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;void(0)) . . . ABORTION see: "BABIES" see: "BIRTH CONTROL" About the termination of pregnancy I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic. The mother tuberculous. Of the children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was tuberculous. What would you have done? 'I would have ended the next pregnancy.' 'Then you would have murdered Beethoven.'" --Maurice Baring (18741945) English man of letters. - "Freedom to Choose" by Bob Blue In a clinic on Main Street, in Washingtonville, Lost in thought, by a window, stood Mary McGill, When her eyes met the eyes of a woman outside. Was it rain on her glasses, or tears she had cried? Outside, on the picket line, Rosemary Flynn Felt the rain on her face, and the anger within, As she glared at the face inside, gentle, and warm, That seemed almost to beckon her in from the storm. And the two women found themselves staring awhile Recognition, awareness, but never a smile. And there seemed to be some kind of truce in that stare, Until Rosemary Flynn recalled why she was there. Then she held up her sign, which said, "Thou shalt not kill," And she pointed directly at Mary McGill. And Mary McGill, before starting to turn, Gave a nod to acknowledge Rosemary's concern. One day, Mary counselled a child named Michelle, Who tried hard to seem calm, in her personal Hell. Mary spoke to Michelle with the tone of a friend, And her gentleness brought Michelle's calm to an end. Michelle told her story with pain hard to hide, Of her mother, and John, and the new life inside. She had meant to show love. She had meant no one harm, But her mother felt anger, and John felt alarm. And the new life inside was a life. It was real, With a brain, and a heartbeat she thought she could feel. And she wanted the child. She would love it so well. She would build it a heaven to make up for this hell. But she'd end the new life, for her mother and John. "I'll do it," she said, "for my mother and John." These words had an emptiIness Mary saw through. "If you do it," said Mary, "please do it for you." Michelle looked at Mary through the pain, and the tears, And Mary saw all of Michelle's sixteen years, And she thought she saw something of several years more, Or perhaps she had seen Michelle's face once before. Michelle only murmured the words, "I don't know." And she stood, and she turned, and she started to go. And Mary made one last request of Michelle, With her parting words, "Take time to think this out well." That night, Michelle's mother stormed into the place, Not hiding her anger, yet hiding her face. "My daughter came here with a purpose," she said. "Not to have you put foolish ideas in her head. She is young; she's a girl, and the father's a boy, And she thinks that a baby is some kind of toy. Your job is to teach her to straighten her out, Not confuse her, and send her home riddled with doubt." "My job," explained Mary, "is not to confuse, But to make her aware of her freedom to choose. My job is to make sure the options are known. You are right. She is young. But her life is her own." Then Mary saw something in this woman's face, And remembered the person, the time, and the place. This woman had labelled abortion a sin. The face in the picket line. Rosemary Flynn. People often accuse, and are quick to condemn When the issue is safe, and does not affect them. I don't envy the job facing Mary McGill. I don't know all the meanings of "Thou shalt not kill." It's a problem more simply prevented than solved, But the choice must belong to the woman involved, And I think that the answers come not from above, But from us, and our consciences, tempered with love. - Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get. --Gwendolyn Brooks (19172000) American poet. "The Mother" l. I [1945] The freedom women were supposed to have in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion: things to make life easier for men, in fact. --Julie Burchill (1959 ) English journalist. _Damaged Goods_ "Born Again Cows" [1986] - The same amendment of the Constitution that forbids the establishment of a State Church affirms my legal right to argue that my religious belief would serve well as an article of our universal public morality. I may use the prescribed processes of government the legislative and executive and judicial processes to convince my fellow citizens Jews and Protestants and Buddhists and non- believers that what I propose is as beneficial for them as I believe it is for me; that it is not just parochial or narrowly sectarian but fulfills a human desire for order, peace, justice, kindness, love, any of the values most of us agree are desirable even apart from their specific religious base or context. . . . I can, if I wish, argue that the State should not fund the use of contraceptive devices not because the Pope demands it but because I think that the whole community for the good of the whole community should not sever sex from an openness to the creation of life. And surely, I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion not because my Bishops say it is wrong but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually. No law prevents us from advocating any of these things: I am free to do so. So are the Bishops. And so is Reverend Falwell. --Mario Cuomo (1932 ) American lawyer and politician. Speech in 1984 at Notre Dame while governor of New York. - I think incest can be handled as a family matter within the family. --Representative Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), defending his position against abortion even in the case of rape or incest Liberals want to strike down the abortion laws, so that unwanted babies can be killed off before they are born. Conservatives want to strike down the welfare laws, so that unwanted babies can be starved to death after they are born. --N. Sally Hass Sperm cells, even under optimal conditions, will never, never ever, become a human being. But that earliest embryo will, barring natural disaster or lethal human intervention, become what everybody recognizes as a human baby on its further way to becoming a fully developed human being. [...] The truth is so blindingly obvious that many are blind to it: nothing that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and nothing that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being. --Richard John Neuhaus (19362009) Canadian Catholic priest and writer. I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. --Ronald Reagan (19112004) American President [19811989] and former Hollywood actor. Campaign debate [21 September 1980]. Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need. --Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse Franηois, Comte de Sade) (17401814) French aristocrat and writer of pornography. Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world. --Talmud (A.D.1st6th cent.) Rabbinical writings. - The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion 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. --Mother Teresa (19101997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary. Nobel Peace Prize Lecture [1979] It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. --Mother Teresa (19101997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary. - - Extra place set at your mind's table like Ezekiel's empty glass, clean spoon. Hands that never pointed out the moon, laid the baby in the Christmas stable, dried dishes. Voice that doesn't call downstairs that he or she will be there soon. In steam behind a bathroom door, no one puts on makeup, leaves a towel for you to find. No hairdryer. No C in French. No midnight curfew, no slamming door, no not-speaking-to. When was it you began to hear silence? They don't tell you about that voice, clear, insistent, steady as a heartbeat, asking, How weren't you ready? --Sally Thomas, "Choice" - If anyone should administer a potion to a pregnant woman to produce an abortion, and the child should die in consequence, the woman who took such a potion, if she is a slave, shall receive two hundred lashes, and if she is freeborn, she shall lose her rank, and shall be given as a slave to whomever we [the king] may select. --_The Visigothic Code_ (Forum Judicum) (mid-7th century; 1910 trans.) p.206, quoted in M.J. Cohan and John Major {ed.} _History in Quotations_ [2004]. - TOPICAL Oscar Wilde famously spoke so many years ago, referring to homosexuality, of "the love that dare not speak its name." Today, of course, homosexuality shouts its name and affixes it to marriage licenses. But there is a new kind of open secret "the right that dare not speak its name." In a June decision, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled the recently passed partial-birth-abortion ban unconstitutional. The right to abortion is as legally secure as ever, but its advocates have never been so apparently ashamed of the practice itself. If pro-choice advocates believe in the necessity and goodness of their position, one would expect them to say something like, "We support abortion that's A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N so women can eliminate unwanted children." Instead, they take refuge in the foggiest corners of obfuscation. In April, supporters of Roe v. Wade held a rally in Washington in support of the right to abortion. But you would hardly know it. The rally was called the "March for Women's Lives" well, for the lives of women who aren't very, very young. The word "abortion" was almost verboten among people who support the right to it. One of the nation's premier defenders of abortion rights is the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. It's a perfectly descriptive name, but the group nonetheless changed it last year to expunge the offending word. It is now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. It's as if the National Rifle Association changed its name to avoid any association with the word "rifle." In three lawsuits challenging the partial-birth-abortion ban after it was signed, abortion-rights advocates refused to say "partial- birth abortion." They preferred the terms "intact dilation and extraction" and "dilation and evacuation," better to keep anyone from understanding whatever they were talking about: Namely, the partial-breech delivery of a baby, until a doctor can pierce its skull with a sharp instrument and vacuum out its brain. Shannen W. Coffin, a former Justice Department official who fought in defense of the ban, recalls one pro-choice lawyer letting slip the phrase "partial-birth abortion," only to correct herself. The judge chided her, "You won't get sick if you say the words." [...] Former President Clinton said abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." The bit about rare suggests that there is something wrong with abortion, that it is to be avoided. It is difficult to square that thought with our judicially legislated legal regime prohibiting any restriction on abortion whatsoever. When the partial-birth abortion debate cropped up a few years ago, abortion-rights advocates insisted the gruesome procedure was so rare that the issue was a sideshow. Now they say the procedure is indistinguishable from other late-term abortions. Hmm. So they all are gruesome? The San Francisco judge struck down the ban partly because she thinks it is sometimes safer to kill a fetus while it is being delivered intact rather than chopping it up inside the womb. By this standard, why shouldn't it be legal to fully deliver the baby and complete the abortion cleanly on the operating table? --Rich Lowry, "The Right that Dare Not Speak Its Name" [15 June 2004] - - An abortion clinic routinely performed partial-birth abortions and even live births in order to maximize the profits from the subsequent sale of undamaged fetal tissue, claims a former technician for a business that markets fetal body parts. "Kelly" the name is a pseudonym worked for Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), which sells fetal tissue to researchers, drug companies, hospitals and universities. Although marketing fetal tissue is a violation of federal law, a major loophole has allowed a burgeoning growth industry in the sale of baby body parts. Working in AGF's rented space inside the abortion clinic, Kelly's job was to collect fetal tissue and body part "donations" from the clinic for AGF. After an abortion, Kelly would survey the various orders for body parts she had received from AGF's clients, and make sure these orders were filled in a timely manner. Nearly two years ago, Kelly says, the doctor in charge entered her office holding twins at 24 weeks gestation both gasping for air and told her they were "good specimens." Expected to end the lives of the premature infants and harvest their organs, Kelly says she told the doctor, "I don't do this. That's not in my contract." The doctor subsequently placed the twins in a pan and poured sterile water over them, she says, adding that she left the room as they drowned. From that point on, Kelly began gathering photocopies of the fetal tissue order forms from various universities and research facilities and offered them to Mark Crutcher, founder of the pro-life organization Life Dynamics in Denton, Texas. [...] Eric Harrah, a former abortion clinic worker, says that "live births" were the industry's "dirty little secret." In the industry for 11 years and owner or partner in 26 abortion clinics, Harrah said, "it was always very disturbing, so the doctor would try to conceal it from the rest of the staff." Live births from partial-birth abortions recently made headlines in Ohio when a woman was being prepared for an abortion at the Women's Med Center in Dayton. The woman went into premature labor and was then admitted to a Dayton hospital where she gave birth to a 25-to-26- week-old infant. Women's Med Center is operated by Dr. Martin Haskell, the developer of partial-birth abortion. According to news reports, this was the second time in four months that a woman had given birth during preparations for a partial-birth abortion at the center. The increasing demand for intact fetal body parts is the main reason the abortion industry wants to protect partial-birth abortion from any restrictions, Crutcher says. Partial-birth abortion "is about maximizing profits. First, you sell the woman an abortion. Then you turn around and sell the dead baby you take out of her. But you have to take it out whole, or you don't have anything to sell." --Frank York "Fetal profits promoting partial-birth abortions?" [15 November 1999] | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM | ISRAEL - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | |
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