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Argument: Even if abortions "kill life", it can be justified as upholding a woman's life
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Supporting quotations
Judith Arcana, abortion activist, at a London seminar, October 1999 - "We – in the states – have dealt heavily, up to now, in euphemism. I think one of the reasons why the 'good guys' – the people in favor of abortion rights – lost a lot of ground is that we have been unwilling to talk to women about what it means to abort a baby. We don't ever talk about babies, we don't ever talk about what is being decided in abortion. We never talk about responsibility. The word 'choice' is the biggest euphemism. Some use the phrases 'products of conception' and ‘contents of the uterus,’ or exchange the word ‘pregnancy’ for the word ‘fetus.’ I think this is a mistake tactically and strategically, and I think it’s wrong.. And indeed, it has not worked – we have lost the high ground we had when Roe was decided. My objection here is not only that we have lost ground, but also that our tactics are not good ones; they may even constitute bad faith. 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 favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening."[1]
Anonymous Boston abortion doctor, "Confessions of an Abortion Doctor," Cheryl Alkon, Boston Magazine, December 2004 - "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."[2]
Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, "Performing Abortions," Commentary Magazine (October, 1976) - "I do think abortion is murder—of a very special and necessary sort. What else would one call the deliberate stilling of a life? And no physician involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that...legalistic distinctions among 'homicide,' 'justified homicide,' 'self-defense,' and 'murder' appear to me a semantic game. What difference does it make what we call it? Those who do it and those who witness its doing know that abortion is the stilling of a life."[3]
Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, discussing two years of research done for her 1978 book In Necessity and Sorrow; Life and Death Inside an Abortion Clinic - "There was not one [abortion practitioner] who at some point in the questioning did not say 'This is murder.'"[4]
Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, "An Abortion Rights Advocate Says He Lied About Procedure", New York Times, (February 26, 1997). - "One of the facts of abortion is that women enter abortion clinics to kill their fetuses. It is a form of killing, you're ending a life."[5]
Laurell K Hamilton Danse Macabre, 1st ed., pp. 4-5 (of 483), New York: Berkley. ISBN 0-425-20797-8. - "[Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant.]
Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet.
Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one.
Ronnie: You're pro-choice.
Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life.
Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both.
Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb."[6]
William F. Harrison, abortion doctor, from the essay Why I Provide Abortions 1996 - "No one, neither the patient receiving an abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at anytime, unaware that they are ending a life..."[7]
James T. McMahon, American Medical News (July 5, 1993) - "If I see a case...after 20 weeks, where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it because the potential is so imminently there. I think, 'Gee, it's too bad that this child couldn't be adopted.' On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is: 'Who owns the child?' It's got to be the mother."[8]
Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, as quoted in Salon Magazine, (June 27, 1997) - "I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say 'yes, it kills a fetus, but it is the women's body, and therefore ultimately her choice.'"[9]
David Zbaraz, abortion doctor, "ABORTIONIST; Doctor Joins Suit for Right to Do Operation He Hates", Washington Post, March 3, 1980 - "It's a nasty, dirty, yucky thing and I always come home angry. . .I've become very good at it. I've become one hell of an abortionist. But it's not something I tell my kids about. . . Have you ever seen one? . . I don't care what anyone say, it is not a tonsillectomy, not just any old medical procedure. It's terminating a potential human life."[10]
