. Thank you for your time and reflection on the value of a human life!
. Thank you for your time and reflection on the value of a human life!Elizabeth Cady Stanton (activist) Mary Wollstonecraft (writer) Alice Paul (drafter of Equal Right Amendment) Benezir Bhutto (Prime Minister of Pakistan) Mother Theresa Pope John Paul Randall M. Jones (atheist) Randy Alcorn (pro-life leader) Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) Billy Graham Mark Belz Alan Keyes (former ambassador and U.S. presidential candidate) George F. Will (columnist and political pundit) Thoughts in Brief
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
In a letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University"When we consider that woman 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."
As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "A Vindication of the Rights
of Women," which Susan B. Anthony admired enough to serialize in The
Revolution. After decrying, in scathing 18th century terms, the sexual
exploitation of women, she said:"Women becoming, consequently, weaker...than they ought to
be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a
mother; and 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."
Alice Paul, the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923) opposed the
later trend of linking the E.R.A. with abortion. A colleague recalls her saying:"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto:"I dream...of a world, where we can commit our social resources to the development of human life and not to its destruction." Prime Minister Bhutto went on to say that “the most effective way to tackle population growth was "by tackling infant mortality, by providing villages with electrification, by raising an army of women...to educate our mothers, sisters, daughters in child welfare and population control, by setting up a bank run by women for women, to help women achieve economic independence, and to have the wherewithal to make
independent choices."But this positive shift was overshadowed by the abortion issue [during the World Population Conference in Cairo]. Sadly, a number of world leaders, including our own, still have much to learn about the real needs of women. The Clinton administration wished to include in the agreement "access to safe abortion" under the guise of reproductive health services and used statistics of illegal abortions as justification. But
this use of statistics misses the point: abortion is a reflection of the problems
that women face, not the solution.
Mother Theresa: Excerpted from speech given at a National Prayer Breakfast
in Washington D.C. 1994"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.Jesus gave even His life to love us. 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.By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her
own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told
that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child
he has brought into the world.The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So
abortion just 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.....
Let us make that one point - that no child will be unwanted,
unloved, uncared for, or killed and thrown away. And give until it
hurts - with a smile.
Pope John Paul II, in a speech in Denver, CO, August 10, 1993"If you want equal justice for all, and true freedom and lasting peace, then, America, defend life! All the great causes that are yours today will have meaning only to the extent that you guarantee the right to life and protect the human person."
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Pope John Paul, Encyclical Letter "The Gospel of Life"
Given in Rome, on March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1995.
Prayer for life of John Paul II
O Mary,
bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life:
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers
of babies to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women
who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love
to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel
as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it
resolutely, in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.
Atheist, Randall M. Jones: Excerpted from "An Open Letter from a Pro-Life Atheist"
Copyright © 1999 by Randall M. Jones.Dear Reader,
I am an atheist and opposed to abortions for the following reasons:1. Even if someone believes that abortions are acceptable, then at least consider this:
A. Most of the abortion methods are cruel, extremely inhumane, and very
painful for the fetus/baby.B. If you intend to kill the fetus, then do so in a humane way. If the
equivalent methods of abortion were used to kill animals at the dog pound,
the SPCA and other animal groups...well, you get the idea.C. The dangers associated with abortions are not explained clearly. Though
most people believe that abortions are completely safe, there are many
dangers physically and psychologically (infection, infertility, bleeding,
depression, and suicide, just to name a few).2. Abortions go against my belief in liberty and justice.
A. Liberty to choose for one's self requires that, as free individuals, we are
responsible for our actions and the consequences thereof.B. Justice is when you get what you deserve.
3. A woman should have the right to do with her own body what she wishes, but when she does what she wants to do, and as a result becomes pregnant, she has done what she wanted to do with her own body. However when she goes for an abortion, she is doing something to someone else's body.
4. What has the unborn done to deserve death? NOTHING! It is not at fault for anything including its own existence, and yet it is expected to pay with its life with no trial, no jury, and no say in what happens to it.
