essay. Outline the points you're going to elaborate on in the essay that back up your theme or thesis statement.
Sometimes it's best to go back and write your introduction after you've written the body of your essay. That way, you can make sure the introduction provides an outline that matches the body.

If the employer listed specifically what should be included in your essay, follow their order, since that's what they'll be looking for when they read the essay.
Write in the first person and make yourself the star of any anecdote you include as an example. Use action verbs to focus on what you did rather than focusing on what happened and how you reacted to it. [7] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source

Step 3 Create transitions between each paragraph of your essay.

For example, if you're writing about your skills as a team player, you might note that you discuss doing routine work that others found monotonous so they had time to work on other parts of a project. You could use that detail to move on to a section describing how you're detail-oriented.

Step 4 Use your closing to summarize your essay.

For example, you might write "My business school education, skills as a team player, and focus on detail make me the best candidate to lead your sales team."

Finalizing Your Essay

Step 1 Proofread your essay for spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.

For example, you might start by looking solely at punctuation, then read through again focusing on spelling.
If you find that you tend to repeat a particular error, go through your essay looking for that error specifically.
If your grammar isn't particularly strong or you're writing in a language other than your native language, have someone else read over your essay as well.

If you find that you stumble over a sentence while reading aloud, that's a sign that your writing could be clearer. Work with your text until you have something that you can read aloud with ease.

If the prospective employer did not specify a length, try to keep your essay under 2 double-spaced pages. Remember that hiring managers are busy and don't have a lot of time to read a long, rambling essay.
Eliminate all unnecessary words or sentences that aren't relevant to the subject of your essay. The majority of your sentences should be short, declarative sentences with action verbs.
Apps such as Hemingway ( http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ ) or Grammarly ( https://app.grammarly.com/ ) can help you identify portions of your essay that are more difficult to read. Both of these apps have a free version that you can use to edit your text.

Step 4 Work backward through your essay to proofread a second time.

Working backward is particularly helpful for noticing spelling mistakes, especially hard-to-catch homophone errors, because you're seeing the word out of context.

Step 5 Print your essay and read through it a final time.

It may also help to print your essay in a different font or font size than what you used to type it. This breaks your brain's familiarity with the text, which can make typos and other errors more noticeable. Just remember to change the font back after you print it.

Job Application Essay

Expert Q&A

Give yourself plenty of time to work on your essay. Ideally, you should plan to work on it over the course of at least two days, so you have the time to set it aside after writing before you move to the editing and proofreading stage. [15] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Unless you're applying for a position in a political or religious organization, avoid including anything in your essay that identifies your political or religious preferences or beliefs. [16] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
Avoid using humor, especially sarcasm or ironic humor, as it can be misconstrued in text. Additionally, humor may lead the hiring manager to believe that you aren't serious about the position. [17] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

↑ https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/writing-sample-job-application
↑ https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/04/30/essay-how-write-good-applications-jobs-or-grants
↑ Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM. Life & Career Coach. Expert Interview. 25 May 2021.
↑ https://www.govloop.com/community/blog/government-job-application-essays-made-easy/
↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/application-essays/
↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
↑ https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/proofreading-tips
↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/career-transitions/200906/the-dreaded-writing-sample

About This Article

Job application essays can seem scary, but they’re really just an opportunity for you to highlight your skills and explain why you’re suitable for the role. Read the job listing to find out what traits and skills the company is looking for, like time management, working under pressure, and leadership. If you don’t know much about the company, read through its website and do an online search to find articles about its work. In your introduction, you’ll want to to describe yourself and introduce the main points you’ll be making. Then, write a paragraph for each trait or skill. Use real life examples from previous jobs, your recent studies, or extracurricular activities to support your points. For example, you could highlight your leadership skills by talking about a time you led a group project that exceeded your targets. For more tips, including how to write a compelling conclusion for your job application essay, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Example of a great essay | Explanations, tips & tricks

Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://doi.org/10.1001/archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2009/05/blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Bryson, S. (2023, July 23). Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/example-essay-structure/

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Describe a Perfect Job You Would Like To Have in the Future: IELTS Cue Card

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Updated on 05 February, 2024

Mrinal Mandal

Study abroad expert.

If you plan to move abroad for study, immigration, or work, you will most certainly take the International Language Testing System or IELTS exam, which includes a speaking test.

Below are two sample essays for a speaking task– Describe a perfect job you would like to have in the future. You can go through these to understand the key areas where candidates can gain marks.

Q. describe a perfect job you would like to have in the future, download e-books for ielts preparation, q. what professional role would you like to play in the coming years, download ielts sample papers, important ielts exam resources.

Since my childhood, I was always asked this question– what I would want to be once I grow up, and I would always be confused. Over the years, I observed the functioning of different jobs and tried to find what suited me the best. Now that I am old enough to decide, I know the answer to this question.

The perfect job for me would be to become a doctor and give back to my people. I derived the inspiration for taking this role up because of my father, who has served as a doctor for 30 years. I remember him being late at night, hitting emergencies, treating people, and giving his all. Moreover, seeing him perform his job with utmost dedication for the betterment of others always inspired me.

I am currently studying MBBS– the degree to become a doctor in India and can't wait to step into a hospital. As a doctor, I aim to expand my ability to reach people in the farthest corners of the country and treat them. In fact, I have been interning in a village, where I have aided in childbirth and assisted in minor medical emergencies.

With my strong interest in Biology and the will to do something meaningful with my life, I am sure of this career path.

Explore More IELTS Speaking Cue Cards:

I have always been very creative and thoroughly interested in human psychology. I am also passionate about what people think and how they make decisions. Growing up, I wasn't aware of the different professions one could pursue. Moreover, my family has always been academically driven, so there was always pressure to do well in my studies.

With this motivation to pursue higher studies and use my interest to create value, in the coming years, I plan on excelling in the field of marketing and advertising. I firmly believe that this field consists of both my love for art and creativity and mapping human behavior when it comes to business and consumerism.

As a marketeer, I aim to work for companies or products and increase sales while promoting business growth. It would be a tremendous learning experience to navigate what the audience wants and what we can do to get them the ideal product. I also aim to participate in harnessing social media as an excellent means to spread the word about the company and attract the target audience. Additionally, analytics also plays a massive role in marketing and advertising, and I want to explore this stream as well.

In terms of marketing and advertising roles and skills, I would like to explore the luxury brands industry, given their expansive reach across nations.

More Resources to Read About IELTS Cue Cards:

IELTS Exam Overview

IELTS is required to be taken by international students and workers who wish to study or work in a country where English is the primary language of communication. Know the complete details.

IELTS Exam Syllabus

With the right knowledge of the IELTS exam syllabus and pattern, cracking the popular English test won’t be difficult.

IELTS Exam Pattern

The IELTS exam pattern encompasses four major sections, i.e. listening, speaking, writing, and reading.

Register For IELTS

IELTS is the most popular and crucial test for evaluating English language proficiency throughout the world. Learn how to register for the IELTS exam.

IELTS Exam Eligibility Criteria

It becomes necessary for candidates to meet the eligibility for IELTS exam and demonstrate their language proficiency while being assessed on four parameters, namely, Writing, Reading, Speaking and Listening.

IELTS Exam Fees

The IELTS exam fee in India varies based on the types of IELTS tests. The link below shows detailed information on the IELTS exam fees.

IELTS Exam Dates 2022

The IELTS exam dates are allotted on a first-come and first-serve basis. Choose your date and timings beforehand to avoid the delay. You can register for the test both in online and offline mode.

IELTS Test Centres in India

Fully aware of the growing popularity of the language test, we bring to you a list of IELTS exam centers in India. The list will enable aspirants in better planning before registering for the test.

Band Score for Reading

IELTS reading band score decides the knowledge and proficiency of the English language of the applicants.

IELTS Listening Band Score

The listening section evaluates the comprehension level of candidates. The scores also depend on the understanding of different accents and dialects.

IELTS Score Validity

The IELTS score validity for General and Academic is two years across the globe. The IELTS result validity for Canada is two years.

Types of IELTS Exam

There are two types of IELTS tests – i) Academic IELTS and ii) General Training IELTS. Candidates are often confused about making the right choice of IELTS test that can meet their requirements regarding their education or job.

Books for IELTS Preparation

Picking the best IELTS books for preparation is essential for scoring well. It may seem tough at first but cracking the examination successfully is not impossible.

IELTS Writing Task 2 Topics

Writing task 2 in IELTS is descriptive essay writing. The applicants are supposed to write an essay in response to the statement or situation given in the essay.

Tips for IELTS Writing

Before appearing for the test, let’s take a look at the below-mentioned IELTS writing tips and tricks to score well in the writing section.

Reading Section IELTS

Reading is the second part of the IELTS test and takes 60 minutes. It consists of three or sometimes four reading passages to increase difficulty, and there are a total of 40 questions to answer.

IELTS Speaking Preparation

Please note that your performance on the speaking test is assessed based on the following criteria- fluency and coherence, grammatical range and accuracy, lexical resource, and pronunciation.

Phrases for IELTS Speaking

There are many phrases for IELTS speaking that a candidate should practice beforehand. If you aim for band 9, you should know these phrases.

IELTS Band Score Chart

IELTS is one of the most used English Language Proficiency Tests. The exam is scored in bands. Your IELTS band score determines the performance level of your test.

IELTS Band Score

Understanding the IELTS band score is not difficult. The results of the examination are reported on a scale of 9 bands.

IELTS Slot Booking

To book the IELTS exam, the candidates can either visit their nearest test center or book the slot online by visiting the official website of IDP. If they choose to go with the second option, they should follow the steps given below.

IELTS Academic Writing Task 1

IELTS Academic writing is meant for students who are applying for top-ranked universities and colleges in English-speaking countries. The writing task one is an academic summary writing based on diagrammatic and graphical representation.

IELTS Writing Task 2

Writing Task 2 is the second part of the writing section of IELTS, where aspirants are presented with a point of view, argument, or problem and asked to write an essay in response to the question.

Writing Task 1 IELTS

In IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 starts with a diagram, a visual representation of information. It can be a table, map, graph, process, diagram, or picture.

IELTS Essay Samples

The essay for IELTS is part of Writing Task 2. It is the same for the General Training and Academic of the IELTS. You will get a topic and have to write an essay on the same.

IELTS Cue Cards

The IELTS speaking cue cards come into play for the second part when the candidate will be choosing cue cards and then speaking on a topic for two minutes at least.

Mrinal Mandal is a study abroad expert with a passion for guiding students towards their international education goals. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering, earned in 2018. Since 2021, Mrinal has been working with upGrad Abroad, where he assists aspiring students in realizing their dreams of studying abroad. With his expertise and dedication, he empowers individuals to navigate the complexities of international education, making their aspirations a reality.

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How to Write a Career Goals Essay: 5 Stages with Tips

6 July 2023

last updated

Career goals essays are pieces of writing where writers explain their selected profession path they wish to pursue. In this case, outstanding papers contain details on what an individual intends to achieve in a career. Basically, a person should include stages of professional development and their specific purposes. For example, five stages of identifying professional essays include defining a dream job, documenting specific goals, breakdown specific goals, making them measurable, and developing an action plan. Then, other important steps include breaking aspirations into short- and long-term objectives. Moreover, a clear order of execution of specific objectives contributes towards one’s level of success in a career. In turn, effective career goals essays follow a specific structure that includes the introduction, body, and conclusion parts. Hence, every applicant focuses on writing a perfect career goals essay by considering the concept of aspirations. Besides, an applicant should focus on professional and educational objectives.

General Features of Writing a Career Goals Essay

Career goals essays refer to a piece of writing where authors explain their selected professional path they wish to pursue. Basically, an outstanding career aspirations essay contains details on what an individual intends to achieve in a selected profession. Then, other important details include career aspirations, relevant achievements that can contribute towards achieving personal goals, and the ways that ambition can promote professional growth. Also, including short- and long-term goals play a crucial role in improving the overall quality of these papers. In this case, a career goals essay stands out from personal statements since they show the admission board of prospective employers that one’s professional purposes apply to the field of study or job position one intends to pursue. Hence, documents are unique since they allow scholars to help to create a strong impression and increase the chances of receiving a university admission or being hired in a company.

Stages of Career Goals

Developing career goals is an important activity that successful students consider. Basically, the process allows people to identify their professional objectives based on personal strengths and interests. Besides, they establish steps that they must follow to make significant and specific contributions to the communities. The following stages are essential in developing aspirations.

Stage 1: Defining a Dream Job

Defining one’s dream is the first step in making long-term professional goals and obtaining the necessary motivation. Basically, this step enables an individual to make clear objectives on what to achieve in the future. In this case, an aspiring student or employee should take the time to study employment sectors and identify important professions. For instance, following this strategy ensures that an individual achieves the most satisfying goals to achieve through a career dream. In turn, prudent individuals base their specific purposes on specific gaps existing in a specific career. Also, one should focus on delivering a solution that can solve an existing problem in the labor market. Thus, defining a dream job is the first and important step towards leading a successful profession.

Effective use of creative ways can lead to an accurate and precise definition of career goals. For instance, one should rely on current and job skills that relate to childhood interests. In this case, successful aspirations must allow an individual to achieve youthful goals. Also, this strategy can increase one’s level of satisfaction. Therefore, one must relate childhood goals to a specific profession when developing specific purposes.

Stage 2: Documenting Career Goals

The second step in identifying desired goals is to document them accurately. In particular, a person must identify how specific goals would change situations and influence other aspects of life. Moreover, by noting personal purposes, this method allows one to envision the job and determine if it would satisfy personal desires. Hence, some important facts that a person must consider may include to:

Envision the type and nature of the office.
Envisage the dress of work.
Consider the daily activities in the dream job.
Develop a clear outlook of the success in the identified job.
Spell out the meaning of success in the career identified.

The process of writing career goals downplays an important role in allowing an individual to identify specific steps to take in achieving aspirations. In this case, envisaging different employment aspects can allow a person to develop a strong connection with the future professional path. Therefore, writing one’s aspirations is an important step towards making a firm decision to pursue a specific career.

Stage 3: Breaking Down Specific Goals

Breaking career objectives into short- and long-term goals are the third important stage that an individual should consider. In this case, aspiring students or employees must identify the goals that they must achieve first. Basically, a clear order of execution of specific objectives contributes towards one’s level of success in a profession. Then, effective organization strategies play a crucial role in the achievement of one’s career goals. From a practical perspective, effective planning reduces the chances of wasting available resources in achieving specific objectives. In turn, breaking down aspirations leads to the identification of those that one can achieve immediately or after a specific period. Therefore, one should consider separating career goals following the following steps:

Identify short-term goals – these objectives include those aims that one can achieve within twelve months.
Identify long-term goals – these aims include activities that one can complete over several years.
Develop strategic plans that can connect between two categories of goals.

Studying the prospects of a career enhances one’s ability to breakdown the desired goals. For example, every successful person takes specific steps to achieve the desired goals. In this case, one should learn from what mentors do to achieve their specific occupation objectives and successes. Then, exploring the professional development of mentors allows one to determine the specific steps to take in pursuing aspirations. In practice, one should consider exploring some opportunities, like online learning, additional certification, and mentorship that can lead to the development of hard and soft skills. Hence, one should consider studying future professional prospects when breaking down aspirations into short- and long-term goals.

Stage 4: Making Career Goals Measurable

Creating specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (smart) goals enhances one’s ability to achieve desired outcomes. For example, an aspiring student or employee should create smart goals after outlining the incremental steps to reach the ultimate career path. Basically, this step allows an individual to identify the progress made in achieving occupational goals. Besides, one identifies the intended progress after a specific time. Then, other benefits of using smart goals include a clear development of plans that can allow an individual to move from one step in the professional path to the other. In turn, students should set specific deadlines for achieving career goals. Therefore, one should consider creating smart aspirations.

Stage 5: Creating an Action Plan

The last step in creating career goals includes developing an action plan. For example, individuals must identify the resources required to achieve specific goals created. In this case, seeking professional assistance and using online resources can help an individual to identify the necessary resources and steps required to achieve specific aspirations. Also, effective action plans allow individuals to take specific steps towards achieving the desired career goal. Therefore, one must consider developing an executable action plan.

Important Factors on How to Write a Coherent Career Goals Essay

One should revise career goals at every stage – changing aspirations depend on new realizations that a person may experience after considering different factors.
Reviewing and changing different professions can improve one’s level of satisfaction. In this case, an individual should rely on evidence-based approaches to settle on specific professional goals.
Five stages identified above should provide a clear explanation of how the aspirant adapts the career, forms a clear concept, impact of professional experience, and anticipated future profession.

General Rules of Writing Good Career Goals Essay Examples

Career goals essay should have three main sections, namely the introduction, body, and conclusion. In this case, the primary goal of the structure is to allow an individual to communicate the career plan effectively. Firstly, the introduction should provide background information about the professional path identified. Secondly, the body section should provide clear and accurate details to support specific goals that one intends to take. Thirdly, the conclusion should sum up the entire essay without introducing new facts. Hence, some guidelines that one should follow in completing these three sections are:

1. Introduction

The opening paragraph should begin with a phrase that captures the reader’s attention. In this case, the opening statement should motivate the admission committee or employer to read through the essay. Then, other details should give an overview of the career plan. In turn, the introductory paragraph should not exceed 10% of the entire length of the career goals essay. Also, the primary aim of this section is to allow an interested person to understand what the applicant intends to do to achieve specific professional goals.

The body of the career goals essay should contain several paragraphs. Basically, every paragraph must focus on a single goal that the applicant intends to achieve. In practice, each body section must follow a sandwich rule. The method allows one to begin with a topic sentence, followed by supporting and explanations. Besides, each section must end with a summative and transitioning statement. In this case, each passage must provide adequate support to each professional goal and should take approximately 80% of the entire composition. Also, applicants must provide clear and accurate details to convince the intended audience.

True details convince admission committees than idealized concepts. For example, applicants should consider providing accurate details in the essay as opposed to idealized concepts. From a practical perspective, the body section should contain real-life cases that led to a professional choice. Besides, one should consider giving accurate facts and explanations on how various factors will improve the future occupation. In turn, some important factors that an aspirant should consider are the ways his or her career may contribute towards community development. Therefore, facts enhance the overall quality of the career goals essay.

3. Conclusion

The ending paragraph should summarize the concepts provided in the essay. For example, an aspirant should bring the entire composition into a unique closure. Basically, individuals should link the opening and body sections. In turn, this section must show the readers that one has come to an end of the writing process. Hence, the ending passage should take approximately 10% of the entire essay.

Key Steps on Writing a Career Goals Essay Sample

Applicants should consider the following steps to ensure that they present outstanding essays.

Writing several drafts – An applicant should consider preparing several drafts of the essay. Basically, this strategy allows one to refine ideas presented. In turn, revising drafts improves the overall quality of the paper. Also, one can add or remove some details to enhance the flow of ideas.
Editing essays – Applicants should revise their essays to identify and correct grammatical errors and sentence structure. For instance, effective revisions lead to flawless papers, which appeals to the target audience. In turn, one should consider allowing peers to revise essays. Moreover, peer-reviewing is an important step in improving the sentence structure in the career goals essay.
Including evidence – Prudent learners consider searching for adequate evidence concerning their profession to include it in the essay. In this case, one should include relevant experiences that can support future aspirations.
Institutional requirements – One should consider specific requirements set by an institution for completing a career goals essay. In turn, some of the important factors that one should consider include the overall length of the paper and structure.

Writing a Perfect Career Goals Essay

Every applicant focuses on writing a perfect career goals essay. Basically, one should consider understanding the concept of professional goals before beginning the writing process. In this case, aspirations are forms of personal development aspirations that a person focuses on achieving by considering ambitions. For instance, graduates should focus on professional and educational objectives. Also, including details about anticipated salaries makes the entire essay vague. Therefore, an applicant should avoid including irrelevant details when preparing an aspiration essay.

Students should set aspirations for different stages of their careers. For example, effective plans should contain specific stages that one should accomplish. In this case, every stage should have specific goals. Also, one should include measurable and achievable goals. Therefore, applicants should include specific goals for each stage included in the career plan.

Effective essay career goals essay should include a clear description of adaptation, formation, maturity, and later career stated. Basically, the adaptation stage entails details on how an individual gained the competence and ability to learn from mentors on the significance of a specific profession. In this case, the formation phase explains how one will strive to work independently and become a useful employer. Then, the maturity step should entail details on how learners gain professional experiences. Besides, the late-career phase focuses on the scope of future career interests. Thus, an effective aspiration essay should include a clear description of all the stages that one should take in developing a career.

Summing Up on How to Write a Good Career Goals Essay

Career goals essays are pieces of writing where students explain their selected professional path they wish to pursue. Basically, outstanding papers contain details on what an individual intends to achieve in a profession. Also, one should include some stages of career development. In this case, effective essays follow a specific structure that includes the introduction, body, or paragraph sections. Besides, applicants must consider revising and editing career goals essays to improve the overall quality of papers. In turn, aspiring university and job applicants should:

include career goals in each stage of professional development;
rely on evidence-based approaches to settle on specific aspirations;
revise career goals essays several times to achieve the desired quality.

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

How to write a case brief: template and explanations, what to do if you can't find a job after college.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Professions & Career — Job

Essay Examples on Job

What makes a good job essay topics.

When it comes to choosing a topic for your job essay, it's important to consider What Makes a Good essay topic. A good job essay topic should be relevant, engaging, and thought-provoking. It should also allow for in-depth analysis and discussion. In order to brainstorm and choose a good job essay topic, consider your own interests and passions, as well as current trends and issues in the job market. Additionally, think about the potential impact and significance of the topic, as well as its potential for generating new ideas and insights. A good essay topic should also be specific and focused, allowing for a clear and concise discussion.

Best Job Essay Topics

The Gig Economy: The Future of Work
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Employment
The Rise of Remote Work: Pros and Cons
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
The Role of Company Culture in Employee Satisfaction
The Future of Traditional 9-5 Jobs
The Influence of Social Media on Job Searching
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Freelancing
The Psychology of Work-Life Balance
The Impact of Technology on Job Automation
The Evolution of Job Interview Techniques
The Role of Soft Skills in Career Success
The Influence of Gender in the Job Market
The Future of Entrepreneurship
The Psychological Effects of Unemployment
The Impact of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
The Importance of Networking in Career Development
The Role of Mentoring in Professional Growth
The Challenges of Work-From-Home Burnout
The Influence of Globalization on Job Opportunities

Job essay topics Prompts

Imagine a world where everyone works from home. How would this impact the job market and society as a whole?
Write about a time when you faced a major career decision. What factors did you consider and how did it shape your career path?
If you could create your dream job, what would it be and why? How would it benefit both you and the community?
Reflect on a mentor or role model who has had a significant impact on your career. What lessons did they teach you and how did it shape your professional development?
Explore the concept of work-life integration. How can individuals achieve a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives in today's fast-paced world?

Choosing a good job essay topic requires careful consideration and creativity. By brainstorming and considering current trends and issues in the job market, as well as your own interests and passions, you can select a topic that is relevant, engaging, and thought-provoking. The best job essay topics are those that allow for in-depth analysis and discussion, as well as the generation of new ideas and insights. With these recommendations and creative prompts in mind, you can take your job essay writing to the next level.

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The Definition of Job Description

Discussion on how to find the job you love, the impact of technology on the future of work, job satisfaction is more important, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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A Reflection of My Job Fair Presentation and The Opportunities Presented

Job questions, the job of video game artist ant the universities where you can be taught it, the connection between job satisfaction and job attitudes, how it jobs are better than other, working as a freelancer, personal writing: criminal justice career choices, human resource management: pros & cons of diversity in workplace, a file cabinet helps keep your home office organized, the profession of a lawyer, why i want to be a journalist, the profession of a lineman: pros and cons, civil engineering as an occupation, career profile research assignment: a career of social worker, first working day - the skillsusa review, office space movies review, profession of film and video editor, the roles and responsibilities of a talent manager, my life as a performing artist, my career plan in the power sector, relevant topics.

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Describe Your Ideal Job- Best Essay that Wins Purpose

The ideal profession is a professional way of doing things that you love and that makes you fully satisfied. Describe your ideal job essay that needs to cover some particular areas. This article will be discussing some points and examples of Describe your ideal job essay.

Introduction to Describe your ideal job essay

It is a profession that is good, interesting, and most importantly, happy, and rewarded with the source of income for it. To understand what work would be a norm, I must first understand myself first, then the motivation and motivation of my work. I want to continue my work, I’m probably just not sure right now, but I’m pretty sure how I want to do it.

My ideal job is to do something that I can help others, for example, to do something for someone else; Radiography, consultants, or a teacher. My ideal work should have three good qualities; a Good environment increased opportunities and should work hard.

The best environment I hope to see in my ideal work is the first important quality. The best work environment for the ideal job is to work with the right people because success will be followed after a team where each person cooperates with integrity, and others humbly accept and help others develop as better people.

For me, the best work environment is very important because it is the best thing to have a good relationship with colleagues. A positive work environment is good for workers to come to work, and it motivates them to survive throughout the day.

This ideal work is to be a profession as well as be able to make a positive impact on me, from the parent to the void, to the home and the family, and to meet my goals and beliefs and to live in that confusing world. Working with people you dislike can cause problems to be uncomfortable with your work.

The second chance I expected for my ideal work for increased opportunities. Employees are able to expand their knowledge, skills, and skills and apply skills acquired in new situations for growth and development opportunities. The opportunity to gain new skills and experience can help employees to increase motivation and job satisfaction and control the working pressure on staff more effectively.

By enabling opportunities for plan, growth, and development, organizations can enhance the quality of their staff’s work experience and understand the benefits of developing staff to their full potential. Whether the jobs that offer big growth opportunities, whether you’ve joined a lower or middle level, stands as the top character of perfect work.

After raising the proposal every person knows that new ideas, new ideas come, and so on. When we are doing great work in our jobs we want to continue doing good work and we want to do this as soon as possible.

When jobs give us the opportunity to grow, we will have to take advantage because there were no jobs and people wanted to get the opportunity to grow. Hard work in my ideal work I hope the last quality. Nothing great is done easily. Keeping busy working for you a lot is better than just doing something as you sit.

Some who work harder show that they can do everything and even more. It is a good thing for the workers because they give good references from people who work for you. It begins to know how people work so that they do not have the chance to continue working and lose their job.

Those who work hard, are rewarded. I know because I have seen it, giving you better opportunities for your work and giving you a good income. Learn to make your money work for you. Doing a lot of work and spending every money you make is not smart. Many want to work harder and ultimately when they work, they become proud and selfish, selfish is worse because it does not let you work hard.

The basic definition of perfect work and ideal work has many qualities. But virtually, an ideal job can not exist at all times. I am sure everybody’s “ideal” is mentioned in the same sentence as “work”. Everyone has what they have in their pictures on their heads. Where they want to go to life, some kind of job, many kids in the house, where you want to live. So how do we define a perfect work or ideal work?

A perfect job that you excel in is compatibility with you and that you are very comfortable with. The desire to dream begins in childhood.

A good salary-paid job is not the only thing I want to work on. I want to work with great people, with whom I enjoy spending time, and with those, I usually can not avoid. The importance is what we want and what we want to do, and we should have a good salary so that we can live.

describe your ideal job essay 02

Most people can learn knowledge because they hope to get the ideal work for themselves. For me, I know it’s an important reason to learn knowledge.

For my future work environment, I want to work in the marketing sector. By identifying the marketing requirements and developing the right products to fill them, there is more to marketing and it is universally available through advertising to reach. I hope the company is located in the Central Business District, and the company has about one hundred employees.

Also, I think the private secretary will work in my standard work and work long-term. As a personal secretary, I should discuss the marketing manager’s guidance and responses to his business letters, keeping the company’s multiple files and records, especially the marketing director and some files and records, and a few minutes in his presence… Of course, without a salary, I hope to get some profit.

For example, subsidies for coverage including holidays and holidays, employee support programs, social work, spouse, domestic workers, and competitive healthcare, medical, dental, vision, life, etc. Without my basic knowledge of work, I have to realize some professional knowledge about marketing, computer skills, communication skills, and experience studying abroad.

