They said it.
The late Christopher Hitchens said the following in Nation magazine, in April 1989:
“[A]nyone who has ever seen a sonogram or has spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows that emotions are not the deciding factor [in abortions]…In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain…break some bones, and rupture some organs.”
Quoted in:
Mehdi Hasan “Being Pro-Life Doesn’t Make Me Any Less of a Lefty” Huffington Post December 14, 2012
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis for opposing Hitler and plotting, with others, to assassinate him. He said the following about abortion:
“Destruction in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life… The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Ethics [translated by Neville Horton Smith] (New York: Macmillan, 1955) 131
Quoted in Terry Schlossberg and Elizabeth Achtemeier Not My Own: Abortion & the Marks of the Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995)
Share on FacebookWalker Piercy, doctor and well-known author, said:
“Any doctor can tell you that an unborn child is fully human. There is no difference between a child five minutes before birth and five minutes after birth. What about a month before birth? Same. How about eight months? How about one day after conception? Sure. It’s a separate organism. Any doctor will tell you that it’s all standard biology: the fetus is a separate genetic structure, a separate immune system… A separate creature.”
The Register, January 11, 1989 (Santa Ana, California)
Quoted in Oliver Trager Abortion: Choice & Conflict (New York: Facts on File, 1993) 114
Share on FacebookActor Kevin Sorbo opposes abortion. He says:
“I’m pro life and to see these kids are given a chance to get into places, that are given a real opportunity, a real chance to have a proper upbringing.”
In response to pro-choicers:
“Their answer deals with anger and hatred, there’s no logic, they’d rather save a sea turtle’s life than save a human’s life that’s a little bit odd to me as well.”
Garrett Sanders “Kevin Sorbo talk career, Christian movies, and his pro-life stance” KETK October 14, 2014
Share on FacebookWhat Martin Luther King, Jr. thought about abortion was revealed in his advice column in Ebony in June 1958. He referred to a post-abortion man’s decision as “a mistake.” This indicates that he did not approve of abortion. It is impossible to know for certain, but he may have been pro-life today.
Here is the letter from the post-abortion man and King’s reply:
“Question: About two years ago, I was going with a young lady who became pregnant. I refused to marry her. As a result, I was directly responsible for a crime. It was not until a month later that I realized the awful thing I had done. I begged her to forgive me, to come back, but she has not answered my letters. The thing stays on my mind. What can I do? I have prayed for forgiveness.
Answer: You have made a mistake. This you admit. Your admitting this fact is very wholesome, for it is the first step in the process of repentance and personality integration. One can never rectify a mistake until he admits that a mistake has been made.
Now that you have prayed for forgiveness and acknowledged your mistake, you must turn your vision to the future….Now that you have repented, don’t concentrate on what you failed to do in the past, but what you are determined to do in the future.”
Martin Luther King JR. advice column Ebony, June 1958, p. 118
Share on FacebookWalker Percy, novelist, who was trained as a physician at Columbia University:
“It is a commonplace of modern biology, known to every high school student… That the life of every individual organism, human or not, begins with the chromosomes of the sperm fuse with the chromosomes of the ovum to form a new DNA complex that henceforth directs the ontogenesis of the organism.”
Walker Percy Signposts in a Strange Land, edited by Patrick Samway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991) 341
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As a materialist, I think it has been demonstrated that an embryo is a separate body and entity, and not merely (as some really did used to argue) a growth on or in the female body. There used to be feminists who would say that it was more like an appendix or even—this was seriously maintained—a tumor. That nonsense seems to have stopped… The words “unborn child,” even when used in a politicized manner, describe a material reality.
Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition, 2009), 378-379
Share on FacebookDietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke out against the Nazis and was executed by Hitler:
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Ethics, 175 – 176
Quoted in
Peter Barnes “The Silent Holocaust” The Banner of Truth Trust, in Free Grace Broadcaster – Issue 220 – Abortion Ezekiel Hopkins
Share on Facebook‘…I fear the power of choice over life or death at human hands. I see no human being whom I could ever trust with such power–not myself, not any other. Human wisdom, human integrity are not great enough. Since the fetus is a creature already alive and in the process of development, to kill it is to choose death over life. At what point shall we allow this choice? For me the answer is–at no point, once life has begun. At no point, I repeat, either as life begins or as life ends, for we who are human beings cannot, for our own safety, be allowed to choose death, life being all we know.”
Novelist Pearl S. Buck
Foreword to Robert E. Cooke and others, ed., The Terrible Choice: The Abortion Dilemma (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), ix-xi, x.
“I do, as a humanist, believe that the concept “unborn child” is a real one and I think the concept is underlined by all the recent findings of embryology about the early viability of a well conceived human baby, one that isn’t going to be critically deformed (or even some that are) will be able to survive outside the womb earlier and earlier, and earlier and I see that date only being pushed back. I feel the responsibility to consider the occupant of the womb as a candidate member of society in the future, and thus to say that it cannot be only the responsibility of the woman to decide upon it, that it’s a social question and an ethical and a moral one. And I say this as someone who has no supernatural belief.”
Hitchens versus Turek debate, September 9, 2008
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