They said it.
Lennart Nilsson, who captured groundbreaking photos of unborn babies in the womb gave the following caption on the picture of a six week old unborn baby that appeared in Life Magazine.
“Its length is only about half an inch and it weighs only 1/25 of an ounce, yet it has already begun to take on a human appearance.”
“Embryo’s Face” Life, March 30, 1950
Sara Dubow Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 115
Woman speaking about the father of her aborted baby. they aborted a previously wanted baby because amniocentesis showed that the child was handicapped:
“Even though he wasn’t talking, I think he may have taken it a little bit harder than even I did, because he seemed to be more afraid to try again… I was more optimistic, and I guess he was still grieving, and I was already on to, “okay, let’s try this again.” But he wasn’t ready, he was more afraid. Even when he’s not talking, I know what he’s feeling.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 216
Share on FacebookA mother of four on welfare describes how Planned Parenthood refused to provide her with any medical services unless she agreed to be sterilized:
“Lydia Jones, a title X and Medicaid eligible welfare mother of 4, went to the Planned Parenthood clinic near her home and discovered that “free” government programs could be a good news /bad news proposition. “They told me that if I wanted to take advantage of their medical services I would have to undergo sterilization,” she said. “The counselor just kept lecturing me about how I needed to do this, and that I should’ve done it a long time ago. She told me that my children were a burden to society. Well, let me tell you, I love my children. And they are a burden to no one. My 2 oldest are in college, working their way through. The other 2 are straight A students and bound for scholarships. I may be poor, and I may be black, but I’m not going to be bullied by these people into despising the heritage God’s given me,” Lydia walked out – a rare exception.”
George Grant Grand Illusions: the Legacy of Planned Parenthood (Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit Press, 1988, 1992 )101
Jones is not the only African American mother to be pressured to get an abortion/sterilization by Planned Parenthood or other abortion clinics. Pro-choice authors Rayna Rapp and Rosalind Pollack Petchesky comment on it as well. See here for more information about abortion clinics and racism.
Share on FacebookStatement of Valerie Hudson, PhD, Prof. Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University, on sex ratios in China:
“Overall, there are at least 90 million missing women in Asia, and over 10% of young adult men in these nations will be hard-pressed to form traditional families of their own…
The 2010 Census in China provides the most recent comprehensive statistics for China’s population, but only preliminary results have been released thus far. According to the census the overall sex ratio in China was 105.2, far above the 98 – 99 that is normal. The birth sex ratio of China in 2010 was over 118. We have more detailed figures from the 2000 census. Of the 14 million births from November 1999 to November 2000, 7.6 million were male and only 6.5 million were female, resulting in a birth sex ratio of 116.9 China’s birth sex ratio has been increasing for the past 20 years: in 1981, shortly after the introduction of China’s one child policy designed to slow population growth, the sex ratio at birth was 108.5. Birth sex ratios vary from province to province, with only 2 provinces at or near the expected sex ratio of 105.0 (Tibet and Xinjiang) and some provinces exhibiting sex ratios as high as 128.2 (Hubei), 130.3, (Guangdong), and 135.6 (Hainan). We look forward to the release of these types of detailed figures from a 2010 census in the near future.
Childhood sex ratios are similarly high: sex ratios for children ages 1 – 4 have increased from 107.0 in 1982 to 120.8 in 2000. Early childhood sex ratios vary from China according to the 2000 census, with only one province (Tibet) exhibiting a sex ratio at or below ratio of 105.0 and 10 provinces exhibiting sex ratios above China’s average (with ratios as high as 135.7 in Hainan, 136.4 in Henan and 136.8 in Jiangxi). Whereas childhood sex ratios typically fall below that of the birth sex ratio due to higher male infant and early childhood mortality patterns, some of China’s childhood sex ratios are actually higher than birth sex ratios, indicating the presence of discriminatory practices against female infants and children.…
One of the few “laws” in sociology is that male criminal behavior drops significantly upon marriage or serious commitment… The foremost repercussions will be an increase in societal instability marked by increases in crime, violent crime, crimes against women, vice, substance abuse, and the formation of gangs involved in all of these antisocial behaviors.”