In conclusion, because I know how to speak and work carefully, and I am very good at papers and daily routines, I think in the future I can be fit for a personal secretary.

describe your ideal job essay 03

How do I imagine an ideal job? If you have a well-paid job, you can consider that you have a good job, but there are many good things in an ideal job.

In my opinion, it is an ideal job when you sit in your office and create your own rules. Have a good secretary and he will make your work more comfortable. Of course, nowadays strategies are handled by all and the work is important in high technology. And it will make your work much more comfortable and easy.

It is normal to work eight hours a day now, but some people try to work longer to increase their salary. It has bad effects on their health. Ideally, it needs to be a free schedule but it’s just a dream about an ideal job.

There is no standard work in the real world. If a person wants an ideal job, he must choose his future career in the initial few years. That’s why we choose our future careers in school. Then we go to the university or institute to get this job. After graduation, we started our careers. In the beginning, we will have to work hard to get a promotion.

There are two ways to do the ideal work: the first time you work and try to get promotions. Secondly, it just works which just works for you and you are fully satisfied with it.

Describe your ideal job essay 04

An ideal job for me is a work that will help me improve my knowledge and skills; A career that will help me to grow professionally and professionally as a profession; job that is eager to work for me and give me the best performance every day. The actuary is my ideal job.

This career has attracted me due to my diverse work. You can work in a specialist field in the direction of insurance, pension, benefits, health care, investment, banking, or risk management for any major organization, or to counsel all types of projects.

Secondly, international opportunities attract me to this career. The Actuary is a truly global job, to transfer actuarial work from country to country.

Once you become eligible, you can go anywhere in the world with your aquarium expertise. It attracts me because of its prizes. Actuaries are well compensated. Even at the entry level, salaries for Acquired Assistants are generally high. In fact, it is one of the highest-paid businesses.

To become an Actuary, you must be a “numbers person”. And I’m kind of a “number person”. There are difficulties to solve problems and solve the problem of mathematics or statistics. I know that because I’m doing a lot of good work in mathematics at school.

Last year I got an average of 95 for academic math and now it is more than 90 percent of academic math and I really like mathematics. I am a visual student, enjoying graphs and charts and I like to get information through reading.

I’m a kind of help I want to explain things to other people; My friends choose to solve their problems and find out other people’s opinions. I have a detailed type. I enjoy working at a steady pace and I like to follow a set of instructions. Like a doctor or lawyer, an acquisition earns professional status along with a test to prove a specific level of knowledge. You must pass a series conducted by the Society of Aquarius (SOA) or the Costati Actuarial Society (CAS) to become a fully qualified aquarium.

To prepare myself to be a sanctuary, I must keep my interest in math. Also, I will take the issues related to this career in grades 11 and 12. For example, math, feasibility and statistics, calculation, business, computer, algebra and geometry, calculus, economics, and law. I will practice and develop some of my other skills such as practice skills, group work skills and etc.

In an interview with Amresh, an actress working in the health department of a large insurance company group, I learned that acupuncture must be able to think clearly and reasonably and should be hard-working and dedicated.

I also learned that in the field of mathematics, statistics, or biological statistics, the performers make good professors; With their expertise in statistics, they can act as statisticians, analyzing statistics in Canada’s population analysis or analyzing public opinion poll for upcoming elections.

Through this study, I learned a lot about aquariums, for example, what they do, where they work, earn, and so on. I learn that any qualified evaluation and skills can be improved. And all of this will help me build my next step in the future.

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Describe your ideal job essay 05

There are different standards about what people want. Some people want to be teachers, some want to be a doctor, some want to be lawyers, etc.

My ideal job is to be a nurse and that is why I have chosen my main English nursing in medical college and I will study this college for five years. I think I should make a living using it to learn. More importantly, I love my main love too. I’d like to be a nurse after graduating from college. Doctors can help a lot better doctors to treat patients. People always treat nurses as “White Angel.” Surely, it’s a wonderful call.

My ideal job is to be a good nurse. When I was young, I saw many patients in the hospital. I hope I can help them maintain their health. Also, I call many nurses in disaster. They had hoped for homeless people. They are called “white corners”. So I want to be a good nurse, I want to be an angel. I hope I can help others escape from the pain. I hope I can devote my time to this career.

Meanwhile, some people choose to do things that were slightly different from their studies, such as Leo and others who wrote about becoming a doctor.

My ideal job is as a doctor. My main nursing is. But I do not have the aim, to be a nurse. My dream is to become a popular doctor who can contribute to his life throughout his life. When I was young, I was always sick and I was weak. There were not many doctors in my suburbs. So today it is If I become a doctor, then I will do my best to treat patients coming to my clinic. I’m ready enough for my dream.

I will be honest, he is not the only one who said that he wants to become a doctor/nurse due to poor health while he is young. So, when my children were sick when they were young, or they seem to be beautiful on paper for this particular matter.

However, in fact, there was a good deal of diversity, many students prefer writing about work that was outside of the medical field. In fact, if I was deprived of them, then I would say that after nursing, the beginner was the second most popular choice, considering how many articles I read here were like Sunny.

My ideal job is to be a teacher. When I was young, I envy teachers because they had a lot of knowledge and many of us were taught that we will never know. Another thing I think is teaching a reputable job. Ultimately, but at least, there is not much poor area of lack of educational institutions. I hope I can be a teacher, I want to help them.

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Among the two classes, there were many students like Olivia, who wrote in the same line.

My ideal work should be to be a teacher – a plain, regular job because it can earn me my interest rate. As a teacher, undoubtedly, I will not earn a lot of money and I will not get great fame. However, from my own point of view, teaching is really a fruitful thing. I just can not teach the students knowledge, but I can teach students to separate from their mistakes, which can affect the whole life of the students. Teachers play a very important role in everyone’s life, so teaching just connects my score with the appropriate value – doing fruitful things, and loving every day.

Thank you, are there “more than nurses, doctors, or teachers” among the articles? Several of my authors have also written about how they want to be writers, such as Tino

My ideal work writer and this is because I love reading different books and creating new ideas in my world. I want to write a novel because it can create the world that you want. You can make your dreams come true in your world. I want someone to have a common idea with me. We can chat and play with each other, and exchange our views. In Ovel’s world, I can do some of the characters they want to do. I can use people touching my story.

describe your ideal job essay 06

My ideal work should be to be a writer, but I am not like those who write about daily life, we are known. Instead, I will write skinners and customs in foreign countries through my own experience. I like to travel and write, so I hope they can be related to each other. When I was young, I read a few textbooks written by a Chinese famous writer, whose nickname San Mao The sceneries presented by her are deeply influenced by my mind. It’s beautiful words and cozy style makes me charming. Probably from that time, my ideal work was budded.

My ideal job is to become a bookstore shopper. We know that books play an important role in our lives. They expand our horizons in different ways. In addition, I like reading good books. I was enjoying my time reading a book. Therefore, hosting a bookstore is the best thing for me.

My ideal job is to become a master’s because once I am the boss, I will lend a lot of money and I can do something which I want to help other people in hardship. I want a lot of help from people When I go shopping with my friend, I see some people bee for money or food. If I have money I will pay for them. They are having a difficult time. When the Sichuan earthquake occurs, many children were losing their people. Since then, if I had enough money I thought, I wanted to give them a warm house and make them happy.

describe your ideal job essay 07

Nursing is my ideal job. When I was a small girl that was always my dream . There are many people who feel nursing who are tired and do not pay well. Probably a couple of years ago, this was the case. The thing seems to have changed now for the better. Today there are many specialized hospitals open in many cities that require more nurses. More interesting is the focus of the hospitals for those who have special training and skills.

For example, the orthopedic hospital will look for a nurse who is trained in trauma care along with unstable treatment. Look at a career in nursing so there are very few nurses. It’s just another job that needs to work well. If you think that the nurses will continue to play the part of Florence Nightingale, but in this day and age will expect it to be very little.

For a very long time, a nursing woman has been associated with gender. Many believe that women need to be resisted. It may sound like a sexist attitude; But unfortunately, it is a common one today.

Most nurses are given general nursing training before going to a clinic or hospital. Very often, this is not enough. Nurses keep learning to work with patients. Finding a job is not the same as finding out a job. A career is a broad field that I want to work in; Unlike a job that I’m paying for that is a task. To find out what career I really love, I have to think of myself rather than my family and/or friends. The most important choice of my decision to make my life happy and to succeed is to think about myself and my decision.

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I just have to know my decision. I will only know about my decision that will affect people around me. I believe that I would thoroughly consider what made me happy. I will appeal to my loved ones, respect, and care for others and my interests.

Nursing is my true passion and a career that I can hear at Kaplan University is very important for success in this career. I just needed the opportunity to prove my ability to be an amazing nurse. Why I chose Criminal Justice because there was some temporary problem in my nursing field but,

Criminal Justice Work I believe is a great field. This gives you a chance to make a difference among the communities. I love to investigate the situation and look for evidence. I found out that something else that I was good at.

My husband says that I love to investigate so I said maybe something I can do. My adviser also told me that I could not be nursing even though I still want to consider something else. I certainly want to work in the field of homicide investigation. Although I find it interesting, I first saw 48 and a lot of forensic files.

I think a college education is a reason for me to open more opportunities in the future, now it is more difficult to get a job without a college education. I certainly do not want to work at Burger King or McDonald’s for the rest of my life. I see many big men and women working so hard on this minimum wage, but never reaching the top.

I said to myself that I am not like myself and that I will do something for myself and my family. So I ask whatever you want in life, with the right positive effect and motivation you can do in some of your life! Barbara Coleman.

How to Write the Perfect Essay

06 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

Student sitting at a desk writing in a notebook

You can keep adding to this plan, crossing bits out and linking the different bubbles when you spot connections between them. Even though you won’t have time to make a detailed plan under exam conditions, it can be helpful to draft a brief one, including a few key words, so that you don’t panic and go off topic when writing your essay.

If you don’t like the mind map format, there are plenty of others to choose from: you could make a table, a flowchart, or simply a list of bullet points.

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Thanks for signing up, step 2: have a clear structure.

Think about this while you’re planning: your essay is like an argument or a speech. It needs to have a logical structure, with all your points coming together to answer the question.

Start with the basics! It’s best to choose a few major points which will become your main paragraphs. Three main paragraphs is a good number for an exam essay, since you’ll be under time pressure.

If you agree with the question overall, it can be helpful to organise your points in the following pattern:

YES (agreement with the question)
AND (another YES point)
BUT (disagreement or complication)

If you disagree with the question overall, try:

AND (another BUT point)

For example, you could structure the Of Mice and Men sample question, “To what extent is Curley’s wife portrayed as a victim in Of Mice and Men ?”, as follows:

YES (descriptions of her appearance)
AND (other people’s attitudes towards her)
BUT (her position as the only woman on the ranch gives her power as she uses her femininity to her advantage)

If you wanted to write a longer essay, you could include additional paragraphs under the YES/AND categories, perhaps discussing the ways in which Curley’s wife reveals her vulnerability and insecurities, and shares her dreams with the other characters. Alternatively, you could also lengthen your essay by including another BUT paragraph about her cruel and manipulative streak.

Of course, this is not necessarily the only right way to answer this essay question – as long as you back up your points with evidence from the text, you can take any standpoint that makes sense.

Step 3: Back up your points with well-analysed quotations

You wouldn’t write a scientific report without including evidence to support your findings, so why should it be any different with an essay? Even though you aren’t strictly required to substantiate every single point you make with a quotation, there’s no harm in trying.

A close reading of your quotations can enrich your appreciation of the question and will be sure to impress examiners. When selecting the best quotations to use in your essay, keep an eye out for specific literary techniques. For example, you could highlight Curley’s wife’s use of a rhetorical question when she says, a”n’ what am I doin’? Standin’ here talking to a bunch of bindle stiffs.” This might look like:

The rhetorical question “an’ what am I doin’?” signifies that Curley’s wife is very insecure; she seems to be questioning her own life choices. Moreover, she does not expect anyone to respond to her question, highlighting her loneliness and isolation on the ranch.

Other literary techniques to look out for include:

Tricolon – a group of three words or phrases placed close together for emphasis
Tautology – using different words that mean the same thing: e.g. “frightening” and “terrifying”
Parallelism – ABAB structure, often signifying movement from one concept to another
Chiasmus – ABBA structure, drawing attention to a phrase
Polysyndeton – many conjunctions in a sentence
Asyndeton – lack of conjunctions, which can speed up the pace of a sentence
Polyptoton – using the same word in different forms for emphasis: e.g. “done” and “doing”
Alliteration – repetition of the same sound, including assonance (similar vowel sounds), plosive alliteration (“b”, “d” and “p” sounds) and sibilance (“s” sounds)
Anaphora – repetition of words, often used to emphasise a particular point

Don’t worry if you can’t locate all of these literary devices in the work you’re analysing. You can also discuss more obvious techniques, like metaphor, simile and onomatopoeia. It’s not a problem if you can’t remember all the long names; it’s far more important to be able to confidently explain the effects of each technique and highlight its relevance to the question.

Step 4: Be creative and original throughout

Anyone can write an essay using the tips above, but the thing that really makes it “perfect” is your own unique take on the topic. If you’ve noticed something intriguing or unusual in your reading, point it out – if you find it interesting, chances are the examiner will too!

Creative writing and essay writing are more closely linked than you might imagine. Keep the idea that you’re writing a speech or argument in mind, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

It’s important to set out your line of argument in your introduction, introducing your main points and the general direction your essay will take, but don’t forget to keep something back for the conclusion, too. Yes, you need to summarise your main points, but if you’re just repeating the things you said in your introduction, the body of the essay is rendered pointless.

Think of your conclusion as the climax of your speech, the bit everything else has been leading up to, rather than the boring plenary at the end of the interesting stuff.

To return to Of Mice and Men once more, here’s an example of the ideal difference between an introduction and a conclusion:

Introduction

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , Curley’s wife is portrayed as an ambiguous character. She could be viewed either as a cruel, seductive temptress or a lonely woman who is a victim of her society’s attitudes. Though she does seem to wield a form of sexual power, it is clear that Curley’s wife is largely a victim. This interpretation is supported by Steinbeck’s description of her appearance, other people’s attitudes, her dreams, and her evident loneliness and insecurity.

Overall, it is clear that Curley’s wife is a victim and is portrayed as such throughout the novel in the descriptions of her appearance, her dreams, other people’s judgemental attitudes, and her loneliness and insecurities. However, a character who was a victim and nothing else would be one-dimensional and Curley’s wife is not. Although she suffers in many ways, she is shown to assert herself through the manipulation of her femininity – a small rebellion against the victimisation she experiences.

Both refer back consistently to the question and summarise the essay’s main points. However, the conclusion adds something new which has been established in the main body of the essay and complicates the simple summary which is found in the introduction.

Hannah is an undergraduate English student at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and has a particular interest in postcolonial literature and the Gothic. She thinks literature is a crucial way of developing empathy and learning about the wider world. When she isn’t writing about 17th-century court masques, she enjoys acting, travelling and creative writing.

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How to Write the Perfect Essay: A Step-By-Step Guide for Students

June 2, 2022

What is an essay?

What makes a good essay?

Typical essay structure, 7 steps to writing a good essay, a step-by-step guide to writing a good essay.

Whether you are gearing up for your GCSE coursework submissions or looking to brush up on your A-level writing skills, we have the perfect essay-writing guide for you. 💯

Staring at a blank page before writing an essay can feel a little daunting . Where do you start? What should your introduction say? And how should you structure your arguments? They are all fair questions and we have the answers! Take the stress out of essay writing with this step-by-step guide – you’ll be typing away in no time. 👩‍💻

What is an essay?

Generally speaking, an essay designates a literary work in which the author defends a point of view or a personal conviction, using logical arguments and literary devices in order to inform and convince the reader.

So – although essays can be broadly split into four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive – an essay can simply be described as a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. 🤔

The purpose of an essay is to present a coherent argument in response to a stimulus or question and to persuade the reader that your position is credible, believable and reasonable. 👌

So, a ‘good’ essay relies on a confident writing style – it’s clear, well-substantiated, focussed, explanatory and descriptive . The structure follows a logical progression and above all, the body of the essay clearly correlates to the tile – answering the question where one has been posed.

But, how do you go about making sure that you tick all these boxes and keep within a specified word count? Read on for the answer as well as an example essay structure to follow and a handy step-by-step guide to writing the perfect essay – hooray. 🙌

Sometimes, it is helpful to think about your essay like it is a well-balanced argument or a speech – it needs to have a logical structure, with all your points coming together to answer the question in a coherent manner. ⚖️

Of course, essays can vary significantly in length but besides that, they all follow a fairly strict pattern or structure made up of three sections. Lean into this predictability because it will keep you on track and help you make your point clearly. Let’s take a look at the typical essay structure:

#1 Introduction

Start your introduction with the central claim of your essay. Let the reader know exactly what you intend to say with this essay. Communicate what you’re going to argue, and in what order. The final part of your introduction should also say what conclusions you’re going to draw – it sounds counter-intuitive but it’s not – more on that below. 1️⃣

Make your point, evidence it and explain it. This part of the essay – generally made up of three or more paragraphs depending on the length of your essay – is where you present your argument. The first sentence of each paragraph – much like an introduction to an essay – should summarise what your paragraph intends to explain in more detail. 2️⃣

#3 Conclusion

This is where you affirm your argument – remind the reader what you just proved in your essay and how you did it. This section will sound quite similar to your introduction but – having written the essay – you’ll be summarising rather than setting out your stall. 3️⃣

No essay is the same but your approach to writing them can be. As well as some best practice tips, we have gathered our favourite advice from expert essay-writers and compiled the following 7-step guide to writing a good essay every time. 👍

#1 Make sure you understand the question

#2 complete background reading.

#3 Make a detailed plan

#4 Write your opening sentences

#5 flesh out your essay in a rough draft, #6 evidence your opinion, #7 final proofread and edit.

Now that you have familiarised yourself with the 7 steps standing between you and the perfect essay, let’s take a closer look at each of those stages so that you can get on with crafting your written arguments with confidence .

This is the most crucial stage in essay writing – r ead the essay prompt carefully and understand the question. Highlight the keywords – like ‘compare,’ ‘contrast’ ‘discuss,’ ‘explain’ or ‘evaluate’ – and let it sink in before your mind starts racing . There is nothing worse than writing 500 words before realising you have entirely missed the brief . 🧐

Unless you are writing under exam conditions , you will most likely have been working towards this essay for some time, by doing thorough background reading. Re-read relevant chapters and sections, highlight pertinent material and maybe even stray outside the designated reading list, this shows genuine interest and extended knowledge. 📚

#3 Make a detailed plan

Following the handy structure we shared with you above, now is the time to create the ‘skeleton structure’ or essay plan. Working from your essay title, plot out what you want your paragraphs to cover and how that information is going to flow. You don’t need to start writing any full sentences yet but it might be useful to think about the various quotes you plan to use to substantiate each section. 📝

Having mapped out the overall trajectory of your essay, you can start to drill down into the detail. First, write the opening sentence for each of the paragraphs in the body section of your essay. Remember – each paragraph is like a mini-essay – the opening sentence should summarise what the paragraph will then go on to explain in more detail. 🖊️

Next, it's time to write the bulk of your words and flesh out your arguments. Follow the ‘point, evidence, explain’ method. The opening sentences – already written – should introduce your ‘points’, so now you need to ‘evidence’ them with corroborating research and ‘explain’ how the evidence you’ve presented proves the point you’re trying to make. ✍️

With a rough draft in front of you, you can take a moment to read what you have written so far. Are there any sections that require further substantiation? Have you managed to include the most relevant material you originally highlighted in your background reading? Now is the time to make sure you have evidenced all your opinions and claims with the strongest quotes, citations and material. 📗

This is your final chance to re-read your essay and go over it with a fine-toothed comb before pressing ‘submit’. We highly recommend leaving a day or two between finishing your essay and the final proofread if possible – you’ll be amazed at the difference this makes, allowing you to return with a fresh pair of eyes and a more discerning judgment. 🤓

If you are looking for advice and support with your own essay-writing adventures, why not t ry a free trial lesson with GoStudent? Our tutors are experts at boosting academic success and having fun along the way. Get in touch and see how it can work for you today. 🎒

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Essay on Career for Students and Children

500+ words essay on career.

Career is a very important thing in one’s life. Whatever career path you choose to follow, it will impact your life greatly. Your career will define your status in a society in addition to your lifestyle. In other words, your career will determine your social circle and relationships.

Therefore, it is extremely important to choose the correct career path . From a very young age, we aspire to be something or the other. While someone aims to be a doctor, some wish to become a painter. Our career choices depend on a lot of things. Thus, it is important to consider all factors before choosing a career path.

How to Choose your Career?

You must consider a number of factors before deciding on your career. Each factor plays a significant role in your choice. Firstly, always assess yourself thoroughly. You must understand your area of interest to choose a career. For instance, someone who dances well can surely become a doctor, but his interest will always be in dance. Thus, ensure that you have the caliber to perform well in the field you choose. This will come from your area of interest itself.

After that, you look for the opportunities available as per your area of interest. Now that you are aware of what you like and dislike, you can easily look for occupations matching your passion. Make a list of the occupations you can get into following your interests. Furthermore, shorten the list you have prepared. You must do so as per what suits you best. Consult with your seniors and parents to make informed decisions.

Most importantly, acquire the skills for the career option you are interested in. Ensure you earn the qualifications and degrees for it. Try taking training programs to enhance your skills. This will give you an upper hand in knowing whether you are correct in choosing the specific career plan. Furthermore, create an impressive resume which can help you get the right opportunities.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

How to Achieve your Career Goal?

There are steps you need to take before achieving your career goal. As they say, success doesn’t come overnight. You must work along the way to accomplish your goals. There is always hope if you have the will. Firstly, create profiles on different job portals to attract the employer’s attention. When you maintain your profile well, you will be able to get good career opportunities.

Moreover, always maintain your network. Build a solid network and create sources in the field. This way you can update yourself with the latest happenings in the industry. In addition, try to attend the related seminars and workshops that happen related to your career choice. You will meet influential people of the same field who can broaden your thinking.

In short, always remember to stay determined. You can easily achieve your career goal if you set your mind to it. In other words, people usually distract themselves easily. You must not do so and focus on your career path to achieve your goals efficiently.

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“What Makes You a Good Candidate for This Job?” (Smart Answers)

By Status.net Editorial Team on November 24, 2023 — 11 minutes to read

When interviewers ask, “What makes you a good candidate for this job?” they want to know why you think you are a good fit for the role. They want to hear about the skills, qualifications, or experiences that set you apart from other candidates. To successfully answer this question, you should understand what the employer is looking for and be prepared to communicate how your skills and experience align with those needs.

When asked, “What makes you a good candidate for this job?” be prepared to demonstrate your understanding of the company’s needs and provide concrete examples of your relevant skills and experience.

Identifying Your Unique Qualities

Assessing your skills.

First, think about your skills. You may have excellent time management, problem-solving, or communication skills. To highlight these, you can:

Make a list of your top skills
Provide examples of situations where you used those skills
Explain how your skills will help you excel in the job

For example, if the job requires excellent communication skills, you can talk about your experience in leading group projects or resolving conflicts.

Recognizing Your Achievements

Next, consider your accomplishments. What have you achieved, and how does that make you a good fit for the job? When discussing your achievements, be specific and relate them to the job description. You can mention:

Awards and recognitions you’ve received
Successful projects you’ve completed
Challenges you’ve overcome

For instance, if the job requires you to manage a team, mention your experience in successfully leading teams to meet project deadlines.

Reflecting on Your Experiences

Finally, reflect on your past experiences and what you’ve learned from them. Think about how your experience can help you succeed in the position you are applying for. When illustrating your experiences, mention:

Relevant internships or jobs you held
Personal experiences that taught you valuable skills
Volunteering and community involvement

For example, if the job involves working under pressure, discuss how you successfully managed multiple assignments and tight deadlines during your college projects.

Tailoring Your Response to the Job

Researching the company.

One effective way to show you’re a good candidate for a job is by researching the company beforehand. This can help you understand the organization’s mission, values, goals, and culture. When answering the question, you can demonstrate your awareness of these aspects and highlight how your own values and skills align with the company’s needs.

For example:

“I noticed that your company values teamwork and innovation, which is important to me as well. In my previous role, I collaborated with colleagues to develop and implement new strategies that improved efficiency by 20%.”

Matching Skills with Job Requirements

Another key strategy for tailoring your response is to match your skills and qualifications with the specific job requirements. Spend time studying the job description, and make a list of key skills and experiences mentioned. When you answer the question, focus on how your abilities align with these requirements and showcase how you can contribute to the company’s success. For example:

“Your job description acknowledges the importance of project management skills and strong communication abilities. As an experienced project manager, I’ve delivered various successful projects on time and within budget. Moreover, I’ve demonstrated my adaptability and strong communication skills while working effectively with diverse teams.”

Using tailored examples that show your competence in the desired role is a smart approach to answering “What makes you a good candidate for this job?”. Keep your response relevant and illustrative of your qualifications and how they align with the company’s needs: this will help you present yourself as a great fit for the role and leave a lasting impression on the interviewer.

Related: How to Answer 11 Common Behavioral Interview Questions

How to Answer 9 Common Situational Interview Questions

10 Strong Answers to “What Makes You a Good Candidate for This Job?”

1. “I believe I’m a great fit for this role due to my proven track record in [industry/field]. With over [number] years of experience in [specific skill or role], I’ve developed a comprehensive skill set that aligns perfectly with the job description. My recent achievements at [previous company], where I [specific accomplishment], demonstrate my ability to deliver results that could benefit your team.”

2. “My educational background in [relevant field of study], combined with my hands-on experience in [specific area], makes me a strong candidate. I have consistently demonstrated [key skill, e.g., problem-solving or leadership] in my previous roles, and I am known for my ability to [specific strength, e.g., work under pressure or innovate]. This job aligns with my career goals and my passion for [industry], and I’m excited about the opportunity to contribute to your company’s success.”

3. “I possess a unique combination of skills that set me apart from other candidates. My expertise in [specific software or technical skill] and my experience with [specific type of project or task] have equipped me to make a significant impact on your team. My dedication to continuous learning and professional development means that I’m always up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in [industry/field].”

4. “I’m a good candidate for this job because of my commitment to excellence and my results-oriented approach. In my previous role at [company], I successfully managed projects that led to a [quantifiable outcome, e.g., 20% increase in sales or 30% reduction in turnaround time], demonstrating my ability to directly contribute to company goals. My strong communication skills and team-player attitude make me an ideal match for your company culture.”

5. “My extensive background in [specific area, e.g., customer service or marketing], along with my ability to [specific skill, e.g., build rapport with clients or create compelling campaigns], make me a strong candidate for this job. I’ve received recognition for my [specific achievement or award], which shows my dedication to [relevant aspect of the job, e.g., customer satisfaction or brand growth].”

6. “I am a good candidate for this position because of my adaptability and innovative thinking. In my previous role at [previous company], I was faced with [specific challenge], and I was able to devise and implement a strategy that [result of strategy]. My ability to think on my feet and embrace new challenges has consistently allowed me to add value to my team and exceed expectations.”

7. “My dedication to [specific area, e.g., user experience or operational efficiency] is evident through my extensive portfolio of work. I bring a unique perspective that combines creativity with analytical skills, which enables me to approach problems from various angles and develop holistic solutions. The position at your company excites me because it would allow me to leverage these skills to [specific goal or project at the new company].”

8. “I have a strong foundation in [relevant field or technology] and a passion for driving results through data-driven decision making. At my last job, I was responsible for [specific responsibility], where I used data to guide our strategies, resulting in [specific positive outcome]. My ability to translate complex data into actionable insights would make me a valuable asset to your team.”

9. “As someone with a deep understanding of [industry or sector], I have honed my skills in [specific skill or area of expertise] to a high level of proficiency. My previous role involved [specific responsibility or project], where I [specific accomplishment or contribution]. This experience has equipped me to make an immediate impact at your company, and I am eager to apply my skills to help achieve [company’s goals or mission].”

10. “I am confident that I am a good candidate for this job because of my dedication to professional growth and my alignment with the company’s values of [company values, e.g., innovation, integrity, community]. My background in [field/industry] has prepared me to face the challenges this role presents, and my proactive approach to [specific work-related challenge] has been recognized with [award, promotion, or other honors]. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to bring my expertise to your team.”

