The Argument for “Choice” – Edward Tivnan
The Feminist Argument: Autonomy with a “Different Voice” – Edward Tivnan
An Equal Right to Choose – Edward Tivnan
The Price of Silence – Michele Kort
Army of God - Amanda Zackem
Difficult Choices, Positive Results - Brandi
Far Out Religious Right - The Washington Spectator
Terrorism in the Name of Christ - Kimberly Blaker
Questions and Answers - Anne Nicol Gaylor
It's Not Abortion that's offensive; It's the so called "Pro-Life" people - Joyce Arthur
Pro-Choice Quotations (Author listed by remark)
Anti-Abortion Quotations (Author listed by remark)
Links

The Argument for “Choice” – Edward Tivnan (Moral Imagination)

Pro-choice advocates do not favor abortion over birth: they simply support reproductive freedom – that is, women should have the choice to end an unwanted pregnancy.

That abortion is murder requires a logical leap that stretches the limits of the language.  “The fetus is an innocent person,” argue the right-to lifers, and as everyone – including liberals and feminist – can agree, killing an innocent person is cold-blooded murder and thus morally reprehensible.  But pro-choice advocates do not concede the fundamental principle of the right-to-life movement: that a fetus is a “person".  The fetus, especially in its earliest stages, is certainly not a person – at least not in any way that most people understand that word.  To call the fetus a person is like calling an acorn an oak, a seed a rose, a blueprint a house, cake ingredients a cake.

Personhood is a philosophical or theological issue, not a biological one.  Although the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Jews, and some fundamentalist Christian sects may sincerely believe that personhood begins at conception, certainly not all Christians and may Jews, as well as millions of others not tied to any organized religion, believe that fetuses are persons.  As Justice Blackmun noted for the Court majority in Roe, no consensus exists among theologians and philosophers for when personhood begins.

The Feminist Argument: Autonomy with a “Different Voice” – Edward Tivnan (Moral Imagination)

Many women suffer for no other reason than that they are women.  Unwanted pregnancy is a dilemma that a man can share, perhaps: sympathize with, maybe, but fully understand, never.

Feminists now recognize that abortion crystallizes the most fundamental issue of feminism – the autonomy of women.  “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body,” declared Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of birth control in the United States.  The French philosopher and patron saint of feminism Simone de Beauvoir viewed pregnancy, which she called the “slavery of reproduction,” the greatest obstacle to female liberation.

Who controls a woman’s body?  Their husbands or lovers?  The courts?  The right-to-life movement?  Is there a man (or woman) alive in our country today who would seriously claim that women do not have the right to control their bodies?  If someone did make such a claim, would anyone take him seriously?  Feminists do not want to be men, or even to be “like men”: they want only to be equal to men, to have the same rights as men, to be paid the same as men in the same jobs, to be able to choose as freely as men.  In the 1960s the increasing availability of reliable birth control made it possible for women to choose when they wanted to have a family.  A giant step toward the liberation of women, birth control did not, however, free them entirely from the dilemma of unwanted pregnancy.  No method of contraception is perfect.

Listen carefully to the hard-line opponents of abortion, examine their propaganda, catch their focus: the fetus is a person, that’s a baby in there, with a right to life.  Look at the photographs of fetuses, look at aborted fetuses.  They look like us, say the anti-abortion camp.

But there is one important factor missing in all those photographs of fetuses: the mother.  The fetus is not hanging on a hook in the nursery or suspended in space, awaiting the stork.  The fetus happens to be surrounded by its mother; it is in a very real sense part of its mother.  A woman is not merely a vehicle of birth.  No is she a warehouse for the “unborn child”, as a federal judge with a knack for metaphor recently put it, “holding it captive”.

The right-to-life movement claims to be a defender of “motherhood”.  Yet, the anti-abortion camp’s insistence that the fetus is an “independent person” devalues the first nine months of motherhood.  Without the mother a fetus cannot grow.  She nurtures and sustains the fetus.  She creates the child.

