Quotes & Sayings About Abortion

Children truly are the family's greatest treasure and most precious good. Consequently, everyone must be helped to become aware of the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion. In attacking human life in its very first stages, it is also an aggression against society itself. Politicians and legislators, therefore, as servants of the common good, are duty bound to defend the fundamental right to life, the fruit of God's love. — Pope Benedict XVI

Put bluntly, abortion supporters have lost the argument on the scientific level. — Nancy Pearcey

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women. — Elizabeth Blackwell

The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples. — Valerie Solanas

That is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition of her survival, yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weak and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn. — Pope John Paul II

History has shown that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, in fact, dramatically change the balance of the court in many critical areas, such as abortion, the privacy debate expansion and child pornography. — Sam Brownback

Don't confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy by itself, with abortion. Abortion is not a theological problem, it is a human problem, it is a medical problem. You kill one person to save another, in the best case scenario. — Pope Francis

All my friends are always telling me how hard it is to have kids. 'Oh, David, it's so hard.' That's not hard. I'll tell you what hard is. Try talking your girlfriend into her third consecutive abortion. Yeah, that's hard, that takes finesse. You're just inconvenienced. — David Cross

Jesus didn't fight against what was wrong. But he fought for what was right. — Ricky Maye

Human life is created in God's image, and that makes it sacred. — Colin S. Smith

I could never, ever have an abortion. — Brooke Shields

I don't think there is a good reason for an abortion, but Dr. Jasper made me really realize it was just a racket. He was just doing it for the money. He didn't care about the women. — Norma McCorvey

They credited us with the birth of that sort of heavy metal thing. Well, if that's the case, there should be an immediate abortion. — Ginger Baker

My position is that I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don't think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society. I've thought a lot about it, and my position probably doesn't please anyone. I think the government should stay out completely. I will not vote to overturn the Court's decision. I will not vote to curtail a woman's right to choose abortion. But I will also not vote to use federal funds to fund abortion. — Joe Biden

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. — Mother Teresa

And there is the matter of abortion. We must with calmness and resolve help the vast majority of our fellow Americans understand that the more than 112 million abortions performed in America in 1980 amount to a great moral evil, an assault on the sacredness of human life. — Ronald Reagan

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

From the perspective of the plan of salvation, one of the most serious abuses of children is to deny them birth. This is a worldwide trend. The national birthrate in the United States is the lowest in 25 years,2 and the birthrates in most European and Asian countries have been below replacement levels for many years. This is not just a religious issue. As rising generations diminish in numbers, cultures and even nations are hollowed out and eventually disappear.
One cause of the diminishing birthrate is the practice of abortion. Worldwide, there are estimated to be more than 40 million abortions per year.3 Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil. — Dallin H. Oaks

Abortion is not the lesser of two evils. It is a crime. It is to throw someone out in order to save another. — Pope Francis

Today, we will hear from federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, who will discuss the problem of ELF and ALF and law enforcement's reaction to their dangerous and destructive tactics. It is these tactics, particularly the widespread use of arson, which makes ELF and ALF the #1 domestic terror concern over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups. — James Inhofe

When women and families have access to reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion care, they have children when the time is right for them and build stronger families and lives. — Dennis S. Ross

It may seem somewhat ironic that the Catholic Church finds itself advocating the same position against abortion as its severest Christian critics, the Protestant fundamentalists. In fact, it is no more surprising than finding the so-called pro-life movement keeping company with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, all of whom at one time or another banned abortions. What they have in common is their belief, rooted in misogyny, that the woman's right to choose - a fundamental aspect of her autonomy - must be crushed in order to achieve what they have deemed a 'higher' religious, moral or social goal. — Jack Holland

You call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion? We call for federally-funded, partial-birth abortions at the drive-through at McDonald's. — Bill Maher

It is necessary to reaffirm our solid opposition to any direct offense against life, especially when innocent and defenseless, and the unborn child in its mother's womb is the quintessence of innocence. Let us remember the words of Vatican Council II: 'Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.' — Pope Francis

Abortion isn't a lesser evil, it's a crime. Taking one life to save another, that's what the Mafia does. It's a crime. It's an absolute evil. — Pope Francis

It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind. — Francine Rivers

If you question whether abortion should be seen as different from removing a tumor, then you must hate women. — Greg Gutfeld

If we took a moment of silence for each person lost to abortion, we would be silent for over 100 years. — Frank Pavone

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don't think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved. — Jimmy Carter

In the specific case of abortion, the matter is particularly easy in that no woman wants a late abortion. Once abortion was made legal, the age of the aborted fetus went down. The slope slipped in the other direction. If we legalize RU-486 and other similar new drugs, the age will fall to one week or less and start approaching zero. The slippery slope will slide in the other direction. The only reason we have late abortions is because we make early abortion difficult. — Garrett Hardin

Abortion is either OK or it's not. — Peggy Noonan

The abortion issue has intersected with my public life from the very beginning. — Robert Casey