“What unique contributions would you bring to our team if we hired you?”

“If hired, I would bring a fresh perspective to the team, combining my cross-industry experience with a passion for innovation. My background has equipped me with a unique set of skills that allows me to approach problems differently, often leading to creative and effective solutions. My commitment to professional development means I’m always looking to refine my skills and knowledge, which can inspire a culture of learning and growth within the team.”

“How does your previous experience prepare you for success in this job?”

“My previous experience has been a blend of hands-on project management and customer engagement, which aligns well with the requirements of this role. I’ve successfully led teams through complex projects, ensuring that we met deadlines and exceeded expectations. These experiences have honed my leadership, organizational, and communication skills, all of which are critical for success in this position.”

“If chosen for this role, what are the first things you would focus on?”

“In the first few weeks, I would concentrate on building a comprehensive understanding of the company’s mission and values, as well as the specific goals of my department. Establishing strong rapport with my colleagues will be crucial, as will a thorough review of ongoing projects and processes. I’d also seek to identify quick wins where I could immediately contribute, setting the stage for long-term success.”

“Without prior experience in this field, how would you contribute to our company?”

Despite lacking direct experience in this particular field, you possess transferable skills that are valuable across different industries: present this information for a successful answer. Example:

“My diverse background has provided me with a versatile skill set that can be applied to this new field. My project management experience has taught me how to lead initiatives efficiently, even when learning about a new subject matter. My eagerness to learn and adapt quickly means I can get up to speed rapidly, ensuring that I contribute meaningfully in a short period of time. I also bring a fresh perspective that can lead to innovative approaches and solutions. I am confident that my proactive attitude and the ability to leverage my transferable skills will allow me to make a positive impact on the company from the outset.”

Related: Top Transferable Skills Every Company Wants

How to Write a Career Change Cover Letter [Examples]

“How do your academic background and personal skills make you the right fit for our program?”

“My academic background has provided me with a solid foundation in [relevant field or discipline], where I’ve developed a strong grasp of [key principles or skills related to the job]. This theoretical knowledge, combined with practical applications during my studies, such as [specific projects or experiences], has prepared me to tackle the challenges associated with this program. Beyond these technical skills, I’ve cultivated strong personal qualities such as [personal quality], [personal quality], and [personal quality], which are crucial for success in any collaborative and dynamic environment. My ability to communicate effectively, manage my time efficiently, and quickly adapt to new situations makes me a strong candidate for this program. I am confident that my combination of academic knowledge and personal attributes aligns well with the demands of your program and will allow me to contribute meaningfully to your team.”

Common Mistakes to Avoid

When preparing your response to “What makes you a good candidate for this job?”, it’s important to avoid some common mistakes that might negatively impact your interview. Here are a few pitfalls to steer clear of, along with helpful tips for crafting a strong answer.

Being too modest: While it’s great to be humble, this question is an opportunity for you to showcase your strengths and achievements. Avoid downplaying your accomplishments out of fear of appearing boastful. Instead, confidently share your skills and experiences that are relevant to the job.
Being too generic: Offering a generic response, like “I’m hardworking and dedicated,” won’t help you stand out from other candidates. To make a lasting impression on your interviewer, tailor your answer to the specific requirements of the job. Describe how your unique attributes and experiences make you the ideal candidate for this particular role.
Focusing solely on yourself: While the question asks about you, don’t forget to mention how your skills and qualities will benefit the team/company.
Not using specifics: This is your chance to provide concrete examples that demonstrate your skills and expertise. Vague statements are hard for interviewers to latch onto, so try to include specific instances of your achievements and accomplishments.
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Write a Job Description That Attracts the Right Candidate

Whitney Johnson

It’s often an overlooked step in the hiring process.

If you think the job you’re hiring for hasn’t changed in the last five years, or even in the past year, then it’s probably just about the only thing in your organization that hasn’t. Job postings should be reevaluated and rewritten every time you need to hire. The author offers four suggestions for composing and positioning a job description: 1) Know what you need now, but also envision the future. 2) Understand the hiring context. 3) Avoid limiting language. 4) Think about meaning.

Far too many organizations miss golden opportunities to bring onboard best possible talent for the tasks at hand — and those of the future. When it’s time to recruit, hire, and onboard, the most common approaches are routine and rote, prone to misjudgment and error. The process is costly and, in the end, unfruitful.

WJ Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent-development company and author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company .

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right to an abortion research paper

Open access
Published: 28 June 2021

Impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health services and outcomes: a systematic review protocol

Foluso Ishola ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8644-0570 1 ,
U. Vivian Ukah 1 &
Arijit Nandi 1

Systematic Reviews volume 10 , Article number: 192 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

20k Accesses

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A country’s abortion law is a key component in determining the enabling environment for safe abortion. While restrictive abortion laws still prevail in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), many countries have reformed their abortion laws, with the majority of them moving away from an absolute ban. However, the implications of these reforms on women’s access to and use of health services, as well as their health outcomes, is uncertain. First, there are methodological challenges to the evaluation of abortion laws, since these changes are not exogenous. Second, extant evaluations may be limited in terms of their generalizability, given variation in reforms across the abortion legality spectrum and differences in levels of implementation and enforcement cross-nationally. This systematic review aims to address this gap. Our aim is to systematically collect, evaluate, and synthesize empirical research evidence concerning the impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health services and outcomes in LMICs.

We will conduct a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on changes in abortion laws and women’s health services and outcomes in LMICs. We will search Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and Web of Science databases, as well as grey literature and reference lists of included studies for further relevant literature. As our goal is to draw inference on the impact of abortion law reforms, we will include quasi-experimental studies examining the impact of change in abortion laws on at least one of our outcomes of interest. We will assess the methodological quality of studies using the quasi-experimental study designs series checklist. Due to anticipated heterogeneity in policy changes, outcomes, and study designs, we will synthesize results through a narrative description.

This review will systematically appraise and synthesize the research evidence on the impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health services and outcomes in LMICs. We will examine the effect of legislative reforms and investigate the conditions that might contribute to heterogeneous effects, including whether specific groups of women are differentially affected by abortion law reforms. We will discuss gaps and future directions for research. Findings from this review could provide evidence on emerging strategies to influence policy reforms, implement abortion services and scale up accessibility.

Systematic review registration

PROSPERO CRD42019126927

Peer Review reports

An estimated 25·1 million unsafe abortions occur each year, with 97% of these in developing countries [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Despite its frequency, unsafe abortion remains a major global public health challenge [ 4 , 5 ]. According to the World health Organization (WHO), nearly 8% of maternal deaths were attributed to unsafe abortion, with the majority of these occurring in developing countries [ 5 , 6 ]. Approximately 7 million women are admitted to hospitals every year due to complications from unsafe abortion such as hemorrhage, infections, septic shock, uterine and intestinal perforation, and peritonitis [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. These often result in long-term effects such as infertility and chronic reproductive tract infections. The annual cost of treating major complications from unsafe abortion is estimated at US$ 232 million each year in developing countries [ 10 , 11 ]. The negative consequences on children’s health, well-being, and development have also been documented. Unsafe abortion increases risk of poor birth outcomes, neonatal and infant mortality [ 12 , 13 ]. Additionally, women who lack access to safe and legal abortion are often forced to continue with unwanted pregnancies, and may not seek prenatal care [ 14 ], which might increase risks of child morbidity and mortality.

Access to safe abortion services is often limited due to a wide range of barriers. Collectively, these barriers contribute to the staggering number of deaths and disabilities seen annually as a result of unsafe abortion, which are disproportionately felt in developing countries [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. A recent systematic review on the barriers to abortion access in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) implicated the following factors: restrictive abortion laws, lack of knowledge about abortion law or locations that provide abortion, high cost of services, judgmental provider attitudes, scarcity of facilities and medical equipment, poor training and shortage of staff, stigma on social and religious grounds, and lack of decision making power [ 17 ].

An important factor regulating access to abortion is abortion law [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Although abortion is a medical procedure, its legal status in many countries has been incorporated in penal codes which specify grounds in which abortion is permitted. These include prohibition in all circumstances, to save the woman’s life, to preserve the woman’s health, in cases of rape, incest, fetal impairment, for economic or social reasons, and on request with no requirement for justification [ 18 , 19 , 20 ].

Although abortion laws in different countries are usually compared based on the grounds under which legal abortions are allowed, these comparisons rarely take into account components of the legal framework that may have strongly restrictive implications, such as regulation of facilities that are authorized to provide abortions, mandatory waiting periods, reporting requirements in cases of rape, limited choice in terms of the method of abortion, and requirements for third-party authorizations [ 19 , 21 , 22 ]. For example, the Zambian Termination of Pregnancy Act permits abortion on socio-economic grounds. It is considered liberal, as it permits legal abortions for more indications than most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa; however, abortions must only be provided in registered hospitals, and three medical doctors—one of whom must be a specialist—must provide signatures to allow the procedure to take place [ 22 ]. Given the critical shortage of doctors in Zambia [ 23 ], this is in fact a major restriction that is only captured by a thorough analysis of the conditions under which abortion services are provided.

Additionally, abortion laws may exist outside the penal codes in some countries, where they are supplemented by health legislation and regulations such as public health statutes, reproductive health acts, court decisions, medical ethic codes, practice guidelines, and general health acts [ 18 , 19 , 24 ]. The diversity of regulatory documents may lead to conflicting directives about the grounds under which abortion is lawful [ 19 ]. For example, in Kenya and Uganda, standards and guidelines on the reduction of morbidity and mortality due to unsafe abortion supported by the constitution was contradictory to the penal code, leaving room for an ambiguous interpretation of the legal environment [ 25 ].

Regulations restricting the range of abortion methods from which women can choose, including medication abortion in particular, may also affect abortion access [ 26 , 27 ]. A literature review contextualizing medication abortion in seven African countries reported that incidence of medication abortion is low despite being a safe, effective, and low-cost abortion method, likely due to legal restrictions on access to the medications [ 27 ].

Over the past two decades, many LMICs have reformed their abortion laws [ 3 , 28 ]. Most have expanded the grounds on which abortion may be performed legally, while very few have restricted access. Countries like Uruguay, South Africa, and Portugal have amended their laws to allow abortion on request in the first trimester of pregnancy [ 29 , 30 ]. Conversely, in Nicaragua, a law to ban all abortion without any exception was introduced in 2006 [ 31 ].

Progressive reforms are expected to lead to improvements in women’s access to safe abortion and health outcomes, including reductions in the death and disabilities that accompany unsafe abortion, and reductions in stigma over the longer term [ 17 , 29 , 32 ]. However, abortion law reforms may yield different outcomes even in countries that experience similar reforms, as the legislative processes that are associated with changing abortion laws take place in highly distinct political, economic, religious, and social contexts [ 28 , 33 ]. This variation may contribute to abortion law reforms having different effects with respect to the health services and outcomes that they are hypothesized to influence [ 17 , 29 ].

Extant empirical literature has examined changes in abortion-related morbidity and mortality, contraceptive usage, fertility, and other health-related outcomes following reforms to abortion laws [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. For example, a study in Mexico reported that a policy that decriminalized and subsidized early-term elective abortion led to substantial reductions in maternal morbidity and that this was particularly strong among vulnerable populations such as young and socioeconomically disadvantaged women [ 38 ].

To the best of our knowledge, however, the growing literature on the impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health services and outcomes has not been systematically reviewed. A study by Benson et al. evaluated evidence on the impact of abortion policy reforms on maternal death in three countries, Romania, South Africa, and Bangladesh, where reforms were immediately followed by strategies to implement abortion services, scale up accessibility, and establish complementary reproductive and maternal health services [ 39 ]. The three countries highlighted in this paper provided unique insights into implementation and practical application following law reforms, in spite of limited resources. However, the review focused only on a selection of countries that have enacted similar reforms and it is unclear if its conclusions are more widely generalizable.

Accordingly, the primary objective of this review is to summarize studies that have estimated the causal effect of a change in abortion law on women’s health services and outcomes. Additionally, we aim to examine heterogeneity in the impacts of abortion reforms, including variation across specific population sub-groups and contexts (e.g., due to variations in the intensity of enforcement and service delivery). Through this review, we aim to offer a higher-level view of the impact of abortion law reforms in LMICs, beyond what can be gained from any individual study, and to thereby highlight patterns in the evidence across studies, gaps in current research, and to identify promising programs and strategies that could be adapted and applied more broadly to increase access to safe abortion services.

The review protocol has been reported using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines [ 40 ] (Additional file 1 ). It was registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) database CRD42019126927.

Eligibility criteria

Types of studies.

This review will consider quasi-experimental studies which aim to estimate the causal effect of a change in a specific law or reform and an outcome, but in which participants (in this case jurisdictions, whether countries, states/provinces, or smaller units) are not randomly assigned to treatment conditions [ 41 ]. Eligible designs include the following:

Pretest-posttest designs where the outcome is compared before and after the reform, as well as nonequivalent groups designs, such as pretest-posttest design that includes a comparison group, also known as a controlled before and after (CBA) designs.

Interrupted time series (ITS) designs where the trend of an outcome after an abortion law reform is compared to a counterfactual (i.e., trends in the outcome in the post-intervention period had the jurisdiction not enacted the reform) based on the pre-intervention trends and/or a control group [ 42 , 43 ].

Differences-in-differences (DD) designs, which compare the before vs. after change in an outcome in jurisdictions that experienced an abortion law reform to the corresponding change in the places that did not experience such a change, under the assumption of parallel trends [ 44 , 45 ].

Synthetic controls (SC) approaches, which use a weighted combination of control units that did not experience the intervention, selected to match the treated unit in its pre-intervention outcome trend, to proxy the counterfactual scenario [ 46 , 47 ].

Regression discontinuity (RD) designs, which in the case of eligibility for abortion services being determined by the value of a continuous random variable, such as age or income, would compare the distributions of post-intervention outcomes for those just above and below the threshold [ 48 ].

There is heterogeneity in the terminology and definitions used to describe quasi-experimental designs, but we will do our best to categorize studies into the above groups based on their designs, identification strategies, and assumptions.

Our focus is on quasi-experimental research because we are interested in studies evaluating the effect of population-level interventions (i.e., abortion law reform) with a design that permits inference regarding the causal effect of abortion legislation, which is not possible from other types of observational designs such as cross-sectional studies, cohort studies or case-control studies that lack an identification strategy for addressing sources of unmeasured confounding (e.g., secular trends in outcomes). We are not excluding randomized studies such as randomized controlled trials, cluster randomized trials, or stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trials; however, we do not expect to identify any relevant randomized studies given that abortion policy is unlikely to be randomly assigned. Since our objective is to provide a summary of empirical studies reporting primary research, reviews/meta-analyses, qualitative studies, editorials, letters, book reviews, correspondence, and case reports/studies will also be excluded.

Our population of interest includes women of reproductive age (15–49 years) residing in LMICs, as the policy exposure of interest applies primarily to women who have a demand for sexual and reproductive health services including abortion.

Intervention

The intervention in this study refers to a change in abortion law or policy, either from a restrictive policy to a non-restrictive or less restrictive one, or vice versa. This can, for example, include a change from abortion prohibition in all circumstances to abortion permissible in other circumstances, such as to save the woman’s life, to preserve the woman’s health, in cases of rape, incest, fetal impairment, for economic or social reasons, or on request with no requirement for justification. It can also include the abolition of existing abortion policies or the introduction of new policies including those occurring outside the penal code, which also have legal standing, such as:

National constitutions;

Supreme court decisions, as well as higher court decisions;

Customary or religious law, such as interpretations of Muslim law;

Medical ethical codes; and

Regulatory standards and guidelines governing the provision of abortion.

We will also consider national and sub-national reforms, although we anticipate that most reforms will operate at the national level.

The comparison group represents the counterfactual scenario, specifically the level and/or trend of a particular post-intervention outcome in the treated jurisdiction that experienced an abortion law reform had it, counter to the fact, not experienced this specific intervention. Comparison groups will vary depending on the type of quasi-experimental design. These may include outcome trends after abortion reform in the same country, as in the case of an interrupted time series design without a control group, or corresponding trends in countries that did not experience a change in abortion law, as in the case of the difference-in-differences design.

Outcome measures

Primary outcomes.

Access to abortion services: There is no consensus on how to measure access but we will use the following indicators, based on the relevant literature [ 49 ]: [ 1 ] the availability of trained staff to provide care, [ 2 ] facilities are geographically accessible such as distance to providers, [ 3 ] essential equipment, supplies and medications, [ 4 ] services provided regardless of woman’s ability to pay, [ 5 ] all aspects of abortion care are explained to women, [ 6 ] whether staff offer respectful care, [ 7 ] if staff work to ensure privacy, [ 8 ] if high-quality, supportive counseling is provided, [ 9 ] if services are offered in a timely manner, and [ 10 ] if women have the opportunity to express concerns, ask questions, and receive answers.

Use of abortion services refers to induced pregnancy termination, including medication abortion and number of women treated for abortion-related complications.

Secondary outcomes

Current use of any method of contraception refers to women of reproductive age currently using any method contraceptive method.

Future use of contraception refers to women of reproductive age who are not currently using contraception but intend to do so in the future.

Demand for family planning refers to women of reproductive age who are currently using, or whose sexual partner is currently using, at least one contraceptive method.

Unmet need for family planning refers to women of reproductive age who want to stop or delay childbearing but are not using any method of contraception.

Fertility rate refers to the average number of children born to women of childbearing age.

Neonatal morbidity and mortality refer to disability or death of newborn babies within the first 28 days of life.

Maternal morbidity and mortality refer to disability or death due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth.

There will be no language, date, or year restrictions on studies included in this systematic review.

Studies have to be conducted in a low- and middle-income country. We will use the country classification specified in the World Bank Data Catalogue to identify LMICs (Additional file 2 ).

Search methods

We will perform searches for eligible peer-reviewed studies in the following electronic databases.

Ovid MEDLINE(R) (from 1946 to present)

Embase Classic+Embase on OvidSP (from 1947 to present)

CINAHL (1973 to present); and

Web of Science (1900 to present)

The reference list of included studies will be hand searched for additional potentially relevant citations. Additionally, a grey literature search for reports or working papers will be done with the help of Google and Social Science Research Network (SSRN).

Search strategy

A search strategy, based on the eligibility criteria and combining subject indexing terms (i.e., MeSH) and free-text search terms in the title and abstract fields, will be developed for each electronic database. The search strategy will combine terms related to the interventions of interest (i.e., abortion law/policy), etiology (i.e., impact/effect), and context (i.e., LMICs) and will be developed with the help of a subject matter librarian. We opted not to specify outcomes in the search strategy in order to maximize the sensitivity of our search. See Additional file 3 for a draft of our search strategy.

Data collection and analysis

Data management.

Search results from all databases will be imported into Endnote reference manager software (Version X9, Clarivate Analytics) where duplicate records will be identified and excluded using a systematic, rigorous, and reproducible method that utilizes a sequential combination of fields including author, year, title, journal, and pages. Rayyan systematic review software will be used to manage records throughout the review [ 50 ].

Selection process

Two review authors will screen titles and abstracts and apply the eligibility criteria to select studies for full-text review. Reference lists of any relevant articles identified will be screened to ensure no primary research studies are missed. Studies in a language different from English will be translated by collaborators who are fluent in the particular language. If no such expertise is identified, we will use Google Translate [ 51 ]. Full text versions of potentially relevant articles will be retrieved and assessed for inclusion based on study eligibility criteria. Discrepancies will be resolved by consensus or will involve a third reviewer as an arbitrator. The selection of studies, as well as reasons for exclusions of potentially eligible studies, will be described using a PRISMA flow chart.

Data extraction

Data extraction will be independently undertaken by two authors. At the conclusion of data extraction, these two authors will meet with the third author to resolve any discrepancies. A piloted standardized extraction form will be used to extract the following information: authors, date of publication, country of study, aim of study, policy reform year, type of policy reform, data source (surveys, medical records), years compared (before and after the reform), comparators (over time or between groups), participant characteristics (age, socioeconomic status), primary and secondary outcomes, evaluation design, methods used for statistical analysis (regression), estimates reported (means, rates, proportion), information to assess risk of bias (sensitivity analyses), sources of funding, and any potential conflicts of interest.

Risk of bias and quality assessment

Two independent reviewers with content and methodological expertise in methods for policy evaluation will assess the methodological quality of included studies using the quasi-experimental study designs series risk of bias checklist [ 52 ]. This checklist provides a list of criteria for grading the quality of quasi-experimental studies that relate directly to the intrinsic strength of the studies in inferring causality. These include [ 1 ] relevant comparison, [ 2 ] number of times outcome assessments were available, [ 3 ] intervention effect estimated by changes over time for the same or different groups, [ 4 ] control of confounding, [ 5 ] how groups of individuals or clusters were formed (time or location differences), and [ 6 ] assessment of outcome variables. Each of the following domains will be assigned a “yes,” “no,” or “possibly” bias classification. Any discrepancies will be resolved by consensus or a third reviewer with expertise in review methodology if required.

Confidence in cumulative evidence

The strength of the body of evidence will be assessed using the Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system [ 53 ].

Data synthesis

We anticipate that risk of bias and heterogeneity in the studies included may preclude the use of meta-analyses to describe pooled effects. This may necessitate the presentation of our main findings through a narrative description. We will synthesize the findings from the included articles according to the following key headings:

Information on the differential aspects of the abortion policy reforms.

Information on the types of study design used to assess the impact of policy reforms.

Information on main effects of abortion law reforms on primary and secondary outcomes of interest.

Information on heterogeneity in the results that might be due to differences in study designs, individual-level characteristics, and contextual factors.

Potential meta-analysis

If outcomes are reported consistently across studies, we will construct forest plots and synthesize effect estimates using meta-analysis. Statistical heterogeneity will be assessed using the I 2 test where I 2 values over 50% indicate moderate to high heterogeneity [ 54 ]. If studies are sufficiently homogenous, we will use fixed effects. However, if there is evidence of heterogeneity, a random effects model will be adopted. Summary measures, including risk ratios or differences or prevalence ratios or differences will be calculated, along with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Analysis of subgroups

If there are sufficient numbers of included studies, we will perform sub-group analyses according to type of policy reform, geographical location and type of participant characteristics such as age groups, socioeconomic status, urban/rural status, education, or marital status to examine the evidence for heterogeneous effects of abortion laws.

Sensitivity analysis

Sensitivity analyses will be conducted if there are major differences in quality of the included articles to explore the influence of risk of bias on effect estimates.

Meta-biases

If available, studies will be compared to protocols and registers to identify potential reporting bias within studies. If appropriate and there are a sufficient number of studies included, funnel plots will be generated to determine potential publication bias.

This systematic review will synthesize current evidence on the impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health. It aims to identify which legislative reforms are effective, for which population sub-groups, and under which conditions.

Potential limitations may include the low quality of included studies as a result of suboptimal study design, invalid assumptions, lack of sensitivity analysis, imprecision of estimates, variability in results, missing data, and poor outcome measurements. Our review may also include a limited number of articles because we opted to focus on evidence from quasi-experimental study design due to the causal nature of the research question under review. Nonetheless, we will synthesize the literature, provide a critical evaluation of the quality of the evidence and discuss the potential effects of any limitations to our overall conclusions. Protocol amendments will be recorded and dated using the registration for this review on PROSPERO. We will also describe any amendments in our final manuscript.

Synthesizing available evidence on the impact of abortion law reforms represents an important step towards building our knowledge base regarding how abortion law reforms affect women’s health services and health outcomes; we will provide evidence on emerging strategies to influence policy reforms, implement abortion services, and scale up accessibility. This review will be of interest to service providers, policy makers and researchers seeking to improve women’s access to safe abortion around the world.

Abbreviations

Cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature

Excerpta medica database

Low- and middle-income countries

Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols

International prospective register of systematic reviews

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Acknowledgements

We thank Genevieve Gore, Liaison Librarian at McGill University, for her assistance with refining the research question, keywords, and Mesh terms for the preliminary search strategy.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Fonds de recherche du Quebec – Santé (FRQS) PhD doctoral awards and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Operating Grant, “Examining the impact of social policies on health equity” (ROH-115209).

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FI and AN conceived and designed the protocol. FI drafted the manuscript. FI, UVU, and AN revised the manuscript and approved its final version.

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Additional file 1:.

PRISMA-P 2015 Checklist. This checklist has been adapted for use with systematic review protocol submissions to BioMed Central journals from Table 3 in Moher D et al: Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 statement. Systematic Reviews 2015 4:1

Additional File 2:.

LMICs according to World Bank Data Catalogue. Country classification specified in the World Bank Data Catalogue to identify low- and middle-income countries

Additional File 3: Table 1

. Search strategy in Embase. Detailed search terms and filters applied to generate our search in Embase

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Ishola, F., Ukah, U.V. & Nandi, A. Impact of abortion law reforms on women’s health services and outcomes: a systematic review protocol. Syst Rev 10 , 192 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-021-01739-w

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Lawrence O Gostin , director 1 ,
Rebecca B Reingold , associate director 2
1 WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
2 Health and Human Rights Initiative, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Correspondence to: L O Gostin gostin{at}georgetown.edu

New ruling threatens rights to health, bodily integrity, and equality

On 24 June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. The court’s regressive ruling stands in stark contrast to global trends expanding abortion rights. Half of Americans will no longer fully possess human rights to health and bodily integrity, and the ruling will exacerbate already unconscionable health and economic inequities.

Reversing a half century of precedent, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that there is no constitutional right to abortion, which is not “essential to ordered liberty.” 1 Constitutional rights to contraception, same sex marriage, and same sex intimacy rely on similar reasoning so could be jeopardised in future rulings. For the first time since it was established in 1789, the court withdrew a fundamental human right. Public trust in the court has plummeted. Abortion will be banned or severely restricted in at least half the states, and access to essential health services will depend entirely on where a person lives.

Global fallout

Since 1994, 59 countries have expanded abortion rights, with only three adding more restrictions—El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Poland. 2 Total abortion bans are growing rarer, with most countries permitting abortion up until a certain point in pregnancy or under broad exceptions. 3 The Dobbs ruling could have profound consequences for abortion access globally. High profile Supreme Court cases have the power to influence courts and legislatures in many countries—potentially stalling further expansion of abortion access or even reversing hard won gains.

The ruling may inspire similar rollbacks of human rights on politically charged issues such as LGBT+ rights, including marriage equality. The court’s decision, however, may also embolden governments to enhance abortion rights. The European parliament condemned the ruling, demanding that the EU’s fundamental rights charter enshrine abortion rights. 4

Human rights

International human rights law protects abortion rights in multiple ways. The right to health includes sexual and reproductive rights. 5 Abortion restrictions cannot jeopardise women’s and girls’ health and lives or subject them to physical or mental suffering that can amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. 6 Denial or delay of safe abortion and forced continuation of pregnancy constitute both discrimination against women and gender based violence. 7 8

In response to the decision, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed that “abortion is at the core of women and girls’ autonomy about their bodies and lives, free of discrimination, violence and coercion.” 9 WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, characterised Dobbs as a “setback” that will cost lives. 10 Abortion restrictions drive “women and girls toward unsafe abortions resulting in complications, even death” and disproportionately affect the poorest and most marginalised communities. 10 The UN Population Fund stressed that 45% of all abortions globally are unsafe and that more women will die as restrictions by national governments increase. 11 World leaders expressed solidarity with American women whose human rights will be devalued.

Since the ruling, 21 states have adopted total or near total abortion bans, some offering no exception for rape, incest, or non-fatal health risks. 12 Many other states could adopt harsh abortion restrictions. Only 16 states explicitly protect abortion rights—four throughout pregnancy and 12 before fetal viability. 13

The 40 million people who lost the right to abortion will have to travel to states that permit abortions or access abortion medication through the internet or other sources. 13 Many will be unable to access safe, legal abortion, owing to various hardships, and may resort to unsafe, clandestine abortions without expert medical oversight. Abortion bans will disproportionately affect underserved and marginalised groups, including those who are living in poverty or in rural areas, from ethnic and racial minorities, young, undocumented, and experiencing intimate partner violence. 14

State abortion bans impose harsh penalties on abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion—including a maximum penalty in Texas of life imprisonment and 10-15 years in 11 other states. 15 Threats of prosecution will undermine health professionals’ ability to provide safe, evidence based care and may even discourage them from treating pregnancy loss, with devastating consequences for public health.

