Category: Miscellaneous Quotes

Abortion is now legal in Ireland. But in the past, women had to travel to England to have abortions. Pro-choice author Judith Orr wrote:

“Doctors in Northern Ireland may recommend an abortion to women who discover that their foetus has a severe or fatal abnormality, but not actually offer one. In such cases, a woman’s pregnancy may be too far advanced for a medical termination with pills, so women are forced to travel to a strange city and clinic in Britain – often at a time of great grief at the prospect of losing a wanted pregnancy – and, until a change in government policy in 2017, pay many hundreds of pounds for an abortion. Couple sometimes want to bury the remains back home, or want a postmortem examination to find out the cause of a fatal foetal anomaly and have been known to be left with no alternative but to carry them back in a picnic cool bag.”

Judith Orr Abortion Wars: The Fight for Reproductive Rights (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017) 24

Below: baby aborted at 6 months

Letter from a man who is in jail. He was convicted and sentenced for killing a preborn baby in an accident he caused through drunk driving. He says:

“What is the difference? Why do we mourn one and not the other? Why did I get punished for this woman losing her child in the automobile accident? Doesn’t an abortion also result in the same thing, the killing of an innocent child? This same woman could’ve had an abortion yesterday, and I would not be in here, and nothing would’ve been said about this baby. This baby would have been discarded like a piece of trash. Now I am that piece of trash that killed an innocent life. What about the abortionist who does all those abortions? Do they not also take an innocent life? Why are they not punished? Do they have a license to kill?”

Brenda Pratt-Shafer, David Shafer What the Nurse Saw: Eyewitness to Abortion (Mustang, Oklahoma: Tate Publishing & Enterprise, LLC, 2016) 315 – 316

In an interview, pro-choice feminist Naomi Wolf admitted that she had “been raised all her life” to “demonize” pro-lifers.

“I have to reckon with the fact that many of the people I’ve heard from on that side [pro-life] of the divide are thoughtful, ethical people who respect women and who believe that it is a deep moral concern and even a deep religious concern to raise the status of women in society.”

Interview with William F. Buckley, on the TV show Firing Line.

Carole Novielli “Pro-choice feminist: Abortion leads to ‘cheapened view of human life’” Live Action News December 15, 2017

In a book for abortion clinic workers on counseling abortion minded women, it gives the example of Jasmine, a woman who is not interested in learning about birth control after her abortion:

“It became more and more of a battle with each method of contraception being rejected. There was no way Jasmine could discuss condoms with her boyfriend; the pill was out of the question as it could be discovered. At one point during the consultation the doctor nearly ended up agreeing that maybe abortion was the only form of ‘birth control’ that was practical.”

Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 14

Authors Liz Jeffries and Rick Edmonds wrote of one incident that occurred in a hospital that did abortions:

“In Grand Rapids the revolt against physician authority began as nurses left a tiny corpse “lying in its mother’s bed for an hour and a half, despite angry calls from the attending physician, who finally went in and removed it himself.”

Liz Jeffries and Rick Edmonds “Abortion: The Dreaded Complication” Today Aug 2, 1981

Curt Young The Least of These: What Everyone Should Know about Abortion (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1984) 93

In his book, abortionist Dr. Don Sloan writes the following:

“One fascinating dilemma in the abortion debate is the right to abortion in cases of rape and incest. If an embryo is a person and abortion is murder and no one has the constitutional right to kill another person, how can it be OK to kill only at certain times – as in rape or incest? Isn’t killing always wrong? If, indeed, it is a killing? Is it murder sometimes and not murder at others? It seems that people who say they’re against abortion except in cases of rape or incest are basing their judgement on something other than whether or not abortion is killing. Clearly, their feelings about abortion have to do not with the “innocent life” of the embryo or fetus, but with the mother…When pressed, they’ll say that they’re against abortion for “birth control” but not in cases of rape or incest because the woman didn’t “intend” to get pregnant- she was an “innocent victim.”

Presumably then, at other times, the woman isn’t “innocent.”…She’s been irresponsible. Now let’s see that she pays for it. A lot of the arguments about abortion are really about controlling women’s sexuality or just controlling women, period.”

Don Sloan, MD, Paula Hartz Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective, A Woman’s Dilemma (Dutton Adult, 1992)

Sloan’s argument is false but logically consistent. Pro-lifers claim that abortion is wrong because the baby is a human being with a right to life, and killing her is a violation of that right. A rape exception protects some preborn babies, but allows others to be aborted based on how they were conceived.

A rape exception indicates that babies conceived by consensual sex are  human beings with rights and babies conceived by rape are not – an obvious contradiction – which leaves pro-choicers like Sloan an opening to claim that being pro-life is not about saving babies after all. If there is a rape exception, the question of whether abortion is right or wrong hinges on whether a woman had sex deliberately. If women who conceived through consensual means are not allowed abortions but rape victims are, pro-choicers can claim that fighting abortion is not really about the rights of the baby, but the behavior of the mother.

In an interview pro-choice author Naomi Wolf admitted that she had “been raised all her life” to “demonize” pro-lifers.

She says:

“I have to reckon with the fact that many of the people I’ve heard from on that side [pro-life] of the divide are thoughtful, ethical people who respect women and who believe that it is a deep moral concern and even a deep religious concern to raise the status of women in society.”

The interview took place with William F. Buckley on the TV show “Firing Line.”

Carole Novielli “Pro-choice feminist: Abortion leads to ‘cheapened view of human life’” Live Action News December 15, 2017

Excerpts from this California Medicine article on abortion has been frequently shared by pro-lifers. The California Medicine article on abortion was written while the push to legalize abortion was first starting. It was 1970, and abortion had been legalized in several states. The article was commenting on how “semantic gymnastics” were used to hide the fact that life begins at conception, which “everyone really knows.”

“The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its age or condition. The ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy. The reference for each and every human life has also been a keystone of Western medicine and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong, and enhance every human life which comes under their surveillance. This traditional ethic is still clearly dominant, but there is much to suggest that it is being eroded at its core and may eventually even be abandoned…

What is not yet so clearly perceived is that in order to bring this about hard choices will have to be made with respect to what is to be preserved and strengthened and what is not, and that this will of necessity violate and ultimately destroy the traditional Western ethic with all that this portends. It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives… This is quite distinctly at variance with the Judeo-Christian ethic…

The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. In defiance of the long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its age, condition, or status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right and even necessary. It is worth noting that the shift in public attitude has affected the churches, the laws, and public policy rather than the reverse. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra-or extra uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.”

“A New Ethic for Medicine and Society” California Medicine 113 (September 1970): 67-68

This California Medicine article on abortion comments on the how euphemisms were used to “rationalize abortion as anything but killing.” It sums up the abortion issue very well.