A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of
his soul.
Solomon, in Proverbs 18:7.
Anti-Life Philosophy.
Progressive activists do not needlessly complicate the various
aspects of our philosophies like anti-progressives do, with their
bureaucratic gibberish and misleading terms that hide the truth. In
fact, our philosophies are so simple and elegant that they can be
summarized in just a few words.
The Purposes of Sloganeering.
Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon;
instead of principles, slogans; and, instead of genuine ideas, bright
ideas.
American writer Eric Bentley.[1]
The Definition of "Slogan."
A slogan is an attractive or catchy phrase that represents a
prepackaged idea or set of ideas. Its purpose is to allow a person to
summarize or 'buy into' a particular position without critically
examining it or thinking about it.
People unthinkingly accept slogans for two reasons: (1)
because they do not want to think about the issue they are supporting,
or (2) because they do not want to be seen as backwards or reactionary
by questioning the slogans, even if they do not fully understand them.
People also use slogans for two reasons: (1) to conceal their
ignorance of the topic being discussed, or (2) to divert attention away
from the topic being discussed because they know that their moral or
ethical position is weak.
It therefore logically follows that the density of slogans used by a
person or movement is inversely proportional to their knowledge of the
topic and the strength of the moral position that they support.
The Anti-Life "Bumpersticker Mentality."
Pro-life activists have been debating anti-lifers for decades under
conditions varying from a street corner in front of an abortion mill to
a fully-equipped television studio.
These debaters have identified a fatal and recurring Achilles heel in
anti-life debating tactics. Whatever the position of the anti-lifers,
and whatever their philosophy pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia,
pro-infanticide, pro-pornography, or pro-pedophilia they will base 90
percent of their argumentation upon about 30 sloganistic points, each of
which is fundamentally flawed.
Through the years, anti-life forces have distilled these ideas into
catchy slogans. Every pro-life activist has heard the standard chants,
including "Woman's body, woman's choice," and "Keep your
laws off my body!"
Abortionist Warren Hern captures the essence and the primary purpose
of slogans perfectly in his book Abortion Practice;
"Television interviews, in particular, should focus on the public
issue involved (right to confidential and professional medical care,
freedom of choice, and so forth) and not on the specific details of the
abortion procedures."[2]
The Psychology.
The psychology behind the frequent use of slogans and chants can be
outlined very easily.
When an anti-lifer is confronted with facts that simply cannot be
refuted, his only possible course of action is to try to divert
attention from the core issues and to appeal to other non-thinkers by
employing a cascade of Newspeak ("feel-good" words) and
slogans. Therefore, it is almost always impossible to discuss a
life issue with a committed anti-life activist without having him resort
to slogans.
This is the essence of the anti-life "bumpersticker
mentality."
In many cases, anti-lifers will resort to slogans right at the
beginning of a formal debate if they are particularly inept or very
badly prepared. This is the only logical recourse for a person who is
attempting to defend an indefensible position.
In extreme cases, an anti-life speaker in a television or radio
discussion sometimes joined by sympathizers in the audience will begin
to loudly chant slogans when he realizes that he is obviously outmatched
in a debate. This type of incident really strikes a responsive chord in
an audience; everyone seems to be pro-life after such a display, perhaps
because they are embarrassed to identify with the anti-life position.
Even the most apparently lucid and logical pro-abortionists will lose
all capability for rational thought if they are compelled to address the
subject of prenatal killing.
The Deadly Danger in Accepting Slogans.
Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Despite
their fallen nature, people are naturally suspicious of undisguised evil
and will reject it unless they are insane or particularly weak.
This is why evil must be attractively packaged for general public
consumption. If the bare truth behind abortion, euthanasia,
homosexuality, and pornography were common knowledge, nobody in their
right mind would accept them as societal goods.
However, people will accept these evils if they are 'dressed
up' in the pretty and colorful clothes of "tolerance," "nonjudgmentalism,"
"freedom," and "diversity."
There is a great danger in accepting evil, no matter what its surface
appearance may be. If a person 'buys into' enough slogans, he begins to
accept the wider philosophy behind them without ever examining its true
nature. Eventually someone will ask him to outline or defend his
position, and he will respond by using slogans, because he has not
thought out the implications of his new beliefs. Once this happens, he
has a vested interest in retaining the anti-life position, and begins to
construct an elaborate psychological defense system that helps shield
him from logic and reality.
Nobody would be foolish enough to pay $50,000 for a 'black box' whose
contents were completely unknown. However, buying slogans is precisely
the same thing except, in this case, the 'payment' is infinitely more
valuable than mere money.
It is the person's soul.
A person will most certainly lose his soul if he accepts
enough slogans, because he will eventually be numbed from seeing reality
and will also gradually lose the ability to discern right from wrong.
Examples of Sloganeering.
Some examples of pro-abortion sloganeering help to illustrate the
above points.
Kathy Keeton is president and co-founder of Omni Magazine,
which bills itself as "The world's leading consumer science
magazine."