For many women, facing the issue of abortion is the first time they have had to make a decision for themselves that no one else, finally, can make.  It is their body at risk, their fetus at risk, their personal, family and financial future at risk.  In fact, women may make moral decision differently from men: they may speak in a “different voice,” as the Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan suggests in In a Different Voice, a provocative and controversial (even among feminists) book about how women grow morally.  According to her, while men look to logic and reason to help them decide what is best to do, women’s moral choices are based on “a feeling for the complexity and multifaceted character of real people and real situations.”  Faced with a moral dilemma, women, Gilligan points out, are inclined to ask not what is right or best or reasonable or the rule, but “who am I hurting?”

In 1970, Kate Michelman was a thirty-year-old mother pregnant with her fourth child when her husband announced that he was leaving her for another woman.  “I had no car, I couldn’t get credit because I had no husband, and I had three children to fee,” Michelman later told a newspaper reporter.  “I understood at that moment the kinds of choices women have to make and how they affect the very fabric of a woman’s life.”

Michelman opted for an abortion, and the hospital scheduled her for a legal abortion.  But while lying in a hospital bed awaiting the procedure she was informed that the hospital would not allow the abortion unless she had the written permission of her husband – the man who had already left her (and their fetus) for another woman!  Michelman got her abortion (the hospital tracked down her husband, who gave his permission), but she also recognized that “I had absolutely no control over my own life”.

For most women, abortion is an agonizing decision.  Something went wrong.  They had not planned to have a baby.  And what the anti-abortion forces never concede, particularly those who support contraception (and polls show that even among American Catholics 95 percent use artificial contraception), is that something goes wrong a lot of the time.  In fact, of the 6 million pregnancies every year in the United States, more than half are unintended.  Even using the pill, the most effective method of birth control, the pregnancy rate runs from 4 to 9 percent.  The highest percentage of abortion are among poor, unmarried black women, for whom pregnancy or another child can be a tragedy.

“Life is like that,” say the hard-liners.  “We all have to suffer the consequences of our actions (i.e., ordinary sexuality); life is full of contingencies which we have to cope with.”  But if one out of two pregnancies is accidental, then unwanted pregnancy is the norm and not the exception.

An Equal Right to Choose – Edward Tivnan (Moral Imagination)

Banning abortion imposes a huge burden on women only.  If women are to be equal to men, they must be as unhindered in reproductive matters as men.  A free society allows many different kinds of personal choices: control over sexual reproduction ought to be one of them.

Despite the overheated rhetoric of the right-to-life camp, most women do not have abortions for trivial reasons.  Nor do most women take their decisions to have an abortion lightly.  Usually, it is a matter of last resort; they cannot raise the child alone as a single parent, they cannot face giving up the child for adoption, they are not psychologically or financially equipped to assume caring for a severely deformed, retarded or handicapped child.  Abortion is never an easy decision.  And although that might not be apparent to those who oppose a woman’s right to end a pregnancy, if there is a right to choose to end a pregnancy it exists no matter what others might think of the reasons for that choice.  A decision must be made.  A free decision, an autonomous decision.  A choice.  How could such a process be considered immoral?  In the face of violent opposition, pro-choice advocates will continue to point out that in the United States individual moral decisions are the prerogative of individuals.  Most Americans, including those who personally oppose abortion, believe that the option of legal abortion – the choice – ought to be available.  And so far, the Supreme Court is inclined to agree.

The Price of Silence – Michele Kort (Ms. Magazine – Volume XIII, Summer 2003)

I will be adding this article soon....

Army of God - Amanda Zackem (Buzzsaw Haircut - http://www.ithaca.edu)

“I am not afraid of them. I am not afraid of the violence," he said. "I fear for my family, my children. I think if I wasn't around what they would go through."
-Dr. Barnett Slepian

On October 23,1998 Dr. Barnett Slepian, after returning home from Shabbat service with his family, where he was honoring his father who had passed away a year prior, was murdered while standing in his kitchen. It was a single bullet shot through his kitchen window, hitting the doctor in the neck and then ricocheting, almost hitting his eldest son Andy, who stood in the same room. Dr. Slepian, a gynecologist/obstetrician (or obgyn) and a fertility specialist in Amherst NY, was a doctor who not only helped deliver newborn babies but also provided to women the service of abortions.

