Quotes about abortion

A collection of quotes on the topic of abortion, life, doing, right.

Quotes about abortion

Ronald Reagan photo

“I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Anderson-Reagan Presidential Debate (21 September 1980) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29407
1980s
Context: With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there's one individual who's not being considered at all. That's the one who is being aborted. And I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.

Matka Tereza photo
Ruth Bader Ginsburg photo

“The emphasis must not be on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Interview, Ms. (New York), April 1974

Benjamin H. Freedman photo
Camille Paglia photo

“You have a stronger case if you give due respect to the other side. An abortion should be something that is wrestled with.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)
Context: The left constantly identifies the pro-life advocates as misogynists and fanatics, but that doesn't represent most of those people. They are deeply religious and they truly believe that taking a life is wrong. If the left were to show respect for that position and acknowledge the moral conundrum of unwanted pregnancy, the opposition to abortion would lessen. We must acknowledge that people should be a little troubled by abortion. Not to acknowledge that this is a difficult decision is wrong. The procedure snuffs out a potential personality. … You have a stronger case if you give due respect to the other side. An abortion should be something that is wrestled with. And herein is the point. Though most people agree that abortion should be an option, there is something attractive about the deeply moral position of those against abortion, particularly when the other side is in a spiritual vacuum. There is nothing in kids' education anymore that tells them to revere anything. Traditional religions, with all their moral codes, are becoming increasingly attractive in light of the alternatives: the Prozac nation, or heroin, which has come back with a vengeance.

John Waters photo
Barack Obama photo

“No one is pro-abortion.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech at Benedictine University (5 October 2004)
2004

Paul Watson photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“I know what I'm about to say now is controversial, but I have to say it. This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4,000 unborn children's lives every day. That's one every 21 seconds. One every 21 seconds. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred, when we've permitted the deaths of 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision. 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love, will never strive to heal the sick, feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights. We are all infinitely poorer for their loss. There's another grim truth we should face up to: Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. This nation fought a terrible war so that black Americans would be guaranteed their God-given rights. Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some could decide whether others should be free or slaves. Well, today another question begs to be asked: How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with? I believe no challenge is more important to the character of America than restoring the right to life to all human beings. Without that right, no other rights have meaning. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

I will continue to support every effort to restore that protection including the Hyde-Jepsen respect life bill. I've asked for your all-out commitment, for the mighty power of your prayers, so that together we can convince our fellow countrymen that America should, can, and will preserve God's greatest gift.
Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (30 January 1984) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40394 · YouTube - Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Elph9CfsKs
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Barack Obama photo

“Well, I think that you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective. Answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade. But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion, because this is something that obviously the country wrestles with.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Answer to the question: "At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?" at the Saddleback Civil Forum http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/16/se.02.html with Pastor Rich Warren, (18 August 2008)
2008

Ronald Reagan photo

“It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier "separate-but-equal" decision.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Ronald Reagan photo

“As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a "criminal" so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
On the other hand, there were certain crimes where requests for leniency merely made me angry. Such crimes were, for instance, rape, or the circulation of indecent literature, or anything connected with what would now be called the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross cruelty to women or children, or seduction and abandonment, or the action of some man in getting a girl whom he seduced to commit abortion. In an astonishing number of these cases men of high standing signed petitions or wrote letters asking me to show leniency to the criminal. In two or three of the cases — one where some young roughs had committed rape on a helpless immigrant girl, and another in which a physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit abortion — I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in my power to increase the sentence. I then let the facts be made public, for I thought that my petitioners deserved public censure. Whether they received this public censure or not I did not know, but that my action made them very angry I do know, and their anger gave me real satisfaction.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VIII : The New York Governorship

Patrick Buchanan photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Kent Hovind photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Peter Dutton photo
Joe Biden photo

“It's going to be very difficult. I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it's always a tragedy, and I think that it should be rare and safe, and I think we should be focusing on how to limit the number of abortions. There ought to be able to have a common ground and consensus as to do that.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Texas Monthly interview, 2006, quoted in * 2019-06-14
Joe Biden says he does not view ‘abortion as a choice and a right’ in unearthed video
Clark Mindock
The Independent
UK
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-abortion-video-2020-campaign-roe-v-wade-choice-a8958156.html
2000s, 2006

Margaret Cho photo

“Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

Source: I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight

“Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Cecily von Ziegesar photo

“I don't eat chicken abortions!”

