Quotes Archives - Page 261 of 350

Ultrasound Laws and Abortion

An article about a law proposing that women view an ultrasound before having an abortion gave the following information:

“A poll by Focus on the Family, a group opposed to abortion, found that when women who were undecided about whether to end a pregnancy were shown an ultrasound of the fetus, 78% did not have the abortion.

….

A Gallup poll in July found that 50% of those surveyed supported laws requiring women to be shown ultrasound images of their fetuses, while 46% were opposed.”

Also from the article:

But critics of these [ultrasound] bills scored an important win in August, when a federal judge struck down parts of a new Texas law requiring women seeking an abortion in most cases to view a sonogram and listen to the fetal heart beat. Judge Sam Sparks ruled that the Texas law — which Gov. Rick Perry helped to push through the legislature — violated the First Amendment. “The act compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree,” he said. The issue could end up in the Supreme Court.

Adam Cohen“The Next Abortion Battleground: Fetal Heartbeats” Time Ideas October 17, 2011

It is hard to imagine how showing a real time image of the child inside a woman, allowing her to make an informed choice and making sure she is not deceived by the clinic workers selling abortions violates women’s rights. Shouldn’t a woman have full access to all the information about what is going on in her own body? So many post-abortion women have claimed that abortion clinic workers lied about fetal development and/or turned the ultrasound away from them. They had an abortion thinking their children were merely tissue or a collection of cells. Then, sometime later they saw an actual photograph or sonogram of an unborn baby and break down, realizing once it is too late that they have been deceived. Are women really so fragile that they need to be protected from the truth?

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Pro-Choice Writer Comments on the Silent Scream

A pro-choice author comments on The Silent Scream, an antiabortion movie that shows an unborn baby being aborted on ultrasound. Planned Parenthood pulled all the stops out to discredit this movie, because it swayed many people towards the pro-life cause.

While these facts may, as Planned Parenthood says, speak loudly, it’s unlikely that they say what the prochoice groups hope, since they put the fetus, even a televised facsimile, on center stage, precisely where prochoice groups don’t want it. Assume the film is wrong and the Planned Parenthood brochure is right. Assume that was a fetal yawn and not a scream. None of the experts contested that it was a fetal mouth, and that it was pan of a fetal head, attached to a fetal spine, and that it had arms andlegs, fingers and eyes. ….

In fact, we need neither The Silent Scream nor a degree in fetal physiology to tell us what we already know: that abortion is the eradication of human life and should be avoided whenever possible. Should it be legal? Yes, since the alternatives are worse. Is it moral? Perhaps, depending on what’s at stake.

Jason Deparle, “Beyond the Legal Right; Why Liberals and Feminists Don’t like to Talk about the Morality of Abortion,” Washington Monthly Apr. 1989

son_1sttri8 — 3-D ultrasound in the first trimester

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Abortion Nurses Bothered by Ultrasounds

“When we started, we lost two nurses. They couldn’t take looking at it. Some other staff was lost.”

Former abortionist Dr. Joseph Randall, on what happened when the clinic where he worked started doing ultrasounds during abortions.

Read Dr. Randall’s full testimony here.

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Pro-Choice Activist on Abortion and Rape

One pro-choice author said the following:

“To defend abortion with confidence, we must first recognize that institutional opposition to the right is part of a broader campaign to undermine women’s autonomy and equality… Abortion is only one piece of the puzzle. When this puzzle is assembled, the image that emerges is of a women subjected, not a fetus saved. For example, it is illuminating that “right to life” leaders generally tolerate abortion in cases of rape or incest. The fetus conceived by rape is biologically and morally indistinguishable from the fetus conceived by voluntary intercourse. But in the view of our opponents, the rape victim is innocent while the woman who chooses to have sex is tainted. For them, it is the woman’s innocence or guilt that determines whether she should be allowed to have an abortion or forced to bear a child.”

“Caitlin Borgmann and Catherine Weiss “Beyond Apocalypse and Apology: A Moral Defense of Abortion” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health volume 35, January/February 2003

Webmaster’s Comment: I thought this was interesting because it shows a pro-choice interpretation of why so many pro-lifers support abortion when it’s a case of rape or incest. They pick up on the inconsistency of that stand. What she says is true that the baby is still a baby whether or not it was conceived through voluntary sex or through rape.

