Category: Miscellaneous Quotes

The author witnessed abortions and interviewed postabortion women and men. She remarked that many women give up smoking to protect the baby, even when they plan to have abortions:

“The maternal instinct manifests itself in many curious ways; it is not so very unusual to encounter a woman who has an abortion appointment for eight days hence – but who has given up smoking cigarettes for the waiting interval “so as not to damage the baby.” This might be sensible if the woman was still uncertain as to whether she would proceed with the pregnancy or not, but it occurs even when the woman is certain she will terminate it. Yet there is a feeling that while the foetus is there, it elicits a sense of protection.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 226-227

Read stories of women who have had abortions

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An author who witnessed abortions said the following:

“As the patients paid, I recalled one observation of an American woman that it was the only operation in the world for which you pay in advance.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 150

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Pro-abortion writer David Lykke:

If you live in the projects on welfare, then you can’t have a baby. And that sounds awful. … But the question is, if you live in a plague area, have you a right to bring a child into a plague area?”

David Lykken, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, quoted in William Norman Grigg. “Are You Fit to Be a Parent?” The New American, January 23, 1995, pages 12 to 14

He supports giving permits to parents to allow them to have babies.

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Dr. Alan Fleishmann, New York specialist in the care of newborns, told London Standard correspondent Jeremy Campbell:

“The fetus is being looked upon as a patient now. This is a big difference and it has come about suddenly… This has increased the moral standing of the unborn. It has changed the way we think about abortion. People will decide that the fetus has a moral status as early the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. That is when we can do a biopsy, screen for genetic defects. Irregular heartbeats and vitamins deficiencies can be corrected at 15 weeks.

The question now is, if some fetuses have the same rights as a patient, shouldn’t all fetuses have those rights?”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 295

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From a pro-choice activist:

“Abortion activists have a rich history of taking the law — and their lives — into their own hands. When the law doesn’t respect women, women won’t respect the law.”

Ninia Baehr. Abortion Without Apology: A Radical History for the 1990s [Boston: South End Press], 1990, page 30.

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From a woman who had an abortion:

“One friend was particularly good. She had recently had an abortion herself, and really nannied me along. Looking back, I now wonder if in some curious way she wanted me to have an abortion because she had had one. I don’t mean this maliciously; I think her help was genuinely well-intentioned, but human nature being what it is, there is always this pressure to make you conform: the married want you to be married, the divorced want you to be divorced. Mothers want you to have babies, abortees want you to have an abortion.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 53

Former abortion clinic director Abby Johnson estimates that 70% of all women who work at abortion clinics have had abortions themselves. Does this play a role in their desire to see other women have abortions?

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Two lawyers comment on Roe v Wade, the decision which legalized abortion:

“The clerks in most chambers were surprised to see the Justices, particularly Blackmun, so openly brokering the [Roe V Wade] decision like a group of legislators. There was a certain reasonableness to the draft, some of them thought, but it derived more from medical and social policy than from constitutional law. There was something embarrassing and dishonest about this whole process. It left the Court claiming that the Constitution drew certain lines at trimesters and viability. The Court was going to make a medical policy and force it on the states. As a practical matter, it was not a bad solution. As a constitutional matter, it was absurd.”

George Kaluger and Meriem Kaluger Human Development: The Span of Life (St. Louis: The CV Mosby Company, 1979) 65 – 66

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When a woman called Joan Paton was seeking an abortion, her husband went to court to stop her. Author Mary Kenny describes how she felt when she heard on the radio that Paton had had the abortion.

“I remember sitting there and feeling a personal sense of loss. I felt it right there in my belly: a pang. I have had this feeling again since, when sitting in waiting rooms and clinics preparing to interview abortionists for this book. As women have come in, visibly pregnant, I have experienced a sense of melancholy that a life is about to be lost….

She tells the story of a woman who wrote an article in a prominent newspaper asking if she should have an abortion. She describes what happened, how many other women sent a letter:

And I know many women share it, whatever their intellectual views of abortion. In April 1983, a young woman called Lynn Reed wrote a short article for the Daily Mail under the headline “Should I Have an Abortion?” She was aged 35, divorced, and unintentionally pregnant by her boyfriend.  The letters poured in – over 500 of them. Of these 452 pleaded with Lynn not to terminate the pregnancy, and many alluded wistfully to regrets about personal abortion decisions. The most common theme was loss, the most common coda to each letter was, “I have never really spoken about this before – please do not reveal my real name.” 59 letters were ambivalent. Eight letters argued for abortion.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 5

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