Category: Pro-Choice Quotes

At a National Abortion Federation meeting session on the management of complications of first trimester abortions:

“… [A] practitioner warned that if a particularly risky procedure was undertaken in emergency circumstances, and failed, it would not only harm the patient but the “movement” as well.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 3

Pro-choice feminists have sometimes put the legality of abortion ahead of the health of women. In some cases, women have died from malpractice and pro-choicers have rallied to support the doctors who killed them. For example, read the story of Bruce Steir

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From one pro-choice writer:

“What makes a late abortion disturbing is that the fetus is big now–like a fully formed child. Two of my obstetrician friends, both strongly pro-choice, told me that, even when it is a mother’s life at stake and abortion is absolutely necessary, doing the D and E feels “horrible.” We imagine, as we look in the fetus’s eyes, that there is someone in there.”

Atul Gawande “Partial Truths in the Partial-Birth-Abortion Debate” Slate Jan. 30, 1998

How an abortion is performed at this time:

Abortions this late are usually performed on healthy women with healthy babies. They are legal in most states.

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Even pro-abortion sources sometimes acknowledge that abortion is hard for women. In the famous book Our Bodies, Ourselves, the authors say the following about abortion:

“Even the most positive feelings afterward tend to be mixed with negative ones.”

The Boston Women’s Health Collective, Inc. Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), 234

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An article in Slate by a pro-choice author discusses partial birth abortion (the technique of abortion that was banned a few years ago.) She says:

“If partial-birth abortion is too gruesome to allow, however, it is hard to see how other late abortions, especially D and Es, are any different.”

Atul Gawande “Partial Truths in the Partial-Birth-Abortion Debate” Slate Jan. 30, 1998

A D & E is performed by tearing the developing baby apart with forceps.  Read an abortionist’s description of the D & Es he performed here. 

Gawande says:

“About 80 percent of late-term abortions are done by D and E. A couple of days ahead, small, absorbent rods are put in the pregnant woman’s cervical opening to expand it gradually. Then, for the actual procedure, she–and the fetus–are given heavy sedation or general anesthesia. The doctor breaks her bag of water and drains out the fluid. The opening won’t let the fetus out whole. So the doctor inserts metal tongs, physically crushes the head, and dismembers the fetus. The pieces are pulled out and counted to confirm that nothing was missed.

Partial-birth abortion is, if anything, less grotesque. The fetus is delivered feet first. To get the large head out, the doctor cuts open a hole at the base of the fetus’s skull and inserts tubing to suck out the brain, which collapses the skull. Often, but not always, the fetus is injected lethally beforehand. The procedure is used for a very small percentage of late abortions, and nothing makes it especially necessary over D and E. “

Here is a chart of a D & E operation:

D & E abortions are usually done in the second trimester, when one out of ten abortions take place. This adds up to many thousands a year.

Here is  a picture of a 16 week old unborn baby, a candidate for this kind of abortion.

See pictures of babies aborted this age by D & E 

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