Category: Quotes

“The condition of unwantedness also makes it probable that the child will be poorly cared for, economically, physically, and psychologically.… Abortion for the children’s sake – this is paradoxical but true.”

Abortion Hearings (Senate) 2, PP 588 – 589 (Statement of Garrett Hardin); Garrett Hardin, Mandatory Motherhood: the True Meaning of “Right to Life” (Boston: Beacon, 1974) PP 98 – 100

This characterization of abortion as being best for the child is similar to some of the arguments against slavery that claimed that African-Americans were better off as slaves and that slavery was, therefore, an act of kindness towards them. Here are some examples:

Thomas Jefferson justified his ownership of slaves. In the 1953 book the Constitutional Principles of Thomas Jefferson, Caleb Perry Patterson said the following:

“….It was Jefferson’s humane feeling for his slaves they kept him from freeing them. To free the ordinary slave was not very different from starting him on the road to starvation. Or as Jefferson put it…Like abandoning children.”

Quoted in Gregg Cunningham “Abortion Is a Form of Genocide” Mary E Williams. Abortion: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 2002)

also from that article:

Author Merrill D Peterson, in Thomas Jefferson And the New Nation

“…To turn loose the mass of slaves would have been, in his [Jefferon’s] eyes, an act of heartless cruelty.”

 

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“What women know is that bringing an unwanted child into the world is the beginning of death not life. Legislation, then, that will compel them to give birth to unwanted children is not pro-life, but pro-death.”

Joy MK Bussert, Minnesota Council of Churches, 1982. Quoted in Bonnie Szumski , Abortion: Opposing Viewpoints (St. Paul, Minnesota: Greenhaven Press, 1986)

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“What happens even to the well baby born to a scared, unmarried teenage girl, herself virtually a child? What happens to the child born into abysmal poverty or into a family already too large? Or to the child born to a sick or disturbed mother? Although it is certainly not inevitable that the child unwanted at birth will be rejected and unloved in life, research into the etiology of mental illness, criminality, and mental retardation has singled out parental deprivation as perhaps the most important single causal factor.”

Abortion Hearings (Senate) 2, PP 588 – 589 (Statement of Garrett Hardin); Garrett Hardin, Mandatory Motherhood: the True Meaning of “Right to Life” (Boston: Beacon, 1974) PP 98 – 100

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An Arizona abortionist who failed to estimate correctly the age of the unborn baby and instead of destroying her, delivered her alive, said the following. She was eight months in the womb.

“We can’t always be perfect.”

“Abortion Attempt Turns into Birth: Baby’s “Fine” Chicago Sun-Times March 23, 1981, 25. Quoted in James Tunstead Burtechaell “Rachel Weeping”

 

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“The decision of a woman, or a couple, to have an abortion is not necessarily made because they dislike children, it is normally an expression of the fact that at this particular time in their life, they feel they cannot offer a child the love, security and physical support which would meet their ideals…Abortion is usually an altruistic decision.”

Malcolm Potts, Peter Diggory, and John Peel, Abortion (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1977) 227 – 228 Quoted in James Tunstead Burtechaell, C.S.C. Rachel Weeping: the Case against Abortion (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982)

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“The decision to have an abortion often reflects or is motivated by religious or spiritual beliefs that place priority on service and conduct of life as values even higher than procreation… Finally, if a woman cannot choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, she is denied the right to the “possession and control” of her own body.”

Lynn M Paltrow “To Return the Law to the Condition Before Roe Would Deny Women Their Fundamental Constitutional Rights” August 29, 1985 Amicus Cruiae prepared and filed by The National Abortion Rights Action League (Now Naral Pro-Choice America)

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“For many young women, seeking an abortion is the first important health decisions they have had to make; recognition of their own abilities to take charge of their health can serve as a basis for other important health decisions, such as practicing contraception.”

Felicia H. Stewart and Philip D. Darney “Abortion: Teaching Why As Well As How” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health volume 35 January/February 2003

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“What we are saying is that abortion becomes one of the choices, and the person has the right to choose whatever it is that is best that they need as necessary and best for them in that situation for which they find themselves, be it abortion, to keep, to adopt, to sell, to leave in a dumpster, to put on your porch, whatever: it’s the person’s right to choose.”

Esther Langston, professor of Social Work, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Public debate on abortion at the campus of the University of Nevada, at the Hendrix Auditorium December 4, 1989. As recorded by Mark Wiegand (Quoted in Francis J. Beckwith “Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights” (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1993) p 174)

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“Why must so many defenders of abortion always present it in negative terms and never talk about how, for some women, the decision to have an abortion is a tremendously positive experience, even if an unplanned pregnancy is not a prospect to be welcomed in itself?”

Pro-choice author Janet Hadley “Abortion: between Freedom and Necessity” (Great Britain: Virago Press) 1996 p 164

 

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Pro-choice author Barbara Ehrenreich:

“A woman may think of her fetus as a person or just cells depending on whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. This does not reflect moral confusion, but choice in action.”

Cited by John Leo in “the Moral Complexity of Choice” U.S. News & World Report, December 11, 1989, 64

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