5. Every one knows that sex will result in a pregnancy, so sexually active people (and
everyone else) should be responsible for their own actions unless they are not free. Freedom carries with it a requirement that you must accept responsibility for your own actions.6. Pro-abortionists say: "If you don't like abortions, then don't have one." My response to them is: "That is a great logical process; you just changed my mind; I think I'll apply that to the rest of my philosophy and change my opinions about everything else too..."
"If you don't like slavery, then don't enslave anyone."
"If you don't like rape, then don't rape anyone."
"If you don't like murder, then don't murder anyone."
"If you don't like theft, then don't steal from anyone."
"If you don't like lies, then don't lie to anyone."
"If you don't like sexually transmitted diseases, then don't transmit one."
"If you don't like terrorism, then don't bomb anyone."
"If you don't like animal cruelty, then don't be cruel to one."
"If you don't like oppression, then don't oppress anyone."
"If you don't like arson, then don't burn the property of anyone."As you can see this type of thinking is anarchy, at it's worst. Basically it says: "Shut up and let me do what I want; I don't care how it affects anyone else; I just want to do what I want to do." It is very self-centered and childish.
7. Most atheists do not see anything wrong with abortions and will not give you the time of day once you mention god or one of the many "holy" books that religious people
believe in.8. Another claim by abortionists is that the fetus is part of the woman's body and has no more consequences than removing some unwanted flesh. My response to that is: "If you smash your hand in a car door who feels the pain? You do! No one else, not your friends, your father, nor your mother. That PROVES that YOU ARE A SEPARATE HUMAN BEING, because you feel your own pain. If the fetus feels it's own pain, then that would make it a separate human being too."
Randy Alcorn: from Randy Alcorn's ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments (Multnomah Press, 1992, 1994)."What is legal is not always right."
One of the weakest arguments for the legitimacy of abortion is the fact that it is legal. Civil law does not determine morality. Rather, the law should reflect a morality that exists independently of the law. Can anyone seriously believe that abortion was immoral on January 21, 1973 and moral on January 23, 1973? If abortion killed children before the law changed, it continues to kill children after the law changed. Law or no law, either abortion has always been right and always will be, or it has always been wrong and always will be.
Our country's history is full of examples of legal things that were not right. Perhaps the most notable example is slavery. In the last century the slaveowners argued that the slaves were theirs and they had the right to do with them as they wished. They claimed that their personal rights and freedom of choice were at stake. They said that the slaves were not really persons in the full sense. They pointed out that they would experience economic hardship if they were not allowed to have slaves, and developed slogans to gain sympathy to their cause. They maintained that others could choose not to have slaves, but had no right to impose their anti-slavery morality on them. And above all, they argued, slavery was perfectly legal, so no one had the right to oppose it.
This point of view was given further legal support in the Dred Scot decision of 1857. The Supreme Court determined in a 7-2 decision that slaves were not legal persons and were therefore not protected under the Constitution. In 1973, one hundred and sixteen years later, the US Supreme Court, by another 7-2 decision, would determine that unborn children also were not legal persons and therefore not protected under the Constitution. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said in 1857, "A black man has no right which the white man is bound to respect."
In the 1940's a German doctor could kill Jews legally, while in America he would be prosecuted for murder. In the 1970's an American doctor could kill unborn babies legally, while in Germany he would be prosecuted for murder. Laws change. Truth and justice don't.
Norma McCorvey: Excerpted from Who is 'Jane Roe'? From CNN Interactive Writer Douglas S. Wood © 1998 CNNAnonymous no more, Norma McCorvey no longer supports abortion rights
(CNN) -- Norma McCorvey won't
be celebrating the 25th anniversary
of the historic Roe vs. Wade
decision that legalized abortion.McCorvey is "Jane Roe," the
pseudonym she assumed to remain
anonymous as the lead plaintiff in
the case that legalized abortion in
the United States."I'm very sad (about the
anniversary)," she told CNN Interactive in a telephone interview.
....
