More Abortion Quotes

One pro-choice author said, after an interview of founder of Catholic's for Free Choice Francis Kissling:

"She had daily hands-on contact with women who were in the process of making the painful and, for some, the traumatic decision to terminate a pregnancy. She listened to the reasons that women wanted abortions, and rarely found them to be frivolous. She also observed that the women who came to her clinic weren’t concerned about their reproductive “rights.” This was something they needed for emotional, physical or economic reasons. There was no political satisfaction in the decision.”

Marian Faux (author of Roe v. Wade) Crusaders: Voices from the Abortion Front (New York: Carol Publishing Group) 1990 p 237

“When a woman must undergo a second-trimester abortion, or when she is forced to abort a fetus she might have wanted had the circumstances of her life been different, she often experiences a genuine sense of loss and need to grieve- not least for herself- for having to make so painful a decision.”

Former abortion clinic counselor quoted in Crusaders, p 87

The author of Crusaders also observed women in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. This is how she described them:

"Most women sit quietly, some keep up the pretense of conversation, most staring into space. One apparently blase young woman calmly paints her fingernails fire-engine red as she awaits her appointment."

p 81

One clinic worker says:

"Sometimes I loved working at the clinic: I felt like a miracle worker. Women came in and their futures were transformed. I was of use, and I thought how rare that was in this world: to get paid for doing something worth doing....but sometimes, I hated it. I hated to see women in pain. The pain never lasted for very long...but still it was probably the most painful thing they'd ever felt. I hated to hear women say:

"I just killed my baby."

"I'm never going to have sex again."

A few women told me, when it was over, that they understood how the "right to life" felt, or that abortion shouldn't be legal."

Anne Finger. Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy and Birth (Seattle, Washington: Seal Press 1990) p 52

Also from Anne Finger:

"Each day at the clinic I confronted what it meant to have come control over our wombs and less control over our social circumstances. You can decide to no longer be pregnant, you can walk into a clinic and plunk down your Medi-Cal card...or two hundred dollars in cash, but you can't decide not to be poor anymore, or to have support so that you can finish school, or to have a partner who wants to raise a child with you...

We've won the right [to legal abortion] however tenuously, but now control of reproduction is expected; we are expected to have children when we can afford them, to schedule our pregnancies to coincide with the demands of education and employment....Our victories are always partial ones; we win part of what we wanted, and then find our victories turned into something else.

p 55-56

The following are from American Life League's "Abortion Encyclopedia"

"'Women don't do this [abortion] lightly.' I'm sick and tired of hearing this. 98 percent of the women do do it lightly in here, but I never say that. And they do it lightly. They think of abortion like brushing their dime teeth, and that's OK with me."

Marilyn Buckham, director of the Buffalo GYN Womenservices Clinic abortion mill, quoted in the Revolutionary Communist Party's Revolutionary Worker, March 6, 1989.

"A counselor at an abortion clinic told me that when adoption is mentioned as an option, a typical reaction from many women goes something like this: "Are you kidding!? Give my baby to some stranger? I could never do that!" What these women are feeling is instinctual — it's a combination of self-preservation, and a maternal obligation to the child. Giving up a child for adoption is very traumatic; it can haunt a woman forever. This relates to women's strong need to control what happens to their children. The fetus is theirs. It's in their body. And they feel obligated to it. They have a gut feeling that it's irresponsible to give your children to strangers — good mothers simply don't do such things. Most women feel that it's better to prevent the birth of a child than consign it to an uncertain fate."

Joyce Arthur. "The Fetus Focus Fallacy." Pro-Choice Press [Pro-Choice Action Network], March 2005. Downloaded from http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/fetus-focus-fallacy.shtml on December 31, 2007.

Question: "Oh, so as long as you make money, it doesn't matter?"

Clinic Employee: "As long as it's food in my stomach, no, it doesn't matter. It is legal ... It is legal ... It is legal!"

Question: "So if they legalized killing four-year-old children, you would have no problem?"

Clinic Employee: "No, I would not have a problem ... My conscience is very clear ..."

Unidentified abortion clinic worker, testifying under oath. Quoted in "Abortion Clinic Staff Worker Gives Her Excuses." Life Advocate (publication of Advocates for Life Ministries, Portland, Oregon), April 1992, page 21.

Interviewer: "Doctor, what does the aborted baby feel while it's dying?"

