Germaine Greer, who is pro-choice, said in an interview in the New Republic:
“It is typical of the contradictions that break women’s hearts that when they avail themselves of their fragile right to abortion they often, even usually, went with grief and humiliation to carry out a painful duty that was presented to them as a privilege. Abortion is the latest in a long line of non-choices…”
The New Republic, October 5, 1992 quoted in Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009) 115
“It doesn’t matter if the fetus is a person. We too are persons, but you can’t force people to donate blood to save other people. Our laws are set up so you can’t force somebody to give any part of themselves to sustain the life of another person.”
Cyny Recker, director of education for the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League.
Leonard Stern“Abortion Wars”The Ottawa Citizen Sun 28 May 2000
In an article in the Tablet, a former abortionist discusses the new ultrasound technology he pioneered and describes the powerful effect viewing ultrasound images have on parents who are seeing their unborn babies for the first time.
He published a book which contains many of the images. But a pro-abortion group has protested:
“It is reprehensible and morally repugnant to use these distorted images to influence women who are making such an important decision on whether or not to go ahead with a pregnancy”
Anne Weyman, chief executive of the Family Planning Association
“The hidden wonder of new life” The Tablet July 10, 2004
Weyman does not explain how images of the unborn baby inside the mother could be “distorted.” She also does not seem to think that women deserve to have all the facts about an invasive operation that can never be undone. Most pro-lifers are familiar with the stories of women who were lied to by abortion clinic workers and later regretted aborting.
8 week ultrasound. many abortion advocates believe women should not be shown images like this before having abortions
“Quite apart from blowing up clinics and terrorizing patients, the anti-abortion movement can take credit for a more subtle and lasting kind of damage: It has succeeded in getting even pro-choice people to think of abortion as a “moral dilemma,” an “agonizing decision,” and related code phrases for something murky and compromising, like the traffic in infant formula mix.
In liberal circles, it has become unstylish to discuss abortion without using words like “complex,” “painful,” and the rest of the mealy-mouthed vocabulary of evasion.
Regrets are also fashionable, and one otherwise feminist author writes recently of mourning, each year following her birthday, the putative birthday of her discarded fetus.
I cannot speak of other women, of course, but the one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks…”
. “Hers” column in The New York Times, February 7, 1985. Quoted in Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer. A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486. Four Walls Eight Windows Press,Village Station, New York, . 1992,
Did the pro-life movement create the belief that women mourn their abortions? Do most women experience their abortions as simple and emotionally benign? Read women’s stories here.
“While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as “pro-life,” the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” The “life” conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.”
“Each of the ‘contents of the uterus’ was placed in a clear glass bowl and then examined under a light. One bowl clearly contained 3 perfect, tiny arms. I asked why there would be a third arm. ‘Twins’ was the response and because it might upset the mother, this information was never shared with any mother.”
“Sometimes during the D & E procedure, a part of the fetus protrudes from, or is pulled through the cervical os before the fetus is fully removed. Although in the vast majority of cases, there is fetal demise before this occurs, from the disruption occasioned by the suction and/or forceps, there could be rare instances where the fetus is “living” within the meaning of the [partial birth] act- whatever that meaning is- when part of the fetus is within the uterus and part is outside….”
10 weeks
Phil Greenberg “To Life: A Collection of Editorials & Columns on Abortion, Life, and Choice” (Little Rock, Arkansas: The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 1999)51-54
In Carhart’s trash can is a printout from a Web site detailing a protest against him in late August by the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. “That’s where it belongs,” he says. “In the trash.”
“They’re fundamentalist religious terrorists.”
He also says:
“We do kill fetuses. It dies because we give an injection into the fetus that causes the heart to just slowdown.”
