They said it.
Legalized abortion did not prevent many abortion deaths from happening. Read more about the era of illegal abortion here.
“One obstetrician reported treating 54 teenagers for significant abortion complications which, because the patient had not returned the physicians who performed the abortions, never appeared in the official statistics.”
Matthew J Bulfin “A New Problem in Adolescent Gynecology” Southern Medical Journal 72, no. 8 (August 1979): 967 – 968
Share on FacebookOne reporter recounts the story of a woman, a 30-year-old divorced mother of two, who had an abortion by pill:
“I took the first three tablets. The process had started and it was inevitable. But you have so long to reflect on it, and I became quite upset.
The second stage was pretty awful. After taking [the drug to induce contractions], the pain became very strong. It was just like early labor. I remember finally dispelling the fetus. The nurse told me it was “beautifully formed.”
[This method] may be physically more natural, but psychologically it hits you much harder. You preside over the killing of a baby, completely unblinkingly.”
Wendy Wright “The Deceit behind RU-486: Who’s Really in Control?” Family Voice, November/December 2000
Share on FacebookThe AMA’s official position on abortionists in 1871:
“There we shall discover an enemy in the camp; there we shall witness as hideous a view of moral deformity as the evil spirit could present… Men who seek not to save, but to destroy; men know not only to the profession, but to the public, as abortionists…
“Thou shalt not kill.” This commandment is given to all, and applies to all without exception… Notwithstanding all this, we see in our midst a class of men, regardless of all principal, regardless of all honor, who daily destroy that fair fabric of God’s creation; who daily pull down what he has built up; who act in antagonism to that profession of which they claim to be members…
It matters not at what stage of development his victim may have arrived – it matters not how small or how apparently insignificant it may be – it is a murder, a foul unprovoked murder; and it’s blood, like the blood of Abel, will cry from earth to heaven for vengeance…
Every practicing physician in the land (as well as every good man) has a certain amount of interest at stake in this matter… The members of the profession should form themselves into a special police to watch and to detect, and bring to justice these characters. They should shrink with horror from all intercourse with them, professionally or otherwise. These men should be marked as Cain was marked; they should be made the outcasts of society.”
American Medical Association statement on abortion, Medical Holocausts 1 (Houston, Texas: Nordland Publishing International, no date) 28 to 30 Quoted in Randy Alcorn “Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments” (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2000)
Share on FacebookWomen’s World reports a study of aborted women in which 45% said they had thoughts of suicide following their abortions.
Martina Mahler “Abortion: the Pain No One Talks About” Women’s World, September 24, 1991, 6
Share on FacebookIn Glamour magazine, a man identified only as Walt says the following about his partner’s abortion:
“I said, “What do you want to do?” She suggested abortion, thinking this would make it possible for me to continue to paint, that that in turn would prolong our relationship… She’s my age, 35, and it may have been her last chance to have a child. I believe she would be much happier if she’d had it – but I would be unhappy having a child I never saw and didn’t live with. I guess I sound like a real cad. Maybe I was.”
In the Essay “Better Living (for Men) through Surgery (for Women)” by Leslie Keech from Rachel McNair, Mary Krane Derr, and Linda Naranjo-Hubbl. Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today (New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd.) 238
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Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst 1882 – 1960, suffragist movement, worked for peace causes, post-World War I, started the Toy factory out of concern for women’s inadequate wages, and “price cost restaurants” with the hungry could order inexpensive meals. Supported birth control and sex education.
She also opposed abortion.
“Increasing numbers of people argue that, when faced with undesired pregnancy, women will procure abortions by hook or by crook; therefore the law should permit abortion, provided it be done under state supervision with strict aseptic precautions… It is grievous indeed that social collectively should feel itself obliged to assist in… abortion in order to mitigate Its crudest evils. The true mission of society is to provide the conditions, legal, moral, economic, and obstetric, which will assure happy and successful motherhood.”