The Army of God, a pro-life extremist group, gave out information, via the Internet, about doctors, nurses, feminists, and Planned Parenthood employees who performed abortions and/or supported them. When a member of this list was killed his or her name would be crossed off the list. Dr. Slepian was the third name with a red line through it, indicating a fatality.

"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or woman are persecuted because of race, religion, or political views that place must-at that moment-become the center of the universe."
-Eli Wiesel

A few months prior, the pro-life organization had their Spring Into Life protest in Amherst NY. Standing outside Dr. Slepian's home, his children's schools, and his office, pro-life advocators would scream and shout as his children would get off the bus from school. "Your father is a child murderer who deserves to die!" "Your father will burn in hell!"

Picketers stood outside the neighborhood schools handing out flyers of alleged "aborted fetuses" while more groups protested and harassed women going into clinics all over town.
This was not the first protest. They had been going on for years. His son Andy told me when interviewed: "They weren't allowed on the property, and have protested in front of our house for years since I can remember, but a lot during 1992-93." Because the protestors would stand outside Andy's high school, he and his brothers would have security guards watching them to make sure they would get home safely.

"They would have pins that said "Slepian Kills Children" but the protestors were never allowed to specifically put our names in ads…we used to have to take them to court," Andy said.

He also recalls a time when a car drove up next to him and his father. The window was rolled down, and the screaming began.

"There is blood on your car!" Dr. Slepian somehow managed to keep a sense of humor through out all of this. Says Andy, "Sometimes my dad would sit on the porch, videotape and wave to them."

When I asked Andy if he was ever scared or worried about his father he said: "During everything in 1993, I once told him I was worried about him and his job and he told me not to worry because no one around here would be sick enough to do something like that." Now after his father's death, Andy said that the most calming thing for him in getting through all of this is the quote that opened this essay. The murder of Dr. Slepian in my eyes goes beyond the point of pro-life vs. pro-choice, because today there is one women without a husband and four boys who will never be able to see their father again.

Today, some obgyns see in their profession a danger similar to police officers. Obgyn doctors will wear bulletproof vests to work in fear of their life. Women who are having abortions have the option of being escorted into the clinic. This is to prevent the protesters from harming the woman or blocking the entrance, and makes sure she knows that someone is there to help her through her ordeal.

Based out of Virginia and headed by Reverend Donald Spitz, The Army of God's mission is to stop and eventually outlaw abortions. Members consist of many different denominations of Christianity, such as Episcopalians and House Churchers. They believe they are on a mission to fight what they call the "New Holocaust."

The group's founder remains anonymous; this man or woman composed the Army of God manual. The manual explains that their mission is to stop abortion, by using force, including murder, and uses quotes from the bible to legitimize the terror. It even includes tips on how to make things like glue, to jam up locks, and gives recipes for turning normal household products into mini bombs. Anna Quindlen writes about this: "But Americans haven't really paid much attention to the campaign of systematic destruction being waged by this group of domestic terrorists over the past quarter century."

The manual is posted on their web page, along with this disclaimer: "The manual is complete, except for some of the appendices which, because of the lack of real free speech on the net, and the hysteria of the Federal Government in protecting the baby killing industry and persecuting anti-abortionists, have been left out."

In a recent email interview, the Reverend Donald Spitz could not be reached, but Dave Leach, the "secretary-general" of the group, explained to me that my use of the word "organization" to describe the Army of God is not quite accurate. In their response I was told, "There is no organization, not in the ordinary sense of the word, meaning a humanly organized group. The 'Army of God' is a Biblical term meaning Christians." Mr. Leach, when asked why his group feels they have the right to kill abortionists, told me, "There is no organization which coordinates such activities."