Earlier this month, the Vatican's top bioethics official condemned as "reprehensible" the assisted suicide of an East Bay woman, Brittany Maynard, who was suffering terminal brain cancer and said she wanted to die with dignity. Francis didn't refer to the Maynard case specifically. While denouncing euthanasia in general, he also condemned abortion, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. — Anonymous

In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed. — Tertullian

What shall we do about the Abortion Bill?" A: "Pay it! — Pierre Trudeau

I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years, — Dan Savage

A majority of Americans oppose partial-birth abortion, and Judge Hamilton's decision flies in the face of Congress passing and President Bush signing legislation banning such horrible acts of violence. — Marc Racicot

For almost twenty years, abortion policy in America has been controlled by the courts. — Robert Casey

I wish the 50 states would break up. Lose the centralised government. More choice. How do you want to live, there's 50 different ways! You hate black people? We've a state for that. You wanna have an abortion? Here's a state. I think we should just keep breaking up countries now so they become just individuals. — Doug Stanhope

Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973. — Mike Huckabee

As soon as a Democrat or a liberal organization opens their mouth and says "We want to see this," it's going to go over the heads. And same way on the abortion debate, if they want to make a change, it is not going to come from a Republican, it's going to have to come from a Democrat. — Chuck Todd

I'm more old-fashioned than a lot of women ... I don't view abortion as just a nothing. It is stopping the process of life. — Teresa Heinz

The impulse to make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free is an old one ... When we are badly frightened, we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing some of our liberties. We did it during the McCarthy era out of fear of communism. Less liberty is regularly proposed as a solution to crime, to pornography, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to all kinds of threats. — Molly Ivins

The Lord is much like the air around us. The air is all around us, it is everywhere. Even though we can't see it, it is there, we know it is there, because we are breathing. The Lord is everywhere too, you can't see Him, but He is there, we know He is there, because we are breathing. (Page 183) — Raymond D. Reifinger III

The President must be true to his word. He must keep his faith with the folks who elected him twice. In other words, he must replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a strict constructionist. The president has a God-given opportunity to change the balance on the Supreme Court. On issue after issue - abortion, sodomy, public display of the Ten Commandments - O'Connor has sided with the court's liberal bloc. Time and again, Justice O'Connor and her colleagues have used the Constitution as an excuse to force weird social experiments on the nation. — Rick Scarborough

Motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness, and happiness as possible. — Caitlin Moran

The whole world is in the throes of a new birth. Anything done for a temporary gain would be tantamount to an abortion. — Mahatma Gandhi

Pro-life advocates don't oppose abortion because they find it distasteful; they oppose it because it violates rational moral principles. The negative emotional response follows from the moral wrongness of the act. — Scott Klusendorf

I'm against abortion. — Charles Evers

Many good people, being influenced by the bold spirit of the times, are now seeking surgery for the wife or the husband so they may avoid pregnancies and comply with the strident voice demanding a reduction of children. It was never easy to bear and rear children, but easy things do not make for growth and development. But loud, blatant voices today shout 'fewer children' and offer the Pill, drugs, surgery, and even ugly abortion to accomplish that. Strange the proponents of depopulating the world seem never to have thought of continence! — Spencer W. Kimball

If you listen to the Catholic bishops you would think that Catholics are against contraception and legal abortion, but if you ask actual Catholics, you discover that more than 90% of Catholic women use contraception and Catholic women seem to need and choose legal abortion at about the same rate as everybody else. The problem is that the backlash occupies positions of power, not that it represents the majority of people. — Gloria Steinem

People accepted the worst from each other, screaming and slapping. Divorce and abortion were never a plot option. If this was love or just inertia, Misty couldn't tell. — Chuck Palahniuk

I was raised by my great-great aunt. I was adopted within our family. My mother had me when she was, I think, 15, 16. They tried to get her to have an abortion and she refused. So, my 'mama' adopted me, which was really her great aunt, which was really my great-great aunt, who was named Viola Dickerson. I was told that my mother was my sister. — Eric Dickerson

Human life commences at the time of conception. — Landrum Shettles

Nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sexual acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and self-destruction. — Suzanne La Follette

[The Republicans] all want to see women's rights eroded and for abortion to become illegal again. — Hillary Clinton

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice
who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal
wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?. — Charles Schumer

Here's the problem for the secularist: where does the right to an abortion come from? If it comes from the state, he really can't cry foul if the state decides to revoke that right. After all, the same government that grants rights can take them away. However, most abortion-choice advocates thing the right to abortion is fundamental, meaning women have that right even if it's not respected by the state. Yet how can fundamental rights of any kind exist without a transcendent source of authority that grants them? — Scott Klusendorf

On the issue of abortion, I'm ever on the fence, or, at most, an inch or two to either side. — Victoria Moran

When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. — Ronald Reagan

First off, I never favored a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion or to overturn Roe v. Wade. — Dennis Kucinich