“Abortion” by Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers (London: Knopf, 1930) 108 – 110
Rachel McNair, Mary Krane Derr, and Linda Naranjo-Hubbl. Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today (New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd.) 131
Share on FacebookDr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first American woman to earn and M.D. She was active in abolitionism and other women’s causes. She was also pro-life. Here she describes the unborn baby and why it should be protected:
“Look at the first faint gleam of life, the life of the embryo, the commencement of human existence.
We see a tiny cell, so small it may be easily overlooked; the anatomist may examine it with scapel or microscope, and what does he discover? Nothing but a delicate, transparent membrane, containing one drop of clear water; the chemist may analyze it with the most scrupulous care, and find nothing but the trace of some simple salts.
And yet there is in that same germ cell something wonderful – life – it is a living cell; it contains a power progressive growth, according to laws, according, towards a definite type, that we can only regard with reverent admiration.
Leave it in its natural home, tended by the rich life of the healthy maternal organism, and it will grow steadily into the human type; in no other by any possibility.
Little by little the faint specks will appear in the enlarging cell, which marked the head, the trunk, the budding extremities; tiny channels will groove themselves in every direction, red particles of inconceivable minuteness will appear in them – they move, they tend towards one central spot, where a little channel has enlarged, has assumed a special form, has already begun to palpitate; finally the living blood in the small arteries joins that in the heart, and the circulation is established.
From every delicate incomplete part, minute nerve threads shoot forth, they tend invariably towards their centres. They join the brain, spinal marrow, the ganglia. The nervous system is formed. The cell rapidly enlarges, it attaches to the maternal organism become more powerful… The human type is surely attained, and after a brief period of consolidation the young existence, created from that simple cell, will awake to further development of independent life.”
“Look at the First Faint Gleam of Life…” By Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., the Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Education of Girls, (New York: Putnam and Sons, 1852) 70 – 73
Rachel McNair, Mary Krane Derr, and Linda Naranjo-Hubbl. Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today (New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd.) 28 – 29
Share on FacebookDr. Albert Altchek who had done 5,000 abortions, on Roe Vs Wade in 1973 editorial:
“As one who was active in promoting [legal abortion] I was elated. However, in a short while an inner deep concern developed. The Court indicated that first-trimester abortion may be performed by any physician without any government restriction. This opinion was based on …. The Court’s finding that such abortion is safer than regular childbirth. The latter observation, based on a carefully controlled series of abortions performed in New York state, may not necessarily hold true if the floodgates of completely unsupervised abortion are suddenly opened nationwide. I predict that within one year our profession will sadly record a far greater morbidity and mortality rate than has been reported so far.”
Albert Altchek, M.D. F.A.C.O.G. “Editorial: Abortion Alert” Obstetrics and Gynecology Sept 1973
And, indeed, legalized abortion has ushered in a new era of complications in abortion deaths. Read about some of these deaths here.
Share on FacebookFrom a 1989 interview with Dr. Julius Fogel, psychiatrist and obstetrician who performs abortions:
“There is no question about the emotional grief and mourning following an abortion… many come in [to the office even years later] — some are just mute, some hostile. Some burst out crying… there is no question in my mind we are disturbing a life process.”
Interview with Coleman McCarthy “Does Abortion Harden Maternal Instinct?” National Catholic Reporter, February 24, 1989
Share on FacebookA study in Czechoslovakia of 220 children born to mothers who had been denied abortion twice (the requests had been turned down, appealed, and turned down again)
“An interpretation of this study to suggest that “unwanted” children will almost surely have a poor future would be misleading; the study children seem to be living relatively normal lives.”
Zdenek Dytrych, Zdenek Matejcek, Veratislav Schuller, Henry P David, Herbert L Freedman “Children Born to Women Denied Abortion” Family Planning Perspectives 7 no. 4 (July/August 1975).
The study found only minor differences between “wanted” and “unwanted” children. This would seem to verify that many children who are unwanted in the womb become wanted after they are born. From others who truly don’t want their children, giving birth and putting the baby up for adoption is an unselfish option that allows the baby to live.
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