Category: Miscellaneous Quotes

The Supreme Court has ruled that unborn babies are not “persons” according to the law and, therefore, cannot be protected legally. However, the Court also:

“consistently held that corporations are “persons” for purposes of the Due Process Clause.”

Minneapolis R. Co. v. P Beckwith, 129 US 26 (1889); Connecticut General Life Insurance Co v. Johnson, 303 US 77 (1938); Wheeling Steel Corporation v. Glander 337 US 562 (1949)

quoted in

James F Bohan. The House of Atreus: Abortion Is a Human Rights Issue (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1999) 11

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A book by a pro-choice author discusses how antiabortion extremist tactics lead to more medical students becoming abortion providers:

Since David Gunn’s death in March 1993, there has been a significant mobilization among pro-choice medical students across the country. “Medical Students for Choice,” a new national organization, has contacts in over 100 medical schools. One of its first activities was to circulate a petition (which ultimately gathered over 3000 signatures) among medical students all over the country, demanding that abortion training be a required component in OB/GYN residency programs.… In Response to the notorious “Bottom Feeders pamphlet, a compilation of vulgar jokes directed at abortion providers, which was recently mailed to medical students in the United States by an antiabortion group, medical students at the University of California at San Francisco raised funds that were donated to the National Abortion Federation.

In a letter to the publishers of the pamphlet, the UCSF students wrote, “If your intentions included intimidating future abortion providers… Then you failed. In fact, “Bottom Feeders” has sparked effective discussions on-campus about how to ensure access to safe, legal abortion for every woman who wants one.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995)  206 – 207

 

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Is holding big media events outside abortion clinics during pickets counterproductive? It can be. According to an abortionist named Caleb Barrington:

“They [pro-lifers]would stage a picket at the office and would at the same time make it a media event. They would call the press, they would all arrive, and the next day I would get twice as many phone calls because people would know I was doing the abortions – so, in fact, they made my name known.”

Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 165

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In 1972, the year before Roe versus Wade, a collection of 100 OB/GYN’s published an article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They expressed doubts about the legalization of abortion. Concern that women may want surgery that is not in their best interest, they said the following:

“For the first time, except perhaps for cosmetic surgery, doctors will be expected to do an operation simply because the patient asks that it be done.”

“A Statement on Abortion by One Hundred Professors of Obstetrics” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 112 (1972) 992 – 98

They realized that the doctor would be a mere technician, performing a service that women wanted without knowing their in-depth medical history or life circumstances. Perhaps these doctors envisioned clinics where women would wait in line and be aborted one after the other with the doctor only seeing his patients for several minutes on the operating table. Is this really conducive to good medical care?

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So many women were having emotional problems after their abortions that Planned Parenthood, which always denies that post abortion trauma is real, finally had to address the issue.

Planned Parenthood website affiliate in Illinois about coping with an abortion

“You can say or yell “stop” whenever you have disturbing thoughts… if you find yourself fantasizing too often about what the child may have been like, you should substitute another fantasy: a baby crying because you have no time to give  it.”

Quoted in Valerie Meehan “Hidden Pain: Silent No More” The American Feminist, Winter 2002 to 2003

Meehan quotes from Theresa Burke, PhD “forbidden grief, the unspoken pain of abortion” written with David Reardon

Here are the results of some studies on abortion and the emotional aftermath:

154% higher risk of suicide. Another study of more than 173,000 American women who had abortions or carried to term found that, during the eight years after the pregnancy ended, women who aborted had a 154% higher risk of suicide than women who carried to term.

DC Reardon et. al., “Deaths Associated With Pregnancy Outcome: A Record Linkage Study of Low Income Women,” Southern Medical Journal 95(8):834-41, Aug. 2002.

Higher suicide risks for teens. Teen girls are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide if they have had an abortion in the last six months than girls who have not had an abortion, and 2-4 times more likely to commit suicide after abortion compared to adult women

B. Garfinkel, et al., “Stress, Depression and Suicide: A Study of Adolescents in Minnesota,” Responding to High Risk Youth (University of Minnesota: Minnesota Extension Service, 1986); M. Gissler, et. al., “Suicides After Pregnancy in Finland: 1987-94: register linkage study,” British Medical Journal, 313: 1431-1434, 1996; and N. Campbell, et. al., “Abortion in Adolescence,” Adolescence, 23:813-823, 1988. See the “Teen Abortion Risks” Fact Sheet at www.unfairchoice.info/resources.htm for more information.