The US, once a world leader in human rights, is now perpetrating violations of those rights. Dobbs poses a major threat to women’s rights to health, bodily integrity, and equality.

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and have no relevant interests to declare.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned, not externally peer reviewed.

↵ Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No 19-1392, 597 US ___ (2022).
↵ Miller CC, Sanger-Katz M. On abortion law, the US is unusual. Without Roe, it would be, too. New York Times 2022 Jan 22. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/upshot/abortion-us-roe-global.html
↵ Center for Reproductive Rights. The world’s abortion laws . 2022. https://reproductiverights.org/maps/worlds-abortion-laws/
↵ Saric I. EU parliament votes to condemn overturning of Roe v Wade. Axios 2022 Jul 7. https://www.axios.com/2022/07/07/abortion-eu-parliament-condemn-roe-wade%20
↵ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. General comment No 22 ( 2016 ) on the right to sexual and reproductive health . E/C.12/GC/22. 2016. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/832961
↵ Human Rights Committee. General comment No 36 ( 2018 ) on article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life . CCPR/C/GC/36. 2018. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3884724?ln=en
↵ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. General recommendation No. 33 on women’s access to justice . CEDAW/C/GC/33. 2015. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/807253?ln=en
↵ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. General recommendation No. 35 on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19 . CEDAW/C/GC/35. 2017. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1305057?ln=en
↵ UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Bachelet on US ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization . 2022. https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/bachelet-us-ruling-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization
↵ WHO chief: US. abortion ruling “a setback,” will cost lives. AP News 2022 Jun 29. https://apnews.com/article/abortion-us-supreme-court-science-health-united-nations-c2de97f0e27ba424000b0f8aeed0dd39
↵ Overturning of Roe v Wade abortion law a ‘huge blow to women’s human rights’ warns Bachelet. UN News 2022 June 24. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1121312
↵ New York Times. Tracking the states where abortion is now banned. New York Times 2022 Jul 20. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html
↵ Guttmacher Institute. United States: abortion . https://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/abortion
Reingold RB ,
↵ Messerly M, Ollstein AM. Abortion bans and penalties would vary widely by state. Politico 2022 May 6. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/06/potential-abortion-bans-and-penalties-by-state-00030572 .

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Yes, science can weigh in on abortion law

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Diana Greene Foster is director of research at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the book The Turnaway Study (2020).

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The world is moving towards greater reproductive rights for women. More than 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws in the past 25 years, informed by scientific research. Studies find that unsafe abortion is responsible for one in eight maternal deaths globally ( E. Ahman and I. H. Shah Int. J. Gynaecol. Obstet . 115 , 121–126; 2011 ), concentrated in low-income countries where abortion is illegal. Preventing unsafe abortion is a priority — 193 countries signed up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which call for reductions in maternal mortality.

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What can economic research tell us about the effect of abortion access on women’s lives?

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, caitlin knowles myers and caitlin knowles myers john g. mccullough professor of economics; co-director, middlebury initiative for data and digital methods - middlebury college @caitlin_k_myers morgan welch morgan welch senior research assistant & project coordinator - center on children and families, economic studies, brookings institution.

November 30, 2021

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On September 20, 2021, a group of 154 distinguished economists and researchers filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in advance of the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization . For a full review of the evidence that shows how causal inference tools have been used to measure the effects of abortion access in the U.S., read the brief here .

Introduction

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization considers the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that prohibits women from accessing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This case is widely expected to determine the fate of Roe v. Wade as Mississippi is directly challenging the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe , which protects abortion access before fetal viability (typically between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy). On December 1, 2021, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson . In asking the Court to overturn Roe , the state of Mississippi offers reassurances that “there is simply no causal link between the availability of abortion and the capacity of women to act in society” 1 and hence no reason to believe that abortion access has shaped “the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation” 2 as the Court had previously held.

While the debate over abortion often centers on largely intractable subjective questions of ethics and morality, in this instance the Court is being asked to consider an objective question about the causal effects of abortion access on the lives of women and their families. The field of economics affords insights into these objective questions through the application of sophisticated methodological approaches that can be used to isolate and measure the causal effects of abortion access on reproductive, social, and economic outcomes for women and their families.

Separating Correlation from Causation: The “Credibility Revolution” in Economics

To measure the causal effect of abortion on women’s lives, one must differentiate its effects from those of other forces, such as economic opportunity, social mores, the availability of contraception. Powerful statistical methodologies in the causal inference toolbox have made it possible for economists to do just that, moving beyond the maxim “correlation isn’t necessarily causation” and applying the scientific method to figure out when it is.

This year’s decision by the Economic Sciences Prize Committee recognized the contributions 3 of economists David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens, awarding them the Nobel Prize for their pathbreaking work developing and applying the tools of causal inference in a movement dubbed “the credibility revolution” (Angrist and Pischke, 2010). The gold standard for establishing such credibility is a well-executed randomized controlled trial – an experiment conducted in the lab or field in which treatment is randomly assigned. When economists can feasibly and ethically implement such experiments, they do. However, in the social world, this opportunity is often not available. For instance, one cannot feasibly or ethically randomly assign abortion access to some individuals but not others. Faced with this obstacle, economists turn to “natural” or “quasi” experimental methods, ones in which they are able to credibly argue that treatment is as good as randomly assigned.

The Effects of Abortion Access on Women’s Reproductive, Economic, and Social Lives

Evidence of the effects of abortion legalization.

The history of abortion legalization in the United States affords both a canonical and salient example of a natural experiment. While Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in most of the country in 1973, five states—Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington—and the District of Columbia repealed their abortion bans several years in advance of Roe . Using a methodology known as “difference-in-difference estimation,” researchers compared changes in outcomes in these “repeal states” when they lifted abortion bans to changes in outcomes in the rest of the country. They also compared changes in outcomes in the rest of the country in 1973 when Roe legalized abortion to changes in outcomes in the repeal states where abortion already was legal. This difference-in-differences methodology allows the states where abortion access is not changing to serve as a counterfactual or “control” group that accounts for other forces that were impacting fertility and women’s lives in the Roe era.

Among the first to employ this approach was a team of economists (Levine, Staiger, Kane, and Zimmerman, 1999) who estimated that the legalization of abortion in repeal states led to a 4% to 11% decline in births in those states relative to the rest of the country. Levine and his co-authors found that these fertility effects were particularly large for teens and women of color, who experienced birth rate reductions that were nearly three times greater than the overall population as a result of abortion legalization. Multiple research teams have replicated the essential finding that abortion legalization substantially impacted American fertility while extending the analysis to consider other outcomes. 4 For example, Myers (2017) found that abortion legalization reduced the number of women who became teen mothers by 34% and the number who became teen brides by 20%, and again observed effects that were even larger for Black teens. Farin, Hoehn-Velasco, and Pesko (2021) found that abortion legalization reduced maternal mortality among Black women by 30-40%, with little impact on white women, offering the explanation that where abortion was illegal, Black women were less likely to be able to access safe abortions by traveling to other states or countries or by obtaining a clandestine abortion from a trusted health care provider.

The ripple effects of abortion access on the lives of women and their families

This research, which clearly demonstrates the causal relationship between abortion access and first-order demographic and health outcomes, laid the foundation for researchers to measure further ripple effects through the lives of women and their families. Multiple teams of authors have extended the difference-in-differences research designs to study educational and labor market outcomes, finding that abortion legalization increased women’s education, labor force participation, occupational prestige, and earnings and that all these effects were particularly large for Black women (Angrist and Evans, 1996; Kalist, 2004; Lindo, Pineda-Torres, Pritchard, and Tajali, 2020; Jones, 2021).

Additionally, research shows that abortion access has not only had profound effects on women’s economic and social lives but has also impacted the circumstances into which children are born. Researchers using difference-in-differences research designs have found that abortion legalization reduced the number of children who were unwanted (Bitler and Zavodny, 2002a, reduced cases of child neglect and abuse (Bitler and Zavodny, 2002b; 2004), reduced the number of children who lived in poverty (Gruber, Levine, and Staiger, 1999), and improved long-run outcomes of an entire generation of children by increasing the likelihood of attending college and reducing the likelihood of living in poverty and receiving public assistance (Ananat, Gruber, Levine, and Staiger, 2009).

Access to abortion continues to be important to women’s lives

The research cited above relies on variation in abortion access from the 1970s, and much has changed in terms of both reproductive technologies and women’s lives. Recent research shows, however, that even with the social, economic, and legal shifts that have occurred over the last few decades and even with expanded access to contraception, abortion access remains relevant to women’s reproductive lives. Today, nearly half of pregnancies are unintended (Finer and Zolna, 2016). About 6% of young women (ages 15-34) experience an unintended pregnancy each year (Finer, Lindberg, and Desai, 2018), and about 1.4% of women of childbearing age obtain an abortion each year (Jones, Witwer, and Jerman, 2019). At these rates, approximately one in four women will receive an abortion in their reproductive lifetimes. The fact is clear: women continue to rely on abortion access to determine their reproductive lives.

But what about their economic and social lives? While women have made great progress in terms of their educational attainment, career trajectories, and role in society, mothers face a variety of challenges and penalties that are not adequately addressed by public policy. Following the birth of a child, it’s well documented that working mothers face a “motherhood wage penalty,” which entails lower wages than women who did not have a child (Waldfogel, 1998; Anderson, Binder, and Krause, 2002; Kelven et al., 2019). Maternity leave may combat this penalty as it allows women to return to their jobs following the birth of a child – encouraging them to remain attached to the labor force (Rossin-Slater, 2017). However, as of this writing, the U.S. only offers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave through the FMLA, which extends coverage to less than 60% of all workers. 5 And even if a mother is able to return to work, childcare in the U.S. is costly and often inaccessible for many. Families with infants can be expected to pay around $11,000 a year for childcare and subsidies are only available for 1 in 6 children that are eligible under the federal program. 6 Without a federal paid leave policy and access to affordable childcare, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to adequately support mothers, and especially working mothers – making the prospect of motherhood financially unworkable for some.

This is relevant when considering that the women who seek abortions tend to be low-income mothers experiencing disruptive life events. In the most recent survey of abortion patients conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 97% are adults, 49% are living below the poverty line, 59% already have children, and 55% are experiencing a disruptive life event such as losing a job, breaking up with a partner, or falling behind on rent (Jones and Jerman, 2017a and 2017b). It is not a stretch to imagine that access to abortion could be pivotal to these women’s financial lives, and recent evidence from “The Turnaway Study” 7 provides empirical support for this supposition. In this study, an interdisciplinary team of researchers follows two groups of women who were typically seeking abortions in the second trimester: one group that arrived at abortion clinics and learned they were just over the gestational age threshold for abortions and were “turned away” and a second that was just under the threshold and were provided an abortion. Miller, Wherry, and Foster (2020) match individuals in both groups to their Experian credit reports and observe that in the months leading up to the moment they sought an abortion, financial outcomes for both groups were trending similarly. At the moment one group is turned away from a wanted abortion, however, they began to experience substantial financial distress, exhibiting a 78% increase in past-due debt and an 81% increase in public records related to bankruptcies, evictions, and court judgments.

If Roe were overturned, the number of women experiencing substantial obstacles to obtaining an abortion would dramatically increase.

If Roe were overturned, the number of women experiencing substantial obstacles to obtaining an abortion would dramatically increase. Twelve states have enacted “trigger bans” designed to outlaw abortion in the immediate aftermath of a Roe reversal, while an additional 10 are considered highly likely to quickly enact new bans. 8 These bans would shutter abortion facilities across a wide swath of the American south and midwest, dramatically increasing travel distances and the logistical costs of obtaining an abortion. Economics research predicts what is likely to happen next. Multiple teams of economists have exploited natural experiments arising from mandatory waiting periods (Joyce and Kaestner, 2001; Lindo and Pineda-Torres, 2021; Myers, 2021) and provider closures (Quast, Gonzalez, and Ziemba, 2017; Fischer, Royer, and White, 2018; Lindo, Myers, Schlosser, and Cunningham, 2020; Venator and Fletcher, 2021; Myers, 2021). All have found that increases in travel distances prevent large numbers of women seeking abortions from reaching a provider and that most of these women give birth as a result. For instance, Lindo and co-authors (2020) exploit a natural experiment arising from the sudden closure of half of Texas’s abortion clinics in 2013 and find that an increase in travel distance from 0 to 100 miles results in a 25.8% decrease in abortions. Myers, Jones, and Upadhyay (2019) use these results to envision a post- Roe United States, forecasting that if Roe is overturned and the expected states begin to ban abortions, approximately 1/3 of women living in affected regions would be unable to reach an abortion provider, amounting to roughly 100,000 women in the first year alone.

Restricting, or outright eliminating, abortion access by overturning Roe v. Wade would diminish women’s personal and economic lives, as well as the lives of their families.

Whether one’s stance on abortion access is driven by deeply held views on women’s bodily autonomy or when life begins, the decades of research using rigorous methods is clear: there is a causal link between access to abortion and whether, when, and under what circumstances women become mothers, with ripple effects throughout their lives. Access affects their education, earnings, careers, and the subsequent life outcomes for their children. In the state’s argument, Mississippi rejects the causal link between access to abortion and societal outcomes established by economists and states that the availability of abortion isn’t relevant to women’s full participation in society. Economists provide clear evidence that overturning Roe would prevent large numbers of women experiencing unintended pregnancies—many of whom are low-income and financially vulnerable mothers—from obtaining desired abortions. Restricting, or outright eliminating, that access by overturning Roe v. Wade would diminish women’s personal and economic lives, as well as the lives of their families.

Caitlin Knowles Myers did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article. She has received financial compensation from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Center for Reproductive Rights for serving as an expert witness in litigation involving abortion regulations. She has not and will not receive financial compensation for her role in the amicus brief described here. Other than the aforementioned, she has not received financial support from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. Caitlin Knowles Myers is not currently an officer, director, or board member of any organization with a financial or political interest in this article.

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Why restricting access to abortion damages women’s health

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Published: July 26, 2022

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004075
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Citation: The PLOS Medicine Editors (2022) Why restricting access to abortion damages women’s health. PLoS Med 19(7): e1004075. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004075

Copyright: © 2022 The PLOS Medicine Editors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors’ individual competing interests are at http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/staff-editors . PLOS is funded partly through manuscript publication charges, but the PLOS Medicine Editors are paid a fixed salary (their salaries are not linked to the number of papers published in the journal).

The PLOS Medicine editors are Raffaella Bosurgi, Callam Davidson, Philippa Dodd, Louise Gaynor-Brook, Caitlin Moyer, Beryne Odeny, and Richard Turner.

In late June, the landmark Roe v . Wade ruling was overturned by the United States Supreme Court, a decision, decried by human rights experts at the United Nations [ 1 ], that leaves many women and girls without the right to obtain abortion care that was established nearly 50 years ago. The consequences of limited or nonextant access to safe abortion services in the US remain to be seen; however, information gleaned from abortion-related policies worldwide provides insight into the likely health effects of this abrupt reversal in abortion policy. The US Supreme Court’s decision should serve to amplify the global call for strategies to mitigate the inevitable repercussions for women’s health.

Upholding reproductive rights is crucial for the health of women and girls worldwide, and access to a safe abortion is central to this, yet policies in several countries either severely limit or actively prevent access to appropriate abortion care and services [ 2 ]. However, there is little to suggest that those countries and jurisdictions with abortion bans or heavily restrictive laws see fewer abortions performed. According to a modeling study of pregnancy intentions and abortion from the 1990s to 2019, rates of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion are broadly similar regardless of a country’s legal status of abortion, and unintended pregnancy rates are higher among countries with abortion restrictions [ 3 ]. Abortion is widely considered to be a low-risk procedure. Abortion-related deaths most likely occur in the context of unsafe abortion practices and are reported to account for 8% (95% UI 4.7–13.2%) of maternal deaths [ 4 ], making them a top direct contributor to maternal deaths globally, alongside hemorrhage, hypertension, and sepsis. Restrictive abortion policies may not lower the overall rates of abortion, but they can drive increasing rates of unsafe abortions, as women resort to seeking abortions covertly. Such abortions are often performed by untrained practitioners or involve harmful methods. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most abortions that take place in countries with restrictive abortion access policies are not considered safe [ 5 ], potentially contributing to maternal morbidity and mortality. A study of 162 countries found that maternal mortality rates are lower in countries with more flexible abortion access laws [ 6 ], suggesting that changes in abortion policies could have grievous implications for maternal deaths.

It is not yet known if the reneging of federal protection of abortion rights will impact maternal deaths in the US; however, in the years following the 1973 Roe v . Wade decision, numbers of reported deaths associated with illegal abortions, defined as those performed by an unlicensed practitioner, declined, hovering between zero and 2 deaths from the 1980s to 2018, down from 35 in 1972 [ 7 ] and 19 reported in 1973 [ 8 ]. It is possible that limits on access to timely and safe abortion care could drive this number back up and add to the already unacceptably high maternal mortality rate in the US, potentially exacerbating the persistent disparities in maternal mortality based on socioeconomic deprivation, race and ethnicity, and other factors [ 9 ].

Legal and social barriers that impede access to safe abortions are detrimental to the health and survival of women and girls; thus, constructing policies ensuring access to safe abortion services should be an urgent priority. Placing undue hurdles between women and access to abortion care is associated with undesirable health outcomes. For example, a 2011 change to medication abortion laws in one US state that involved increased medication costs and restricted the timing and location where abortion services could be provided was associated with an increase in rates of women requiring additional medical interventions [ 10 ]. Lending international weight to this argument, dissolution of barriers to safe abortion access was emphasized in the March 2022 update of WHO guidance on abortion care [ 11 ], echoing a 2018 comment on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights released by the United Nations Human Rights Committee [ 12 ] that called on member states to remove existing barriers and not enact new restrictions on provision of safe abortion services so that pregnant women and girls do not need to turn to unsafe abortions.

In jurisdictions where prohibitive policies exist, more could be done to counter the impacts of new barriers by changing how abortion care is delivered and increasing accessibility. Protocols for the safe self-management of abortion can be implemented alongside provision of information and provider support. WHO guidance [ 11 ] suggests expanding the breadth of practitioners authorized to prescribe medical abortions to include nurses, midwives, and other cadres of healthcare workers. The guidelines also mention telemedicine as an approach to circumvent obstacles to seeking safe abortion services [ 11 ]. For those with access to the necessary technology, telemedicine services together with self-management of medication abortion can overcome travel-related barriers and ensure the privacy of those seeking treatment. Demands for telehealth services increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, according to one study, remote provision of abortion services in the US may be a promising option to counteract barriers and facilitate access [ 13 ].

In 2022, restrictive policies or outright bans on abortion services are discriminatory against women, obstructing their right to maintain autonomy over their own sexual and reproductive health. A post- Roe legal landscape that renders abortion more difficult or impossible to obtain safely will exacerbate an increasingly bleak picture of maternal health in the US; however, the US is just one example where increased effort is needed to overcome barriers to improving women’s healthcare. The reality is that such barriers continue to represent a threat to the health of women worldwide. Evidence-based changes to policy and practice that break down barriers and build new roads are required to enable women to access the healthcare they need.

1. United Nations, Human Rights Office: UN Human Rights Media Center [Internet]. Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); c1996–2022. Joint web statement by UN Human rights experts on Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v. Wade; 2022 Jun 24 [cited 30 Jun 2022]. Available from: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/joint-web-statement-un-human-rights-experts-supreme-court-decision-strike-down ]
2. Center for Reproductive Rights. The World’s Abortion Laws [Internet]. New York (NY): Center for Reproductive Rights; c1992–2022. [cited June 30, 2022]. Available from: https://reproductiverights.org/maps/worlds-abortion-laws/
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11. World Health Organization. Abortion Care Guideline. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022 Mar 8. 170 p. Available from: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240039483 .
12. United Nations, Human Rights Committee (124th session (8 Oct– 2 Nov 2018). General comment no. 36, Article 6, Right to life. Geneva: UN Human Rights Committee; 2019 Sep 3. 21 p.

Introduction: The Politics of Abortion 50 Years after Roe

Katrina Kimport is a professor with the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and a medical sociologist with the ANSIRH program at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examines the (re)production of inequality in health and reproduction, with a topical focus on abortion, contraception, and pregnancy. She is the author of No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter for Reproductive Autonomy (2022) and Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States (2014) and co-author, with Jennifer Earl, of Digitally Enabled Social Change (2011). She has published more than 75 articles in sociology, health research, and interdisciplinary journals.

[email protected]

Rebecca Kreitzer is an associate professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on gendered political representation and intersectional policy inequality in the US states. Much of her research focuses on the political dynamics of reproductive health care, especially surrounding contraception and abortion. She has published dozens of articles in political science, public policy, and law journals.

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Katrina Kimport , Rebecca Kreitzer; Introduction: The Politics of Abortion 50 Years after Roe . J Health Polit Policy Law 1 August 2023; 48 (4): 463–484. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10451382

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Abortion is central to the American political landscape and a common pregnancy outcome, yet research on abortion has been siloed and marginalized in the social sciences. In an empirical analysis, the authors found only 22 articles published in this century in the top economics, political science, and sociology journals. This special issue aims to bring abortion research into a more generalist space, challenging what the authors term “the abortion research paradox,” wherein abortion research is largely absent from prominent disciplinary social science journals but flourishes in interdisciplinary and specialized journals. After discussing the misconceptions that likely contribute to abortion research siloization and the implications of this siloization for abortion research as well as social science knowledge more generally, the authors introduce the articles in this special issue. Then, in a call for continued and expanded research on abortion, the introduction to this special issue closes by offering three guiding practices for abortion scholars—both those new to the topic and those deeply familiar with it—in the hopes of building an ever-richer body of literature on abortion politics, policy, and law. The need for such a robust literature is especially acute following the US Supreme Court's June 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.

Abortion has been both siloed and marginalized in social science research. But because abortion is a perennially politically and socially contested issue as well as vital health care that one in four women in the United States will experience in their lifetime (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), it is imperative that social scientists make a change. This special issue brings together insightful voices from across disciplines to do just that—and does so at a particularly important historical moment. Fifty years after the United States Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade (1973) decision set a national standard amid disparate state policies on abortion, we again find ourselves in a country with a patchwork of laws about abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion it had established in Roe , purportedly returning the question of legalization of abortion to the states. In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, state policies polarized, and public opinion shifted. This moment demands scholarly evaluation of where we have been, how we arrived at this moment, and what we should be attentive to in coming years. This special issue came about, in part, in response to the on-the-ground conditions of abortion in the United States.

As we argue below, the siloization of abortion research means that the social science literature broadly is not (yet) equipped to make sense of this moment, our history, and what the future holds. First, though, we make a case for the importance of political scientists, economists, and sociologists studying abortion. Then we describe the siloization of abortion research through what we call the “abortion research paradox,” wherein abortion research—despite its social and political import—is curiously absent from top disciplinary journals, even as it thrives in other publication venues that are often interdisciplinary and usually specialized. We theorize some reasons for this siloization and discuss the consequences, both for generalist knowledge and for scientific understanding of abortion. We then introduce the articles in this special issue, noting the breadth of methodological, topical, and theoretical approaches to abortion research they demonstrate. Finally, we offer three suggestions for scholars—both those new to abortion research and those already deeply familiar with it—embarking on abortion research in the hopes of building an ever-richer body of literature on abortion politics, policy, and law.

Why Abortion?

Abortion has arguably shaped the American political landscape more than any other domestic policy issue in the last 50 years. Since the Supreme Court initially established a nationwide right to abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973), debate over this right has influenced elections at just about every level of office (Abramowitz 1995 ; Cook, Hartwig, and Wilcox 1993 ; Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1994 ; Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1992 ; Paolino 1995 ; Roh and Haider-Markel 2003 ), inspired political activism (Carmines and Woods 2002 ; Killian and Wilcox 2008 ; Maxwell 2002 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ) and social movements (Kretschmer 2014 ; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996 , 2008 ; Munson 2010a , Munson 2010b ; Rohlinger 2006 ; Staggenborg 1991 ), and fundamentally structured partisan politics (Adams 1997; Carsey and Layman 2006 ; Killian and Wilcox 2008 ). Position on abortion is frequently used as the litmus test for those seeking political office (Flaten 2010 ; Kreitzer and Osborn 2019 ). Opponents to legal abortion have transformed the federal judiciary (Hollis-Brusky and Parry 2021 ; Hollis-Brusky and Wilson 2020 ). Indeed, abortion is often called the quintessential “morality policy” issue (Kreitzer 2015 ; Kreitzer, Kane, and Mooney 2019 ; Mooney 2001 ; Mucciaroni, Ferraiolo, and Rubado 2019 ) and “ground zero” in the prominent culture wars that have polarized Americans (Adams 1997 ; Lewis 2017 ; Mouw and Sobel 2001 ; Wilson 2013 ). Almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade , in June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, ushering in a new chapter of political engagement on abortion.

But abortion is not simply an abstract political issue; it is an extremely common pregnancy outcome. Indeed, as noted above, about one in four US women will get an abortion in her lifetime (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), although the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion vary substantially across racial and socioeconomic groups (Dehlendorf, Harris, and Weitz 2013 ; Jones and Jerman 2022 ). Despite rampant misinformation claiming otherwise, abortion is a safe procedure (Raymond and Grimes 2012 ; Upadhyay et al. 2015 ), reduces physical health consequences and mortality (Gerdts et al. 2016 ), and does not cause mental health issues (Charles et al. 2008 ; Major et al. 2009 ) or regret (Rocca et al. 2013 , 2015 , 2020 ). Abortion also has a significant impact on people's lives beyond health outcomes. Legal abortion is associated with educational attainment (Everett et al. 2019 ; Ralph et al. 2019 ; Mølland 2016 ) as well as higher female labor force participation, and it affects men's and women's long-term earning potential (Bernstein and Jones 2019 ; Bloom et al. 2009 ; Everett et al. 2019 ; Kalist 2004 ). Access to abortion also shapes relationship satisfaction and stability (Biggs et al. 2014 ; Mauldon, Foster, and Roberts 2015 ). The preponderance of evidence, in other words, demonstrates substantial benefits and no harms to allowing pregnant people to choose abortion.

Yet access to abortion in the United States has been rapidly declining for years. Most abortion care in the United States takes place in stand-alone outpatient facilities that primarily provide reproductive health care (Jones, Witwer, and Jerman 2019 ). As antiabortion legislators in some states have advanced policies that target these facilities, the number of abortion clinics has decreased (Gerdts et al. 2022 ; Venator and Fletcher 2021 ), leaving large geographical areas lacking an abortion facility (Cartwright et al. 2018 ; Cohen and Joffe 2020 ) and thus diminishing pregnant people's ability to obtain abortion care when and where they need it.

The effects of policies regulating abortion, including those that target facilities, have been unevenly experienced, with people of color (Jones and Jerman 2022 ), people in rural areas (Bearak, Burke, and Jones 2017 ), and those who are financially struggling (Cook et al. 1999 ; Roberts et al. 2019 ) disproportionately affected. Even before the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion, the American landscape was characterized by ever-broadening contraception deserts (Axelson, Sealy, and McDonald-Mosley 2022 ; Barber et al. 2019 ; Kreitzer et al. 2021 ; Smith et al. 2022 ), maternity care deserts (Simpson 2020 ; Taporco et al. 2021 ; Wallace et al. 2021 ), and abortion deserts (Cartwright et al. 2018 ; Cohen and Joffe 2020 ; Engle and Freeman 2022 ; McNamara et al. 2022 ; Pleasants, Cartwright, and Upadhyay 2022 ). After Dobbs , access to abortion around the country changed in a matter of weeks. In the 100 days after Roe was overturned, at least 66 clinics closed in 15 states, with 14 of those states no longer having any abortion facilities (Kirstein et al. 2022 ). In this moment of heightened contention about an issue with a long history of social and political contestation, social scientists have a rich opportunity to contribute to scientific knowledge as well as policy and practice that affect millions of lives. This special issue steps into that opportunity.