Once an abortion-rights supporter, the 50-year-old McCorvey has
switched sides: She's now a vocal anti-abortion activist. She has
started a ministry called Roe No More to fight against abortion rights
with the aim of creating a mobile counseling center for pregnant
women in Dallas.'I am Roe'
She began her association with one of the United States' most
contentious and volatile sociopolitical issues in 1970, when she
became the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit filed to challenge
the strict anti-abortion laws in Texas.The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down
its controversial ruling on January 22, 1973. The decision legalized
the right to an abortion in all 50 states and sparked a political debate
that remains charged to this day.However, McCorvey, who was 21 when the case was filed and was
on her third pregnancy, never had an abortion and gave birth to a
girl, who was given up for adoption.
Margaret Sanger, Nurse and birth control activist who founded what became Planned Parenthood[What most people are not aware of is how inherently prejudice much of her reasoning for the need for birth control. She was in fact a great advocate of eugenics. Without quite the power of Hitler, she was nevertheless, very much for eradicating, via birth control, the "the children of feeble-minded, the diseased and the mentally dwarfed [who] drag down the standards of schools and society"]
Sanger said:
"Every mother and mother-to-be should protect the fundamental rights of her babies and in fact of all babies. Baby's rights' have been well formulated by my friend Marie Carmichael Stopes: [they include the Right:]
"To be wanted.
"To be loved before birth as well as after birth.
"To be given a body untainted by a heritable disease, uncontaminated by any of the racial
poisons."[All people who have a family history of any inheritable disease of the mind or body or those of a less than Sanger-approved race should according to Sanger, contained via birth control.]
Sanger's birth-control agenda is better known than her emphasis on "the race" which she is interested in elevating:
"I place this stress upon healthy bodies for the future mothers of the race...."
"Only secondary to the menace of the great racial diseases is the danger of fatigue to potential motherhood."Excerpted from: Physical Culture, March 1921. P.41, 123, 126-127 (MSPME-CDS C16:147-150)
Transcribed by the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, 1999.
*********
Interestingly, even Sanger seemed to consider killing a child in-utero or soon after birth an "extreme":
"[Women] knew virtually nothing about her reproductive nature and less about the consequences of her excessive child-bearing. It is true that, obeying the inner urge of their nature, some women revolted. They went even to the extreme of infanticide and abortion."Excerpted from: Birth Control Review, August 1921. (MSPME-SCC S70:0911-2).
Transcribed by the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, 1999
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[Sanger's birth control agenda was promoted under the guise of helping women who were physically and emotionally worn out by the oft repeated cycles of pregnancy, childbirth and raising children, but her own behavior revealed that it was a great means by which to escape marital fidelity and family responsibility.]Quotes below excerpted from "Margaret Sanger: Biographical Sketch" © Esther Katz.
"Sanger separated from her husband, William, in 1914, and in keeping with her private views on sexual liberation, she began a series of affairs with several men, including Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. In 1922 she married oil magnate James Noah H. Slee, but did so on her own terms, insuring her financial and sexual independence. Slee, who died in 1943, became the main funder of the birth control movement.
....
She increasingly rationalized birth control as a means of reducing genetically transmitted mental or physical defects, and at times supported sterilization for the mentally incompetent. While she did not advocate efforts to limit population growth solely on the basis of class, ethnicity or race, and refused to encourage positive race-based eugenics, Sanger's reputation was permanently tainted by her association with the reactionary wing of the eugenics movement."
Billy Graham, during a press conference in San Antonio, TX, April 1I am against abortion, I think that life is sacred and we should take a position of being against abortion. I think it is wrong to take human life. I think that human life starts at conception.
Mark Belz, Suffer The Little Children (Crossway Books, Westchester, IL 60154, 1989) pg. 125...life for the unborn will never be durably defined in Washington until it is first defined at the door of the abortion clinic. Law follows fact more than fact follows law. If I cannot defend a child's life at the moment of the child's death, I cannot convincingly defend the child's life in the courts, in the legislature, or in the pulpit.
Alan Keyes: From "Alan Keyes on the Issues" from the Alan Keyes for President campaign"Abortion and Euthanasia."
