They said it.
Toni M Bond, executive director for the National Network of Abortion Funds:
“Black women have been and still are treated as “invited guests” in the reproductive rights movement.”
Corinne J Naden Abortion (Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2008) 71
She is commenting about how the vast majority of pro-choicers are white
Share on FacebookKaren Stamm, pro-choice activist:
“[W] e must be aware that the [abortion] laws have not been changed for [women’s] benefit, but so the government can have control over the population.”
Karen Stamm “The Master’s Plan” Abortion Task Force Folder, March 1981
Mary Ziegler After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015) 142
Share on FacebookPro-choice author Sarah Kliff , who often writes in support of late-term abortions, witnessed an early suction abortion. She saw the blood and tissue run down the tube, but did not look at the aborted remains closely, or she would’ve seen torn off arms and legs.
She describes the reactions of her pro-choice friends when she told them she had witnessed an abortion:
When I returned from Omaha, friends and colleagues wanted to know if I had “done it.” When I said I had, their reactions surprised me. Friends who supported legal abortion bristled slightly when I told them where I’d been and what I’d watched… my experience (among an admittedly small, largely pro-choice sample set) found a general discomfort when confronted with abortion as a physical reality, not a political idea. Americans may support abortion rights, but even 40 years after Roe, we don’t talk about it like other medical procedures.
Sarah Kliff “Watching My First Abortion” Newsweek 8/14/09
Share on FacebookFrom author Anne Hendershott, on Roe V Wade:
“The constitutional law expert Bernard Siegan, for instance, believes that some of the justices, rather than engaging in a careful reading of the Constitution to guide them, made a political decision based upon their own personal beliefs. In his book The Supreme Court’s Constitution, Professor Siegan suggests that in the case of Roe V Wade, “a major problem confronted by the majority justices was how best to rationalize constitutionally this enormously important decision, destined to strike down, in whole or in part, the statutes of every state in the union.” Siegan concludes that instead of interpreting a particular provision of the Constitution as requiring invalidation of a statute, the justices sought to find constitutional basis for decisions they had already determined in advance.”
Anne Hendershott The Politics of Abortion (New York, New York: Encounter Books, 2006) 2
Share on FacebookSally Blackmun, Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry Blackmun’s daughter, talks about why he found in favor of Roe V Wade:
“Sally Blackmun, an abortion-rights activist and daughter of Justice Harry Blackmun, who authored the Roe V Wade opinion, recounts how personal considerations entered into her father’s thinking on the matter. She recalls that he often discussed the broad issues involved in his cases with his family “around the dinner table,” and says that “he really struggled with Roe V Wade.” At one point, when the family was in the middle of a meal together, justice Blackmun asked Sally and her two sisters how they thought the case should be decided. They said that they favored the plaintiff. Appearing to take partial credit for the historic Supreme Court decision, Sally suggests that her father was certainly influenced by “his 3 daughters and an outspoken, independent wife.” And although Justice Blackmun’s written decision cites a right of privacy that he found in the 14th amendment to the Constitution, his daughter maintains that he also viewed Roe as “an opportunity to give women rights that will emancipate them.” Noting that her father had spent 9 years working as a general counsel for the Mayo Clinic, Sally Blackmun concludes that this period of his life “gave him the opportunity to see firsthand the aftereffects of botched illegal abortions.”
Sally Blackmun, introduction to Gloria Feldt, The War on Choice (New York: Random House, 2004), xix
Quoted in Anne Hendershott The Politics of Abortion (New York, New York: Encounter Books, 2006) 1-2
What would’ve happened if one of his daughters or his wife had been pro-life?
Share on FacebookAbortion clinic owner Norma Goldberger describes how they handled prolife demonstrators at the facility. One day there was a new pro-lifer acting as leader of the protesters. The man never been to the clinic before. Normally, the protests were led by a man named Farley. This is what Goldberger says the abortion workers did:
We decided to stand on the inside of the front glass door facing the leader and stare at his crotch. We made hand gestures indicating that what was there must be very, very small.… It worked. A few minutes of that tactic and the Farley substitute left and his entire group left with their leader. Best of all, he never returned to our clinic.
Norma Goldberger Abortion Confidential: Secrets of an Abortion Clinic Owner (CreateSpace , November 23, 2014) Kindle Edition
Share on FacebookJoyce let her 11 year old son decide for her whether or not to get an abortion.