The Abortion Research Paradox

This special issue is also motivated by what we call the abortion research paradox. As established above, abortion fundamentally shapes politics in a myriad of ways and is a very common pregnancy outcome, with research consistently demonstrating that access to abortion is consequential and beneficial to people's lives. However, social science research on abortion is rarely published in top disciplinary journals. Abortion is a topic of clear social science interest and is well suited for social science inquiry, but it is relatively underrepresented as a topic in generalist social science journals. To measure this underrepresentation empirically, we searched for original research articles about abortion in the United Sates in the top journals of political science, sociology, and economics. We identified the top three journals for each discipline by considering journal reputation within their respective discipline as well as impact factors and Google Scholar rankings. (There is room for debate about what makes a journal a “top” general interest journal, but that is beyond our scope. Whether these journals are exactly the top three is debatable; nonetheless, these are undoubtedly among the top general-interest or “flagship” disciplinary journals and thus representative of what the respective disciplines value as top scholarship.) Then we searched specified journal databases for the keyword “abortion” for articles published in this century (i.e., 2000–2021), excluding commentaries and book reviews. We found few articles about abortion: just seven in economics journals, eight in political science journals, and seven in sociology journals. We read the articles and classified each into one of three categories: articles primarily about abortion; articles about more than one aspect of reproductive health, inclusive of abortion; or articles about several policy issues, among which abortion is one ( table 1 ).

In the three top economics journals, articles about abortion focused on the relationships between abortion and crime or educational attainment, or on the impact of abortion policies on trends in the timing of first births of women (Bitler and Zavodny 2002 ; Donohue III and Levitt 2001 ; Myers 2017 ). Articles that studied abortion as one among several topics also studied “morally controversial” issues (Elías et al. 2017 ), the electoral implications of abortion (Glaeser, Ponzetto, and Shapiro 2005 ; Washington 2008 ), or contraception (Bailey 2010 ). Articles published in the three top political science journals that focused primarily on abortion evaluated judicial decision-making and legitimacy (Caldarone, Canes-Wrone, and Clark 2009 ; Zink, Spriggs, and Scott 2009 ) or public opinion (Kalla, Levine, and Broockman 2022 ; Rosenfeld, Imai, and Shapiro 2016 ). More commonly, abortion was one of several (or many) different issues analyzed, including government spending and provision of services, government help for African Americans, law enforcement, health care, education, free speech, Hatch Act restrictions, and the Clinton impeachment. The degree to which these articles are “about abortion” varies considerably. In the three top sociology journals, articles represented a slightly broader range of topics, including policy diffusion (Boyle, Kim, and Longhofer 2015 ), public opinion (Mouw and Sobel 2001 ), social movements (Ferree 2003 ), and crisis pregnancy centers (McVeigh, Crubaugh, and Estep 2017 ). Unlike in economics and political science, articles in sociology on abortion mostly focused directly on abortion.

The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law ( JHPPL ) would seem well positioned to publish research on abortion. Yet, even in JHPPL , abortion research is not very common. In the same time period (2000–2021), JHPPL published five articles on reproductive health: two articles on abortion (Daniels et al. 2016 ; Kimport, Johns, and Upadhyay 2018 ), one on contraception (Kreitzer et al. 2021 ), one on forced interventions on pregnant people (Paltrow and Flavin 2013 ), and one about how states could respond to the passage of the Affordable Care Act mandate regarding reproductive health (Stulberg 2013 ).

This is not to say that there is no extensive, rigorous published research on abortion in the social science literature. Interdisciplinary journals that are focused on reproductive health, such as Contraception and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health , as well as health research journals, such as the American Journal of Public Health and Social Science & Medicine , regularly published high-quality social science research on abortion during the focal time period. Research on abortion can also be found in disciplinary subfield journals. In the same time period addressed above, the Journal of Women, Politics, and Public Policy and Politics & Gender— two subfield journals focused on gender and politics—each published around 20 articles that mentioned abortion in the abstract. In practice, while this means excellent research on abortion is published, the net effect is that abortion research is siloed from other research areas in the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. This special issue aims to redress some of this siloization and to inspire future scholarship on abortion. Our motivation is not simply premised on quantitative counts, however. As we assert below, abortion research siloization has significant consequences for knowledge—and especially for real people's lives. First, though, we consider some of the possible reasons for this siloization.

The Origins of Siloization

We do not know why abortion research is not more commonly published in top disciplinary journals, given the topic's clear importance in key areas of focus for these disciplines, including public discourse, politics, law, family life, and health. The siloing and marginalization of abortion is likely related to several misconceptions. For one, because of social contention on the issue, peer reviewers may not have a deep understanding of abortion as a research topic, may express hostility to the topic, or may believe that abortion is exceptional in some way—a niche or ungeneralizable research topic better published in a subfield journal. Scholars themselves may share this mischaracterization of abortion. As Borgman ( 2014 ) argues about the legal arena, and as Roberts, Schroeder, and Joffe ( 2020 ) provide evidence of in medicine, abortion is regularly treated as exceptional, making it both definitional and reasonable that abortion be treated differently in the law and in health care from other medical experiences. Scholars are not immune to social patterns that exceptionalize abortion. In their peer and editor reviews, they may inappropriately—and perhaps inadvertently—draw on their social, rather than academic, knowledge. For scholars of abortion, reviews premised on social knowledge may not be constructive to strengthening the research, and additional labor may be required to educate reviewers and editors on the academic parameters of the topic, including which social assumptions about abortion are scientifically inaccurate. Comments from authors educating editors and peer reviewers on abortion research may then counterintuitively reinforce the (mis)perception that abortion research is niche and not of general interest.

Second, authors' negative experiences while trying to publish about abortion or reproductive health in top disciplinary journals may compound as scholars share information about journals. This is the case for research on gender; evidence from political science suggests that certain journals are perceived as more or less likely to publish research on gender (Brown et al. 2020 ). Such reputations, especially for venues that do not publish abortion research, may not even be rooted in negative experiences. The absence of published articles on abortion may itself dissuade scholars from submitting to a journal based on an educated guess that the journal does not welcome abortion research. Regardless of the veracity of these perceptions, certain journals may get a reputation for publishing on abortion (or not), which then may make future submissions of abortion research to those outlets more (or less) likely. After all, authors seek publication venues where they believe their research will get a robust review and is likely to be published. This pattern may be more common for some author groups than others. Research from political science suggests women are more risk averse than men when it comes to publishing strategies and less likely to submit manuscripts to journals where the perceived likelihood of successful publication is lower (Key and Sumner 2019 ). Special issues like this one are an important way for journals without a substantial track record of publishing abortion research to establish their willingness to do so.

Third, there might be a methodological bias, which unevenly intersects with some author groups. Top disciplinary journals are more likely to publish quantitative approaches rather than qualitative ones, which can result in the exclusion of women and minority scholars who are more likely to utilize mixed or qualitative methods (Teele and Thelen 2017 ). To the extent that investigations of abortion in the social sciences have utilized qualitative rather than quantitative methods, that might contribute to the underrepresentation of abortion-focused scholarship in top disciplinary journals.

Stepping back from the idiosyncrasies of peer review and methodologies, a fourth explanation for why abortion research is not more prominent in generalist social science journals may arise far earlier than the publishing process. PhD-granting departments in the social sciences may have an undersupply of scholars with expertise in reproductive health who can mentor junior scholars interested in studying abortion. (We firmly believe one need not be an expert in reproductive health to mentor junior scholars studying reproductive health, so this explanation only goes so far.) Anecdotally, we have experienced and heard many accounts of scholars who were discouraged from focusing on abortion in dissertation research because of advisors', mentors', and senior scholars' misconceptions about the topic and about the viability of a career in abortion research. In data provided to us by Key and Sumner from their analysis of the “leaky pipeline” in the publication of research on gender at top disciplinary journals in political science (Key and Sumner 2019 ), there were only nine dissertations written between 2000 and 2013 that mention abortion in the abstract, most of which are focused on judicial behavior or political party dynamics rather than focusing on abortion policy itself. If few junior scholars focus on abortion, it makes sense there may be an undersupply of cutting-edge social science research on abortion submitted to top disciplinary journals.

The Implications of Siloization

The relative lack of scholarly attention to abortion as a social phenomenon in generalist journals has implications for general scholarship. Most concerningly, it limits our ability to understand other social phenomena for which the case of abortion is a useful entry point. For example, the case of abortion as a common, highly safe medical procedure is useful for examining medical innovations and technologies, such as telemedicine. Similarly, given the disparities in who seeks and obtains abortion care in the United States, abortion is an excellent case study for scholars interested in race, class, and gender inequality. It also holds great potential as an opportunity for exploration of public opinion and attitudes, particularly as a case of an issue whose ties to partisan politics have solidified over time and that is often—but not always—“moralized” in policy engagement (Kreitzer, Kane, and Mooney 2019 ). Additionally, there are missed opportunities to generate theory from the specifics of abortion. For example, there is ample evidence of abortion stigma and stigmatization (Hanschmidt et al. 2016 ) and of their effects on people who obtain abortions (Sorhaindo and Lavelanet 2022 ). This research is often unmoored from existing theorization on stigmatization, however, because the bulk of the stigma literature focuses on identities; and having had an abortion is not an identity the same way as, for example, being queer is. (For a notable exception to this trend, see Beynon-Jones 2017 .)

There is, it must be noted, at least one benefit of abortion research being regularly siloed within social science disciplines. The small but growing number of researchers engaged in abortion research has often had to seek mentorship and collaborations outside their disciplines. Indeed, several of the articles included in this special issue come from multidisciplinary author teams, building bridges between disciplinary literatures and pushing knowledge forward. Social scientists studying abortion regularly engage with research by clinicians and clinician-researchers, which is somewhat rare in the academy. The interdisciplinary journals noted above that regularly publish social science abortion research ( Contraception and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ) also regularly publish clinical articles and are read by advocates and policy makers. In other words, social scientists studying abortion frequently reach audiences that include clinicians, advocates, and policy makers, marking an opportunity for social science research to influence practice.

The siloization of abortion research in the social sciences affects more than broad social science knowledge; it also dramatically shapes our understanding of abortion. When abortion researchers are largely relegated to their own spaces, they risk missing opportunities to learn from other areas of scholarship that are not related to abortion. Lacking context from other topics, abortion scholars may inaccurately understand an aspect of abortion as exceptional that is not, or they may reinvent the proverbial theoretical wheel to describe an abortion-related phenomenon that is not actually unique to abortion. For example, scholars have studied criminalized behavior for decades, offering theoretical insights and methodological best practices for research on illegal activities. With abortion now illegal in many states, abortion researchers can benefit from drawing on that extant literature to examine the implications of illegality, identifying which aspects of abortion illegality are unique and which are common to other illegal activities. Likewise, methodologically, abortion researchers can learn from other researchers of illegal activities about how to protect participants' confidentiality.

The ontological and epistemological implications for the siloization of abortion research extend beyond reproductive health. When abortion research is not part of the central discussions in economics, political science, and sociology, our understanding of health policy, politics, and law is impoverished. We thus miss opportunities to identify and address chronic health disparities and health inequities, with both conceptual and practical consequences. These oversights matter for people's lives. Following the June 2022 Dobbs decision, millions of people with the capacity of pregnancy are now barred from one key way to control fertility: abortion. The implications of scholars' failure to comprehensively grapple with the place of abortion in health policy, politics, and law are playing out in those people's lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Articles in this Special Issue

In this landscape, we offer this special issue on “The Politics of Abortion 50 Years After Roe .” We seek in this issue to illustrate some of the many ways abortion can and should be studied, with benefits not only for scholarly knowledge about abortion and its role in policy, politics, and law but also for general knowledge about health policy, politics, and law themselves.

The issue's articles represent multiple disciplines, including several articles by multidisciplinary teams. Although public health has long been a welcoming home for abortion research, authors in this special issue point to opportunities in anthropology, sociology, and political science, among other disciplines, for the study of abortion. We do not see the differences and variations among disciplinary approaches as a competition. Rather, we believe that the more diverse the body of researchers grappling with questions about abortion, abortion provision, and abortion patients, the better our collective knowledge about abortion and its role in the social landscape.

The same goes for diversity of methodological approaches. Authors in this issue employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, showcasing compelling methodological variation. There is no singular or best methodology for answering research questions about abortion. Instead, the impressive variation in methodological approaches in this special issue highlights the vast methodological opportunities for future research. A diversity of methodologies enables a diversity of research questions. Indeed, different methods can identify, generate, and respond to different research questions, enriching the literature on abortion. The methodologies represented in this issue are certainly not exhaustive, but we believe they are suggestive of future opportunities for scholarly exploration and investigation. We hope these articles will provide a road map for rich expansions of the research literature on abortion.

By way of brief introduction, we offer short summaries of the included articles. Baker traces the history of medication abortion in the United States, cataloging the initial approval of the two-part regimen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), subsequent policy debates over FDA-imposed restrictions on how medication abortion is dispensed, and the work of abortion access advocates to get medication abortion to people who need it. Weaving together accounts of health care policy, abortion advocacy, and on-the-ground activism, Baker illustrates both the unique contentions specific to abortion policy and how the history of medication abortion can be seen as a case of health care advocacy.

Two of the issue's articles focus on state-level legislative policy on abortion. Roth and Lee generate an original data set cataloging the introduction and implementation of statutes on abortion and other aspects of reproductive health at the state level in the United States monthly, from 1994 to 2022. In their descriptive analysis, the authors highlight trends in abortion legislation and the emergent pattern of state polarization around abortion. Their examination adds rich longitudinal context to contemporary analyses of reproductive health legislation, providing a valuable resource for future scholarship. Carson and Carter similarly attend to state-level legislation, zeroing in on the case of abortion policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to show how legislation unrelated to abortion has been opportunistically used to restrict abortion access. The authors also examine how abortion is discursively constructed as a risk to public health. This latter move, they argue, builds on previous constructions of abortion as a risk to individual health and points to a new horizon of antiabortion constructions of the meaning of abortion access.

Kim et al. and Kumar examine the implementation of US abortion policies. Kim et al. use an original data set of 20 years of state supreme court decisions to investigate factors that affect state supreme court decision-making on abortion. Their regression analysis uncovers the complex relationship between state legislatures, state supreme courts, and the voting public for the case of abortion. Kumar charts how 50 years of US abortion policy have affected global access to abortion, offering insights into the underexamined international implications of US abortion policy and into social movement advocacy that has expanded abortion access around the world.

Karlin and Joffe and Heymann et al. draw on data collected when Roe was still the law of the land to investigate phenomena that are likely to become far more common now that Roe has been overturned. Karlin and Joffe utilize interviews with 40 physicians who provide abortions to examine their perspectives on people who terminate their pregnancies outside the formal health care system—an abortion pathway whose popularity increases when abortion access constricts (Aiken et al. 2022 ). By contextualizing their findings on the contradictions physicians voiced—desiring to support reproductive autonomy but invested in physician authority—in a historical overview of how mainstream medicine has marginalized abortion provision since the early days after Roe , the authors add nuance to understandings of the “formal health care system,” its members, and the stakes faced by people bypassing this system to obtain their desired health outcome. Heymann et al. investigate a process also likely to increase in the wake of the Dobbs decision: the implementation of restrictive state-level abortion policy by unelected bureaucrats. Using the case of variances for a written transfer agreement requirement in Ohio—a requirement with no medical merit that is designed to add administrative burden to stand-alone abortion clinics—Heymann et al. demonstrate how bureaucratic discretion by political appointees can increase the administrative burden of restrictive abortion laws and thus further constrain abortion access. Together, these two articles demonstrate how pre- Roe data can point scholars to areas that merit investigation after Roe has been overturned.

Finally, using mixed methods, Buyuker et al. analyze attitudes about abortion acceptability and the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, distinguishing what people think about abortion from what they know about abortion policy. In addition to providing methodological insights about survey items related to abortion attitudes, the authors expose a disconnect between how people think about abortion acceptability and their support for the Roe decision. In other words, as polarized as abortion attitudes are said to be, there is unacknowledged and largely unmeasured complexity in how the general public thinks about abortion.

Future Research on Abortion

We hope that a desire to engage in abortion research prompts scholars to read the excellent articles in this special issue. We also hope that reading these pieces inspires at least some readers to engage in abortion research. Having researched abortion for nearly three decades between us, we are delighted by the emerging interest in studying abortion, whether as a focal topic or alongside a different focus. This research is essential to our collective understanding of abortion politics, policy, and law and the many millions of people whose lives are affected by US abortion politics, policy, and law annually. In light of the limitations of the current field of abortion research, we have several suggestions for scholars of abortion, regardless of their level of familiarity with the topic.

First, know and cite the existing literature on abortion. To address the siloization of abortion research, and particularly the scarcity of abortion research published in generalist journals, scholars must be sure to build on the impressive work that has been published on the topic in specialized spaces. Moreover, becoming familiar with existing research can help scholars avoid several common pitfalls in abortion research. For example, being immersed in existing literature can help scholars avoid outdated, imprecise, or inappropriate language and terminology. Smith et al. ( 2018 ), for instance, illuminate the implications of clinicians deploying seemingly everday language around “elective” abortion. They find that it muddies the distinction between the use of “elective” colloquially and in clinical settings, contributing to the stigmatization of abortion and abortion patients. Examinations like theirs advance understanding of abortion stigmatization while highlighting for scholars the importance of being sensitive to and reflective about language. Familiarity with existing research can help scholars avoid methodological pitfalls as well, such as incomplete understanding of the organization of abortion provision. Although Planned Parenthood has brand recognition for providing abortion care, the majority of abortions in the United States are performed at independent abortion clinics. Misunderstanding the provision landscape can have consequences for some study designs.

Second, we encourage scholars of abortion to think critically about the ideological underpinnings of how their research questions and findings are framed. Academic research of all kinds, including abortion, is better when it is critical of ideologically informed premises. Abortion scholars must be careful to avoid uncritically accepting both antiabortion premises and abortion-supportive premises, especially as those premises unconsciously guide much of the public discourse on abortion. Scholars have the opportunity to use methodological tools not to find an objective truth per se but to challenge the uncontested common sense claims that frequently guide public thinking on abortion. One strategy for avoiding common framing pitfalls is to construct research and analysis to center the people most affected by abortion politics, policy, and law (Kimport and McLemore 2022 ). Another strategy is to critique what Baird and Millar ( 2019 , 2020 ) have termed the performative nature of abortion scholarship. Abortion scholarship, they note, has predominantly focused on negative aspects and effects of abortion care. Research that finds and explores affirmatively positive aspects—for instance, the joy in abortion—can crucially thicken scholarly understanding.

Third, related to our discussion above, scholars of abortion face an interesting challenge regarding how abortion is and is not exceptional. Research on abortion must attend to how abortion has been exceptionalized—and marginalized—in policy and practices. But there are also numerous instances where abortion is only one example of many. In these cases, investigation of abortion under the assumption that it is exceptional is an unnecessary limitation on the work's contribution. Scholars of abortion benefit from mastery of the literature on abortion, yet knowing this literature is not sufficient. There are important bridges from scholarship on abortion to scholarship in other areas, important conversations across and within literatures, that can yield insights both about abortion and about other topical foci.

As guest coeditors of this special issue, we are delighted by the rich and growing body of scholarship on abortion, to which the articles in this special issue represent an important addition. There is still much more work to be done. Going forward, we are eager to see future scholarship on abortion build on this work and tackle new questions.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Krystale Littlejohn, Jon Oberlander, Ellen Key, and Jane Sumner for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Both authors contributed equally to this article and are listed alphabetically.

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Number of Articles about Abortion in Top Disciplinary Journals, 2000–2021

Note : AER = American Economic Review ; QJE = Quarterly Journal of Economics ; JPE = Journal of Political Economy ; APSR = American Political Science Review ; AJPS = American Journal of Political Science ; JOP = Journal of Politics ; ASR = American Sociological Review ; AJS = American Journal of Sociology ; ARS = Annual Review of Sociology.

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What the data says about abortion in the u.s..

Pew Research Center has conducted many surveys about abortion over the years, providing a lens into Americans’ views on whether the procedure should be legal, among a host of other questions. In a Center survey conducted after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to end the constitutional right to abortion , 62% of U.S. adults said the practice should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. Another survey showed that relatively few Americans take an absolutist view on the issue.

Here is a look at data on the number of legal abortions that take place in the United States each year – and other related measures – from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, which have tracked these patterns for several decades. The latest data from both organizations is from 2020 and therefore does not reflect the period after the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

This compilation of data on abortion in the United States draws mainly from two sources: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, both of which have regularly compiled national abortion data for approximately half a century, and both of which collect their data in different ways.

The CDC data that is highlighted in this post comes from the agency’s “abortion surveillance” reports, which have been published annually since 1974 (and which have included data from 1969). Its figures from 1973 through 1996 include data from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and New York City – 52 “reporting areas” in all. Since 1997, the CDC’s totals have lacked data from some states (most notably California) for the years that those states did not report data to the agency. The three reporting areas that did not submit data to the CDC in 2020 – California, Maryland and New Hampshire – accounted for approximately 19% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2017, according to Guttmacher’s data. Most states, though, do have data in the reports, and the figures for the vast majority of them came from each state’s central health agency, while for some states, the figures came from hospitals and other medical facilities.

Discussion of CDC abortion data involving women’s state of residence, marital status, race, ethnicity, age, abortion history and the number of previous live births excludes the low share of abortions where that information was not supplied. The methodology for the CDC’s latest abortion surveillance report, which includes data from 2020, can be found here . Previous reports can be found at stacks.cdc.gov by entering “abortion surveillance” into the search box.

Guttmacher data in this post comes from national surveys of abortion providers that Guttmacher has conducted 19 times since 1973. Guttmacher compiles its figures after contacting every known provider of abortions – clinics, hospitals and physicians’ offices – in the country. It uses questionnaires and health department data, and it provides estimates for abortion providers that don’t respond to its inquiries. (In 2020, the last year for which it has released data on the number of abortions in the U.S., it used estimates for 12% of abortions.) For most of the 2000s, Guttmacher has conducted these national surveys every three years, each time getting abortion data for the prior two years. For each interim year, Guttmacher has calculated estimates based on trends from its own figures and from other data.

The latest full summary of Guttmacher data came in the institute’s report titled “ Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2020 .” It includes figures for 2020 and 2019 and estimates for 2018. The report includes a methods section.

In addition, this post uses data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) on complications from abortion. The NCBI is part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

How many abortions are there in the U.S. each year?

An exact answer is hard to come by. The CDC and the Guttmacher Institute each try to measure this, but they use different methods and publish different figures.

The CDC compiles figures voluntarily reported by the central health agencies of the vast majority of states (including separate figures for New York City) and the District of Columbia. Its latest totals do not include figures from California, Maryland or New Hampshire, which did not report data to the CDC. (Read the methodology from the latest CDC report .)

The Guttmacher Institute compiles its figures after contacting every known provider of abortions – clinics, hospitals and physicians’ offices – in the country. It uses questionnaires and health department data, and provides estimates for abortion providers that don’t respond to its inquiries. Guttmacher’s figures are higher than the CDC’s in part because it includes data (and in some instances, estimates) from all 50 states. The institute’s latest full report, and its methodology, can be found here . While the Guttmacher Institute supports abortion rights, its empirical data on abortions in the U.S. has been widely cited by groups and publications across the political spectrum, including by a number of those that disagree with its positions .

The last year for which the CDC and Guttmacher reported a yearly national total for abortions is 2020, and neither organization reported a large change from the previous year. The CDC says there were 620,327 abortions nationally in 2020 in the District of Columbia and 47 states, a 1.5% decrease from 629,898 in 2019. Guttmacher’s national total for 2020 was 930,160, a 1.5% increase from 916,460 in 2019.

The figures reported by both organizations include only legal induced abortions conducted by clinics, hospitals or physicians’ offices, or those that make use of abortion pills dispensed from certified facilities such as clinics or physicians’ offices. They do not account for the use of abortion pills that were obtained outside of clinical settings .

How has the number of abortions in the U.S. changed over the years?

A line graph showing the changing number of legal abortions in the U.S. since the 1970s. The annual number of U.S. abortions rose for years after Roe v. Wade, reaching its highest levels around the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, abortions have generally decreased at what a CDC analysis called “a slow yet steady pace.”

The annual number of U.S. abortions rose for years after Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure in 1973, reaching its highest levels around the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to both the CDC and Guttmacher. Since then, abortions have generally decreased at what a CDC analysis called “a slow yet steady pace.”

Guttmacher recorded more than 1.5 million abortions in the U.S. in 1991, about two-thirds more than the 930,160 it reported for 2020. The CDC reported just over 1 million abortions in 1991 and 620,327 in 2020, looking at just the District of Columbia and the 47 states that reported figures in both years. (This line graph shows the long-term trend in the number of legal abortions reported by both organizations. To allow for consistent comparisons over time, the CDC figures in the chart have been adjusted to ensure that the same states are counted from one year to the next. Using that approach, the CDC figure for 2020 is 615,911 legal abortions.)

There have been occasional breaks in this long-term pattern of decline – during the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, and then again in the late 2010s. The CDC reported modest 1% and 2% increases in abortions in 2018 and 2019, respectively, while Guttmacher reported an 8% increase in abortions over the three-year period from 2017 to 2020.

As noted above, these figures do not include abortions that use pills that were obtained outside of clinical settings.

What is the abortion rate among women in the U.S.? How has it changed over time?

Guttmacher says that in 2020 there were 14.4 abortions in the U.S. per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. Its data shows that the rate of abortions among women has generally been declining in the U.S. since 1981, when it reported there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age range.

The CDC says that in 2020, there were 11.2 abortions in the U.S. per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. (That figure excludes data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia.) Like Guttmacher’s data, the CDC’s figures also suggest a general decline in the abortion rate over time. In 1980, when the CDC reported on all 50 states and D.C., it said there were 25 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.

That said, both Guttmacher and the CDC say there were slight increases in the rate of abortions during the late 2010s. Guttmacher says the abortion rate per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 rose from 13.5 in 2017 to 14.4 in 2020. The CDC says it rose from 11.2 in 2017 to 11.4 in 2019 before falling back to 11.2 in 2020. (The CDC’s figures for those years exclude data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia).

What are the most common types of abortion?

The CDC broadly divides abortions into two categories: surgical abortions and medication abortions, which involve pills. Since the Food and Drug Administration first approved abortion pills in 2000, their use has increased over time as a share of abortions nationally, according to both the CDC and Guttmacher. In fact, 2020 marked the first time that a majority of legal abortions in the U.S. involved pills: 53%, according to both the CDC and Guttmacher. That was up from 44% in 2019 and 40% in 2018, according to the CDC. (The CDC’s figures for 2020 include D.C. and 44 states that provided this data; its figures for 2019 figures included D.C. and 45 states, and its figures for 2018 included D.C. and 43 states.) Guttmacher, which measures this every three years, said that in 2017, 39% of U.S. abortions involved pills.

Two pills commonly used together for medication abortions are mifepristone, which, taken first, blocks hormones that support a pregnancy, and misoprostol, which then causes the uterus to empty. Medication abortions are safe to use until 10 weeks into pregnancy, according to the FDA.

Surgical abortions conducted during the first trimester of pregnancy typically use a suction process, while the relatively few surgical abortions that occur during the second trimester of a pregnancy typically use a process called dilation and evacuation, according to the UCLA School of Medicine website.

How many abortion providers are there in the U.S., and how has that number changed?

In 2020, there were 1,603 facilities in the U.S. that provided abortions, according to Guttmacher . This included 807 clinics, 530 hospitals and 266 physicians’ offices.

A bar chart showing that the total number of abortion providers is down since 1982. In 2020, there were 1,603 facilities in the U.S. that provided abortions, including 807 clinics, 530 hospitals and 266 physicians’ offices.

While clinics make up half of the facilities that provide abortions, they are the sites where the vast majority (96%) of abortions are administered, either through procedures or the distribution of pills, according to Guttmacher’s 2020 data. (This includes 54% of abortions that are administered at specialized abortion clinics and 43% at nonspecialized clinics.) Hospitals made up 33% of the facilities that provided abortions in 2020 but accounted for only 3% of abortions that year, while just 1% of abortions were conducted by physicians’ offices.

