ClinicQuotes

Former Clinic Worker explains to priest why he needs to speak out about abortion

Pro-life writer Jennifer Hartline relates a story told to her by Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director:

“She [Abby Johnson] told me of a conversation she had with a priest at a conference recently when she insisted that our priests need to be talking about abortion from the pulpit every week, and that the sanctity of human life needs to be mentioned in the Prayers of the Faithful every week. This priest said, “C’mon, Abby, how often do we really need to include abortion in our homilies?” She replied, “Well, we’d often have women come in for an abortion and lay on the table with a rosary in their hands. I had two employees in my clinic who would help perform abortions on Saturday and be at Mass on Sunday receiving the Eucharist. You tell me, how often do you think we need to talk about abortion?”

Jennifer Hartline “And Then There Were None: Abby Johnson Helps Abortion Workers Leave the Industry” Catholic Online 9/7/2012

Share on Facebook

Mother of disabled child speaks out against abortion

The mother of a child with Down Syndrome wrote:

“When I hear about people who have aborted such a child [with down syndrome] because they didn’t want him to have to “live a life like that,” I am incredulous. How someone comes to the conclusion that not allowing a child to live at all is somehow better than living as a special needs child is beyond comprehension. Aborting a disabled child removes the option looking at the glass as half empty or half full. Abortion takes the glass and heaves it over the side of a cliff while the pieces shatter on the rocks below. While it may eliminate the disappointment, sorrow and frustration, it also eliminates the hope, joy and pride of accomplishment that a child can bring. What a travesty. What arrogance. What right to have to destroy that little person because he doesn’t measure up to someone’s standard?”

Lori Schneck “A Normal Life” Concerned Women for America, November 23, 2005

Share on Facebook

Aborted babies alive and crying in China

A New York Times reporter wrote the following:

“… Vigilantes abducted pregnant women on the streets and hauled them off, sometimes handcuffed or trussed, to abortion clinics. Other women, he said, were locked in detention cells or hauled before mass rallies and harangued into consenting to abortions. The reporter referred to “aborted” babies which were actually crying when they were born.”

Christopher Wren “China’s Birth Goals Meet Regional Resistance” Special to the New York Times May 15, 1982

Share on Facebook

Paper describes “fetus” having skull crushed

In a paper on the D&E abortion method, which at the time was new, an abortionist wrote:

“The fetus was extracted in small pieces to minimize cervical trauma. The fetal head was often the most difficult object to crush and remove, because of its size and contour. The operator kept track of each portion of the fetal skeleton….”

Sadja Goldsmith “Second Trimester Abortion by Dilation and Extraction (Evacuation) [D&E]: Surgical Techniques and Psychological Reactions” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians in Atlanta, Georgia Oct 13-14 1977

Preborn baby at 20 weeks – A D&E could be done at this stage

Share on Facebook

Woman told “it’s not a baby”

A post-abortive woman named Margaret tells her story:

“In September I traveled down with Gerry to this clinic, where I was told, “You are in an unsupported situation and we can help you because you can have an abortion.”

Seeking reassurance, I asked “It’s not a baby, is it?”

“No,” they replied. “It’s just a blob of cells at the moment and the sooner it’s done the better.”

From this moment on, my denial hardened. It couldn’t be a baby, and I was doing the best thing possible for everyone concerned.”

Melanie Symonds, Phyllis Bowman And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion (The SPUC Educational Research Trust, 1996) 54

Share on Facebook

British doctor would make 400% more money doing abortions

From a British abortionist:

“The financial side of private clinics has attracted a good deal of attention. A Christian gynecologist told me that she had been invited to help in such a clinic with the expectation of fees 400% greater than her present income: it was added that most of these “would be paid in banknotes.” The implication of this would not be lost on the Collector of Taxes!”

RFR Gardner Abortion: The Personal Dilemma (Exeter, Great Britain: The Paternoster Press, 1972) 78

Share on Facebook

Abortion textbook urges pro-choicers to consider women’s sadness post-abortion

A textbook intended to train abortion workers how to counsel patients says:

“The opposing argument originally put forward by feminists tried to minimize the emotional effect of termination on women. This appeared vital during the struggle for abortion as any discussion of ambivalent feelings or possible harmful effects could, they thought, have weakened their cause. Now that the law is in place and safer from attack, pro-choice supporters can afford to look at some of the emotional costs to women themselves.”

For example, they say:

“… Most studies identify a variably sized group of women who do seem to experience significant psychological sequelae which are not always short-lived.”

Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 141, 142

Share on Facebook

Feminist argues for third trimester abortion

The following is from feminist Karen Houppert, in response to an article by Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook claimed that unborn babies should not be aborted in the third trimester because their brain patterns at that stage are similar to that of adults. Houppert supports third-trimester abortion. She says:

“According to Easterbrook’s new science, at 24 weeks the fetus’s “cerebral cortex becomes “wired,” and “fetal EEG readings begin to look more and more like those of a newborn.”

Easterbrook contends that the “hopelessly confusing viability standard should be dropped in favor of a bright line drawn at the start of the third trimester, when complex fetal brain activity begins.”

It is at this point that feminists who’ve been around the block once or twice might fight the temptation to take this earnest neoliberal by the hand and lead him gently back to the point of contention: What does it mean that this fetus acquires “personhood” inside the body of another?

Memo to Gregg: Yours is that same tiresome argument about when life begins. Randall Terry [founder of Operation Rescue] and his minions call them the “preborn.”

You’ve simply modernized, adding the intellectual’s imprimatur by invoking science to define “signs of formed humanity.”

But get this. Most of us feminists don’t even disagree with you. We might quibble with the notion that “personhood” is bestowed at precisely 24 weeks when the brain waves are first detected on an EEG, because, in general, when a pregnancy is a welcome one, we women tend to bestow “personhood” immediately.

(We change the way we eat; “You’re eating for two now.” We pass around sonograms and coo at those 10 little “signs of formed humanity.” We mourn when we miscarry.)

… Our jaded feminist gives a weary nod and says, “Remember, this fetus is being carried inside a woman’s body. The question,” she reminds him, “is not, “When does life begin?” But, “Can it ever be moral for a woman to be pregnant against her will?”

Karen Houppert “The Meaning of Life” The Nation vol. 270, March 13, 2000 P7

Share on Facebook

Simone de Beauvoir: “The world will never be the same”

Simone de Beauvoir says that after abortion women:

“learn to believe no longer in what men say… The one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there. It is at her first abortion that a woman begins to “know.” For many women the world will never be the same.”

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc.: Bantam Books, 1952)

Share on Facebook