Later in the letter he told me: "There is something about serving time in jail together… that increases our respect for one another. When we look at each other behind jail bars, we think, "This guy must really love Jesus as much as I do, to be willing to lay down his freedom." Mr. Leach does not see these acts of violence as unacceptable in any way; he commends them for it. "God, who appoints the time of our death, also charges us with the responsibility to stop terror."

It is noticeable how upbeat these "soldiers" are in conversation as well as on some members web pages. Because they feel that this is a mission given to them by God they see what they are doing as a good deed with something like a religious mandate. Mr. Leach said in his letter: "Abortionists need no jury to determine their guilt."

"The right of privacy…is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
-Roe vs. Wade 1973

What this group doesn't understand is that it's not the doctor that walks into the clinic to have the abortion, it's the woman, and this is her legal right and choice. If this group is so interested in stopping abortions then perhaps they should try informing more women of their beliefs instead of killing doctors that just help with the process. My theory is that if abortion weren't legal there would be women throwing themselves down staircases, trying to miscarry or even resorting to using appliances such as clothes hangers. Legal abortion is simply safer.

It's a scary thought that because of fearing for their lives, many people are deciding against going into the obgyn field or even having an abortion. Since this is a problem in our country, security measures need to be increased around clinics and threats against doctors should not be taken so lightly. I asked Dave Leach in my letter why his group doesn't use passive aggressive mannerisms to influence the public? His response to me was: "I have been a candidate for State Representative; this year will be my 5th run, and this time I'll win."

Abortion is not an easy topic. It never has been, and it never will be. It's one that divides our country right down the middle. When dealing with an issue that bases itself on a person's faith, and God's word, conflict is bound to rise. The Army of God doesn't acknowledge that our country is a melting pot of many different people with an array of beliefs. What it comes down to is having respect for one another. The Army of God is a group in our country that is overlooked by so many and yet so very dangerous. They are dangerous in two senses: First, they will use violence of any kind to stop abortions, and secondly because they instill a fear in women and doctors, thus limiting who will have abortions and or provide them. Abortion is a legal right of women in the United States, and more than a million women choose it each year.

The murder of Dr. Slepian has impacted many nationwide, and embedded a hole in the heart of his family.

His clinic remains open.

 

Difficult Choices, Positive Results - Brandi, age 32, Baton Rouge, LA

Terrorism in the Name of Christ - Kimberly Blaker (The Right Stuff, Column, http://www.g21.net)

Among a plethora of other parallels, what do Christianity, Islam, and other world religions all have in common? An inescapable capability of manifesting and/or attracting extremists of the most lethal kind - terrorists. This has been proven time and again throughout history and continues to be revealed. The capture of Eric Robert Rudolph is just one more reminder.

Rudolph, charged with several Atlanta bombings, including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park; an office building that was home to an abortion clinic; and a gay and lesbian nightclub, proves that fundamentalist Muslim terrorists from abroad are not our only enemy, and that, in fact, religious extremism by American Christian fundamentalists is every bit as real.

Rudolph reportedly had contact with the racist Aryan Nation, also known as Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and was a Christian Identity follower. Some of his bombs even included messages from the Army of God.

An illustration of support for Rudolph's violence is found on the Army of God's web site, where, following links to news reports on Rudolph and other anti-abortion violence, the terrorists offer, "Babies deserved to be protected from baby killing abortionists and from pro-choice baby killers."

The Army of God further advocates, "99 Covert Ways to Stop Abortion," a list loaded with vicious, malicious, and criminal recommendations for terrorizing abortion clinic doctors, employees, and women seeking abortion.

"For example," the Army advances, "an innocent driver in going-home or going-to-work traffic who just happens to be in front of the abortionist in his car might need to stop quickly to avoid hitting a child who darted into the street, or some other unforeseen traffic hazard. If the abortionist were to fail to stop in time, he would cause an accident that would require the police to cite him for following too closely. It would cost him time and money, make him late for ... work and make him liable to a lawsuit. it might even cost him his insurance coverage, depending on his previous record !?!"