Source: Gossip Girl

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo

“I want to have your abortion.”

Source: Fight Club

George Carlin photo

“How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Abortion"
Back in Town (1996)
Context: Here's another question I have. How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen... 'cause chickens are decent people.

Clement of Alexandria photo
Madalyn Murray O'Hair photo

“One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times.... He is beyond human forgiveness.”

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919–1995) Atheist activist

Quoted without citation by Ted Dracos, UnGodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (2003), on her son William's rejection of atheism and conversion to Christianity and new calling as a traveling evangelist.
Attributed

Ron Paul photo
Tony Abbott photo

“The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "Abortion rate a tragedy, says Abbott" http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/16/1079199224910.html on www.theage.com.au, March 17, 2004.
2004

Timothy M. Dolan photo
Sarah Silverman photo

“I want to get an abortion. But my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Hans Arp photo
Anthony Kennedy photo
Margaret Sanger photo

“It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.”

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 2, "Women's Struggle for Freedom"

Lila Rose photo
Ray Comfort photo
Camille Paglia photo
Ron Paul photo
Tom Price (U.S. politician) photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
John Hagee photo
Kent Hovind photo
Paul A. Samuelson photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Benjamin Watson photo
Jacques Maritain photo
Herman Cain photo

“I do not think abortion should be legal in this country. Abortion should not be legal. That is clear. But if a family made the decision to break the law, that's that family's decision.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

America Live
Fox News
2011-10-21
Television, quoted in * Herman Cain: I’m Not Pro-Choice, I’m Pro-Choice On Getting An Illegal Abortion
Mediaite
2011-10-21
Alex
Alvarez
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/herman-cain-im-not-pro-choice-im-pro-choice-on-getting-an-illegal-abortion/
2011-10-23

Ann Coulter photo
Rush Limbaugh photo

“You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

The Rush Limbaugh Show
2013-01-16
Radio, quoted in * 2013-01-18
Rush Limbaugh: 'You Know How to Stop Abortion? Require That Each One Occur With a Gun'
Conor
Friedersdorf
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/rush-limbaugh-you-know-how-to-stop-abortion-require-that-each-one-occur-with-a-gun/267279/

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Anna Soubry photo
Gavin McInnes photo

“I was an atheist most of my life and now I am a God-fearing Catholic, because of the miracle of life. And I’m pro-life. Amongst my peers abortion is cool, it’s like, empowering, and they make jokes about it. Some of my best friends go, ‘I accept that it’s murder and I am pro-choice.’ That’s the world I live in.”

Gavin McInnes (1970) Canadian writer

‘Godfather of Hipsterdom’ Gavin McInnes: Feminism makes women miserable http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/23/godfather-of-hipsterdom-feminism-makes-women-miserable/ (October 13, 2013)

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it becameNew York, London or Tokyo.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 11, p. 323

Phyllis Schlafly photo

“ERA means abortion funding, means homosexual privileges, means whatever else.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

[Beth, Fouhy, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/08/25/fouhy.maloney/, A new version of the ERA, CNN.com, 1999-08-25, 2007-03-30]

Shane Claiborne photo
Bill Sali photo
Ann Coulter photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo

“I consider abortion to be murder. No-one should have the right to allow this to happen.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Turkey PM Erdogan sparks row over abortion" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18297760, BBC (June 1, 2012)

Thomas Frank photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Marjorie Dannenfelser photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Gloria Steinem photo

“I was perversely delighted to see the Catholic Church and the Vatican go after nuns because I think they made a major error. People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it’s just too much.
Their stance on abortion is also quite dishonest historically, because as the Jesuits (who always seem to be more honest historians of the Catholic Church) point out, the Church approved of and even regulated abortion well into the mid-1800s. The whole question of ensoulment was determined by the date of baptism. But after the Napoleonic Wars there weren’t enough soldiers anymore and the French were quite sophisticated about contraception. So Napoleon III prevailed on Pope Pius IX to declare abortion a mortal sin, in return for which Pope Pius IX got all the teaching positions in the French schools and support for the doctrine of papal infallibility. … My favorite line belongs to an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston. Flo Kennedy and I were in the backseat talking about Flo’s book, Abortion Rap (1971), and the driver turned around and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I wish I’d gotten her name so we could attribute it to her.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)