Five-fold higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse. Excluding women with a prior history of substance abuse, those who abort their first pregnancy are 5 times more likely to report subsequent drug and alcohol abuse vs. those who give birth.

DC Reardon, PG Ney, “Abortion and Subsequent Substance Abuse,” American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 26(1):61-75, 2000.

For more studies on the mental fallout from abortions, go here.

For testimonies and stories of post-abortion women, go here. 

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In a well-known pro-choice book,an author who observed in an abortion clinic told of the abortion decision of a young women who already had a two year old. Lamenting the fact that she could not have her baby and stay financially afloat, the woman said:

“This is my decision but not my choice.”

Chalker R. and Downes, C. “A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486” (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York 1992) Quoted in an essay by Catherine Spencer

The truth is, many women have abortions not because they are deciding without qualms that they don’t want a baby, but, rather, that they see themselves in a hopeless situation, and feel they have no other choice. Or, just as often, they are pressured by other people (usually the baby’s father) into having the abortion.

To read more about coerced abortions, go here. 

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Should just anyone be allowed to perform an abortion, or should only doctors be allowed to perform them? Surprisingly, there are no laws mandating that those who perform abortions must be doctors in many states.

Until recently, in Arizona, non-doctors performed abortions at Planned Parenthood. A simple nursing degree is all they had- and more than they needed to operate legally.

This all changed with the 2009 Abortion Consent Act.

The law states the following,. according to an article by Steven Ertelt:

The law makes it so Arizona will require a notarized parental signature before an abortion can be performed on a minor child, women will be provided with full and accurate information by a doctor in person at least 24 hours before an abortion, medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and non-doctors will not be permitted by law to perform surgical abortions.

Steven Ertelt “Arizona Abortions Drop 30% After Pro-Life Law Takes Effect” LifeNews.com 10/12/11

Rather than comply with the law, Planned Parenthood stopped performing abortions at seven locations. Apparently, doctors were not performing the surgeries on women in these clinics.

Roe Vs. Wade was supposed to protect women against unqualified abortionists. I wonder how many women knew that their surgery was being done by someone who did not have a medical degree?

Read about abortion’s dangers here.

The law led to a 30% drop in the number of abortions in the state

Note: One Planned Parenthood nurse, Beth Otterstein, who performed abortions before being banned from doing so said the following after the law passed:

“I’m very sure we’re going to see illegal abortions crop up, which can be very serious because they can lead to deaths”

Rachel Jimenez “At Flagstaff Clinic, Women Seeking Abortions Told to go to Phx” Tuscon Sun Sentinel October 4, 2011

Only Planned Parenthood could claim that a law requiring women to have their surgery done by competent physicians would lead to unsafe abortions. I wonder if they listen to themselves.

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A pro-choice feminist who observed at an abortion clinic told the following story of a woman who came in for an abortion:

“The second woman was Japanese and spoke very little English, and she had not brought anyone to translate.… This woman actively resisted… She was very drugged up – Demerol and Valium on top of the Sublimaze. She wouldn’t keep her legs open and kept sliding up on the table. From the second Roger first touched her, she looked like she was in agony.

What happened was that three people held her down, basically. Julia and Toby held her legs apart, and Ilene, who was assisting, held her at the waist to keep her from sliding up. I stood at her side and tried to get her to do deep breathing, pretty ineffectually. It was horrible to watch… Roger looked very annoyed during the whole thing. Toby told me later that when Julia was first encouraging the woman to take deep breaths, Roger said, “This will make or breathe!” And slid in the speculum roughly. I had thought of him as very compassionate but apparently not when things don’t go well. I wonder what that woman was thinking during the whole thing.”

Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 75

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Jenny Jerrome has a page where she rates abortion clinics for women, advertising those that she feels best serve them. Here is some of the advice she gives pregnant women considering abortion:

“Don’t get sucked into one of those abortion options counseling centers. They will hound you and heap guilt on you and pound on you until they break down your spirit and force you to wait until it is too late. Then, they will abandon you and look down their noses at you.…

Don’t wait. Make your decision quickly it’s a hard thing to do, but the longer you wait, the fewer options you have. Take a day, (no more than one day) and make your decision. A favorite tactic of those who don’t want you to have a choice is to delay, find excuses for you to delay a little longer, and finally tell you, “tough luck honey, it’s too late!”