What else might anti-abortionists try? They can squeeze crazy glue into entry key holes; "accidentally" bulldoze buildings; or shoot out clinic windows, preferably with a "semi-automatic." Never mind that someone might be on the other side of the glass.

But far from exhaustive, the site claims that, "rescuers," as they call themselves, may be likely to get "felony convictions" regardless of whether they act violently. Therefore, the Army justifies, "the powers that be have guaranteed that the bombs and fires are not going to be just here and there every now and again, but here, there, and every- where, now and again and again and again."

The extremists admit that certain details from their manual have even been omitted from their web site because of "the hysteria of the Federal Government." One can only imagine the magnitude of what isn't included.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, causing 168 deaths, are but two more examples of such terrorism. They were influenced by the Christian Identity movement and their bombing was in retaliation of what they perceived as government wrongs against a Ruby Ridge white supremacist family and the Waco Branch Davidians.

Equally disturbing, according to the National Abortion Federation, there have been 7 murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 166 arson attacks, 82 attempted bombings/arson, 355 death threats, 125 assault and batteries, 654 anthrax threats, and 1,042 vandalizations by anti-abortionists.

But abortion providers aren't the only target of Christian terrorists. Blacks, Jews and gays and lesbians have been longtime victims of these extremists.

During the 30 year period of 1889 to 1918, it is estimated between 3,200 and 5,000 men, women, and children (mostly black) were victims of lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian movement). In 1999, there were 1,487 recorded offenses against homosexuals, three resulting in death. There were 1,606 reported anti-Semitic incidents in 2000, including several bomb threats to Jewish centers and temples.

Most telling, during the decade of 1991 to 2000, approximately 74,000 hate crimes were reported, according the FBI, in all.

Given the magnitude of fundamentalist Christian-based violence in the U.S., it's bewildering why so much emphasis has been placed on Islamic terrorism while Christian terrorism has received little acknowledgement or energy from mainstream society and our government. Certainly the tragic events of September 11, shouldn't be overlooked or neglected - but neither should the widespread terrorism within our own nation.

Questions and Answers - Anne Nicol Gaylor (Abortion is A Blessing)

Education, of course, is the answer. The antiabortionists have been allowed to blur the picture but when the focus clears, the legality of abortion will remain secure. Had the proponents of legal abortion had the access to money, to schools and churches, and to the media that the antis have had, the only proponents of a ban on abortions in this country today would be those zealots who oppose not only abortion but contraception, and in the final analysis, sex itself.

Since the controversy goes on, it may be useful to review some talking points in coping with the zealots. In fielding questions on abortion on talk shows and before civic, school and church groups, I have found the antis' questions fall into patterns. Here are some typical questions with answers that worked for me.

QUESTION: How can your group condone abortion when it is murder?

Obviously we do not regard abortion as murder. We do not equate an embryo or fetus with a human being. While we recognize that there is everything in a human embryo to produce a person, we know that substantial growth and development are necessary before any person exists. In reality everyone does distinguish between potential and actual existence. You do not insist, for example, that an acorn is an oak tree. If someone drives over an acorn in your yard, you do not rush out and exclaim, "Why did you destroy my oak tree?" Yet there is everything in an acorn to produce an oak tree except growth and development. You do not insist that the egg you ate for breakfast was a chicken, yet a fertilized egg has everything in it to produce a chicken except growth and development. If you go to the store to buy apples and are given a handful of seeds, you will not pay for apples, even though the storekeeper might argue correctly that indeed apple seeds do produce apples. Just as blueprints are not a completed building, so a human fertilized egg is not a person. A conceptus, an embryo or fetus is potential life. Birth makes babies and a great deal of growth and development must go on before a fetus can sustain life, other than parasitically.

At the end of the second month of development, and most abortions in the United States are performed before the end of the second month, an embryo is approximately an inch in length and weighs one- thirtieth of an ounce. To say that this embryo in its primitive development is a human being is an affront to honesty. Think for a moment what you would do with such an embryo if you had one. You could not rock it, or feed it, or sing to it. All that you could do would be to put it on the shelf because it is an embryo; it is not a baby. It is potential life; it is not a human being.