Looking just at clinics – that is, the total number of specialized abortion clinics and nonspecialized clinics in the U.S. – Guttmacher found the total virtually unchanged between 2017 (808 clinics) and 2020 (807 clinics). However, there were regional differences. In the Midwest, the number of clinics that provide abortions increased by 11% during those years, and in the West by 6%. The number of clinics decreased during those years by 9% in the Northeast and 3% in the South.

The total number of abortion providers has declined dramatically since the 1980s. In 1982, according to Guttmacher, there were 2,908 facilities providing abortions in the U.S., including 789 clinics, 1,405 hospitals and 714 physicians’ offices.

The CDC does not track the number of abortion providers.

What percentage of abortions are for women who live in a different state from the abortion provider?

In the District of Columbia, New York City and the 46 states that provided abortion and residency information to the CDC in 2020, 9.7% of all abortions were performed on women whose state of residence was known to be different than the state where the abortion occurred – virtually the same percentage as in 2019 (9.3%).

The share of reported abortions performed on women outside their state of residence was much higher before the 1973 Roe decision that stopped states from banning abortion. In 1972, 41% of all abortions in D.C. and the 20 states that provided this information to the CDC that year were performed on women outside their state of residence. In 1973, the corresponding figure was 21% in the District of Columbia and the 41 states that provided this information, and in 1974 it was 11% in D.C. and the 43 states that provided data.

In the months prior to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, politicians in some states with permissive abortion laws (such as New York , California and Oregon ) introduced measures to assist women from states with restrictive abortion laws. Some examples included providing additional state funds for women’s travel expenses and for abortion clinics that were expecting more out-of-state patients.

What are the demographics of women who had abortions in 2020?

In the 46 states that reported data to the CDC in 2020, the majority of women who had abortions (57%) were in their 20s, while about three-in-ten (31%) were in their 30s. Teens ages 13 to 19 accounted for 8% of those who had abortions, while women in their 40s accounted for 4%.

The vast majority of women who had abortions in 2020 were unmarried (86%), while married women accounted for 14%, according to the CDC , which had data on this from 39 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).

In the District of Columbia and 29 states that reported racial and ethnic data on abortion to the CDC , 39% of all women who had abortions in 2020 were non-Hispanic Black, while 33% were non-Hispanic White, 21% were Hispanic, and 7% were of other races or ethnicities.

A pie chart showing that in 2020, a majority (58%) of abortions were for women who had never had one before. For 24% of women it was their second abortion, for 10% it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher.

Among those ages 15 to 44, there were 24.4 abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic Black women; 11.4 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women; 6.2 abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic White women; and 12.7 abortions per 1,000 women of other races or ethnicities in that age range, the CDC reported from those same 29 states and the District of Columbia.

Most U.S. abortions in 2020 were for women who had previously given birth. 39% of women who had abortions in 2020 had no previous live births at the time they had an abortion, 25% had one previous live birth, 20% had two previous live births, 10% had three, and 6% had four or more previous live births.

For 58% of U.S. women who had induced abortions in 2020, it was the first time they had ever had one, according to the CDC. For nearly a quarter (24%), it was their second abortion. For 10% of women, it was their third, and for 8% it was their fourth or higher. These CDC figures include data from 41 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).

Nearly four-in-ten women who had abortions in 2020 (39%) had no previous live births at the time they had an abortion, according to the CDC . A quarter of women who had abortions in 2020 had one previous live birth, 20% had two previous live births, 10% had three, and 6% had four or more previous live births. These CDC figures include data from 42 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).

When during pregnancy do most abortions occur?

The vast majority of abortions occur during the first trimester of a pregnancy. In 2020, 93% of abortions occurred during the first trimester – that is, at or before 13 weeks of gestation, according to the CDC . An additional 6% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, and 1% were performed at 21 weeks or more of gestation. These CDC figures include data from 40 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).

How often are there medical complications from abortion?

About 2% of all abortions in the U.S. involve some type of complication for the woman, according to an article in Statpearls, an online health care resource. The article says that “most complications are considered minor such as pain, bleeding, infection and post-anesthesia complications.”

The CDC calculates case-fatality rates for women from legal induced abortions – that is, how many women die from abortion-related complications, for every 100,000 abortions that occur in the U.S . The rate was lowest during the most recent period examined by the agency (2013 to 2019), when there were 0.43 deaths to women per 100,000 legal induced abortions. The case-fatality rate reported by the CDC was highest during the first period examined by the agency (1973 to 1977), when it was 2.1 deaths to women per 100,000 legal induced abortions. During the five-year periods in between, the figure ranged from 0.5 (from 1993 to 1997) to 0.8 (from 1978 to 1982). The CDC says it calculates death rates by five-year and seven-year periods because of year-to-year fluctuation in the numbers and due to the relatively low number of women who die from abortion.

In 2019, the last year for which the CDC has information, four women in the U.S. died due to complications from induced abortions, according to the CDC . Two women died in this way in 2018, and three women in 2017. (These deaths all followed legal abortions.) In 2016, the CDC reported seven deaths due to either legal (six) or illegal (one) induced abortions. Since 1990, the annual number of deaths among women due to induced abortion has ranged from two to 12, according to the CDC.

The annual number of reported deaths from induced abortions tended to be higher in the 1980s, when it ranged from nine to 16, and from 1972 to 1979, when it ranged from 13 to 54 (1972 was the first year the CDC began collecting this data). One driver of the decline was the drop in deaths from illegal abortions. There were 35 deaths from illegal abortions in 1972, the last full year before Roe v. Wade. The total fell to 19 in 1973 and to single digits or zero every year after that. (The number of deaths from legal abortions has also declined since then, though with some slight variation over time.)

The number of deaths from induced abortions was considerably higher in the 1960s than afterward. For instance, there were 235 deaths from abortions in 1965 and 280 in 1963 , according to reports by the then-U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, a precursor to the Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC is a division of Health and Human Services.

CORRECTION (Jan. 13, 2023): This post has been updated to reflect the correct attribution of data on the percentage of abortions in the U.S. that involve some type of medical complication for the woman. The correct source is Statpearls.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published May 27, 2022, and first updated June 24, 2022.

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Key facts about the abortion debate in America

Public opinion on abortion, three-in-ten or more democrats and republicans don’t agree with their party on abortion, partisanship a bigger factor than geography in views of abortion access locally, do state laws on abortion reflect public opinion, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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How states giving rights to fetuses could set up a national case on abortion

Regan McCarthy

Abortion access advocates are chanting and waiving signs outside the Florida Supreme Court. Inside, justices have just heard arguments on the ballot language for a proposed state constitutional amendment that would protect abortion access up to the point of viability. Regan McCarthy hide caption

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Last month, when the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments for a proposed state constitutional amendment that would explicitly protect access to abortion, the discussion took a surprising turn for attendees like state House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell.

"The chief justice seemed to really be trained on trying to understand what the effects of this ballot initiative would be on other areas of the law," Driskell said.

Specifically, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wanted to know how the amendment might interact with Article I of Florida's Constitution , which grants "all natural persons" the inalienable right to life.

"I don't know that I could affirmatively say that the term 'natural person' doesn't, as a matter of ordinary meaning, include the unborn," Muñiz said during the hearing.

It wasn't the first time Muñiz made that type of comment. He previously spoke about how Article I relates to rights for fetuses during a hearing on Florida's current 15-week abortion ban.

"Chief Justice Muñiz is all but writing up an engraved invitation to make this argument to the Florida Supreme Court," said University of California-Davis law professor Mary Ziegler.

The court's ruling in both cases is pending and it remains to be seen whether the chief justice's questions about fetal personhood will impact the outcomes. But Ziegler said the question of fetal personhood "isn't going anywhere."

It's a topic that's made headlines since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a recent wrongful death case that embryos are "extrauterine children." That ruling raised questions around access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state and sent ripples throughout the country.

Since then, Alabama lawmakers have rushed to support a bill to protect IVF , a fertility procedure that remains very popular with Republicans and Democrats alike. In Florida, lawmakers paused their efforts to add fetuses to their own state's wrongful death law.

Ziegler, who has written several books on abortion law and history, said many of the steps states are taking on the issue are part of a plan that's been in place since the 1960s.

State laws giving rights to fetuses may be setting the pieces for a longer game

For decades, members of the anti-abortion rights movement have been working to put laws on the books across the country that extend rights to fetuses — like fetal homicide, wrongful death, and child support during pregnancy.

"The idea was to go to sympathetic judges, like those on the Florida Supreme Court," Ziegler told NPR, "and say, 'Isn't it weird that a fetus isn't a rights holder for the purposes of the state constitution or the purposes of the abortion law, but it is in all these other contexts?'"

Ziegler said each new law passed creates a cumulative effect. The more times a state recognizes a fetus as a person in one area of law, the easier it will be for lawyers to make the argument that it's inconsistent that fetuses aren't recognized as people by the Constitution. If states like Alabama and Florida recognize fetuses as people in their laws and constitutions, she said, it helps set the dominos for an argument on the national level.

"The more states pass laws recognizing a fetus as a rights holder in a variety of contexts, the more you're going to see the anti-abortion movement wanting to return to the U.S. Supreme Court and say, 'Actually under the 14th Amendment of the federal Constitution, a fetus is also a rights holder,'" Ziegler said.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 , decisions about abortion regulation reverted to individual states. But Ziegler said if states can continually make laws that give rights to fetuses and that makes it to the highest court, it could potentially cut off access to abortion nationwide.

Ziegler said the plan she believes the anti-abortion movement is working toward now is similar to one that's worked in the past. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion , in which he pointed to states that had laws on the books against abortion access.

"In recent years, a significant number of States have enacted abortion restrictions that directly conflict with Roe. Those laws cannot be dismissed as political stunts or as outlier laws," Kavanaugh wrote. "Those numerous state laws collectively represent the sincere and deeply held views of tens of millions of Americans."

Andrew Shirvell (center in sunglasses) is founder of the anti-abortion group Florida Voice for the Unborn. He's standing on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court protesting abortion access. He said if Florida passes a bill letting parents collect damages for the loss of a pregnancy it would give abortion opponents another law to point to in the effort to establish fetal personhood in the state. Regan McCarthy hide caption

A Florida bill is paused for this session, but not gone for good

Florida Republican lawmakers recently considered a bill that would have let parents collect damages in civil suits for the loss of a pregnancy. While the bill's sponsors (who helped to pass Florida's pending six-week abortion ban) said the wrongful death measure had nothing to do with abortion, advocates on both sides of the issue disagreed.

Andrew Shirvell, founder of the group Florida Voice for the Unborn, told lawmakers as he spoke about the bill in committee that he would "say the quiet part out loud." From his viewpoint, he said, the wrongful death bill is "another reaffirmation that unborn children should be considered nothing less than human persons under our state laws and our state constitution."

Opponents worried the measure could cut off access to reproductive health care including abortion and IVF, even though the measure included a definition for the term "unborn child" that specified it must be in the womb. State Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book raised concerns the measure could be a vehicle to bring a fetal personhood case before Chief Justice Muñiz.

"When you're tiptoeing and you're delving for personhood, you're coming for it and it's only a matter of time," Book said. "I think for a long time people suggested that advocates [and] lawmakers who talked about personhood, coming after IVF, the abortion battle, that we were somehow hyperbolic or hysterical. Well, look where we are."

Shortly after the Alabama ruling, the Senate sponsor of Florida's bill pulled the measure from its final committee stop.

"Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done," said Republican state Sen. Erin Grall in a statement. "It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance."

Book said she hopes new attention on the Alabama case and the stalled Florida bill could spell the end for the push for fetal personhood.

"People across the country are talking about it," Book said. "I think at the end of the day, Republicans realize this is a problem. This isn't something that they should be doing."

In the wake of the Alabama ruling, the campaign arm for U.S. Senate Republicans advised candidates to "clearly and concisely reject" any efforts to restrict access to IVF.

But already, Republican legislative leaders in Florida have indicated plans to revisit their wrongful death bill next year—potentially renewing the discussion surrounding fetal personhood.

Abortion policy
reproductive health
Abortion rights

The Anti-abortion Movement’s Attack on Wanted Pregnancies

The push to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses not only forces unwanted pregnancies, it also steals choice from women who fervently want children.

A black and white photo of a family facing away from the camera, with a cut-out where a child should be in its fathers arms

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade , we’ve witnessed the sober consequences of denying abortions to people who desperately want them. Women have been forced to continue pregnancies that have almost killed them , and given birth to children they can’t afford to care for, children conceived by rape , and children they are simply not ready to have . Now we’re seeing the flip side of the anti-abortion movement’s push to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses: the denial of pregnancy to women who fervently want children.

Last month, at least three major clinics in Alabama paused in vitro fertilization, or IVF, treatments after the state’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children under the law. The details of the lawsuit that triggered the ruling are grim. A patient at a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, entered an IVF clinic located in the same building, removed several frozen embryos from storage, and dropped them, destroying them in the process. The families who lost embryos sued the clinic, arguing that their embryos should be protected under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In a momentous decision, the court agreed . “Unborn children are ‘children’ under the Act, without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the majority opinion. That means that in Alabama, fertilized eggs created during fertility treatments and stored in a freezer—referred to in the opinion as “extrauterine children” in a “cryogenic nursery”—can now be considered the legal equivalent of born offspring.

Read: The Alabama embryo opinion is about more than Christian nationalism

In a dissent, Associate Justice Greg Cook warned that the ruling would almost certainly end IVF in Alabama as it was currently practiced. “No court—anywhere in the country—has reached the conclusion the main opinion reaches,” he wrote. Ironically, a case that started with the plaintiffs’ desire to grow their families using fertility treatments ended with a ruling that prevented others, at least temporarily, from having children that way. (Last night, Alabama passed a law framed as a short-term fix to shield IVF providers from prosecution and civil suits. But because it doesn’t reverse the underlying decision that embryos have legal rights, the future of IVF in the state remains somewhat murky.)

The Alabama Supreme Court ruling was in many ways a predictable outcome of the anti-abortion movement’s embrace of “fetal personhood,” a concept that aims to bestow embryos and fetuses with legal rights. The reproductive-rights nonprofit Pregnancy Justice warned of its rising power in a report released after Roe was overturned. “At least 11 states have extremely broad personhood language that could be read to affect all state laws, civil and criminal,” the report said. “As ascendant as the concept of fetal personhood has become, we have yet to reckon with what it really will, or could, mean.” The cause is rapidly gaining prominence: So far this year, lawmakers have introduced fetal-personhood bills in at least 14 states . Some states have already used personhood language to prosecute pregnant women for actions considered harmful to fetuses, such as using recreational drugs. IVF has not been an explicit target of personhood advocates, possibly because of its popularity among the general public . But the Alabama decision has exposed the contradiction inherent in supporting both IVF and the idea that life begins at fertilization, as many Republican lawmakers do. They are philosophically incompatible.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision is now reverberating through the IVF community nationwide. I’m a member of multiple infertility support groups, having gone through IVF myself in the past year. Online, I’ve witnessed widespread panic, anger, and confusion among patients in Alabama and across the country. The unanswered questions are endless: If embryos are considered children, what does that mean for their creation, storage, and destruction? (Some patients end up with leftover embryos that can be discarded or donated to other patients or to science.) Will other states follow suit? What about the implications for stem-cell research? Contraception?

I have not been able to stop thinking about the Alabama patients who, without warning, had their IVF treatments canceled mid-cycle as clinics weighed the possible legal ramifications of the ruling. “We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care,” said a spokesperson for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which suspended all IVF services involving egg fertilization, embryo development, or embryo transfer. While the full toll of the closures is still being measured, one clinic that paused treatments, Alabama Fertility, told CNN it canceled an estimated 35 embryo transfers in the days after the ruling. The Center for Reproductive Medicine, the defendant in the court’s recent decision, also announced that it was halting services, saying: “We understand the burden this places on deserving families who want to bring babies into this world and who have no alternative options for conceiving.”

It’s worth explaining in detail what IVF involves and what, precisely, was lost as a result of this decision. IVF is complicated, expensive, and emotionally draining. It relies on precise timing that aligns with a patient’s menstrual cycle. First are the shots, once or twice a day, of fertility medications that help eggs mature. Some women are brave enough to inject themselves; I’m not one of them. I couldn’t even look at the needle as it went into my stomach. Instead, I covered my eyes with a sleep mask and listened to music as my husband gently administered the medicine. In an effort to make the process less horrible, I bought chocolates that I loved from my youth—Belgian, in the shape of seashells—and ate one as a reward each night. My friend posited that associating the chocolates with painful shots might backfire, and she was right; I haven’t been able to eat them since.

After about two weeks and half a dozen clinic visits, depending on how one’s body reacts to the drugs, eggs are retrieved during an outpatient surgery, typically done under anesthesia. Next, the eggs are fertilized with sperm in a lab. Then the fertilized eggs are watched for a few days to see if they develop into blastocysts. At each stage, there is significant attrition. I came out of the egg-retrieval surgery with 22 eggs. Eight survived to the blastocyst stage. After testing, only four were found to be free of genetic abnormalities.

The final step—the embryo transfer—requires perfect timing and just the right cocktail of drugs to prepare the body for the embryo in the hopes that it will implant and grow. In the weeks leading up to my transfer, I obsessed over the exact thickness of my uterine lining, which was measured at appointments every three days. Even though I was dubious about the science behind the popular advice given in fertility forums, I followed its tenets out of faith: eating copious amounts of pineapple, drinking pomegranate juice, and having sex the night before the transfer. The whole process felt like a gamble. I was scared that any single decision I made—to have a glass of wine; to take a planned trip to a day spa—could jeopardize the entire cycle, costing me months of time and thousands of dollars in medicine and doctor visits, not to mention the impact on my mental health (turns out that hormone injections make you weepy), my ability to work (interrupted by constant trips to the clinic), and my physical body (swollen, crampy, and bruised).

In the IVF forums, I recognized a common coping mechanism: relentless positive thinking. There’s a term, PUPO , which stands for “pregnant until proven otherwise.” It’s commonly used by patients after an embryo transfer, an exclamation that aims to speak their dream into existence. IVF is a gamble. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, how much money and time and tears you invest, it simply doesn’t work. Women like me, ages 38 to 40, have a 26 percent chance of a live birth resulting from a single egg retrieval. The numbers decrease the older you are, which infuses the entire process with a sense of urgency. Knowing all of this, people still choose this path—because they want the chance to have a baby. For the unlucky women of Alabama who were in the midst of that grueling process, that chance was stripped away, their reproduction plans put on hold without their consent.

One patient who had her embryo transfer canceled detailed her devastation in an interview with ABC . She was already taking medications to prepare for the embryo transfer, and had purchased the drugs needed for the full cycle. “I’m angry that other people get to make a decision about whether or not I get to grow my family,” she said. “I’m mad that other people’s opinions affect medicine and the practice of it.”

Her comments unintentionally mirror those made by many women on the other side of this equation—those who are seeking an abortion in a post- Roe world and cannot obtain one. Those women, too, have been stripped of the right to make their own decisions about the size of their families, their medical care shaped by other people’s opinions. Although ending an unwanted pregnancy and pursuing IVF may seem like opposite ends of a spectrum, both are fundamentally about reproductive autonomy: the power to make decisions related to pregnancy and childbearing without government interference. And just as it is cruel to force someone who doesn’t want to have a baby to do so—to go through the physical experience of pregnancy and labor and delivery, to fundamentally change the trajectory of their life with the addition of a child—it is a similar form of cruelty to deny a person the chance to try for a child if that is what they desire.

Read: The coming rise of abortion as a crime

The Alabama families who filed the wrongful-death lawsuit are unlikely to be pleased with the repercussions currently unfolding in the state. As a lawyer for the plaintiffs stressed during oral arguments , IVF worked for them. “They have two beautiful children in each family because of in vitro fertilization. The notion that they would do anything to hinder or impair the right or access to IVF therapy is flat wrong. That’s not why we’re here.” Amid widespread outrage, state lawmakers fast-tracked legislation aiming to restore access to IVF by providing immunity from civil and criminal liability for providers and patients. But the bill, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Kay Ivey on Wednesday night, sidesteps the larger issue. It fails to make a clear legal distinction between embryos created during fertility treatment and children. And while some of the IVF clinics that paused services said they would resume care as early as this week, the clinic at the center of the state Supreme Court decision said it would not.

“As we understand the language of the proposed law, as it stands, we are not reopening our IVF facility until we have legal clarification on the extent of immunity provided by the new Alabama law,” read a statement reported by CNN . “At this time, we believe the law falls short of addressing the fertilized eggs currently stored across the state and leaves challenges for physicians and fertility clinics trying to help deserving families have children of their own.”

Sean Tipton, the chief advocacy and policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, called the new legislation sloppily worded and hastily crafted. “There’s a lot of unknowns about what the impact of this court case and the following legislation is going to be,” he told me. “Ultimately, we do know that there are going to be fewer babies born in Alabama to the families that so desperately want them. That is the undeniable legacy that the Alabama Supreme Court decision is leaving.”

My heart breaks for the Alabama families whose IVF plans are in limbo, because I understand what it feels like to yearn for a child and not know when you might be able to have one, if ever. I got lucky. My embryo transfer worked, and I now have a four-month-old daughter, who slept beside me while I wrote this story. I still have three more embryos, giving me the option to try for more children in the future, or not, depending on what I choose. Choose being the operative word.

Watch CBS News

France enshrines women's constitutional right to an abortion in a global first

By Elaine Cobbe

Updated on: March 5, 2024 / 12:35 PM EST / CBS News

Paris — France became the first country to enshrine a woman's right to an abortion in its constitution. Lawmakers from France's upper and lower houses of parliament met Monday and easily passed the historic amendment.

The bill was approved in an overwhelming 780-72 vote, and nearly the entire joint session stood in a long standing ovation.

The move was driven by concern that snowballed in France as the U.S. started rolling back abortion rights two years ago, when Roe v. Wade was overturned . French President Emmanuel Macron promised that France would ensure women's right to abortion was protected in the event of any similar moves to restrict access at any time in the future.

The amendment to Article 34 of the constitution would explicitly enshrine "a woman's guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion."

Macron announced after the vote that the amendment would be inscribed in the constitution on Friday, March 8 — International Women's Day — during a ceremony in central Paris that will be open to the public. Writing on social media, he said the vote was a matter of "French pride" and a "universal message."

The move has overwhelming support in the country. Several opinion polls have found that more than 80% of the French population approves of amending the constitution to enshrine that right.

There has been cross-party support for the change. Even far-right parliamentarians, from parties that have historically opposed expanding abortion rights, voted in favor of the reform.

Abortion was legalized in France in 1975. The legal limit for abortions was extended from 12 to 14 weeks of pregnancy in 2022, amid anger that French women were often forced to travel abroad for the procedure.

Just days ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, there was another historic moment Monday when the Congress was opened by a woman for the first time.

The president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, launched the proceedings, saying: "I am proud to pay tribute to all the women who have written, have acted, have fought daily so that we can climb the steep slope leading to equality between men and women."

Constitutionalisation of abortion: a special Congress meets in Versailles

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told the session in Versailles: "We owe a moral debt to women," and said that passing the amendment would be "a victory for women's rights."

"When women's rights are attacked in the world, France rises and places itself at the forefront of progress," Attal said in a social media post after last week's Senate vote in favor of the amendment.

Justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti called it "an historic vote," adding: "It reminds all those who didn't yet know it that the women in our country are free, and to what point we are all attached to that freedom."

France is a proudly secular country, though there is a strong Catholic tradition embedded in the culture. The country's Conference of Bishops relayed a call Monday for a day of "fasting and prayer," called for by several Catholic associations, over the pending legislation.

The Vatican also noted its opposition last month, and on Monday its Pontifical Academy for Life released a statement saying that, "in the era of universal human rights, there can be no 'right' to take a human life."

Roe v. Wade
European Union

Elaine Cobbe is a CBS News correspondent based in Paris. A veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering international events, Cobbe reports for CBS News' television, radio and digital platforms.

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v.46; 2022 Apr

Access to safe abortion is a fundamental human right

Abortion is a common medical or surgical intervention used to terminate pregnancy. Although a controversial and widely debated topic, approximately 73 million induced abortions occur worldwide each year, with 29% of all pregnancies and over 60% of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion . Abortions are considered safe if they are carried out using a method recommended by WHO, appropriate to the gestational age, and by someone with the necessary skills . Medical and surgical abortions can be safely managed by a trained health worker at a health-care facility. Medical abortions can also be safely self-managed outside of a health-care facility during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Global estimates suggest that approximately 45% of abortions are unsafe, defined as a procedure for termination delivered by persons without the necessary skills or in an environment not in conformity with minimal medical standards, or both . Wide disparities in the prevalence of unsafe abortions exist between high-income (12•5%) and low-income and middle-income (49•5%) countries or by the level of restriction of abortion laws . Unsafe abortions account for 4•7–13•2% of maternal deaths each year, with many more individuals experiencing other physical health complications, such as infection, haemorrhage, or uterine perforation, or psychological consequences, such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders . People with unintended pregnancies often seek unsafe abortions due to legal restrictions, stigma or discrimination, financial barriers, or limits in access to safe family planning services.

In March 2022, WHO released new guidelines on the delivery of comprehensive abortion care, with recommendations covering three main domains: law and policy, clinical services, and service delivery. They recommend full decriminalisation of abortion, and that abortion be made available on request of the pregnant person. WHO advises against laws and other regulations that restrict abortion by grounds, calling for the formulation or revision of existing grounds in accordance with international human rights law until grounds-based approaches are removed. In terms of best practices and service delivery, WHO provides new recommendations for pain management in surgical and medical abortions, and for the option of telemedicine as an alternative to in-person interactions to deliver medical abortion care for self-managed abortions. These pivotal evidence-based recommendations and best practices recognise the needs of pregnant individuals across the abortion care pathway, calling for the removal of unnecessary policy barriers and providing clear guidance to health-care providers for the delivery of safe abortion care.

Although access to safe abortion worldwide is improving, legal barriers and stigma create wide disparities between countries. Over the last 25 years, at least 50 countries have liberalised their laws to improve access to abortion care; however, 90 million women of reproductive age still live in countries in which abortion is prohibited altogether (eg, in Egypt, Iraq, and the Philippines). Even in countries where abortion is lawful, policies vary widely, including whether it is regulated through criminal law . These legal constraints, together with other cultural and religious factors fuel abortion stigma , which can lead to feelings of shame, secrecy, and psychological distress over time in those who have sought an abortion, as well as marginalisation of abortion providers . As of February 2019, of 158 countries where abortion is lawful at the pregnant person's request, 28 (18%) restrict access to abortion-related information, 12 (8%) require spousal consent, and 56 (35%) permit service providers to conscientiously object provision of abortion care. In addition, constraints on gestational age limits, waiting periods, and lack of trained or willing providers, lead some pregnant individuals to travel to other countries with fewer restrictions to seek an abortion .

Certain populations can also face particularly difficult barriers to abortion care. People assigned female sex at birth but who do not conform to the gender binary (gender-expansive, non-binary, or transgender people) also encounter deterrents to abortion care caused by gendered health-care environments, misgendering, high financial costs, or discrimination . In a 2019 survey of individuals who do not conform to the gender binary, most respondents reported preferring a medication abortion rather than a surgical abortion, because they viewed this method as the least invasive and more private approach. Respondents also most frequently recommended that intake forms and health-care providers adopt gender-neutral or gender-affirming language to improve the quality and accessibility of abortion care.

In addition, despite the right to health under international law, migrants, asylum seekers, and displaced persons also encounter restrictive or no access to sexual and reproductive health services , or they are reluctant to exercise their right to available abortion care due to stigma, fear of deportation, or discrimination . Some migrant, refugee, or asylum-seeking women are at greater risk of sexual violence or sexual exploitation, thus increasing the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Despite this increased need for sexual and reproductive health care, these individuals encounter interpersonal, health-system, and sociocultural barriers preventing access to timely care .

It is clear that much work needs to be done to address the existing inequalities and stigma worldwide. Abortions occur regardless of the level of restriction . As such, a pregnant person's autonomous right to receive safe abortion care, should they decide to exercise it, must be respected. The morbidity and mortality caused by unsafe abortions can be avoided if necessary steps to decriminalise and destigmatise abortion are taken, and health-care systems provide universally accessible safe abortion care.

eClinicalMedicine

Made by History

History Reveals the Truth About Exemptions to Abortion Bans

A spread from LIFE Magazine featuring Chessen on the left.