“I’ve always been very honest with my son. I set him down one night, and I told him – this was just before his 12th birthday – and I said, “Michael, I’m pregnant, and I really don’t know what to do. Peter wants me to keep the child, and I really don’t think I want to, Michael.” And he said to me, “Mother, I wanted a brother or sister, but by the time the child is old enough to play with me, I will be too old to be able to give the child anything.” And then he said, “And how are you going to support it?” He’s never liked Peter, and even brought that up then, “Do you think Peter’s going to be around?” And I said, “No, he’s not going to be, Michael.” He said, “the best thing you can do, Mother, is have an abortion.”…
It was a tough decision, but one I’ve never regretted.”
But she later said:
“I felt terrible for weeks. A lot of depression. Something has just been torn from your body. You’re going through a lot of hormonal changes. And there’s a lot of depression. There’s a lot of guilt. Especially when you’ve got a man [Peter] who’s telling you: you murdered your child. You’re wondering if you’ve done the right thing.”
Sumi Hoshiko Our Choices: Women’s Personal Decisions about Abortion (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993) 55, 56
What kind of mother bases her decision on whether to abort on the answer of an 11-year-old child? How will this boy feel when he grows up and learns the truth about abortion, and that he had a role in killing his brother or sister?
Share on FacebookPro-Choice feminist SE Smith is describing the racist motives of the early pro-choice movement:
“While members of the reproductive rights movement are often deeply uncomfortable with discussing, let alone confronting, the origins of the movement, this is an important and necessary part of fighting for reproductive rights for all… The unfortunate truth is that many of the early fighters for access to reproductive rights did so for less-than-perfect reasons; Margaret Sanger, for example, held up as an icon of birth control, strongly believed in eugenics.
In her “Morality and Birth Control” speech (1918), Sanger stated that “all of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class.” Lest you think this was a one-time issue, she noted in a speech in 1920 that “[Birth control] sweeps the diseased, the weakling and the feebleminded to the wall with her great gestures that clean the world for the fit and the strong.” She was at it again in Birth Control Review in 1921 with “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda”: “On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to discourage the open fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
Sanger felt that poor people, disabled persons, and people of color should not reproduce, and she stated so quite openly. Her advocacy for birth control was rooted in part in a desire to advance a eugenic agenda…
It’s deeply saddening that the origins of the movement lie in eugenics and an attempt to control fertility, not to promote bodily autonomy….
Members of minority groups have good reason to fear the reproductive rights movement, to be concerned by some of its rhetoric, and to feel left out of discussions.…
When I bring these issues up, I commonly encounter significant anger, especially from leaders of the reproductive rights movement who are disconcerted by discussions like this one. Their reactions are often defensive, and are focused on painting the movement in a better light by attempting to negate what I’ve just said.”
SE Smith “Justice for All” in Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
Share on FacebookAccording to author Brian E Fisher in his book Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women, the early pro-choice movement was originally inspired by men. Founders of NARAL, one of the biggest abortion rights groups for over 50 years, were both men and originally stratagized on how to get women involved.
Co-founder Lawrence Lader:
“if we’re going to move abortion out of the books and into the streets, we’re going to have to recruit the feminists.”
Bernard Nathanson, with Richard N Ostling Aborting America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1979) 32
C0-founder Bernard Nathanson:
“I figured that if the feminists appeared to take over, the necessary abortion reform would be dismissed by moderates without a fair hearing. I was dead wrong, of course. Lader’s marriage with the feminists was a brilliant tactic.”
Bernard Nathanson, with Richard N Ostling Aborting America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1979) 50
Bernard Nathanson, later became pro-life
Rosemary Oelrich Bottcher, past president of Feminists for Life, says:
“The first edition of Betty Friedan’s seminal book, The Feminine Mystique, did not even mention abortion. Legalizing abortion was not on the newborn NOW’s list of issues. In his 1979 book, Aborting America, Dr. Nathanson recalled Lader saying, “… Friedan has got to put her troops into this thing – while she still has control of them.”
When I met Nathanson at the National Right to Life convention in June of 1996, he told me that they convinced the leaders of NOW that easy access to legal abortion was essential to ameliorating the problems that were thwarting the well-being of women, the problems that Friedan had identified in her book.
“We got them to see legal abortion as a civil rights issue, a basic women’s rights issue,” Nathanson explained.”
Rosemary Oelrich Bottcher “Men Launch the Movement to Legalize Abortion”
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A California woman actively working to repeal abortion in the 1960s, Pat Maginnis, said that she:
“rued the low level of activity on behalf of liberalization, particularly by women and told [American Civil Liberties Union cofounder] Morris Ernst that “the men have given us the greatest support.”
David J Garrow Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe V Wade (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1994) 292
Quoted in Brian E Fisher Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women (Frisco, Texas: Online for Life, 2013) Kindle edition
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