Category: Miscellaneous Quotes

From a Pro-Choice author who has interviewed dozens of abortionists:

“Each generation of activists – and physicians willing to engage with such a divisive social issue is abortion are indisputably “activists” – experiences its own defining moments. And just as the death of women in emergency rooms was such a defining experience for older abortion providers, there are indications that the murders of abortion providers and other recent extremist abortion activity are playing the same role today for many contemporary medical students.

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 raise 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.”

USC S Medical Students, “Letter to Life Dynamics,” July 15, 1993

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

Here, we see that anti-abortion violence and bullying or insulting tactics only drive more ambivalent medical students into the field of abortion. The response to violence and harassment is a sense of self-righteousness on the part of the providers, and encourages, ultimately. the destruction of more babies. These tactics should be condemned by all pro-lifers, both because they are morally wrong and because they are counterproductive.

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From a pro-choice author who interviewed dozens of abortionists for her book:

“As I have argued, it would be a mistake to overestimate the influence of antiabortionists in explaining the provider shortage, and thereby to overlook other factors, such as the long-standing ambivalence of the medical establishment toward abortion.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) page 187

The medical community is deeply ambivalent about abortion, because, perhaps due to their medical training. Doctors may intuitively know that abortion kills babies. All the Embryology textbooks say that life begins at conception. That is why there is so much stigma attached to abortion and abortion providers.

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Daniel Fieldstone, abortionist:

“If this were a rational society, we have fewer unintended pregnancies and far fewer abortions…”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 182

If abortion is simply the removal of a few cells, the simple “termination of pregnancy” then why should there be fewer abortions? This abortionist seems to long for a world where abortions are rare. But if abortion is not killing a baby, and is not harmful to women, why should it be rare? The truth is that abortion providers see the bodies of aborted babies daily and they know abortion is not a matter to take lightly.

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One abortionist talks about how antiabortion protest that his clinic actually led to an increase in business:

“They 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.”

This indicates that large media events in front of clinics, as opposed to peaceful sidewalk counseling, often work against the pro-life movement and, in fact, lead to more abortions.

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

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Pro-Choice author Carole Joffe reveals that the main reason for the abortion provider shortage is lack of support within the medical community, not the actions of  violent antiabortion activists:

“While the dramatic, violent assaults on clinic facilities and abortion providers by antiabortionists have dominated headlines as the late 1980s and are commonly viewed as the chief reason for physicians’ withdrawal from abortion, in fact much of the medical establishment had already distanced itself from abortion services in the years before antiabortion violence began to escalate – mainly by supporting legal abortion in principle, while refusing to take part in the practice of abortion.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 161

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“The bulk of our doctors come from out of state. They fly in, they fly out.”

Betty Thompson, Jackson Women’s Health org, abortion clinic chain, PBS, The Last Abortion Clinic

Quoted by Life Dynamics

The number of abortion providers is small – with only a few abortionists doing the vast majority of abortions. It also should be noted that the doctor who leaves the abortion clinic as soon as he’s done operating is not very days a complication occurs. This puts women at risk.

 

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“There are a lot of people who love us, but don’t want to do [abortions] themselves… They’re certainly happy that I’m well trained, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty – and that’s okay.”

Late-term Abortionist Paul Temple

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 158

This quote offers insight on why there are so few abortion providers – many OB/GYN’s (and others– Roe V Wade did not specify that abortions have to be performed by OB/GYN’s who are trained, anyone can technically do them, as long as they have a medical license or nursing degree)many people do not want to get their “hands dirty” with abortion, especially late-term abortion.

 

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Dr. Barry Messinger, abortionist, discusses one of the reasons why there are so few abortion providers:

“I knew that not very many of my academic colleagues were interested or willing to put time into doing abortions… I also became aware of the fact that the technique was rapidly becoming simple and one would not be able to write a lot of papers about its complexities and advances and permutations – things like that. So from that point of view, it’s not a very intellectually challenging deal… I think that limited the kind of academic people who would be interested in it.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) Page 151

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From pro-choice author Carole Joffe in Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995)

 “[influential physician Robert Hall said that women should have counseling before an abortion] Then if she still wants the abortion she should have it. When it comes to the doctor, I think he’s eventually going to be no more than a technician. This may be humiliating to him. But it is his unavoidable plight if we are to grant women their inherent right to an abortion.”

This may be part of the reason why abortionists are so hard to come by in United States. They often turn out abortions on an assembly line, seeing the woman only long enough to perform the operation and developing no rapport with her as a patient.

Often abortion clinics have very substandard counseling. Read about abortion counseling here.

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Tina Welsh of the Duluth Women’s Health Center abortion clinic told 20/20 in a May 24, 1991 interview,

“In 10 years we have never had a physician from Duluth that has been willing to work here.  And I went right down the list, about 27 physicians, in the immediate area of northern Minnesota and Michigan and Wisconsin.”

Abortionists are hard to come by these days in the United States. Pro-choicers often blame pro-life activities and violence, but the more honest among them point to the stigma of providing abortions and the unpleasantness of the work. Read more about the stigma in this section.

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