“China’s One Child Policy: the Government’s Massive Crime against Women and Unborn Babies” Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Committee of Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives 112th Congress, September 22, 2001
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From one patient who had an amniocentesis to find out if the baby she was carrying would be disabled. She intended to abort if anything was wrong with the baby:
“If something turns out to be wrong, maybe I’ll be happy I’ve had it. But in some ways, I wish it wasn’t available, I wish I didn’t have to know… I’ve had a couple of abortions before, so it isn’t that. But there’s something about this that’s like playing God.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 117
Share on FacebookEdward Pohlman, in a pre-Roe study financed by Planned Parenthood, noted:
“Induced abortion requires overt action and a decision that is somewhat daring. In cultures which provides sanctions against abortion, it is impossible to believe that all of the parents who want abortions have them. Others would seriously, consciously like to have them but do not, because of health, conscience, public opinion, and other barriers… there are psychological as well as legal and practical differences between… seriously considering abortion and actually going through with one, to be sure.”
Edward Pohlman “The Psychology of Birth Planning” Shenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1967, 220
The conclusion of the study was that anti-abortion laws deter women from having abortions. Many women do not seek abortions when it is illegal. Making abortion legal leads to an increase in the number of abortions.
Share on FacebookAuthor Gita Aravamudan interviewed an Indian midwife discussing female infanticide.
“They stifle them with a pillow or with a cloth. Oh! It is a horrible sight. The little one will struggle under the sari like this, like this… And then it will be still. Oh! how many I have seen.… I am only paid to do a job. It is my livelihood. It is their child and their wish. I have kept all my daughters. But if they want to send theirs away…”
“send them away” = euphemism for killing their baby.
Gita Aravamudan Disappearing Daughters: the Tragedy of Female Foeticide (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India, 2007) 12
Aravamudan mentions that she believes this midwife may have committed infanticide herself.
Share on FacebookTed Merrill, who has performed some abortions himself, talks about how students in one of his classes started to rethink their views on abortion, just because they were able to witness the development of chicken embryos. He says:
“Extreme positions may be easier when the argument is intellectual. But they don’t hold up at close range. I noticed this in my interactions with college students in an anatomy and physiology class I taught. The nine students in this all-female class were unequivocally in favor of abortion rights when we started the section on reproduction. But something changed when they studied live chick embryos.
I had explained to them that all vertebrates closely resemble one another during early development. Then we open fertilized eggs at various stages. Under a microscope, eggs that have incubated for 36 hour show the first rudiments of an embryo, and a crude tubular structure rhythmically twitching in the center. At 48 hours, you can see an elementary – but definitely formed – heart pumping red blood cells through a looped network of tubes. You can recognize an eye. Just a day later, there are limbs, a face, and a brain that looks like linked sausages.
As the young women looked at these early-stage embryos and watched that amazing little heart beating, they were moved. “If we closed up the shell and put it back in the incubator, would it still grow?” one of them asked me. Another said, “It’s going to die in a little while under the microscope, isn’t it?” A third student declared, “I don’t think we should be doing this.” And while some of my students couldn’t wait to see how the embryo progressed through the later stages of development, others became upset and refused to open any more eggs.
When I brought the talk around to abortion again, I noticed that their feelings were no longer clear-cut. They all upheld a woman’s right to choose, but felt that other factors had to be considered, too.”
Ted Merrill “Abortion: Extreme Views Ignore Reality” Medical Economics, July 15, 1996
So often, people have views on abortion based on impersonal sound bites and slogans they have heard. They do not consider the reality of the unborn baby. Even seeing the embryos of chickens started these students thinking about the reality of life in the womb.
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One female lawyer made an interesting comment back in 1990. Commenting on how many of the female lawyers in the American Bar Association have had abortions:
“I’m practically the only one of my friends who hasn’t had an abortion. We’re talking about lots of women in this room…”
Sandra J P Dennis
Richmond Times – Dispatch August 11, 1990
It’s true that this quote is dated, but it makes one wonder. how has the high abortion rate affected the way these lawyers argued about cases relating to abortion? Are the statistics similar in 2014?
Share on FacebookChinese author Sheng Keyi, who wrote “Northern Girls” wrote about the lives of Chinese migrant women seeking jobs in cities like Shenzhen in the south:
“About 70 or 80 percent of migrant worker girls in Shenzhen have probably had abortions. I remember hearing that working in a gynecological hospital in Shenzhen was one of the best ways to make an income, because there was such a regular supply of abortions to be done. Millions and millions. It is very common.”
DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW “Behind China’s High Abortion Rate: New Sexual Freedoms” The New York Times OCTOBER 19, 2012
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