Category: Rhetoric Vs. Reality

“I am an abortion practitioner because of my utmost respect for motherhood… I am convinced that being a mother is the hardest job there is… being a mother requires precise abilities, arrangements, resources, and a community of support. Motherhood, then, is the true sacrament, and helping make it so is the essence of my work.”

Dr. Elizabeth Karlin, abortion provider, from an article in the New York Times, quoted by 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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“The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person… what it [the unborn] actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman’s body.”

Leonard Peikoff “Abortion Rights Are Pro-Life” www.aynrand.org . January 17, 2003

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“I am pro-choice because I’m a mother, I’m a Christian, and I’m a doctor.”

Dr. Siglinda Jacobsen, obstetrician-gynecologist

Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press) 2007 p 185

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“Some may find it paradoxical that after 23 years of legal abortion, this question [is abortion morally right?] has not been resolved. Why? Teaching people that fetuses are not persons, that they may morally be terminated, and that values suggesting otherwise are false and outmoded is hard work.”

Abortion Rights Advocate Thomas W. Flynn “Defend Abortion, Not Just Choice” Free Inquiry, Summer 1996 page 31

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One woman who had an abortion says:

“My decision to have an abortion was a decision I made to care for the child that was within me. To adopt that child would be more cruel to me than just ending it, because it’s giving the child no help. It’s like saying “Well, it’s not my problem.” My decision to abort will affect my child in a humane manner, because I’ve got my child’s interests at heart. That is why I decided to terminate, for that child’s sake.”

Quoted in Leslie Cannold “The Abortion Myth: Feminism, Morality and the Hard Choices Women Make” (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1998) p xviii

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Joseph Feldman, who runs an abortion clinic in Phoenix, says the following after he and the parents of one aborted child baptized the remains of the baby they killed.

“…inside the clinic, we know we are doing God’s work.”

Quoted in Gloria Feldt “Behind Every Choice is a Story” (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2002) p 168

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“How come they [pro-lifers] don’t get upset over a little kid having its tonsils out? That’s worse than having an abortion any day!”

“Abortion Eve” comic book by Chin Lyvely and Joyce Sutton, distributed to teens by Planned Parenthood on the eve of Roe V. Wade (1973) Quoted in “Abortion Encyclopedia” by American Life League

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“Anti-abortionists claim that fetal personhood is a biological fact, rather than a theological perspective. However, the fetus is human only in the sense that any part of the human body is human. Every cell carries the full genetic code…”

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. “Respecting the moral agency of women” educational pamphlet by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Quoted in American life league, the pro-life Encyclopedia

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“[the idea of] dismembering a baby and pulling it out in pieces… is obviously horrific. But at the same time, it is easy to get caught up in that emotion.”

Pro-choice activist and producer of the pro-abortion movie “My Fetus” Julia Black in an interview with ABC’s Tony Jones From Ed Vitagliano “Murder: So What? Film Reveals Growing Callousness Toward Abortion” AFA Journal Nov/Dec 2004

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“A woman may feel utterly devastated by the thought of a child, a bit of herself, put out for adoption and never seen or heard from again. She may therefore want not merely that the child be detached from her, but more, that it die. Some opponents of abortion are inclined to regard this as beneath contempt- therefore showing insensitivity to what is surely a powerful source of despair.”

Moralist and abortion rights supporter Judith Jarvis Thompson in her essay “Abortion” from the book “Contemporary Issues in Bioethics” Tom Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters. 2003 p 209

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