It is also true that many women who get pregnant from rape don’t want to have abortions, and many who have regret it. To read some of their stories, go here.

12weeks_closeup — 12 week old unborn baby. can you tell how he was conceived?

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NARAL Calls Use of Ultrasounds “Intimidation”

Abortion clinics sell abortions. To expect an abortion clinic to be objective in describing abortion is like expecting a car dealership to be objective about buying a car. Clinics make money off of abortions. They don’t make money off of women having their babies.

For some quotes from abortion clinic counselors revealing their bias, go here.

For obvious reasons, abortion proponents oppose laws allowing women to see their ultrasounds before abortions. Even laws that do not require a woman to see her baby on the screen, but merely require her to be offered a chance are vigorously opposed by abortion rights organizations. They also fight crisis pregnancy centers, which often show women a sonogram of her baby in an attempt to allow her to make an informed choice.

Bill S. 340 Informed Choice Act Would have given grants to crisis pregnancy centers to buy ultrasound equipment

Kate Michelman president of NARAL pro-choice America said CPC would use ultrasound images to “intimidate” women also said “it never fails to amaze me how little respect they have for women’s capacity to understand what goes on in our bodies.”

David Crary “Abortion Foes Hope to Sway Pregnant Women with Ultrasound Images” Associated Press State and Local Wire February 1, 2001

For examples of women whose hearts and minds were changed by seeing ultrasounds, go here.

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Author Advocates for Legal Abortion

Pro-choice author Janet Hadley on the reasons abortion must remain legal. She admits in her book that abortion is the taking of a life.

“Without cheap, safe, people friendly contraception as well as the legal and safe means to end unwanted pregnancy, “anatomy is destiny” and women’s lives are still gruesome game of health roulette.” (emphasis author’s)

Janet Hadley “Abortion: between Freedom and Necessity” (Great Britain: Virago Press 1996) 131

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Attorney Describes “Assembly Line” Care at Abortion Clinic

“It was really a case of an assembly line, conducting abortions, one after another, three to five minutes apart.”

Attorney for the family of a girl who died from a legal abortion
ABC 20/20 Transcript # 99030802-j11, A Woman’s right, a woman’s risk, 3/8/1999

For examples of other women who died from legal abortions, go here.

For more cases of abortion malpractice go here.

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Abortionist on the Danger of Uterine Perforations

In an article in Salon, an abortionist said the following:

“This is why I hate overuse of forceps- things tear. There are only two kinds of doctors who have never perforated a uterus, those that lie and those who don’t do abortions.”

Margaret A. Woodbury “A doctor’s right to choose” Salon July 24, 2002

Can be found here.

For more details about the abortions this doctor performs, go here.

For more information on the dangers of abortion, go here.

For studies on abortion’s physical risks, go here.

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Mother of Down Syndrome Child Speaks Out

When tests reveal that unborn babies have Down Syndrome,the majority of women decide to terminate the pregnancy. Here are the reflections of one woman who has a child with Down Syndrome:

“Whenever I am out with Margaret, I’m conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90%… Margaret does not view her life as unremitting human suffering (although she is angry that I haven’t bought her an iPod). She’s consumed with more important things, like the performance of the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs and the dance she’s going to this weekend. Oh sure, she wishes she could learn faster and have better math skills. So do I. But it doesn’t ruin our day, much less our lives. It’s the negative social attitudes that cause us to suffer.

Many young women, upon meeting us, have asked whether I had “the test.” I interpret the question as a get home free card. If I say no, they figure that means I’m a victim of circumstance, and therefore not implicitly repudiating the decision they may make to abort if they think there are disabilities involved. If yes, then it means I’m a right-wing antiabortion nut whose choices aren’t relevant to their lives.

Either way, they win.”

Patricia E Bauer “Selective Abortion Is Immoral” in Lucinda Almond The Abortion Controversy (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2007) 25-26

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Lack of Insurance Puts Pressure on Pregnant Woman to Abort

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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