The Reverend Carlton Veazey, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and founded its Black Church Initiative said:
“I was raised by my father, who was also a minister, to believe in the moral agency of individuals, that they had a right to make moral choices. Choice is a God-given right. To have a child can be a sacred choice. By the same token, to not have a child can be a sacred choice.
The woman may not be prepared to bring a new life into the world. She may not be able to provide for a child. She may decide, `My life is not where it should be.”
CONNIE SCHULTZ “Abortion Can Be a Sacred Choice” Newhouse News Feb. 3, 2006
Preborn baby at nine weeks, before and after an abortion. This is what Reverend Carlton Veazey calls a “sacred choice”
A pro-abortion teenager says abortion is like pulling up a weed:
“… I really don’t think it could be called murder; I think it’s silly when people go on like that. It’s alive but it’s not an animal or person really yet. It’s like pulling up a weed in your garden… I don’t think that through most of the pregnancy the unborn child really enters into it.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 125
A preborn baby is a developing human being. By the time most abortions take place, the baby has a heartbeat and brainwaves. Most abortions take place between 7-9 weeks. Below is a picture of a seven week old preborn baby:
After an abortion, the 7 week old child looks like this:
A woman in a study on abortion said she had an abortion because she wanted to enjoy life with her boyfriend and go sailing. Gail, age 26, said:
“It was really easy to make the decision, just because I didn’t want to be pregnant. I don’t like to stay home and cook and take care of a child; they make me nervous. My boyfriend is a student, and he doesn’t work. We have all these plans about traveling, and different things – going sailing, building a sailboat, and stuff. Maybe in a few years, but not right now, anyway. So, when I did find out that I was pregnant, there was really no decision to be made, you know, it had already been thought out.”
The author said:
“Gail had stated earlier in her interview that the fetus does not become an equal human life until it resembles human form.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 74 In reality, a preborn baby looks human as early as 7 weeks after conception. Below you can see a preborn baby at 7 weeks, before and after an abortion:
“One woman I interviewed tried to communicate with her foetus… But her foetus would not talk back. And the fact that the foetus was so unresponsive helped her decide not to continue the pregnancy. If the foetus had “spoken” to her, she would have continued.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 59
An 18-year-old woman was interviewed right before her abortion:
Legs of preborn baby at 11 weeks
Q: When do you think it becomes a human life?
A: Well, it’s at the moment of conception, and it really – it’s hard for me now, because I started thinking of him as being a human now, because I know he’s probably almost developed and stuff, and its’s really sad for me to think of it. I guess I’m being really selfish about it. I just don’t want anybody to know. It is [just] the social pressure….So- I don’t know, it just seems the easy way out, the only way to do it without anybody knowing, you know, just to get rid of it before it gets big. …It really upsets me, because it’s kind of against my morals, I mean – I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I really had a good reason to, because it does seem like it’s a human life…It would just look really bad, I think. Well, not just that, but it’s just not right for right now…because it would be a deterrent right now to both our careers…it’s too bad it happened, and it won’t happen again.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 67-68
A woman who was characterized as “brilliant” and a college professor had an abortion because her astrologer. She aborted because of a horoscope. Mary Kenny recounts:
“Another curious case was that of a brilliant woman academic head of a department at a provincial university who was in her 30s and having an affair with an artist – a moody, melancholic yet pleasing man, married, though not very happily. She… became pregnant. She was at the same time very pleased and very sad. She would have greatly liked to have had the child, but she thought the relationship impossible. So she took herself off to an astrologist and had her horoscope cast. The astrologist was disturbed at what he saw in her future, and warned her to try and avoid an event which might happen “about eight or nine months from now.” That clinched it: she knew it was a sign that she must have an abortion. So she did. Some eight months later her lover committed suicide. So it may not have been the birth of the child, but the suicide of the man, that the astrologist had presumably foreseen. The woman was, naturally, very distressed, though she stood by her decision, and felt the suicide of her lover would have been a bad omen for the child anyway. Later, she became obsessively keen to have a child and even considered artificial insemination by donor (AID), though, up to the time of writing (some five years after the original abortion) without success.
What is significant about this case is that it shows how a highly intellectual and rational person can use what some would consider a quirky and superstitious method to help her make a decision about abortion.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 56 – 57
It is sad that this woman chose to kill her baby because of a horoscope. This anecdote shows that even a woman who is well-educated and presumably intelligent can make a decision to abort her child based on faulty reasoning. She seems to regret her abortion and desires another child, possibly to replace the one she has lost.
Most abortions are done on babies that look like this, and are over seven weeks of ageShare on Facebook
Pro-choice author Frances Ryan claims aborting disabled babies is “the humane choice”:
“There are times when abortion is the humane choice… It’s okay to say that out loud. The thought doesn’t suggest a disabled life is worth less, but acknowledges the extra time, energy, and money a severely disabled life needs.”
Frances Ryan “How Pro-Lifers Hijacked the Paralympics” The Guardian, October 30, 2012
Abortion at 10 weeks. Is this ever a “humane choice?”Share on Facebook
“The decision is up to her. It’s a matter of her body. And it’s like a thumbnail or a tumor. But I see the issue as being pretty much it’s her control over her body.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 44
For a study, a 15-year-old girl named Beckie who had an abortion explained her feelings:
Q: When do you think, in the course of its development, that the fetus becomes a human life?
A: Three months.
Q. What makes it become a human life at that point?
A. Well, either when the heart starts beating, yeah, I guess when the heart stats beating, because that functions everything else, and I believe that starts around three months. Two and a half or three months….after that I consider it murder, whereas beforehand it’s not, you know. (51)
The heart doesn’t start beating at 3 months – starts beating in 3 weeks, and according to some research, even earlier. You can see a video of a baby’s heart beating 4 weeks in the womb. Beckie’s lack of knowledge of fetal development led to her having an abortion when she assumed the heartbeat started later than it really did.
The study also interviewed a woman named Barbara, who also had an abortion. She was also 15.
Q: When you decide that it’s a human being at three months, what things do you think make it human at that point?
A: It’s got a heart. It’s breathing, it’s got a brain, it moves.
Q: Do you think after that point it would be the same as killing?
A: Yeah.
Q: Do you think it would be the same as killing another human being?
A: Yeah. I don’t really think it should be done.
Q: In the first three month, why is it OK?
A: Because it’s just like an egg, inside of you. It’s just like a thing of fluid, almost. I guess that’s all it is. And it doesn’t really have any shape, it doesn’t really have a brain or anything.” (52)
This is what a baby looks like it 8 weeks in the womb. Brain waves start at 6 weeks.
Here is a picture of a baby’s fingers at at 7 weeks
Hands of baby at 7 weeks
Again, the study shows that a woman who had an abortion did so with a false view of fetal development
From another teen who had an abortion, Ramona, 17:
“Q: You’re saying it becomes a life around the fourth month?
A: Somewhere around, yeah, the fifth, sixth, and on. I mean that’s when it looks like something, you know. But I think that in the first three months, it’s a life, but it’s not, you know, really completely formed, or anything like that…in the lasts three months I don’t think it should be allowed.” (53)
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982)
The study shows how little these teens know about fetal development. Perhaps if someone had taught them more about how a baby develops, they would not have aborted.