Ballard: "Oh, I think that depends on your philosophy."

Excerpt from an interview of abortionist Michael Ballard by Mike Levy. Triumph Magazine, March 1972, pages 20 to 23 and 44. Quoted in Donald DeMarco. Abortion in Perspective. Hayes Publishing Company, 1974.

Attorney: "What, the legal view set aside, would be your objection to killing a child a day after he or she was born?"

Crist: "I have none, and I have none to euthanasia."

Abortionist Robert Dale Crist, testimony before the United States District Court for Eastern Louisiana on October 20, 1978 (CD 78-2765). Quoted in "Teenager Dies at Hands of Houston Abortionist." The Wanderer, February 13, 1992, pages 1 and 11.

"Each and every pregnancy threatens a woman's life. From a strict medical viewpoint, every pregnancy should be aborted."

Abortionist Lisa Fortier at the 1980 national convention of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), quoted in Andrew Scholberg. "The Abortionists and Planned Parenthood: Familiar Bedfellows." International Review of Natural Family Planning, Winter 1980, page 308.

"The relationship between the gravid [pregnant] female and the feto-placental unit can be understood best as one of host and parasite.

Abortionist Warren Hern. Abortion Practice. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1984, pages 14

"A medically necessary abortion is any abortion a woman asks for."

Abortionist Jane Hodgeson, quoted in Human Life International Special Report Number 83, August 1991, pages 6 and 7.

"In my medical judgment, every pregnancy that is not wanted by the patient, I feel there is a medical indication to abort a pregnancy where it is not wanted. In good faith, I would recommend on a medical basis, you understand, that, and it would be 100% ... I think they are all medically necessary ... Occasionally we will advise these women to carry their pregnancy to term, but most of these are medically necessary because I am considering the woman's physical, mental, emotional and social and welfare and family and environment and all that ... I am concerned with the quality of life, not physical existence."

Abortionist Jane Hodgson, Transcript, August 3, 1977, at 99-101, McRae v. Califano, 491 F.Supp. 630 (E.D.N.Y. 1980), rev'd sub nom. Harris v. McRae. 100 S. Ct. 2671 (1980).

From Deathroe (Life Dynamics)

"...in my clinic, we wash off the tissue and examine it. It is treated respectfully and put with the woman's first name into a container. We show it to patients if they ask to see it, and make sure they understand which part is the sac [later the placenta], which part the pregnancy if visible (after nine weeks) and which is part of the lining of the uterus. People have been known to pray over it, write notes for inclusion, "baptize" it, etc., etc. Some clinic staff have also been known to say a little prayer over it-- thanking it for its sacrifice so that the woman could continue on the path she was on."

Abortion clinic employee
blog
Abortion Clinic Days, Blog 11-30-2005

Faye Wattleton
former president of Planned Parenthood
ABC News Special, ABC News Forum Abortion: The New Civil War:11-1-1990

“I don't believe that a single one of us does not believe that a fetus is a living fetus; that we are not suggesting that it is some inanimate object. The question is that, when you have a woman's life and her needs and her health on the one side, and the developing fetus on the other, a choice has to be made, and that choice should be left to the individual. That's why it's so controversial.”

Jane Bovard
owner of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, N.D.
NY Times, Scant drop in abortion rate if parents are told: 3-6-2006

"I see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one (abortion). But I say to parents, 'You force her to have this abortion, and I can tell you that within the next six months she's going to be pregnant again.' "

Charlotte Taft
abortion clinic owner
Fairfield County Weekly: Listening to Women About Abortion, A new wave of abortion rights activism is spreading across the country--from zines to documentaries-- that focuses on telling women's stories rather than spouting stale feminist aphorisms, by Jennifer Baumgardner - May 26, 2005

"I was shocked by how many who seemed fine during the (abortion) procedure were now having thoughts and feelings that no one had anticipated."

The biggest thing she noted was that women felt sadder than they had anticipated.

Taft went on to say, "They wondered, How can I feel sad about something I chose?"

Karen Jones
abortion clinic administrator
St. Petersburg Times, "A chain of tears:' a doctor and abortion:6-3-1990

"We've had a lot of those. They want to bury it themselves. We had one, her mother wanted to know the exact moment it happened so she could go into the bathroom and light candles and have a ceremony. I said, "Not in our bathroom.' So she went into the parking lot."

