“ It is morally and ethically wrong to do abortions without acknowledging what it means to do them. I performed abortions. I have had an abortion and I am in favour of women having abortions when we choose to do so. 

 

But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means that there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend that this is not happening.”

 

“My whole professional training was to prolong life, to nurture and protect it. Abortion is clearly at odds with that ethos.”

 

“Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that."

 

 

“No one, neither the patient receiving an abortion, not the person doing the abortion, is ever, at any time, unaware that they are ending a life.”

 

 

“I wanted to be the world’s best abortionist, for the good of my patients ….finally, I realised that abortion is not good for women. The truth is that abortion stops the beating heart of a live, growing human being. Nothing good can come of it. Only heartache and regret.”

To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way - no matter how early it was performed it was taking life ….”

 

 

“An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health.”

 

“Abortion is the taking of human life.”

 

 

“One has to start with the attitude that you accept the criticism that abortion is murder … You’re extinguishing life and if you don’t face up to that you are not being honest with yourself.”

 

“Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter … I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.

 

Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of there embrace of abortion, which results ni the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of cells of insensate tissue.”

 

 

“I had my own moment of truth during my fifth month of pregnancy in May 2004. A small moment, but it changed me. I was speaking to a group from Barnard’s College Students for Choice when I referred to the object in Oe’s uterus when one is pregnant as a ‘baby’.

 

A nurse practitioner who speaking after me interrupted, “Fetus, you mean. You said baby, but it’s a foetus.” “Oh, right,” I stammered. “Ops”. I felt foolish, caught in an ignorant mistake. Later, through, I realised that I had always thought of my pregnancy as carrying a baby - that was the word I wanted to use - and I was forcing myself to say “fetus’ out of fear….I thought of other phrases I forced myself to use too, like ’so-called partial-birth abortion” and “anti-choice.’

 

These phrases suddently struck me as legal jargon, words in the service of arguments that weren’t themselves always meaningful. Suppressing language, policing ourselves so that we don’t slip up and say “baby’ continues the split between our policies and our lives." 

“Any woman who has felt  a baby stir inside her {and} who has seen the tine heart pulsing on an ultrasound screen knows that abortion is about ending a life.”

“There are many sperm cells in the [seminal] fluid. If one of them meets an egg cell inside the mother, new life can begin to grow [.] … [I]f one of your friends is pregnant, ask her to let your child feel the baby move [.] … [A] baby grows in a special place inside the mother, called the uterus.”

 

“Abortion is a bad thing.”

“Abortion is in some sense an act of violence, and indisputably results in the termination of a life”