O n Thursday night, Kate Cox is set to sit in the President’s box as a guest of First Lady Dr. Jill Biden at the State of the Union Address. Her presence reflects the importance of abortion as a political and electoral issue, as well as her willingness to speak up for access to medical care.

The 31-year-old mother of two could have stayed quiet and anonymous after learning her fetus had the highly fatal trisomy 18 and doctors warned her that her pregnancy threatened her life and future ability to have children. Cox could have traveled from her native Texas—where abortion is banned—to another state for the abortion that she needed, with no one but those closest to her knowing about it. However, Cox desired to have the medical procedure at home with her own doctor and family nearby, so she sued Texas for the right to terminate her pregnancy. She aimed to force the courts to define when an abortion is medically necessary, even if only in her case. The resulting uproar catapulted Cox’s nonviable pregnancy into the national spotlight.

Cox’s story echoes the 1962 case of Sherri Chessen (she was known publicly by her husband’s name , Finkbine), whose abortion drew national and international scrutiny . Looking at the two cases side by side exposes the cruelty of abortion bans, then and now, and reveals how any claim that they protect mothers and children is a guise based on no applicable medical truth.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, doctors across the world routinely prescribed thalidomide to pregnant women in attempts to ease nausea. Unbeknownst to anyone taking or prescribing the new drug, however, thalidomide often caused fetal anomalies when consumed during pregnancy and resulted in the death of around 40% of babies affected.

In 1962, Chessen, a mother of four, was pregnant for the fifth time, and consumed thalidomide regularly during the early weeks of her pregnancy, unaware of its impact on her growing fetus.

Read More: Court Says Texas Can Ban Certain Emergency Abortions. What That Means

In her 11th week of pregnancy, Chessen learned about the dangers of the drug. In consultation with her OB-GYN, she sought a therapeutic abortion—a procedure that she never expected to need—at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix. She also spoke to the press anonymously to warn other women about thalidomide. But the press coverage ignited public outrage over the fact that Chessen planned to obtain an abortion, prompting the local newspaper to reveal her identity.

The story drew the attention of Maricopa County Attorney Charles N. Ronan, who said that under Arizona law an abortion could only be administered to “save the life of the mother.” Without learning the facts of the case, Ronan threatened to prosecute anyone who helped Chessen obtain an abortion. He claimed his office would have “no choice” if someone filed a complaint against her or her doctor since this was, in his words, “a medical question, not a legal question.”

Ronan’s statements had a chilling effect. Good Samaritan Hospital would not greenlight the procedure without immunity, despite Chessen signing a consent form agreeing that the abortion was “necessary for the protection of [Chessen’s] life and well-being.” At the time, doctors had little idea when prosecutors and courts would accept their judgment that a woman’s life was endangered, and when they would reject it. So the hospital sued on behalf of itself, Chessen, and her husband, Robert Finkbine, in an attempt to force the courts to “define life.”

Sherri Chessen, her husband Robert Finkbine, and their four children, Tracy, Mark, Terri, and Steven, shortly after the thalidomide crisis of 1962.

But a judge refused to offer criteria for defining when a woman’s life was at risk—instead claiming the definition of life was up to the doctors—and he dismissed the case. Despite the judge saying the matter was for doctors to decide, when reporters asked Ronan if he would prosecute the hospital, doctors, or Chessen if she received an abortion, he answered—with a sly grin on his face—“we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Ronan’s convoluted and confusing answers created doubts in the minds of Chessen’s doctors, and they refused to perform the abortion for fear of both legal and social ramifications.

Even worse, vigorous news coverage of the situation shattered Chessen’s privacy. Newspaper headlines ranged from details about her pregnancy (“Pill May Cost Woman Her Baby”) to analysis of Chessen’s appearance and mental state (“Anguished Mother of 4 Awaits Operation Ruling”). One newspaper article shared Chessen’s home address, and her family began receiving hate mail and death threats, prompting a subsequent headline about Chessen’s plans (“Finkbines Slip into Seclusion”).

The courts’ refusal to intervene and the hospital’s unwillingness to permit the procedure forced Chessen to travel 5,000 miles to Stockholm, where, after a series of evaluations and weeks of waiting, she was finally able to get the legal healthcare she needed. Subsequently, she had two more daughters (one of whom, Kristin Atwell Ford, contributed to this essay).

Cox’s case featured many similarities to Chessen’s. Her doctor, too, thought an abortion was the appropriate medical care given the condition of her fetus and concerns about the risks of infection or uterine rupture. And this convinced Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that Cox’s pregnancy put her “life, health, and fertility” at risk. But as with Ronan, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately struck back, writing in a letter that the judge was “not medically qualified to make this determination.” He claimed that Cox’s doctor did not show “all of the elements necessary to fall within an exception to Texas’ abortion laws.” Paxton also warned of prosecution against Cox’s doctors and their hospitals, writing that the judge’s order “will not insulate you, or anyone else from civil and criminal liability,” which could include prison time and hefty fines.

Read More: What to Know About the Texas Woman Who Sued the State to Get an Abortion

Like the judge and prosecutor in Chessen’s case, Paxton clung to the claim that the decision as to whether an abortion was necessary should be left to doctors—even as he refused to defer to Cox’s doctor’s judgment. Paxton also would not offer clarity on when a woman’s life was sufficiently at risk under the law to justify an abortion. This forced Cox to travel to New Mexico for an abortion. Before doing so, however, she rhetorically wondered , “Why should I or any other woman have to drive or fly hundreds of miles to do what we feel is best for ourselves and our families, to determine our own futures?”

Anti-abortion-rights forces claim that abortion bans aim to protect the wellbeing of mothers and families. But the long, tortured processes that confronted Chessen and Cox after finding out that an abortion was medically necessary reveal that those claims are false. The point of abortion bans is to make it harder for anyone to obtain terminations, including when there are fatal fetal anomalies or when the life of the mother is at stake. Even pundit Ann Coulter, a conservative abortion opponent, argued that the decision not to allow Cox to terminate her pregnancy lacked compassion.

Sherri Chessen Finkbine, 60, reflecting having been a pariah after having her thalidomide-damaged fetus aborted in Sweden 30 years before, rather than illegally in the US.

The two cases also showed that stereotypes about abortion patients, as well as the outrage directed at Chessen and Cox, miss something fundamental. Both Chessen and Cox were mothers who wanted to have more children and were trying to safeguard their ability to do so. Chessen hoped to have six kids. She was concerned about her ability to care for her four living children and her future children. Arizona’s abortion ban, and the power arbitrarily exercised by Ronan, prevented her from having a procedure she desperately needed, and made an already agonizing ordeal even worse.

Cox also emphasized how her abortion was about protecting not only her health, but her ability to grow her family, “We want to be able to have more babies. We want to give siblings to our kids.” She also was shocked that the state was willing to “put [her] own health at risk and a future pregnancy at risk.”

Now 91, Chessen still vividly remembers the death threats and public shaming she received for speaking up about her abortion. Still defiant decades after the threat of prosecution derailed her medical care, Chessen declares, “Sixty years later and [Cox] has to go through exactly what I went through? Somebody’s not listening, somebody’s not learning.” Chessen acknowledges how the trauma of the state blocking her abortion still haunts her: “It will never go away. Never, never, never. And no one should be put through that kind of torture.”

Saniya Lee Ghanoui is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. Kristin Atwell Ford is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. Ghanoui and Atwell are producing a documentary about the impact of Sherri Chessen’s story on abortion laws, drug safety, and fetal health.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here . Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors .

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Write to Saniya Lee Ghanoui and Kristin Atwell Ford / Made by History at [email protected]

French Lawmakers Enshrine Access to Abortion in Constitution

Legislators passed an amendment giving women the “guaranteed freedom” to end their pregnancies, which experts called a global first.

By Catherine Porter

Reporting from Versailles

French legislators on Monday voted to explicitly enshrine access to abortion in the Constitution, making their country the first in the world to do so.

Acutely aware that they were breaking historical ground from the grand assembly room inside Versailles Palace, the politicians delivered impassioned speeches about women’s rights around the world, paid homage to the courageous Frenchwomen who had fought for abortion rights when it was illegal and leaped up time and again to offer standing ovations.

“We are sending the message to all women: Your body belongs to you and no one has the right to control it in your stead,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said, before the gathered lawmakers voted 780-72 for the amendment.

The amendment declares abortion to be a “guaranteed freedom,” overseen by Parliament’s laws. That means future governments will not be able to “drastically modify” the current laws funding abortion for women who seek one, up to 14 weeks into their pregnancies, according to the French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti.

Amending the Constitution is not without precedent in France; the current Constitution has been modified over 20 times since it was adopted in 1958. But it is rare. Lawmakers last amended it in 2008.

The motivation for the latest change was the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, an issue raised repeatedly by legislators. But the move also reflects the widespread support for abortion in France, and a successful campaign by a coalition of feminist activists and lawmakers from multiple parties.

“France is showing the right to abortion is no longer an option, it’s a condition of our democracy,” said Mélanie Vogel, a Green Party senator and major force behind the bill.

Ms. Vogel said in an interview, “I want to send a message to feminists outside of France. Everyone told me a year ago it was impossible.” She added: “Nothing is impossible when you mobilize society.”

The Vatican and the French Conference of Bishops opposed the amendment , as did anti-abortion activist groups. But in France, a country where calls to protest regularly bring hundreds of thousands to the streets, opposition was notably scarce.

Instead, hundreds of Parisians gathered Monday afternoon in Trocadéro Square to watch the vote broadcast on a large screen. “We hope it guarantees our rights, especially in the face of the terrifying threat of the extreme right,” said Yanna Antigny-Fernandes, 21, moments before the final count was declared, to the sound of celebratory screams and Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).”

“It’s Simone de Beauvoir who said that women’s rights were the first freedoms to be attacked.”

With the vote, France became the first country in the world to explicitly write access to abortion into its Constitution, according to five constitutional experts.

“It’s not stating reproductive choices or the right to have children; it’s a very different language when you say access to abortion,” said Anna Sledzinska-Simon, a professor of comparative constitutions and human rights law at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. “The French are calling it by its name — that’s crucial.”

Constitutional experts say the amendment broadens the mold of France’s fundamental text, written by men for men.

“It’s a big milestone, because it goes to the very foundation of this idea that constitutions were about men’s autonomy,” said Ruth Rubio-Marín, author of a book on gender and constitutions , noting that historically women were only defined as “breeders and caretakers.”

Other constitutions, like Ecuador’s, have been broadened to include things like support for caregiving and the equal division of domestic work. But they often remain aspirational, said Ms. Rubio-Marín, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Seville in Spain.

“That this is happening in the Old World, in an established democracy where the constitution is taken seriously — in that way, it’s historic,” she said.

The fight for legal abortion in France burst into public view in 1971, when 343 Frenchwomen signed a manifesto written by the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir declaring that they had undertaken clandestine, illegal abortions and demanding that the law change.

Four years later, a female minister, Simone Veil , successfully pushed through a temporary law decriminalizing abortions.

Throughout Monday’s special legislative session, lawmakers paid tribute to Ms. Veil, as well as Gisèle Halimi , the former lawyer whose defense of a 16-year-old student who had endured an illegal abortion after having been raped led to her acquittal in 1972.

“We have followed in your footsteps and like you, we succeeded,” said Senator Laurence Rossignol, a former women’s rights minister. She added that French feminists would continue to fight internationally against “those who resist,” citing politicians including Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Liberty, equality, fraternity,” she said, citing France’s national motto. “And, if I could add, sorority.”

Over the past five decades, the law assuring abortion rights has continually been expanded, to the point that it is now considered among the most liberal in Europe. It includes the right to fully funded abortions for women and minors up to the 14th week of pregnancy upon request, with no waiting period or required counseling sessions.

Later abortions are permitted if the pregnancy is deemed a risk to the woman’s physical or psychological health or if the fetus presents certain anomalies.

After the Covid pandemic hit, France quickly ensured that women seeking abortions could receive medical consultations virtually, said Laura Rahm, a researcher at Central European University, in Vienna, who examined access to abortion in France for a five-year European study .

“A system always shines or cracks when it’s put under pressure,” she said. The French system had clearly shone, she said.

Still, studies show that 17 percent of women travel outside their home regions — known as departments in France — for abortion services, sometimes because of a growing shortage of medical facilities locally .

While the law states that women should have a choice of medical or surgical abortions, in practice that’s often not the case, said Sarah Durocher, national co-president of Le Planning Familial, a French equivalent of Planned Parenthood.

Putting the “guaranteed freedom” to have an abortion in the Constitution means that will have to change, she said.

“This will give birth to other things,” said Ms. Durocher, noting that 130 centers offering abortion had closed in France over the past decade. “For example, real policies so there is effective access to abortion.”

Despite the new amendment, French feminists say France remains a male-dominated society where sexism persists . Settling into her perch overseeing the session as the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet noted that she was the first woman in French history to preside over such a gathering, a congress of both houses of Parliament.

But unlike in the United States, the issue of abortion in France is not politically charged or highly divisive. Instead, most French people believe abortion is a basic public health service and a woman’s right. A recent 29-country survey showed France with the second-highest support for legalized abortion in the world, after Sweden.

But attempts to introduce abortion into the Constitution had failed before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade . The decision drove French lawmakers to safeguard the practice, presenting multiple bills within months. Last year, the French government introduced its own bill seeking to enshrine it in the Constitution.

Just last week, members of a coalition of lawmakers and feminist organizations feared that the Senate, dominated by conservatives, might derail the amendment, but it passed.

“We managed to create this environment, where if you voted against this change, it meant you wanted to maintain the right as a legislator to potentially prohibit abortion in the future,” said Ms. Vogel. “So if you are not against abortion, you had no reason not to vote in favor of it.”

She added, “That narrative penetrated society.”

Ségolène Le Stradic and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris. More about Catherine Porter

Teen Abortion Access Remains Difficult Even in States Where Access is Protected

By Rachel Janfaza

Glass of water in strong sunlight on blue bedside table with blister pack of medication pills

A state like Massachusetts is considered a safe haven for abortion in a post- Dobbs America. But a first-of-its-kind report about national abortion access for youth from Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ ASPIRE Center for Sexual & Reproductive Health released on Monday called “The Minor Abortion Access Research and Advocacy Project” reveals that there are stark gaps in reproductive health care availability for minors – even in states that have expanded abortion access since the reversal of Roe v. Wade .

The group’s research found that oftentimes, parental involvement laws – which mandate minors’ parental permission before an abortion – or the judicial bypass process – which requires teens to go through the court system if they cannot ask their parents for consent to an abortion – stand between teens under the age of 18 and abortion, hindering young people’s bodily autonomy despite state policies meant to enhance reproductive health care access.

“We know that young people experience all the burdens, all the barriers that adult abortion seekers do, but in many states where abortion is legal , they also have to deal with parental involvement laws, and so they are facing even more restrictions and more barriers,” MaryRose Mazzola, who’s an attorney and the director of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts ASPIRE Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health, told Teen Vogue . “Our goal with this project was to create this map, create these minor access grades to really reflect the lived reality of minors across the country in this post-Dobbs environment.”

The ASPIRE Center gave states grades from A to F on the basis of whether, “a state has a parental involvement law, the age at which minors can consent to their own abortion,” they write, and how burdensome that law and its judicial bypass system are on the minor seeking an abortion. In creating their map comparing abortion access overall compared to abortion access for teens, the ASPIRE Center used data from Guttmacher Institute , a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive rights.

assortment of used at-home pregnancy tests

The ASPIRE Center’s research shows that in 37 states, young people are required to involve a parent or guardian in some capacity in their decision to get an abortion. There are total abortion bans in 14 states, and strict gestational limit bans in six more, which limits abortion access overall. Only 16 states and Washington DC got an A grade in abortion access overall, and only 13 and Washington DC got an A grade for minors abortion access. According to the report, there are five states that are rated A for abortion access overall, but have a lower rating for abortion access for youth.

In Massachusetts, which is rated A for abortion access overall, abortion access for minors received a D grading because of the state’s parental involvement law. That law, passed in 1974, has required a minor seeking an abortion to receive permission from both parents. The Massachusetts state legislature reversed that law for 16 and 17-year-olds in 2020, but it still exists for anyone younger.

Beyond Massachusetts, the ASPIRE Center found that Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, and Rhode Island have the greatest discrepancies between abortion access for all people and abortion access for minors . While Colorado and Maryland are rated A for abortion access overall, both states are rated C for abortion access for minors. And though Michigan and Rhode Island are rated B overall, they are rated D for minors.

“Importantly, [parental involvement and judicial bypass laws] treats abortion differently than all other pregnancy related decisions,” Mazzola said. “If that same mother got pregnant and decided to carry their pregnancy to term, they would have full legal rights and medical making decisions over their own body and that fetus and that child. Similarly they could carry the pregnancy to term and give the child up for adoption.… We have this standard where in states that require parental consent [for abortion], if you can't get that consent, you're going before a judge. They're determining whether you're mature enough to have an abortion.”

Sarah Michal Hamid, a full spectrum doula who’s now 23-years-old and lives in Los Angeles, California, had an abortion when she was 16-years-old. California does not have parental involvement laws for minors seeking abortion care and permits confidential abortions through a program that enables minors to receive the procedure without having to utilize their parents’ insurance.

“I was not in a safe and healthy relationship. I wasn't in a context where I could parent. I was a teenager,” Hamid told Teen Vogue , about her experience. “I come from a unique background where sex, sexuality, and reproductive healthcare was a taboo. While my parents were involved in my reproductive healthcare, we didn't talk about sex. So to admit or to discuss pregnancy would essentially be to like, admit to sexual activity, which carried so much shame at the time,” she said.

“I wasn't able to tell my parents and unfortunately I had to navigate my abortion, essentially alone, with the exception of the amazing medical providers that were the ones that made it possible for me to get an abortion,” Hamid explained. Upon arriving at a Planned Parenthood Clinic and testing positive for pregnancy via urine, Hamid described, a nurse practitioner administered the first round of medication for her misoprostol only medication abortion .

“Had I needed to involve my parents and obtain essentially a court order from a judge to allow me to receive abortion care, I wouldn't be here and I would probably have almost a six-year-old,” Hamid said. “I couldn't involve my parents in my abortion care. And now that I have had the space to honor that experience, I'm able to engage with my parents about abortion in an extremely positive way, and threatening that for a young person is evil.”

As the ASPIRE Center’s study details, teens don’t tell their parents about abortion for a number of reasons, and parental involvement laws can be burdensome for teens wary of “an adverse parental reaction,” who want to preserve the status quo with their parents or family and fear that asking for an abortion could complicate that, or who don’t want to add stress to their parents’ plate. Further, some teens are unable to ask for permission from a parent or legal guardian due to circumstances such as abandonment, incarceration, or deportation. And overall, abortion is stigmatized, which can complicate family conversations about the procedure.

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“Parental involvement laws put pregnant teens’ health and safety at risk and they do so in a few ways,” Mazzola said. “They delay access to abortion care, which can be time sensitive, depending on the gestational limits in your state. They also increase the risk of family violence or retaliation due to a teen’s pregnancy depending on what that family looks like. If you're in a home where there has been a history of violence, if this tends to be a part of your life, then it can cause more violence. And then even just going through the judicial bypass process causes a lot of stress, fear, and financial cost to young people.”

The ASPIRE Center’s report cites quotes from J. Shoshanna Ehrlich’s 2006 book, ‘ Who Decides? The Abortion Rights of Teens ’ in which teens describe facing violence in their household to high parental expectations, pressure, and stigma. Ehrlich co-authored the Minor Abortion Access Research and Advocacy Project report. A teen who decided to not involve her mother in her decision regarding abortion out of fear of a violent reaction shared: “I get beat up sometimes… I get beat up most in my house — more than my brothers and sisters.”

“I’m the oldest kid on both sides of the family. All the grandkids, all the cousins look up to me and everyone depends on me — you’re the eldest, you’re doing so good in school, you’re gonna go to college, and you’re going to do this or that, without messing up with dudes,” said one teen.

“[My mom] has this assumption that like I’m like too smart to make a mistake because I’m in the National Honor Society and going to college...I think it would have definitely affected her viewpoint...She would think I was irresponsible about everything,” said another.

While the judicial bypass process circumvents the need for parental permission, and in theory, alleviates that specific burden for youth who need it, forcing teens’ to go through the court system to access an abortion is daunting and, at times, untenable. Jessica Goldberg, a youth access counsel with If/When/How : Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, said that while “judicial bypass is often presented as this process that makes forced parental involvement ok because this forced alternative is being presented to a young person, so in those cases where a young person cannot involve a parent, they have this other option – is just not a really accurate representation of what judicial bypass is.”

“No matter what state you're talking about, no matter how friendly or hostile their courts are, judicial bypass is a barrier,” Goldberg told Teen Vogue , referring to states that require that process. If/When/How has conducted reports on the legal process that have found a myriad of barriers for young people seeking judicial bypass, Goldberg shared, such as courts’ preparedness to grant judicial bypass or lack of information to grant the bypass.

Beyond rolling out the report this week, the ASPIRE Center is embarking on a public education campaign to show states with gaps in abortion care overall as compared to for minors, like Massachusetts, that it is possible to expand abortion care for teens. They point to Illinois as an example of a state that has done just that. In 2021, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation to roll back a 1995 law that required parental notification at least 48 hours before a minor would be able to get an abortion.

“One of our priorities for this legislative session and in general is to increase minor access by repealing our remaining parental involvement law,” Mazzola said – speaking about Massachusetts specifically. “The first step is obviously conducting this research. And from here we'll be sharing the research here in Massachusetts, and then with partners across the country who similarly want to advocate for repeal.”

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Abortion services have been targeted by restrictive policies, and unequal access is further compounded by existing weaknesses in our health care system, as highlighted by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. 7,8 This already fragmented landscape was further complicated when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion in its June 24, 2022 ...

Abstract. This article presents a research study on abortion from a theoretical and empirical point of view. The theoretical part is based on the method of social documents analysis, and presents a complex perspective on abortion, highlighting items of medical, ethical, moral, religious, social, economic and legal elements.

A country's abortion law is a key component in determining the enabling environment for safe abortion. While restrictive abortion laws still prevail in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), many countries have reformed their abortion laws, with the majority of them moving away from an absolute ban. However, the implications of these reforms on women's access to and use of health ...

Today, the moral argument in the abortion debate—both religious and secular—is often perceived to be the province of those who oppose abortion. Opponents focus on fetuses and morality ("killing"), supporters focus on women and law ("choice"), and this disjuncture leads us to talk past one another. Yet working with health-care ...

Women's reproductive rights. I hope it is stating the obvious to suggest that it is despicable both to ban abortion and to impose it on women whether in the name of religion, in the service of a political ideology, or as a perceived demographic imperative. Forced birth and forced abortion are foul. They are an assault on the autonomy, dignity ...

Legal abortion is a safe clinical procedure, with extremely low rates of complications and death. 1 Conversely, the risk of death associated with childbirth is 14 times that associated with legal ...

Abortion restrictions have been introduced in various forms across many states for years, but since June 2022, when the right to abortion was no longer federally protected, we have seen a rapid increase in these restrictions. ... The paper explicitly examines abortions after 12 weeks as an important indicator of change, not because of the small ...

Abstract. Previous research focused on popular US Supreme Court rulings expanding rights; however, less is known about rulings running against prevailing public opinion and restricting rights. We ...

New ruling threatens rights to health, bodily integrity, and equality On 24 June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. The court's regressive ruling stands in stark contrast to global trends expanding abortion rights. Half of Americans will no longer fully possess human rights to ...

The world is moving towards greater reproductive rights for women. More than 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws in the past 25 years, informed by scientific research.

This review will systematically appraise and synthesize the research evidence on the impact of abortion law reforms on women's health services and outcomes in LMICs. ... The three countries highlighted in this paper provided unique insights into implementation and practical application following law reforms, in spite of limited resources ...

DOI: 10.1126/science.adh3104. The legal landscape surrounding abortion in the United States has shifted dramatically since the Supreme Court's June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization eliminated a nationwide right to abortion ( 1 ). In the year since, roughly half of US states have expanded abortion restrictions.

Research demonstrates that abortion access does, in fact, profoundly affect women's lives by determining whether, when, and under what circumstances they become mothers. Economists also have ...

In late June, the landmark Roe v.Wade ruling was overturned by the United States Supreme Court, a decision, decried by human rights experts at the United Nations [], that leaves many women and girls without the right to obtain abortion care that was established nearly 50 years ago.The consequences of limited or nonextant access to safe abortion services in the US remain to be seen; however ...

the right to be free from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.5 The Human Rights Committee has confirmed that "although States parties may adopt measures designed to regulate voluntary terminations of pregnancy, such measures must not result in violation of the right to life of a pregnant woman or girl, or her other

Overall, 25% of adults initially said abortion should be legal in all cases, but about a quarter of this group (6% of all U.S. adults) went on to say that there should be some exceptions when abortion should be against the law. One-in-ten adults initially answered that abortion should be illegal in all cases, but about one-in-five of these ...

Social and moral considerations on abortion. Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms: Overall, just 7% of all U.S. adults say abortion is morally acceptable in all cases, and 13% say it is morally wrong in all cases. A third say that abortion is morally wrong in most cases, while about a quarter (24%) say it is ...

"The more states pass laws recognizing a fetus as a rights holder in a variety of contexts, the more you're going to see the anti-abortion movement wanting to return to the U.S. Supreme Court and ...

An initiative petition entitled "Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion" had been circulating in Florida since May 2023. The proposed amendment, which would effectively ban pro-life legislation, recently garnered enough signatures to trigger review of the initiative by the Florida Supreme Court.

On May 15, 2019, the Alabama State Senate passed a bill that restricts the right to abortion by criminalising doctors who do the procedure. This was followed the next day by the Missouri State Senate passing a law forbidding abortions after 8 weeks of pregnancy. These two bills are the latest in a rapidly escalating attack on a woman's constitutionally protected right to an abortion. Alabama ...

The reproductive-rights nonprofit Pregnancy Justice warned of its rising power in a report released after Roe was overturned. "At least 11 states have extremely broad personhood language that ...

France becomes first country to make abortion a constitutional right 01:45. Paris — France became the first country to enshrine a woman's right to an abortion in its constitution. Lawmakers from ...

Even worse, vigorous news coverage of the situation shattered Chessen's privacy. Newspaper headlines ranged from details about her pregnancy ("Pill May Cost Woman Her Baby") to analysis of ...

The Vatican and the French Conference of Bishops opposed the amendment, as did anti-abortion activist groups.But in France, a country where calls to protest regularly bring hundreds of thousands ...

Abortion rights are positioned to be a major factor in the upcoming presidential election, the first since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and led to tighter abortion restrictions in ...

The ASPIRE Center's research shows that in 37 states, young people are required to involve a parent or guardian in some capacity in their decision to get an abortion.

Why Are You a Good Fit for This Job? (Example Answers Included)

Mike Simpson 0 Comments

By Mike Simpson

There you are, sitting across from the hiring manager, answering questions like a boss. Then, the hiring manager hits you with, “Why are you a good fit for this job?”

Suddenly, you’re dumbfounded – and secretly hoping you didn’t just look at them like they spontaneously grew a third head. After all, the hiring manager’s seen your resume. They know you’re a great fit, right? Otherwise, why would they bring you in for an interview?

Well, there’s a bit more behind this interview question. So, if you’re wondering why the hiring manager would ask you, “Why would you be a good fit for this position?” and how to answer it, here’s what you need to know.

What Is the Meaning of “Fit?”

Before we dig into how to answer “Why are you a good fit for this job?” let’s take a step back a second and talk about what “fit” even means here.

The folks at Merriam-Webster define fit as “acceptable from a particular viewpoint.” Well, that doesn’t help a ton, but it does start to shape the picture.

Think of it this way. A company is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Every employee is a piece of that puzzle, coming together to create the picture. A vacant position is a missing piece, a hole in that picture. The hiring manager’s job is to fill that hole.

Ultimately, in the context of this question, fit is mainly about being that right puzzle piece. It’s how your skills, experience, and interests match the duties and responsibilities of the job, as well as the company’s culture.

