This research guide shows the evolution of abortion laws and discusses the legality of abortion, abortion consent laws for minors, and women's reproductive rights. As we all know, abortion is a sensitive and controversial topic that everyone has a view on. As defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, abortion is, “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo of fetus: such as spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first twelve weeks of gestation, the induced expulsion of a human fetus, or the expulsion of a fetus by a domestic animal often due to infection at any time before completion of pregnancy." Abortions are one of the most common medical procedures done in the United States every year. More than 40% of all women have an abortion at some point in their reproductive lives.
Lexis Advance by LexisNexis, WestlawNext by Westlaw, Bloomberg Law, and HeinOnline offer a large amount of information that is not available for free. This includes secondary sources such as digital versions of treatises, including e-books, journal articles, legal encyclopedias such as American Jurisprudence, 2d (Am. Jur. 2d) and Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.), American Law Reports (A.L.R.), legal dictionaries such as Black’s Law Dictionary and Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, Restatements, Uniform Laws, and legal newspapers. The commercial databases also offer primary sources such as older state and federal cases, legal forms, court dockets, public records, certain state and federal administrative materials, historical and legislative history materials. Furthermore, commercial databases often contain a great deal of valuable staff-added information. For example, LexisNexis and Westlaw have databases that contain the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) or United States Code Service (U.S.C.A.) (codified federal statutory laws). The official U.S. Code is available online and for free. But unlike the free internet version of the U.S. Code, the LexisNexis and Westlaw “annotated codes” provide “annotations,” additional information such as relevant cases, federal regulations, legal articles, law journal articles, and more.
Introduction." UPDATE: A Guide to Fee-Based U. S. Legal Research Databases - GlobaLex. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2017.