Crisis pregnancy centers have helped tens of thousands of  pregnant women and new mothers, offering both emotional support and material help, including referrals for medical care and social services. Some crisis pregnancy centers follow the women for years, providing daycare assistance and parenting classes, and job training, whereas an abortion clinic will do her abortion and sent her home. Putting pressure on a pregnant woman to decide what to do about her pregnancy quickly is a common technique that abortion clinics use in order to convince  women  to  have abortions. Studies show that the longer a woman waits to have an abortion, the more likely she is to change her mind and have her child. Abortion clinics know this.. They will often say that it will become too late to have an abortion if the woman does not abort immediately. In reality, abortion is legal for all nine months of pregnancy and over half of all abortion clinics perform abortions after 12 weeks.

Jerrome continues with her “good advice”:

Under “Who Will Know I Had an Abortion?”

“First, don’t tell anyone. If you told someone you were going to have an abortion, lie! Yes, lie! Tell them you started bleeding and it was suddenly all gone. Cry a little, if you can, and say you feel better and don’t want to talk about it… Remember, you can’t trust anyone with this. If you really don’t want anyone else to know, you have to keep it from your closest friends and family. You might be able to trust them now, but over time, things will change. Your relationship with them might change… Don’t tell and no one will know!”

Isolating the pregnant woman from her support system is one of the cruelest things that can be done to her. A woman should not be forced to go through an abortion decision on her own. Friends and loved ones can help a woman talk things out. Fear and and a sense of being alone often drive a person to choose something in a moment of crisis that they will regret for the rest of their lives. A woman should find out what support is available for her and her child if she chooses to carry the baby to term. Making a decision in isolation, without reaching out to anyone for help, can lead to devastating guilt and grief as well as undue pressure to have an abortion.

Not content with simply isolating a woman from her support system during her pregnancy, Jerrome takes it further and encourages her to lie about her abortion. This can set the course for a lifetime of denial and shame as the woman feels that she needs to hide this terrible secret from everyone she knows. It can be a major block to healing which needs to take place after an incident as traumatic as an abortion.

http://www.jennyjerrome.com/pg_i_doctell.html

 

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In the article “From Fence-Sitter to Activist” (which can be found here) a young woman describes the reasons why she became pro-life. She became pregnant while in college, and wanted to keep her baby. However, she ran into trouble due to her lack of health insurance.

“I arrived at the midwives’ clinic, which was in a local hospital. I reported for my appointment and was asked for my medicaid card. When I told them I was an uninsured college student, they told me that this was a clinic for medicaid patients. I begged. I pleaded. They sent me away.

I cried out in the parking lot. “They never flat out TELL you to have an abortion,” I sobbed to my husband, “but they make it very clear that they expect you to! They don’t offer you so much as a kind word!” I was heartbroken. Nobody cared about our baby. But a woman came running out of the hospital looking for us. Panting, she told us, “I’m glad I caught you before you left!” She introduced herself as one of the midwives. She assured me that she would make sure that I got proper prenatal care, and led us back inside. She took us to the financial office. There, she told a clerk to make payment arrangements for me, then send me back to the clinic. I never forgot the despair as I stood crying in the parking lot, or the relief and gratitude when the midwife reached out to me. I swore that I’d never leave a pregnant woman alone and despairing, as I had been.

Even with payment arrangements, we were nervous about the medical costs. I wondered if perhaps we could get some kind of catastropic insurance. We made an appointment. There, we were humiliated. The case worker counted our student loans as income, but didn’t count tuition and books as necessary expenses. We pleaded. We weren’t looking for full coverage — just emergency coverage in case something went wrong. We were told that we should have thought of this before I became pregnant. Back out in the parking lot I was furious. Again, they never outright TELL you to get an abortion, but they sure do make it plain what they expect. I hated the people who hated my baby.”

Extending health coverage to the uninsured, and making prenatal care and birth affordable for everyone will drastically cut the abortion rate. As this woman says, many pregnant women have nowhere to turn.

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