Abortion

"Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State."

"Love, spite of honour’s dictates, gave thee breath; Honour, in spite of love, pronounced thy death."

"All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy... Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed [abortion]. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!"

"Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I cannot believe ... that such a law [against abortion] would have the desired effect. It seems to be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed."

"I guess I never realized I would find [performing abortions] as unpleasant as I do. I really don't enjoy it at all. It's not a rewarding thing to do ... [patients] look at you as an evil person who is deliberately putting them through a painful procedure ... it's their whole attitude that bothers me. I feel like a simple thank you is in order, instead of 'Why are you doing this to me?'"

"I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but I also believe that I am ending it for good reasons."

"I don't approve, but it doesn't matter if I don't approve. I'm doing my job, I'm doing what I am trained to do."

"Murder, red-handed murder, is so popular in Chicago today that you cannot go on the principal streets without seeing the signs hanging out by the dozens of scoundrels in the shape of men who stand ready to commit the murder of an unborn innocent for $5 and upward."

"She will rue the day she forces nature."

"[T]he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive."

"Men tend to take abortion lightly; they regard it as one of the numerous hazards imposed on women by malignant nature, but fail to realise fully the values involved. The woman who has recourse to abortion is disowning feminine values, her values, and at the same time is in most radical fashion running counter to the ethics established by men. Her whole moral universe is being disrupted....[H]ow could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men say when they exalt woman or when they exalt man; the one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there."

"Squats on a toad-stool under a tree A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom, Crying with frog voice, “What shall I be? Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me Scarcely alive in her wicked womb.”"

"Abortion, it can be said, is contraception practised late. So the ethical rules that support contraception also support the abortion of a non-viable fetus, that is one not yet capable of living indefinitely outside the mother's body. Abortion is always sad, and depressing for the aborting woman. It negates her nature, and for that we should have pity. Yet it is her choice."

"For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows."

"When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society. So when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged."

"Abortion does not seem the kind of moral issue which is just 'solved' once and for all; it can only be coped with."

"Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you're just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state."

"Here's another question I have. How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen... 'cause chickens are decent people."

"Catholics and other Christians are against abortions and they're against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals? Leave these fucking people alone for Christ's sake! Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and the Christians are just tossing them aside... You'd think they'd make natural allies."

"Since the first century, the Church has addressed the moral evil of abortion and the killing of a defenseless baby in the womb. People who are casual about the sin of abortion and who choose to view it as a political issue rather than the serious moral issue that it is are guilty of violating the Fifth Commandment."

"Almost all women in this nation now receive ultrasounds during the course of their pregnancy and you know, a number of things can be picked up on those ultrasounds, one of which is hydrocephalus. And almost uniformly, when there is an indication of hydrocephalus a recommendation for termination is made. ... A significant number of those patients who decide not to go the abortion route, it turns out, end up with children who are normal, who never required a shunt, never required anything, and yet had come to see me for a recommendation for abortion."

"When we look to the unborn child, the real issue is not when life begins, but when love begins."

"A murder before birth."

"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility, where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well...."

"The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant."

"If you haven't seen what abortion does, then you will never understand what abortion actually is."

"You're not going to get the answers from holy texts. You're not going to the answers from biologists. These are matters of human concern. There are conflicting values and taken in isolation each of these values is quite legitimate. Choice is legitimate, preserving life is legitimate."

"Everybody is right when it comes to the issue of abortion."

"When I was in Lithuania a few years ago, I visited a nursery and I was told, "All these children are unwanted." So I think it is better that that situation be stopped right from the beginning -- birth control. Of course, abortion, from a Buddhist viewpoint, is an act of killing and is negative,generally speaking. But it depends on the circumstances. If the unborn child will be retarded or if the birth will create serious problems for the parent, these are cases where there can be an exception. I think abortion should be approved or disapproved according to each circumstance."

"[Abortion opponents] love little babies, as long as they're in somebody else's uterus."

"Women have the right to life, to their life and the lives of their children. Let’s not forget this. Abortion is murder. Science says that within a month from conception all the organs are already there. One kills a human being. Doctors who engage in this are—pardon the expression—hit men. This cannot be disputed. One kills a human life. And women have the right to protect life."

"The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement."

"It is typical of the contradictions that break women's hearts that when they avail themselves of their fragile right to abortion they often, even usually, went with grief and humiliation to carry out a painful duty that was presented to them as a privilege. Abortion is the latest in a long line of non-choices that begin at the very beginning with the time and the place and the manner of lovemaking."

"The goal was ‘every child a wanted child’; it should also have been ‘every abortion a wanted abortion’, but the two sides of the phony debate were never to meet."

"Odd pawk this that's laid her up for good: copper helix like a fiddlehead's lovelock in her womb. The aborted little tiny, future bantling's all in driblets; limb from limb and bit by bit. Semi, hemi, aliquot."

"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."

"There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of [a] higher order than the right to life ... that was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned."

"The polls find that most of us think we have made up our minds about abortion. Another way of reading the polls is that the silent minority wishes the noisy majority would shut up and leave their consciences alone. But they don't shut up. They don't let go. And that is a good thing. Abortion is an issue of death and of life. And to find your true feelings about it means you have to confront your own morality and mortality. That is not an easy or comforting thing to do. That is why throughout history the majority's first, most persistent answer to moral challenge has been, 'Shut up.' That is why the pages of history are punctuated with martyrs. Finally, however, a time comes to listen. But, for abortion that time won't come until those most concerned - on both sides - stop to listen to what the other has to say. It they would listen they would realize that each side - pro-abortion and anti-abortion is pro-life. The anti-abortion forces are so obsessed with the question of birth that they ignore another question: What happens after the baby gets here? The fight long and desperately to save the fetus but are not nearly so worried about the challenge to save the children. The pro-abortion forces say that the social conditions awaiting so many of the unborn are not good enough to live in. It is a legitimate concern, but in finding an answer in abortion they are overstepping their rights. In denying life because social conditions, they are forcing their cynicism on others."

"I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me."

"The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."