QUESTION: I have talked to lots of people who say abortion isn't really legal? Is abortion legal?

Yes! On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court, by ruling oppressive Texas and Georgia abortion statutes unconstitutional, legalized abortion across the country.

Although abortion may not be available in every state, it is legal in every state. The only regulation a state may make about abortion in the first three months is to require that it be done by a licensed physician. For the second three months of pregnancy, a state may, if it wishes, say abortions must be performed in hospitals, or similarly regulate conditions protecting the health of the woman. Only in the final three months of pregnancy may abortion be prohibited by state law, and even in that period a woman may have an abortion to protect her life or health.

Don't let any antiabortionist tell you differently!

QUESTION: How can you support abortion when that unborn child that is murdered might turn out to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare?

While it is possible that an aborted embryo or fetus might have turned out to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare, it is equally possible it might have turned out to be another Genghis Khan, another Adolf Hitler. As one proponent of abortion has so aptly said, the overwhelming chances are that it would have turned out to be just another Joe Blow. It is possible to speculate endlessly about what might have happened, about the nonexistent.

In our world of almost four billion persons, it is highly probable that a Beethoven or Shakespeare already exists who will never see a piano or learn to read, because the child lives in a Chicago ghetto or Manila slum or Rio de Janiero favela. The potential of millions of children already born will never be realized because of malnutrition, illness, and poverty. Antiabortionists, in their obsession with the quantity of life, ignore the quality of life. Their consuming concern for embryos rarely is paralleled by a concern for children already born.

QUESTION: You say a woman should be able to make this decision for herself. Why shouldn't the father be able to say whether or not an abortion can be done? After all, the child belongs to him, too, doesn't it?

We believe no woman should have to bear a child she does not want. Compulsory pregnancy compounds problems; it does not solve them. We are against enforced pregnancy no matter who is doing the enforcing whether it is the state, the church, or an individual man.

From a practical point of view, if a couple does not agree on something as basic and important as having a child, what kind of parents are they going to be? What kind of marriage must they have? At best, they are going to produce a half-wanted child.

And why shouldn't pregnancy be a woman's decision when she contributes so much more to the pregnancy than does the man? An ejaculation, which takes a few seconds, can not be equated fairly with nine months of gestation, and delivery. You must remember that pregnancy is not much fun. For many women, by the time they have quit vomiting they have started to bulge, and the whole process can be nine months of acute discomfort.

If a woman produced one or two eggs in her lifetime then what happened to those eggs would be of great concern, not only to her, but to society. But she doesn't produce one or two eggs, she produces about 400 mature eggs. Obviously they can't all become persons. Clearly society can afford to let her determine for herself which eggs she sees through to personhood.

QUESTION: I can see abortion in cases of rape or incest or if there is a strong possibility that a fetus is retarded or deformed but if some sixteen-year-old tart goes out and gets herself pregnant, why should she be able to have an abortion?

She should have an abortion because no sixteen-year old girl should have to bear a child. No woman, regardless of age or circumstances, should be forced to have a baby. You are viewing pregnancy and the consequent birth of a baby as punishment. What a wretched reason for a baby to be born! A teen-aged girl who becomes pregnant has a legitimate claim to anyone's sympathy, to any doctor's help. She is physically immature, mentally immature, insolvent, unhappy, her education incomplete. What sense does it make to compel her to become a mother when the safe, simple alternative of abortion is available?

QUESTION: Won't abortion mean fewer and fewer babies to adopt in this country?

Perhaps, and hallelujah! No woman should have to turn herself into a breeding machine so somebody else can adopt a child. A scarcity of babies to adopt means that so many of the formerly unadoptable-- the older children, the black children, the mixed race children, the children with handicaps--are finding homes. Also, there is new pressure to ease the ludicrous restrictions on intercountry adoptions. There are literally millions of homeless children in the world; there are also artificial, bureaucratic barriers keeping them and potential parents apart.