Margaret Sanger photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Frida Kahlo photo
Kent Hovind photo
Michele Bachmann photo

“Well, I think one thing that we can do, quite simply, is to withhold funding from Planned Parenthood. It's the largest provider of abortion in the United States. They are a billion-dollar industry. As a matter of fact, the head of Planned Parenthood in Illinois said that Planned Parenthood wants to be the LensCrafters of Big Abortion.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Terrence P.
Jeffrey
Rep. Michele Bachmann: De-Fund Planned Parenthood
CNSNews
2010-12-06
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michele-bachmann-can-t-we-minimum-start
2011-04-15
Misquoting Steve Trombley in a 2008 interview with The Wall Street Journal http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9674675 saying "I like to think of it as the LensCrafters of family planning."
2010s

Jesse Jackson photo
John Gray photo
Margaret Sanger photo
William H. Pryor Jr. photo

“I considered Roe to be the abomination because it involves abortion, involves, from my perspective, the killing of innocent, unborn children.”

William H. Pryor Jr. (1962) American judge

Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of William H. Pryor, Jr. to be Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit (June 11, 2003)

Patrick Buchanan photo
Amir Taheri photo
Alan Keyes photo
Richard Nixon photo

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Tape 407, Conversation No. 407-18, 32:08 http://nixon.archives.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape407/407-018.mp3
On Nixon Tapes, Ambivalence Over Abortion, Not Watergate http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html by Charlie Savage, The New York Times, June 23 2009, retrieved June 23 2009
1970s, Tape transcripts (1973)

Morrissey photo

“I could never really make the connection between Christian and Catholic. I always imagined that Christ would look down upon the Catholic church and totally disassociate himself from it. I went to severe schools, working class schools, where they would almost chop your fingers off for your own good, and if you missed church on Sunday and went to school on a Monday and they quizzed you on it, you'd be sent to the gallows. It was like 'Brush you teeth NOW or you will DIE IN HELL and you will ROT and all these SNAKES will EAT you'. And I remember all these religious figures, statues, which used to petrify every living child. All these snakes trodden underfoot and blood everywhere. I thought it was so morbid. I mean the very idea of just going to church anyway is really quite absurd. I always felt that it was really like the police, certainly in this country at any rate, just there to keep the working classes humble and in their place. Because of course nobody else but the working class pays any attention to it. I really feel quite sick when I see the Pope giving long, overblown, inflated lectures on nuclear weapons and then having tea with Margaret Thatcher. To me it's total hypocrisy. And when I hear the Pope completely condemning working class women for having abortions and condemning nobody else… to me the whole thing is entirely class ridden, it's just really to keep the working classes in perpetual fear and feeling total guilt.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "All men have secrets and these are Morrissey’s", interview by Neil McCormick,Hot Press (4 May 1984)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Richard Dawkins photo

“I can think of no moral objection to eating human road kills except for the ones that you mentioned like 'what would the relatives think about it?' and 'would the person themselves have wanted it to happen?', but I do worry a bit about slippery slopes; possibly a little bit more than you do.There are barriers that we have set up in our minds and certainly the barrier between Homo sapiens and any other species is an artificial barrier in the sense that its a kind of 'accident' that the evolutionary intermediates happen to be extinct. Never the less it exists and natural barriers that are there can be useful for preventing slippery slopes and therefore I think I can see an objection to breaching such a barrier because you are then in a weaker position to stop people going further.Another example might be suppose you take the argument in favour of abortion up until the baby was one year old, if a baby was one year old and turned out to have some horrible incurable disease that meant it was going to die in agony in later life, what about infanticide? Strictly morally I can see no objection to that at all, I would be in favour of infanticide but I think i would worry about/I think I would wish at least to give consideration to the person who says 'where does it end?'”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

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Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews (2009)

Jane Roberts photo
Jesse Helms photo
Margaret Sanger photo

“Our laws force women into celibacy on the one hand, or abortion on the other. [npg] Both conditions are declared by eminent medical authorities to be injurious to health.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Frederik Pohl photo