If the Declaration of Independence states our creed, there can be
no right to abortion, since it means denying the most fundamental
right of all, to human offspring in the womb. The Declaration states
plainly that we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with
our human rights.But if human beings can decide who is human and who is not, the
doctrine of God-given rights is utterly corrupted. Abortion is the
unjust taking of a human life and a breach of the fundamental
principles of our public moral creed.Some people talk about "viability" as a test to determine which
offspring have rights that we must respect, and which do not. But
might does not make right. And so the mere fact that the individual
in the womb is wholly in its mother's physical power and
completely dependent upon her for sustenance gives her no right
whatsoever with respect to its life, since the mere possession of
physical power can never confer such a right. Medical procedures
resulting in the death of an unborn child, except as a collateral and
unintended consequence of efforts to save the mother's physical
life, are therefore impermissible.As for the 'so-called right to suicide' and related practices, such as
euthanasia, whatever emotional arguments we make on their
behalf, they represent a violation of the principles of the
Declaration of Independence. Our rights, including the right to life,
are unalienable. If we kill ourselves or consent to allow another to
do so, we both destroy and surrender our life. We act unjustly. We
usurp the authority that belongs solely to the Creator, and deny the
basis of our claim to human rights.
George F. Will: Excerpted from "54 Babies"CHINO HILLS, Calif.: Where Route 71 crosses over Payton Drive, at the bottom of the steeply sloping embankment, two boys, who were playing nearby, found the boxes. The boys bicycled home and said they had found boxes of “babies.”
....
The fetuses had been dumped here, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, on March 14, 1997, by a trucker who may not have known what the Los Angeles abortion clinic had hired him to dispose of. He later served 71 days in jail for the improper disposal of medical waste. Society must be strict about its important standards.
....
What local authorities dealt with as a problem of solid waste disposal struck a few local residents as rather more troubling than that. They started talking to each other, and one thing led to another, and to the formation of Cradles of Love, which had the modest purpose of providing a burial for the 54 babies.The members of Cradles of Love—just a few normal walking-around middle-class Americans—called them babies, and still do. These people are opposed to abortion, in spite of the Supreme Court’s assurance in 1973 that abortions end only “potential life.” (Twenty-five years later the Supreme Court has not yet explained how a life that is merely “potential” can be ended.)
Some will say the members of Cradles of Love, who are churchgoers, have been unduly influenced by theology. Or perhaps the real culprit is biology. It teaches that after the DNA of the sperm fuse with those of the ovum a new and unique DNA complex is formed that directs the growth of the organism. It soon is called a fetus, which takes in nourishment and converts it to energy through its own distinct, unique organic functioning, and very soon it looks a lot like a baby.
....
Each baby was given a name by a participating church group. Each name was engraved on a brass plate that was affixed to each of the 54 small, white, wooden caskets made, at no charge, by a volunteer who took three days off from work to do it. Fifty clergy and four persons active in the right-to-life movement carried the caskets. Each baby’s name is inscribed on a large headstone, also provided at no charge. Fifty-four doves, provided at no charge by the cemetery, were released at the services.The ACLU trembled for the Constitution.
We hear much about the few “extremists” in the right-to-life movement. But the vast majority of the movement’s members are like the kindly, peaceable people here, who were minding their own business until some of the results of the abortion culture tumbled down a roadside embankment and into their lives.
Which is not to say that this episode was untainted by ugly extremism. It would be nice if the media, which are nothing if not diligent in documenting and deploring right-to-life extremism, could bring themselves to disapprove the extremism of the ACLU, which here attempted a bullying nastiness unredeemed by any connection to a civic purpose.
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George Will's son, Jon, has Down's Syndrome and has lead a productive life which Will talks about in a Newsweek article in 1993. Will is clearly convinced of the grievous error people make with the argument of "quality of life" because it is ultimately speculation and "we" are making that decision for "them" - those who have a challenging disability.
For a listing of the pithy bumper sticker quotes that capture ideas in brief: Click here.