In relation to adoption, it is valuable to contrast our attitudes toward adoptive and natural parents. For years we have insisted that adoptive parents be not too old or too young, that they have stable personalities and even stabler incomes, that they supply references, that they survive group and individual in-depth interviews as to their suitability for parenthood. Yet, on the other hand, we have forced the thirteen-year-old girl, the mother worn out from childbearing, the penniless woman and the woman who is ill--all of whom did not want to be pregnant, none of whom could have got a foot in the door of an adoption agency--to continue pregnancies and to become parents. How ludicrous that we should maintain such lofty standards for parenthood on the one hand, and have absolutely no standards at all on the other.

QUESTION: Doesn't abortion make women sterile?

No. Improperly performed abortions may result in cervical damage, sterilization, or even death. But properly performed abortions, especially those done in early pregnancy using a local anesthetic and a suction aspirator, are very safe, several times safer for a woman than childbirth. (In 1973 the death rate for women in childbirth in the U.S. was 14/100,000, for abortion 3/100,000. The death rate for first trimester abortion was 2/100,000. Death rates can be expected to decline still further when physicians become more skilled at abortion techniques.)

QUESTION: Don't most people object to the legalizing of abortion? Doesn't the referendum in Michigan prove this?

Most of the polls done in 1974 show the country about evenly divided on the issue, with those persons favoring legal abortion a few percentage points ahead.

Antiabortionists love to refer to the 1972 Michigan referendum, in which a proposition to legalize abortion was defeated 61-39 per cent, but that particular referendum probably only proves that the Catholic Church has a lot of money. A comparison is useful here. In one of the western states a few years ago a modified ban on cans was proposed and went out to referendum. Polls showed that an overwhelming percentage of the state's voters would favor the referendum and wished to put an end to the waste of basic materials and the unsightliness of scattered cans. Then those who objected to the can-ban got busy. They launched an expensive public-relations campaign deliberately designed to cause apprehension, inferring a can-ban might mean a recession in the state's economy and a consequent loss of jobs. In the end the can-ban, whose backers had spent a small sum, failed.

In Michigan early polls showed 56 per cent of the voters favored legalization of abortion. Opponents, who hired an advertising agency, staged a three-week blitz before the referendum, saturating television throughout the state with antiabortion commercials. As an example of their diligence, they came over to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to place commercials, since Green Bay serves some of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Gory and inaccurate brochures found their way to almost every one's door; one woman reported receiving thirteen pieces by mail and personal delivery. The Catholic Church used its tax-exempt machinery openly for the political purpose of helping defeat a referendum, and of course it won. (Detroit Free Press, March 4, 1973) Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

The lesson to be learned from the Michigan referendum is that advertising campaigns, especially when they are inaccurate, blitz campaigns that are not countered, may sway voters.

It is of questionable constitutionality, of course, to put individual rights out to referendum. It's as undemocratic as letting Alabama and Mississippi decide whether blacks should vote. Basic human rights, including a woman's right to control her own reproductive life, are guaranteed by the Constitution. They are not to be decided by popular referenda or church edicts or male legislatures.

It's Not Abortion that's offensive; It's the so called "Pro-Life" people - Joyce Arthur (The Ubyssey)

Pro-Choice Quotations

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. - Florynce R. Kennedy

Controversy over the meaning of our nation's most majestic guarantees frequently has been turbulent. Abortion raises moral and spiritual questions over which honorable persons can disagree sincerely and profoundly. But those disagreements did not then and do not now relieve us of our duty to apply the Constitution faithfully.  - Harry A. Blackmun

The states are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies. - Harry A. Blackmun

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard. - Hillary Clinton

I am and always have been pro-choice, and that is not a right any of should take for granted. There are a number of forces at work in our society that would try to turn back the clock and undermine a woman’s right to chose, and [we] must remain vigilant. - Hillary Clinton

If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.  ~Michael Jay Tucker

Against abortion?  Don't have one.  ~Author Unknown

Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children.  Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day.  There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo.  But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.  ~Garrett Hardin