Peg Johnston
abortion clinic worker
Fairfield County Weekly: Listening to Women About Abortion, A new wave of abortion rights activism is spreading across the country--from zines to documentaries-- that focuses on telling women's stories rather than spouting stale feminist aphorisms ,by Jennifer Baumgardner - May 26, 2005

She'd sit in on a counseling session with a woman who'd say, "I feel like I'm killing my baby." At first, she said, she assumed that the patients were simply repeating what they'd heard outside from pro-lifers.

But, Johnston stated, "once I began listening more intently to her, I learned that she wasn't saying what the picketer was saying--although she used the same words. They weren't mouthing an anti-choice message--they were acknowledging that this was serious stuff. How can I want one kid and not the other?"

Peg Johnston
director of Southern Tier Women's Services near Binghamton, New York.
Ms. Magazine, Abortion under attack, August-September, 2001

"Women who sit in my clinic don't see it as a right, They're scared."

Robert Crist
abortionist
St. Petersburg Times, "A chain of tears:' a doctor and abortion:6-3-1990

Explaining what the girl's ask abortionist Robert Crist he made these comments:

"Was it a boy or a girl?"... "Can I see it?"..."You must think I'm awful."

Then there are the questions they ask before the abortion, which can seem the most disheartening part of all:

"How much does it cost to terminate the baby?".... "Am I going to be tied down?"..."Is a doctor going to do it? Is he licensed? A real doctor?"

Sherry Cage
abortion clinic counselor
St. Petersburg Times, "A chain of tears:' a doctor and abortion: 6-3-1990

In the article, abortion clinic counselor spoke of the reactions women have regarding their abortions. She asked, "Remember the one who wanted to take it home in a jar?"

Carol E. Ball
abortionist, Planned Parenthood of South Dakota
Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study abortion: December 2005

"I would refuse to answer those questions (if asked by the patient if the unborn baby was “ Human Life”), because it is a subjective matter for the woman to decide and an answer from her is nothing but her own subjective opinion."

David Paintin
abortionist
Pro-Choice Forum: Women's experiences ‘My Foetus', Summary and Review by David Paintin,4-24-2004 http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk/ocrwomex5.asp

“There are reasons why a fetus should not be regarded as a person with full human rights at any time during pregnancy. The fetus is a parasite completely dependent on the woman for continued existence.”

Dennis Christensen
abortionist
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin), Controversy makes private practice public for Madison doctor An abortion provider, unabashed: 4-11-1999

"As for abortion, it is what it is. The fetus is what it is. In my mind, the one who gets to decide that value is the woman who's pregnant. It's as simple as that."

James McMahon
late term abortionist
LA Times, The Abortions of Last Resort, 1-7-1990

Late-term abortionist James McMahon said in an interview that his conscience and his religious beliefs (he claims he still attends Mass occasionally) have answered the basic questions that arise from later abortions. "I've always been a classic liberal. I believe in freedom in its broadest sense," says the abortionist, whose office is decorated with photographs of his own two children. "I frankly think the soul or personage comes in when the fetus is accepted by the mother."

Jane Hodgson
abortionist
ABC News Special, ABC News Forum Abortion: The New Civil War:11-1-1990

In an ABC News interview abortionist Jane Hodgson made the following statements:

“I have supervised and participated in or done approximately 30,000 (abortions)

PETER JENNINGS asked: They call you a killer. Does that make sense to you?

HODGSON: "Well, I don't feel that way. I think I have done a humane service for lots of women in this world. I don't look upon it as killing, no, because I do not consider, in the first place, that any embryo or the fetus is a person. It is a potential person."

She was asked by a caller, "Exactly what do you define in medical terms as a person?"

HODGSON replied: "I don't believe there is a medical definition of person, but it means, it implies certainly a- we don't deny that the fetus or the embryo is human, but personhood implies a great deal more. A person can- a fetus cannot be a person without a brain. Nothing can be a person that does not have a brain. And a fetus does not have a brain that is functional until at least 30 weeks."

Kirsten Moore
Center for American Progress
Politics of Choice, Newsweek: 2-27-2006

Quote: “Women who are thinking about ending a pregnancy are not asking, ‘Is this a life?’ They know that it is. They are asking, ‘Can I take care of this baby?”