Why Does the Hiring Manager Ask This Question?

During an interview, every question usually serves a purpose. So, why would a hiring manager include “Why are you a good fit for this job?” in their list of interview questions.

We get that this question can feel a little silly. Your resume does give them insights into your skillset and experience. However, the hiring manager wants to know more about how what you bring to the table lines up with the role.

Additionally, the hiring manager needs to identify the best candidate in the bunch. They are hoping you’ll say something that separates you from the pack, making their decision easier.

Another main goal is seeing if you’ll mesh with the company’s culture. Overall, 87 percent of companies say that culture and engagement is one of the biggest challenges they face, so the hiring manager needs to find a good fit.

Plus, by asking this interview question, they get to test your research and listening skills. That’s right; it’s a surprise motive!

You can’t craft a great answer if you don’t know enough about the job description and company. The hiring manager is testing what you know. How sneaky.

So, the hiring manager is asking you this question for all of the reasons above. They want to make sure you’re the perfect match, and this question helps them figure that out.

Common Mistakes When Answering This Question

As with all interview questions, certain mistakes can completely derail your chances of landing a position. When it comes to answering “Why are you a good fit for this job?” there are a few doozies you want to avoid.

First, when you answer this interview question, focusing on anything other than the “fit” part of the equation is a misstep. This isn’t the same as answering “ Why should we hire you ?” or a similar question that’s more open.

You really have to drill into why what you bring to the table aligns with this specific job. If you aren’t addressing the must-have skills and experience you found in the job description, you’re missing the mark.

Second, not showing that you understand the company’s needs is a big no-no. You need to demonstrate that you know what the company and job are all about, referencing specific details from your research.

Finally, simply rehashing your resume and cover letter isn’t going to do it. You need to use examples that highlight your relevant capabilities. Otherwise, your answer is going to land in bland territory.

Remember, this is just one question the hiring manager could ask you in your interview! That’s why we created an amazing free cheat sheet that will give you word-for-word answers for some of the toughest interview questions you are going to face in your upcoming interview.

Click below to get your free PDF now:

Get Our Job Interview Questions & Answers Cheat Sheet!

FREE BONUS PDF CHEAT SHEET: Get our " Job Interview Questions & Answers PDF Cheat Sheet " that gives you " word-word sample answers to the most common job interview questions you'll face at your next interview .

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Tips for Answering This Question

Alright, we know you’re here for some great example answers and we promise those are coming. But first, how about some handy tips that can help you create your own answers?

With these tips, you can get a solid understanding of how to respond to this interview question. It allows you to use out example answers as frameworks and then adjust them to meet your needs. Awesome, right?

So, without further ado, here are three tips for answering “Why are you a good fit for this job?”

1. Mention Specific Core Duties

Ideally, you want to mention a few specifics in your answer. Head to the job description and review the highest priority requirements or duties. Then, work those into your response, addressing them directly.

2. Reference the Company Mission or Values

When it comes to “fit,” it’s about more than the job itself. You also need to show that you’ll mesh with the company’s culture. How do you do that? By discussing part of the company’s mission or values that really speak to you.

In most cases, you can find a company’s mission and values statements on its website. In some cases, they’ll be included in the job description, too, so you can look there as well.

3. Be Enthusiastic

When you’re answering this interview question, enthusiasm is your friend. If you seem hesitant or blasé about your answer, the hiring manager might think that you’re not all that into the job. That’s no good.

In the end, a little bit of excitability can work in your favor here. So, choose points that really bring a smile to your face, ensuring you come across as an engaged, passionate candidate.

How to Answer the Interview Question “Why Are You a Good Fit for This Job?”

Alright, let’s dig into the nitty-gritty of how to answer “Why are you a good fit for this job?” First, it’s important to understand that this is an open-ended interview question that doesn’t have an official “right” answer.

Instead, being “right” means showcasing yourself as a great match to the role and company. Plus, you need to make your answer as compelling as possible.

So, how do you do all that? Well, by using the Tailoring Method . In fact, the Tailoring Method is ridiculously perfect for this interview question. It’s all about crafting custom answers that really speak to the job you’re trying to land. If now isn’t the time to bust it out, when is?

Now that you have a general idea of how to answer this interview question, it’s time for some samples. Here are three example responses to “Why would you be a good fit for this job?” that each use slightly different approaches.

1. Start with Duties

With this approach, you begin your answer by discussing core duties you found in the job description. While you still want to discuss culture-fit, this strategy can work best if the job ad focused heavily on the role’s responsibilities, as that indicates that may be the hiring manager’s biggest priority.

EXAMPLE ANSWER:

“In the job description, I noticed there were several references to high production standards and working in a fast-paced environment. In my previous manufacturing position, our targets were always challenging. The goal was to hone efficiency, ensuring we could exceed expectations at every juncture. As a result, I dedicated myself to learning the technical skills I needed to thrive. This included everything from safety protocols to machine operation, ensuring I could perform the duties correctly and quickly. Not only did I grow my production and assembly skills, but I thrived in the fast-paced environment. I have a track record of exceeding production goals by 10 percent, often making myself the top performer on my team. However, I understand that personal performance is only part of the equation. Just as your company values teamwork, I believe that part of my strength comes from my colleagues. As a result, I consisted worked to help them excel, acting as a mentor to new hires and offering my support whenever the need arose. Together, I believe that makes me an exceptional fit for this role.”

2. Lead with Culture

At times, company culture actually takes center stage in a job description. Usually, you’ll see a lot of references to the work environment and personality in the job posting, showing that culture is potentially a higher priority than technical prowess.

Now, it isn’t that you don’t want to talk about your hard skills . Instead, it’s simply that you want to lead off with references to the company’s mission, values, and culture.

“When I was looking for opportunities, one of the factors that led me to apply for this position was the company’s values. ABC Corp. believes in supporting its community and putting its customers first, a perspective that is very much like my own. In my last customer service position, my goal was always to exceed expectations. Going the extra mile to solve customer problems and make things right is essential in my eyes. Not only does it ensure they have a better experience, but it also boosts retention and the company’s brand. Ultimately, that’s a win-win. However, it isn’t my mentality alone that makes me an exceptional fit for this job. I also have extensive customer service experience in your industry, as well as knowledge of contact center technologies, trouble ticket systems, and troubleshooting techniques, making me a great match for the position.

3. Solve a Problem

If you have the ability to use this approach, it can be a smart move. With the problem-solver angle, you focus on a challenge the company is facing that this role can solve. Then, you highlight how you can be the answer to that conundrum, showcasing your value in that specific way.

Throughout your answer, you’ll touch on hard and soft skills that would allow you to help the company overcome its troubles. Additionally, you can squeeze in a bit about culture-fit, rounding out your response.

“Based on my research, I gleaned that one of the biggest priorities for this position is to help the company recapture sales losses due to COVID-19. It was certainly a hard-hit sector, and it’s a challenge that I’m surprisingly familiar with. In my past position, our sales team experienced pandemic-related declines in customer interest. As part of the marketing team, my goal was to adjust the product’s position. Showcasing its value in the current landscape meant a departure from the tried-and-true approaches of the past. However, innovative-thinking was necessary, ensuring any losses could be recovered. Ultimately, my campaign adjustments did the trick, leading to sales reaching pre-COVID numbers in just a few months. I feel that I can use similar techniques to identify opportunities in the market that can allow your company to experience the same gains, making me a great fit for this position and the company’s overall goals.”

Putting It All Together

Ultimately, all of the tips above can help you answer “Why are you a good fit for this job?” in a way that captures the hiring manager’s attention. Use them to your advantage. That way, you can shine and, in the end, increase your odds of landing the position.

FREE : Job Interview Questions & Answers PDF Cheat Sheet!

Download our " Job Interview Questions & Answers PDF Cheat Sheet " that gives you word-for-word sample answers to some of the most common interview questions including:

What Is Your Greatest Weakness?
What Is Your Greatest Strength?
Tell Me About Yourself
Why Should We Hire You?

Click Here To Get The Job Interview Questions & Answers Cheat Sheet

Co-Founder and CEO of TheInterviewGuys.com. Mike is a job interview and career expert and the head writer at TheInterviewGuys.com.

His advice and insights have been shared and featured by publications such as Forbes , Entrepreneur , CNBC and more as well as educational institutions such as the University of Michigan , Penn State , Northeastern and others.

Learn more about The Interview Guys on our About Us page .

About The Author

Mike simpson.

Co-Founder and CEO of TheInterviewGuys.com. Mike is a job interview and career expert and the head writer at TheInterviewGuys.com. His advice and insights have been shared and featured by publications such as Forbes , Entrepreneur , CNBC and more as well as educational institutions such as the University of Michigan , Penn State , Northeastern and others. Learn more about The Interview Guys on our About Us page .

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Rotary reveals essay contest winners, three mms students honored.

Marshall Middle School sixth graders Kelsey Cowden, Maria Jose and Hailey Tallam took a photo with members of the Marshall noon Rotary club at Wednesday’s award ceremony for the winners of the Four-Way Test essay contest. Cowden won third place, Jose won second place, and Tallam won first place in the contest.

MARSHALL — There was an atmosphere of excitement as sixth-grade students gathered in the Marshall Middle School auditorium on Wednesday. Everyone was waiting to hear who the winners of this year’s Rotary Four-Way Test essay contest would be.

“We were excited to pick some winners, and this was not easy,” Marshall Public Schools Superintendent and Rotary member Jeremy Williams told students. “It’s not like there was just one or two good essays, there were a lot of good essays to pick from.”

One by one, Williams announced the names of Kelsey Cowden, Maria Jose and Hailey Tallam as the third place, second place and first place winners of the contest.

Classmates cheered for each of the winners, as Williams shook their hands and presented them each with a certificate and a cash prize. As the grand prize winner, Tallam was also invited to visit an upcoming meeting of the Marshall noon Rotary, Williams said.

The essay contest is an annual event organized by Marshall Rotarians. Kids are asked to write about how the Rotary’s Four-Way Test applies to their own lives.

“That’s something that the Rotary group uses every day,” Williams explained. “Every time we meet, we recite this Four-Way Test. We think about, how does this apply to what we’re doing in our community?”

The test has four questions Rotary members apply to the things they say or do, club members said. Those questions are: “Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Is it beneficial to all concerned?”

“Those are good things to think about every day in the classroom, or when you’re going through your school day,” Williams told students. “That’s what you wrote essays about. And you had some really good things you wrote about in those essays.”

In addition to recognizing this year’s top three essay writers, Wednesday’s awards ceremony also called up students for classroom awards from MMS language arts teachers.

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Washington State's David Riley calls new job 'perfect situation'

Associated Press

David Riley finally found an opportunity that made him think it was time to leave what he helped create at Eastern Washington of the Big Sky Conference. Despite uncertainty about the future, Riley made the jump in part because all it required was a short move down the road.

Riley was introduced Thursday as the men's basketball coach at Washington State, taking over for Kyle Smith, who left for the same position at Stanford after leading the Cougars to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 16 years.

"It's just the idea of being in a college town where there's no distractions, you have a really passionate group around you that cares about the university, that cares about the basketball team," Riley said of his move to Washington State. "There's a real support system here, and I think it's very conducive to building a family atmosphere with the team."

Riley, 35, spent 13 years at Eastern Washington in a variety of roles, and he has been a head coach for only three years.

But he was highly successful in that stint, going 62-30. With Washington State facing a shaky foundation, Riley could end up being an optimal hire for the Cougars to navigate the next few years.

"We're going to have high expectations for next year, but I think we've got the right coach that can work with our players and make sure that we're exceeding those expectations," Washington State president Kirk Schulz said.

Riley led Eastern Washington to consecutive Big Sky regular-season titles the past two years. He said he has turned down previous offers to leave Eastern Washington. But having to move only 70 miles down the road to take over a program coming off an NCAA tournament appearance was one he couldn't pass up.

"I definitely passed up on a lot of opportunities, a lot of different opportunities that people on paper were like, 'What the hell are you doing?'" Riley said. "But this is a place that means a lot to me, and it had to be the perfect situation for me to leave. This is that."

While the Cougars are coming off a March Madness berth, the program will look much different under Riley. Several key players have already entered the transfer portal. Standout Jaylen Wells announced Thursday that he would be entering the NBA draft while retaining his college eligibility.

There are also big questions about Washington State's future following the collapse of the Pac-12 and the interim lifeline that will have the Cougars competing in the West Coast Conference.

"Just hearing some confidence from the leadership here was big, but at the end of the day it's Washington State, it's a big-time program," Riley said. "There's a ton of passion for the basketball program, for the university. I know it's going to be a great spot."

Watch CBS News

Scientists working on AI tech to match dogs up with the perfect owners

By Ian Lee , Tina Kraus

Updated on: March 28, 2024 / 3:10 PM EDT / CBS News

London — When Londoner Chelsea Battle first met her cavapoo Peanut, it was love at first sight.

"He's my son," she told CBS News, calling her bond with her dog "one of the most important relationships in my life."

Chelsea adopted Peanut during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I think it's really important to understand that dogs have different personalities, and you need to find the one that's best for you," Chelsea said. "I lucked out."

Their bond is strong, and picking a dog or other pet often comes down to a gut feeling. But computer scientists at the University of East London are hoping to take some of the chance out of the process. They're using artificial intelligence to help predict the personality types of individual dogs , so they can be better matched with humans.

"These personality types are defined based on the behavioral attributes, not the breed, not the gender of the dog," Dr. Mohammad Amirhosseini, a senior lecturer in computer science and digital technology at the university, told CBS News.

Using behavioral records from more than 70,000 dogs from the University of Pennsylvania, the British researchers developed an AI algorithm to classify canines into five groups — you might even call them personality types.

"Our best performing model achieved 99% accuracy, which is amazing," said Amirhosseini.

They found that dogs can be sorted into one of the following categories:

Excitable and hyper-attached
Anxious and fearful
Aloof and predatory
Reactive and assertive
Calm and agreeable.

With this information in hand, the researchers hope to eventually be able to predict the best specific dogs — not just breeds — for an array tasks from sniffing out drugs to guiding the blind, and maybe even cuddling the kids.

Currently, more than half of dogs put into training for specific jobs, such as security or guide work, fail their programs, according to the American Kennel Club.

"If we have an idea about the dog's personality in advance," said Amirhosseini, "we can select the right dog for the right job."

He said he hoped that one day, the AI technology will be readily available to help families looking to adopt a dog find one that's perfect for them. Right now, about half of dogs rescued from shelters in the U.S. end up being returned by the owners, and behavioral issues are very often cited as a factor.

The researchers hope that as they develop the AI tool, it will help to create more successful adoptions.

Artificial Intelligence
Pet Adoption
United Kingdom

Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News Streaming Network. Lee, who joined CBS News in March 2019, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism's top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors' Tom Renner award.

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Codi Childs | NCAA.com | April 5, 2024

Career perfect 10 leaders in women's college gymnastics.

Florida’s Trinity Thomas landed her 28th and final perfect 10 at the 2023 national championships. She scored the perfect score in her final vault of her college career. She moved into a tie for first place on the all-time list of gymnasts with the most perfect 10s in NCAA history.

Thomas is tied with Kentucky’s Jenny Hansen and UCLA’s Jamie Dantzscher atop the list with 28 career-perfect 10s, while Georgia’s Hope Spivey sits in third with 27.

Here's an updated list of the women's college gymnasts with the most career-perfect 10s, taken from College Gym News , and each participating school’s archives.

This list has been updated through March 23, 2024.

NC women's college gymnastics career perfect 10 leaders

^ We heard from Mary Howard, the Senior Associate Athletics Director for University of Florida gymnastics, a few days after this story was first published. After her extensive research, she discovered that while the University of Georgia’s records have Spivey at 24 career perfect 10s, three additional 10s from national championships were not included in Spivey’s totals, bringing her to 27.

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I didn't get a VP job in HR because the recruiter said I didn't try hard enough with my appearance

Melissa Weaver was rejected for a VP role in HR at a tech company due to her appearance.
The recruiter stated Weaver did not put enough effort into how she looked for the video interview.
Weaver didn't wear makeup but said she wore a blazer, a collared shirt, and gold earrings.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Melissa Weaver , 30, who has worked in human resources. After a recent interview for an HR job at a tech company, conducted by video, the New Yorker was disappointed to learn she wasn't moving to the next round. When Weaver asked for feedback, the recruiter replied in an email viewed by Business Insider that she was "concerned that you didn't put forth enough effort into your appearance given you were interviewing for a Vice President role." The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

I was laid off from my previous job in December. When I started looking for a new job, I wanted to make sure it would be one where I felt like I could contribute a lot. I found a posting on LinkedIn for a vice president of human resources role, which I understand is ironic, given what happened.

I looked at the job description and knew it was in line with what I had done previously. I researched the company and their core values, which, again — very ironic. Then I applied. The recruiter reached out and said that my background aligned with what they wanted.

The interview was by video. I had on a black blazer and a collared shirt, both of which were ironed. I wore small gold earrings. I'd done a blowout on my hair and had beige-colored nails. I did everything in line with proper professional attire . But I didn't wear makeup, which I didn't think was a big deal. But apparently, it was to her.

I thought the interview went really well. I had good answers to questions. Having a recruitment background, I know how to have conversations with people. It was supposed to go 30 minutes, but it went closer to 40. I was really optimistic when the call ended.

Concerns about my appearance

A couple of days after the interview, I got an email from the recruiter saying that I was in line with what they wanted in terms of experience and that my values aligned with theirs but that they wouldn't be moving forward. I decided to ask for feedback. She wrote back and said she was concerned that I didn't put enough effort into my appearance .

My reaction was a bit of shock. One, that someone would write that in an email. But more so, that in 2024, this is still happening. I had so much enthusiasm about the company, and I knew I was good for the role. I can only assume her concern was that I didn't put on makeup because I'd done everything else. So hearing that because I hadn't done that, I was somehow less qualified or didn't seem like I was as enthusiastic about the job was just baffling.

I was dressed up.

In the comments for a TikTok I made about the experience, people say things like, "I actually heard that I've worn too much makeup in my interview." Or, "I'm not supposed to wear red lipstick because it's too much of a power move." One woman said she got more assignments at work when she started wearing makeup. For someone else, it was losing weight. Reading that — in 2024 — our appearance somehow correlates to our ability to do our jobs is very disheartening. A lot of people use makeup to enhance their features. But the idea that that's a requirement is kind of insane.

I was dressed up for the interview. Dressing nicely shows that you have enthusiasm for the job and take it seriously. That applies to both men and women. So, in recruitment, I never judged someone if they wore makeup or if a man had long hair, as long as it was well-kept. I did have someone show up in a video interview in pajamas once. In that case, I was like, "I'm not really sure about this for a senior-level position."

The fact is, makeup just applies to women. It's not expected that men wear foundation or contour or whatever. But that something gender-specific can somehow impact a role is not good.

It might have been more shocking had the comment come from a man because, having worked in recruitment, I never had a male colleague comment about a woman's makeup. Maybe, for women, it's a matter of them wearing it themselves so they would expect it from another woman.

I don't think this experience is necessarily going to change my approach to a job search because I want to be part of a company that has a supportive culture and that doesn't have the sort of expectations of women having to wear makeup. Making sure that companies have an inclusive culture is incredibly important to me.

Recruiters are the face of a company.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to judge an entire company based on one person, though recruiters are typically the face of the company — or the first face you see. So that's something to be mindful of. I don't think I could learn all I want to know about a company's culture based on the first person that I meet with or even the first few people. That's why I appreciate a hiring process with multiple interviews with different people. As draining as some people can find that, I appreciate it because you do get a feel for a lot of different people in the company.

Something I've always loved about being an HR is that it is a people-facing role. That's why I want to find an employer with an inclusive culture and where I can contribute to that. This is about women supporting women and men supporting women as well. It's given me an extra boost in terms of knowing what I'm passionate about, which I want to be sure I can bring to a company.

I didn't write the recruiter back because I didn't think it would make a difference. Several people encouraged me to forward her email to the company's head of HR. I don't know if I will. You also worry about being blackballed.

HR can be taxing work, but at the end of the day, I love it. I love working with people. And so I know that it's the lane that I want to stay in.

I didn't make the TikTok to bash the company or anything like that. I never wanted it to be a crusade. I just wanted people's opinions, and if it generates a conversation, then I'm happy about that. Many of the comments I've received have been supportive and have called out a double standard. The fact that so many of them were encouraging made me feel positive and that just because one recruiter felt that way, it's not the majority opinion.

Do you have something to share about an interview process or what you're seeing in your workplace? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our workplace team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story or to ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers. Or check out Business Insider's source guide for tips on sharing information securely.

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Sensible Ways to Fight Terrorism

More from our inbox:, the quake, as felt in manhattan, r.f.k. jr.’s claim of ‘censorship’, obstacles to liberalism, prioritizing and valuing care jobs.

A long-exposure photo of crowds of people walking past a pile of bouquets of flowers.

To the Editor:

Re “ The West Still Hasn’t Figured Out How to Beat ISIS ,” by Christopher P. Costa and Colin P. Clarke (Opinion guest essay, April 1):

Two clear lessons have emerged in the decade since ISIS exploded on the world scene. First, as the authors note, pulling all U.S. troops and intelligence assets from fragile conflict zones is a boon to globalized terror movements. Despite political promises, the full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2021 did not “end” those wars; it transformed them into more complex and potentially more deadly challenges.

Second, we must reckon with the underlying grievances that make violent anti-Western ideologies, including militant jihadism, attractive to so many in the first place. These include the ill effects of globalization, and a “rules-based” world order increasingly insensitive to the needs of developing countries and regions.

Simply maintaining a military or intelligence presence in terror hot spots does nothing to reduce the sticky recruiting power of militant movements. Unless the United States and its allies and partners begin offering tangible policies that counter jihadi ideology and propaganda, we will just continue attacking the symptoms, not the causes.

Stuart Gottlieb New York The writer teaches American foreign policy and international security at Columbia University.

The Islamic State’s territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria may have been eliminated years ago, but as Christopher P. Costa and Colin P. Clarke write, the terrorist group itself is very much in business. ISIS-K, its branch in Afghanistan, has conducted two large-scale external attacks over the last two months — one in Iran that killed more than 80 people and another near Moscow that took the lives of more than 130.

If the United States and its allies haven’t found a way to defeat ISIS-K in its entirety, it’s because terrorism itself is an enemy that can’t be defeated in the traditional sense of the term. This is why the war on terror framework, initiated under the George W. Bush administration immediately after the 9/11 attacks, was such poor terminology. Terrorism is going to be with us for as long as humanity exists.

Viewed this way, terrorism is a conflict management problem, not one that can be solved. While this may sound defeatist to many, it’s also the coldhearted truth. Assuming otherwise risks enacting policies, like invading whole countries (Iraq and Afghanistan), that are likely to create even more anti-U.S. terrorism than we started with.

Of course, all countries should remain vigilant. Terrorism will continue to be a part of the threat environment. The U.S. intelligence community must ensure that its counterterrorism infrastructure is well resourced and continues to focus on areas, like Afghanistan, where the U.S. no longer has a troop presence. But for the U.S., a big part of the solution is keeping our ambitions realistic and prioritizing among terrorist threats lest the system gets overloaded or pulled in too many directions at once.

While all terrorism is tragic, not all terrorist groups are created equal. Local and even regional groups with local objectives aren’t as important to the U.S. as groups that have transnational aims and the capabilities to strike U.S. targets. This, combined with keeping a cool head instead of trafficking in threat inflation, is key to a successful response.

Daniel R. DePetris New Rochelle, N.Y. The writer is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Re “ Earthquake Rattles Northeast, but Little Damage Is Reported ” (live updates, nytimes.com, April 5):

I’m lying in bed Friday morning, on 14th Street in Manhattan. Suddenly I feel and see the bed start to shake!

My first thought — OMG, I’m in “The Exorcist.” Then an alert on my phone tells me that it’s an earthquake in New York City.

Frankly, I’m not sure which one scared me more.

Steven Doloff New York

Re “ Kennedy Calls Biden Bigger Threat to Democracy Than Trump ” (news article, April 3):

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s concern about the Biden administration’s “censorship” of misinformation might be viewed as legitimate if the American public demonstrated more responsibility about fact-checking what they see and hear on social media and other information platforms masquerading as legitimate sources of news.

Sadly, many in this country, and indeed the world, have abdicated responsibility for being factually informed about current events. As long as bad actors have unfettered access to social media platforms, it will be necessary to “censor” the misinformation they claim as fact. The world has become the proverbial crowded theater where one cannot yell “fire.”

Helen Ogden Pacific Grove, Calif.

Re “ The Great Struggle for Liberalism ,” by David Brooks (column, March 29):

In face of growing populism at home and abroad, Mr. Brooks issues a cri de coeur on behalf of liberal democracy and democratic capitalism, which provide the means to a “richer, fuller and more dynamic life.”

His impassioned plea for “we the people” of these United States to experience a sense of common purpose, to build a society in which culture is celebrated and families thrive, is made despite existential challenges to American liberalism:

1) We do not share an overarching belief in who we are as a people, as a nation.

2) Trust in our three branches of government, in checks and balances, is broken amid warring partisanship.

3) There is, for many, as Mr. Brooks notes, an “absence of meaning, belonging and recognition” that drives a tilt to authoritarianism in search of the restoration of “cultural, moral and civic stability” by any means necessary.

The ballot box in a free and open society allows for choice, and there are those who, in exercising their right to vote, would choose to cancel the aspirational hopes of the preamble to our Constitution.

David Brooks sees the full measure of the choices facing America and the world in 2024. Do we?

Michael Katz Washington

Re “ New Ways to Bring Wealth to Nations ,” by Patricia Cohen (news analysis, Business, April 4):

Ms. Cohen is right to argue that the service sector will be the key to economic growth in the future. However, it’s essential to consider what service jobs are — and who will be doing them.

Of course, the service industry includes office workers in tech hubs like Bengaluru, as highlighted by Ms. Cohen. Currently, these jobs are held predominantly by men, so to spur inclusive growth, employers and governments must make sure women have equal access.

But the service sector also includes hundreds of millions of people — mostly women — who are teachers and who care for children, older people and those with disabilities and illnesses. To seize the opportunity ahead, governments must position care jobs as careers of the future for women and men, alongside tech jobs. This requires making sure these positions provide good pay and working conditions.

If the goal is sustainable growth, the best approach leverages the critical care sector to generate income in the short run and prepare healthy, well-educated young people, which maintains progress in the long run.

Anita Zaidi Seattle The writer is president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality Division.

COMMENTS

The Perfect Job
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How to Write a Job Application Essay: 13 Steps (with Pictures)
2. State your theme or thesis statement upfront. If the potential employer has specified what your essay should be about, your essay as a whole should focus on that theme. If they've given you leeway to choose your own theme, choose something that is tailored to the position you're applying for. [4]
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How To Find the Perfect Job For You (With Tips and Tricks)
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Why Are You a Good Fit for This Job? (Example Answers Included)
In some cases, they'll be included in the job description, too, so you can look there as well. 3. Be Enthusiastic. When you're answering this interview question, enthusiasm is your friend. If you seem hesitant or blasé about your answer, the hiring manager might think that you're not all that into the job.
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The essay contest is an annual event organized by Marshall Rotarians. Kids are asked to write about how the Rotary's Four-Way Test applies to their own lives.
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1d. Riley, 35, spent 13 years at Eastern Washington in a variety of roles, and he has been a head coach for only three years. But he was highly successful in that stint, going 62-30. With ...
Scientists working on AI tech to match dogs up with the perfect owners
Updated on: March 28, 2024 / 3:10 PM EDT / CBS News. London — When Londoner Chelsea Battle first met her cavapoo Peanut, it was love at first sight. "He's my son," she told CBS News, calling her ...
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Thomas is tied with Kentucky's Jenny Hansen and UCLA's Jamie Dantzscher atop the list with 28 career-perfect 10s, while Georgia's Hope Spivey sits in third with 27. Here's an updated list of ...
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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Melissa Weaver, 30, who has worked in human resources.After a recent interview for an HR job at a tech company, conducted by video, the New ...
Opinion
Responses to a guest essay about ISIS and the West. Also: The Northeast quake; R.F.K. Jr.'s claim of "censorship"; obstacles to liberalism; valuing care jobs.