I believe every abortion is a tragedy. — Diane Abbott

It just so happens that people aren't doing comedy about abortion or cannibalism or waterboarding. And that to me doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't aspects of those subjects that are funny, it just means that people are too uptight. — Rob McElhenney

To forbid birth is only quicker murder. — Tertullian

Abortion ... interferes with God's plan-a plan He willed before He created the universe. — Richard Halverson

In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns. — Katherine J. Cramer

Contraceptives have a proven track record of enhancing the health of women and children, preventing unintended pregnancy, and reducing the need for abortion. — Louise Slaughter

Aristotle didn't have a problem with abortion," she says.
"Oh, well, good, that's a comfort," I say. — Deborah Meyler

Abortion is the easy way out. It's hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations. — Tony Abbott

You need to identify the values that come out of that kind of belief system, because I don't see them. All the polls I look at say, for example, that adultery is committed as much in the Bible Belt as in any other part of the country. The same goes for abortion, child abuse, spouse abuse or murder. — John Shelby Spong

Ultimately abortion takes place because there is something wrong within the culture, within the system, and not simply because this or that particular woman is seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. — Ronald Rolheiser

Anybody who's against birth control and abortion has to be a criminal idiot. — Eleanor Clark

I don't support abortion. I could never participate in one. But I think it would be a mistake to make them illegal again. — Jesse Ventura

It's all about the fungibility and money. If Planned Parenthood accesses hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and they use that for other purposes, then they can use other dollars to fund abortion. — Eric Cantor

It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will. — Margaret Sanger

No one is pro-abortion. — Barack Obama

The abortion industry can try to improve its 'messaging' all it wants. But unless abortion advocates change their devotion to abortion-on-demand, the only message Americans will receive is that the abortion industry is only really interested in improving its bottom line at the expense of the most defenseless among us. — Gary Bauer

The most brutal form of domestic violence is the violence against unborn children, and this particular bill would prohibit abortions after the fetus feels pain, which is 20 weeks and older. — Joseph Fischer

There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy. — Bernard Nathanson

Science cannot tell you whether abortion is wrong, but it can point out that the (embryological) continuum that seamlessly joins a non-sentient foetus to a sentient adult is analogous to the (evolutionary) continuum that joins humans to other species. If the embryological continuum appears to be more seamless, this is only because the evolutionary continuum is divided by the accident of extinction. Fundamental principles of ethics should not depend on the accidental contingencies of extinction.* To repeat, science cannot tell you whether abortion is murder, but it can warn you that you may be being inconsistent if you think abortion is murder but killing chimpanzees is not. You cannot have it both ways. — Richard Dawkins

I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. — Italo Calvino

Julia supposed that there was also a difference in perspective: 'The practical level was another level down [in 1960s social movements] and not so interesting. I don't know much about organizing, but I feel as though, if the reality of the situation doesn't change people's heads, then nothing's going to change their heads. Marches and those things are not the work of it. The work of it is whatever the work is. — Laura Kaplan

I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest. — Donald Miller

A group of women who valued motherhood, but valued it on their own timetable, began to make a new claim, one that had never surfaced in the abortion debate before this, that abortion was a woman's right. Most significantly, they argued that this right to abortion was essential to their right to equality
the right to be treated as individuals rather than as potential mothers. — Kristin Luker

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. — Gore Vidal

the late 1940s, hospitals in many states set up abortion committees to which a woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy could appeal.9 It was a humiliating process, which could involve multiple physical examinations and interrogations by unsympathetic doctors. — Katha Pollitt

I'm a teen distortion, survived abortion. — Marilyn Manson

Abortion is not an issue with the American people. It is a figment of your imagination if you think that this is an issue that is talked about a lot. — Dan Quayle

Abortion is black genocide ... What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? — Jesse Jackson

Senator John Kyle claiming that over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion.
Stephen Colbert: Over 90 percent, that is unbelievable ... in that it is not true. Only 3 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion. Kyle just rounded it up to the nearest 90. — Stephen Colbert

It seemed the medical establishment cared more about the principle of unfettered access to abortion than the safety of real-life women — Ann McElhinney

I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink. I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be
strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous. — Cheryl Strayed

There's a second life involved. No matter what your position is on abortion or the death penalty, you shouldn't put a pregnant woman to death. — George H. W. Bush

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. — Mother Teresa

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. — John Irving

I do not believe in abortion at will. I do not believe that if a woman just wants to have an abortion she should ... I do believe if you have an abortion you are committing murder. — Nancy Reagan

The male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage — Valerie Solanas

Although abortion has been legal nationwide for more than a quarter century, access remains difficult for many women. — David Grimes

The abortion controversy is important for what it says about our stance toward procreation and children altogether. — Leon Kass

The accusation that President Clinton cares deeply about nothing is refuted by his tenacious and guileful battle to prevent any meaningful limits on the form of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. — George Will