abortion

"Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today — abortion which brings people to such blindness."

"By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have any responsibility for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign... you must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth."

"Every abortion kills two the child and the conscience of the mother. The latter will never forget she, herself, has killed her own child. If you don't want that child, I want it, give it to me!"

"If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

"Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually said, in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, 'The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.' What? How can a woman with such cock-eyed judgement be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize?"

"But what I find somewhat disturbing is that she (Mother Teresa) remained inactive when children were hurt or killed, or were at the risk of being orphaned ... this did not sit comfortably with her 'Child First' philosophy. But then, for her the unborn child was far more important than the actual child. Having gone through hundreds of her speeches I have wondered, when compared to the unborn child if the actual child mattered to her at all."

"If a fertilized egg is fully human, then all terminations of pregnancy at any stage and for any reason are to be regarded as murder. This offends against the natural or instinctive feeling in favor of the pregnant woman and the occupant of her womb, because it blurs the distinction between an embryonic group of cells and a human with a central nervous system. The distinction between abortions in the first and third trimesters, a distinction which speaks both to our ability to avoid casuistry and to our inborn wish to have a say in our own fates, is therefore null and void in Catholic teaching."

"We speak of peace. These are the things that threaten peace. I think that today peace is threatened by abortion, too, which is a true war, the direct killing of a child by its own mother. In the Bible we read that God clearly said: “Even though a mother did forget her infant, I will not forget him.”Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace. We who are here today were wanted by our parents. We would not be here if our parents had not wanted us.We want children, and we love them. But what about the other millions? Many are concerned about the children, like those in Africa, who die in great numbers either from hunger or for other reasons. But millions of children die intentionally, by the will of their mothers. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves, or one another? Nothing."

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. . . So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts..."

"...the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself... because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."

"Women... sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection... either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity."

"George W. Bush, go to hell! And while you're at it, we want you to take Ashcroft with you. And don't forget Rumsfeld. And please carry along Condi Rice... I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion."

"Should there be competing articles, so that you would have the Catholic article on abortion, the evangelical Christian version, and the Planned Parenthood version"

"In some cases abortion is justified."

"Even if you are pro-choice, no one likes to see a dead fetus."

"Partus antequam edatur, mulieris portio vel viscerum est."

"It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

"...the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself... because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."

"About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?" "I would have terminated the pregnancy." "Then you would have murdered Beethoven."

"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

"Since a man can't make one He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one."

"The assumption that disabled children must not be born is apparently so powerful that many babies who would have been completely healthy are being aborted as well."

"Still I think there's too much fuss about abortion. This is done by men. Men who don't give a fuck about their own kids, those who already have arms and legs. And go to grade one. They should be bought a backpack or trainers and taught drawing. [...] They've got neither dough nor time for their own kids, but about yours and mine whose arms still haven’t grown... Okay. Had I given them a chance, they would've had arms and legs. You get it. Where was I? Those masters don't even know they have kids, but they know everything about abortions. They write science papers, give lectures, hand flyers, present diapositives, show slow motion small bodies being crunched. Jerks have eyes full of love for late and future abortions. They want to unite abortions of the world. Raise them to their feet! In your dreams!"

"[A] physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit abortion—I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in my power to increase the sentence."

"Abortion, it's beautiful, it's beautiful abortion is legal. I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, 'cause you know they are fucking... When a woman gets pregnant, it's a choice between the woman and her girlfriends. One girlfriend goes, 'Child, you should have that baby — that man got some good hair.' And the other girlfriend says, 'Child, why we even talking about this — ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next week? Get rid of that baby!' [That] is how life is decided in America."

"Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable... In a society where women entered sexual intercourse willingly, where adequate contraception was a genuine social priority, there would be no 'abortion issue'... Abortion is violence... It is the offspring, and will continue to be the accuser of a more pervasive and prevalent violence, the violence of rapism."

"I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born."

"As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the 'quality of life' ethic. I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future."

"Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value."

"The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being."

"If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.""

"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life."

"One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives."

"It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

"How does a doctor's ability to stop an abortion supersede a woman's right to full knowledge of her medical condition? Doctors in the continue to declare themselves more virtuous than me. But I ask which one of us tells only the truth to our patients, and which of us is willing to lie to get what we want. I will not lie to my patients, no matter how difficult it may be to deliver the news. I trust them to ask good questions and make educated decisions, with my help if they ask for it. I had hoped that the rest of the medical community shared my beliefs about being honest with patients. I am greatly saddened to learn otherwise."

"Quae prima instituit teneros convellere fetus, Militia fuerat digna perire sua."

"When we question whether someone is a person, it is because we want to kill him. We do this with our enemies in wartime, or with anyone we would like to enslave or exploit. Before we can feel comfortable treating others this way, we have to expel them from the human community."

"The cruel irony is that abortion has been presented as something that would set a woman free. This brings to mind the gypsy in Verdi's opera '. Outraged by the count's cruel injustice, she stole his infant son and, in a crazed act of vengeance, flung him into the fire. Or so she thought. For, in turning around, she discovered the count's son lay safe on the ground behind her; it was her own son she had thrown into the flames. Abortion can present itself as glittering liberty, a defiant way to cast off the shackles of injustice. That illusion lasts only until you realize who it was that you threw into the flames."

"It is better to improve the economic conditions of the poor than to attempt to remedy matters by decreasing the numbers."

"The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces: what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities."

"We lived our dreams and challenged fate In tears she told me she was late Then Sally let his pigeons out to fly She left one night with just a nod Was lost in some back alley job I close my eyes and Sally's pigeons fly."

"As long as the Catholic Church, or any faith, continues to block legislation allowing individual conscience and free choice in abortion, the core of our democratic system is crippled. The right to abortion is the foundation of Society's long struggle to guarantee that every child comes into this world wanted, loved, and cared for. The right to abortion, along with all birth-control measures, must establish the Century of the Wanted Child."

"Babies are not like bad teeth to be jerked out just because they cause suffering. An unborn baby is a baby nevertheless."

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

"The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off."

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. ... [P]eople have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. ... We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. ...[T]here is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits. ... A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices."

"Who cares if it's legal? I don't care if it's legal. Slavery was legal once too, and not just in America, but just about every other country in the world. The powerful have always legalized their subjugation of the less powerful."

"Abortion is part of the power patriarchy holds over women. Abortion is an issue of hegemony and imperialism: men to other men are explorers; to men, women are the moon, enigmatic frontier and flow, "virgin"/empty land to be owned and controlled and into which flags can be rammed. Men have made women their territory, abortion theirs to control, mystify, and sell back to women; abortion is not simply a medical procedure, it is a medicalized procedure, a procedure medicalized, like childbirth and Pap tests, and for the same reasons—control and profit."

"It is not possible to speak of the right to choose when a clear moral evil is involved, when what is at stake is the commandment, Do not kill!"