Of course abortion isn't right.  But it is even less right to bring unwanted children into lifelong suffering and to strip women of their choice.  Making abortion illegal is not the way to prevent it.  There is a much larger picture that starts with much deeper roots.  ~Anonymous

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity:  a form of rape by the State.  ~Edward Abbey

Seventy-seven percent of anti-abortion leaders are men.  100% of them will never be pregnant.  ~Planned Parenthood advertisement

The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces: what they want is control.  Control over behavior: power over women.  Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities. - Ursula K. Le Guin

"Make no mistake. This clearly is an issue of personal freedom -- not one of morality. Morality cannot be legislated. Morality is clearly a matter of personal choice. Personal choice can be limited and will be limited unless thinking women and men raise our voices against those who wish to take away our freedoms." - Melissa Etheridge

Anti-Abortion Quotations

"No abortions.  No exceptions." - Paul DeParrie

"Pro-life women using an oral contraceptive are committing abortions upon themselves." - Army of God

"Now you want to give contraceptives to poor women.  Where are we going to get men for the armed forces?  It's a good way to destroy an army." - Gordon Roselip (Remark made during his term as state senator, Wisconsin).

"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Dec. 30, 1981 (Who was it that talked about having a wall between church and state? That's right, Thomas Jefferson...but what the hell did that guy know?)

"It is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism-everything that the Bible condemns."--Pat Robertson, on Planned Parenthood (funny, I didn't know Planned Parenthood suggested sex with animals!)

"I would have said yes to abortion if only it was right. I mean, yeah it's right. Well no it's not right that's why I said no to it."-- George W. Bush, South Carolina, February 14,2000

All of these guys are motivated by their Christian doctrine to prevent the slaughter of innocents. Which is a little puzzling, given that Yahweh specifically sanctioned infanticide more than once in the Old Testament.

And a tumult will rise among your people, and all of your fortresses will be ruined, just as Shalman ruined Beth-Arbel in a day's battle. Mothers will be dashed to pieces with their sons. Hosea 10:14

Samaria will be desolated, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword, their infants will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. Hosea 13:16

Their infants will be dashed to pieces right before their eyes. Their houses will be ruined and their wives raped. Isaiah 13:16

Then again, nobody really gives a tinker's damn what the Bible says anyway. People just take little pieces from the book whenever it suits them, and ignore the rest.

For all sorts of scary, homophobic, racist, anti-abortion quotations from some of the top leaders in the anti-abortion movement (some of them funding our dear George W. Bush's re-election - come on, like you didn't know that was the first thing on his agenda), see the following sites:

www.armyofgod.com - this one is truly frightening.  They also have a page devoted to aborted fetuses that they've given names to, like Tommy and Sue.  Of course, if Tommy or Sue are gay, black or non-Christian, the Army of God does not want you to live.  I'm sure God is pretty pissed that this group of zealots is using God's name in vain.

www.godhatesfags.com - yep, the home of Fred Phelps, the original homophobic, religious zealot who can find passages in his bible that you can't find in yours!  He really hates gays, non-Christians, pro-choice supporters, non-whites, women, and any one that isn't, well, just like him.  Oh, yeah, and he is also using God's name in vain.  It's ironic that all of these fanatics like to use God's name to soften the blow of the extreme hate in their message (screw that part in the bible about love your neighbor - God really didn't mean that part).

www.patrobertson.com - this guy has hopes of running our country.  Thank God (yes, thank you, God), for not allowing this hate-filled preacher man any where near the position of head of our country.  But, alas, he is best friends with George Bush - and we know where that is going....

http://www.cbn.com - the Christian Broadcasting Network.  Talk about making one feel bad for being a Christian.

http://cc.org - the Christian Coalition.  Using your donations to help fund the obliteration of all things sexual!!!

www.thetruthaboutgeorgebush.com - straight from our president.  Checks and Balances can only hold out for so long, folks.  Get out, vote, protest, support those who support our rights!!!!

Links:

American Civil Liberties Union www.aclu.org