20 week old unborn baby, Abortion is legal at this stage in most states.
A pro-choice writer shared the following argument against laws protecting babies from late-term abortions:
“We may, as many people do, sympathize with the pain we think the fetus feels, but we must be careful in saying that this sympathy establishes the personness of the fetus. It establishes nothing but our ability to sympathize.”
Michael Bettencourt “Case for Fetal Personhood a Dubious Conception” In These Times, September 20 – 26, 1989
This is an old quote, but it struck me as being particularly odious.
“I was reminded of being with men and women from the Unitarian faith tradition last year as they celebrated Mary who by her assent, they believed, was one of the first women in the New Testament to express Choice.”
“[Women who abort] all share something incredibly private and sacred.”
Jenny Higgins, Abortion clinic counselor
Jenny Higgins, “The Breeze in the Waiting Room” in ED Krista Jacob Our Choices Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion (ED Krista Jacob (Lincoln, NE: Writer’s Advantage, 2002)
Below: photo of a baby aborted at 9 weeks. Is this a sacred thing?
Molly Yard, former president of NOW, said that the abortion pill was:
“…[Perhaps even] the most significant medical advance in human history and the symbol of a brighter future for women everywhere.”
New York Observer, May 16, 1991
Quoted in: George Grant Grand Illusions: the Legacy of Planned Parenthood(Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit Press, 1988, 1992) 35
This quote shows how out of touch with reality some pro-choice leaders are. To think that the abortion pill, which kills babies (and sometimes women) is the greatest medical advance in human history is incredibly skewed thinking. The abortion pill is more valuable than the discovery of antibiotics, which has saved hundreds of millions of lives? Greater than cutting edge cancer treatments that prolong life and eradicate the disease in some people? Greater than the elimination of smallpox and other deadly diseases, greater than vaccines which protect children from all kinds of dangerous illnesses, greater than the advances in mental health care that has allowed mentally ill people to live normal lives rather than being institutionalized? Greater than advances which have allowed AIDS patients to live fuller, richer lives?
Her statement is amazing. Instead of all these advances, the greatest advance in human history is the ability to kill babies like the one below in a way that’s extremely painful and difficult for women (you can read horror stories from women who took the drug here)
7 weeks – some clinics prescribe the abortion pill up to 9 weeksShare on Facebook
Molly Yard, then president of the National Organization for Women, gave an interview with New Dimensions magazine about when a “fetus” becomes human being:
Q: When do you believe the fetus becomes a viable human being?
A: If you read the medical knowledge, 26 weeks is probably the earliest. As a matter of fact, I was just reading figures that indicate that a fetus born before 30 weeks has almost no chance of making it and, if it does, it is going to suffer all its life from all kinds of problems.
Q: Would you recommend 30 weeks is a cutoff point for allowing abortions?
A: I am not recommending anything. I am saying that Roe V Wade was very properly decided. It says that women have a constitutional right to control their reproductive lives, that they have the absolute right to choose it in the 1st and 2nd trimesters, and in the 3rd trimester the state has an interest
“Voices of the Abortion Debate” New Dimensions, 1990
First of all, does it really make sense to say that this baby below (28 weeks) is not a person …
But this baby (32 weeks) is a person?
Month 8
What’s the huge difference between the two? There’s not much difference on a developmental level, though one does have stronger lungs than the other. Both are capable of surviving outside a woman’s womb. Of course, Molly Yard’s statistics on when the baby can survive are outdated –In fact, they weren’t even true in 1990. Today, the survival rate of babies at 27 weeks is 90% or higher. babies as young as 21 weeks have survived being born prematurely.
Roe V Wade did allow restrictions on abortion in the thirdtrimester, but these restrictions could only go into effect if they had an exception for the “health” of the mother. Doe v. Bolton, a companion case to Roe V Wade that is lesser-known, defined health in very broad terms, including emotional health, meaning that such a law (banning third trimester abortions) is toothless and cannot truly be enforced– The woman could make the case that the abortion would be detrimental to her emotional well-being.
Note also that Molly Yard is not prepared to ban abortion, even after, in her opinion, the “fetus” becomes a human being
A Planned Parenthood board member explains the importance of indoctrinating children with the pro-abortion message:
“It’s going to be a long war, with changing strategies, so we have to teach our children, too, to be vigilant. The language of choice has to be part of their everyday vocabulary. That way they can’t be silenced without it feeling unnatural. It was the children that were the turning point in the South in the 60s and in Soweto. It has to be the children who are the turning point in the movement if we are ever to gain the momentum necessary to turn back the opposition.”
Audrey Bracy Deegan, Planned Parenthood National Board, and Board of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island
Quoted in Gloria Feldt the war on choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004) 240
As long as their children are brainwashed with the pro-abortion message, pro-choicers like Deegan have h0pe for the future. I wonder if it ever occurs to the children of pro-choice leaders like her that they too would have been aborted (i.e. killed) had they been in their mothers’ wombs at an inconvenient time.
Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, on HB 125, a bill that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be heard. It was dubbed, “the Heartbeat Bill”:
“They can give it whatever cute name they want. (HB 125) is a virtual ban on abortion. It’s a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. By the time you find out you’re pregnant, abortion is already illegal.”
“The biblical tradition also acknowledges that we human beings find it difficult to restrain ourselves from making idols that represent the divine. One of the early stories of conflict in this regard is that of the Golden Calf… I suggest that the sacred fetus is the modern equivalent of the Golden Calf. The sacred fetus has become an absolute around which a host of decisions are made. And these decisions become progressively more destructive. If the fetus is sacred, the mother is subservient, a view that is destructive to women.”
The Rev. Roger Buchanan, “The Modern Golden Calf,” Clergy Voices, June 1996, 5
The babies below are both 7 weeks old. Most abortions take place at this time or later. The first one is a healthy child in the womb at that age. The one underneath has been aborted. Is protecting these children making an idol out of them? Or is it justified?
“Mostly, this must seem selfish, when I had an abortion a decade ago, I knew I was killing. There was no other way to think about it, to describe it… But I was killing a very small piece of life in favor of my bigger life. That’s important, it makes you get your priorities straight.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 137