Krishna Rajanna
abortionist
The Pitch 6-16-05 / State of Kansas Board of Healing Arts case # 05-HA-58 / Statement of Detective William Howard to the House Committee on Health and Human Services 3-15-2005

“We can not have a pregnant woman working at an abortion clinic." One employee of [an abortion clinic] told reporters that [the abortionist] threatened to fire her because she was pregnant.

Lynne Vickery
abortion clinic employee, Cedar River Clinic
Fwhc.org: All about abortion, What 1,000 Abortions Have Taught Me

“My announcement that I would rather have an abortion than a cavity filled shocked her into silence.”

Michael Benjamin
abortionist
Testimony: House Health care Committee, Full Committee Meeting September 14 and 15, 1989, Florida House of Representatives.

Speaking about the typical abortion patient, "I think it is basically a personality type who generally has her life out of control and unfortunately nowadays there are no shortage of people in general whose lives are out of control. They drift, they tend to live for the moment in terms not only of their sexual practices but in terms of their economic lives and they are people in general who don’t think beyond the moment, who don’t plan for tomorrow, and who really will take life as it comes and deal with the rest later. It is a personality type is what I am saying rather than any race or socioeconomic group or things of that sort.” He continues with his opinion of the first time abortion profile, “ there is certainly a very high incidence amongst teenagers and I believe the reason for that is that teenagers generally don’t think of consequences of their actions or ignorant as to contraceptive practices or deny the possibility of pregnancy...” Benjamin performs abortions in South Florida.

Mildred Hanson
abortion clinic owner
Voices of Choice: Doctor’s Stories

“I challenged myself: Is this right? Is this ethical? Is this Christian? Is this appropriate? Am I demeaning myself? Do I want to do abortions? There's a lot of personal soul-searching. It's not an easy decision that a physician makes to be an abortion provider.” Hanson owns her own abortion clinic and was the former Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and South Dakota.

Peter Bours
abortionist
The New York Times, The abortion conflict; what it does to one doctor, By Dudley Clendinen; Dudley Clendinen is a New York Times correspondent based in Atlanta :8-11-1985

'There's a 6-year-old boy that I delivered that I say hello to, and after the last newspaper article came out, he wouldn't look at me. That's the hardest thing for me, because I've always prided myself on my relationship with kids. It hurts me.''

Prof Bill Ledger
abortionist-UK
The Daily Mail, Why does Britain have record levels of abortion and an unprecedented need for IVF? 6-30-2006

"I have seen women whose boyfriends have left them, who are at college and have yet to finish their studies, women who can't afford to bring up a child, women who were taking the Pill but didn't realize that being sick reduced its effectiveness. These are women who want children, but not now because they believe the welfare of that child will be compromised. They do think very hard and there is a great sadness. The decision will affect every year they spend on this planet and most do not move on easily"

Robert Crist
abortionist
St. Petersburg Times, "A chain of tears:' a doctor and abortion:6-3-1990

"I don't drag people in, I provide a service to people who call seeking such a service. I'm an object of hate for that?"

Warren Hern
abortionist
Warren Hern’s Letter to Bill Ritter/ Canadian Business and Current Affairs Western Report, Why doctors are fleeing the carnage (What keeps doctors from performing abortions) 11-21-94

“The real question, is not when life begins, but who is best prepared to make the decision to transmit life to a new generation – the individual or the state?"

Maureen Paul
medical director , Planned Parenthood of NY
NY Magazine, The Abortion Capital of America:As the pro-life movement intensifies nationwide, New York contemplates its history and future as a refuge. By Ryan Lizza: 12-12-2005

“Hillary can say anything she wants about whether an abortion is a tragedy.What I know when I perform an abortion for a patient is that the overwhelming feeling is one of relief. Because the abortion has solved a huge problem in her life, whether it’s because she couldn’t afford another child, couldn’t afford to be a good mother to another child, or doesn’t have the money to raise a child.Every time I do an abortion I save a woman’s life. If you want to call that a tragedy”—she pauses and exhales a sharp sigh—“I don’t consider it a tragedy, I’m sorry.”

Miriam McCreary
abortionist
CNN.com, Doctor flies into South Dakota to perform abortions, By Drew Griffin and Kira Kay: 4-5-2006

"I've helped them out of a predicament that they were not happy to be in, and if I wasn't here to do it, you know, maybe no one else would do it."