This claim would lead one to believe that the magazine's writers and
especially its president would carefully research issues before
commenting upon them, in the interest of passing on accurate information
to readers.
In her book Woman of Tomorrow, Keeton rationally discusses a
wide range of subjects ranging from adrenogenital syndrome to X
chromosomes. But when she writes a few paragraphs about abortion, she
loses control and crams several slogans into a single sentence:
"For all the noise and violence we're hearing from the antiabortion
forces today, it's clear that these people do not represent the majority
and should have no right to force their opinions on others."[3]
No prizes for guessing where Keeton stands on abortion! Notice that
she doesn't really say anything in this sentence; she is trying
to divert attention from the central issue of baby slaughter.
And people say that scientists should keep emotion and speculation
out of their
research ...
It is relatively easy to uncover the pro-abortion position of
anti-life writers and debaters even when they are speaking primarily on
unrelated topics; simply look or listen for the run-on sentences and the
sudden disintegration in grammar when they switch to the topic of
abortion. The contrast is stark indeed.
Speaking of disintegration, some organizations and individuals have
devolved in their thinking to the point that they express themselves in
terms of nothing but slogans.
The undisputed sloganeering champion is the Revolutionary Communist
Party of the United States (RCP). Abortion is one of the favorite topics
of its propaganda weekly Revolutionary Worker. One typical
passage reads "Women must have the right to choose! No forced
reproduction no forced sterilization! Women are NOT incubators! Fetuses
are NOT children! Abortion is NOT murder! Outlawing abortion was and IS
a Nazi program! Break the chains! Unleash the fury of women as a mighty
force for revolution!"[4]
This type of rhetoric makes a person sweat just from reading
it!
As demonstrated by the RCP, pro-abortionists sometimes rattle off
slogans one after the other, rapid-fire, without even pausing to take a
breath. The purpose of this type of machine-gun delivery is to 'charge'
the emotions of an audience while never allowing its individual members
the time they need to think about what is being said. All that is
perceived and remembered are the slogans and the anger and indignation
radiated by the speaker.
For example, Ellie Smeal of the Fund for a Feminist 'Majority'
presented an 'open talk' to President Bush at the 1991 National
Organization for Women (NOW) conference in New York City, at which she
was almost incoherent with indignation most of the time; "Why do
you hate women? How many women died today, Mr. Bush? ... We don't think
the public knows the Family Planning clinics are closed. We don't think
they know we've got a Ceaucescu sitting in the White House. In fact I
think we should use that word because this is forced breeding. What else
is there, did we all bemoan what happened there? We're doing the same
thing, the Ceaucescus are right here today. We have forced pregnancy
..."[5]
How to Practice Rebuttals.
Introduction.
If a pro-lifer develops the ability to quickly refute slogans, he
will leave his anti-life opponent with no defense whatsoever. Since
euphemisms and slogans are an integral part of the anti-life mentality,
and since all anti-lifers resort to them routinely, every pro-life
activist should be able to identify and debunk them immediately.
How to Practice: An Overview.
The best way to learn how to rebut slogans is to go through a
four-step practice program as shown below.
(1) Study the pro-life rebuttals to pro-abortion slogans contained
in this
chapter.
(2) Use the Debate Drill Sheet (Figure 16-2) to practice rebuttals.
(3) Practice debating with a pro-life friend who is playing the
'devil's
advocate' (i.e., the pro-abortionist).
Finally,
(4) Engage in actual debate with real live pro-aborts.
The First Steps.
The first and second steps of the learning process take the most time
and effort. After reading and studying the rebuttals to pro-abortion
slogans that are contained in this chapter, look at Figure 16-1 (the
list of popular pro-abortion slogans) and Figure 16-2 (the Debate Drill
Sheet).
FIGURE 16-1
THE MOST POPULAR PRO-ABORTION SLOGANS
Pro-Abortion Slogan
Slogans that Avoid the Issue by Focusing on Freedom.
(1) "Freedom of choice!"
(2) "Abortion is my Constitutional right!"
(3) "Abortion is perfectly legal."
(4) "You can't legislate morality!"
(5) "Don't foist your morality off on me!"
(6) "Who will decide you or the State?"
(7) "Abortion should be a decision between a woman and her
doctor."
(8) "If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me
with a child?"
(9) "Pro-family, pro-child, pro-choice."
Slogans that Avoid the Issue by Portraying the Woman as a Victim.
(10) "Right to Life, that's a lie! You don't care if women
die!" (11) "Abortion
is safer than
childbirth."
(12) "No mandatory motherhood!"
(13) "What about rape? Incest? Deformities?"
(14) "Every child a wanted child!"
(15) "Outlawing abortion will create a new class of
criminals!"
(16) "Banning abortion discriminates against poor women."
(17) "We are being oppressed by lavishly-funded anti-choice
groups."
Slogans that Avoid the Issue by Employing Misleading Metaphysical
Arguments ('Mystagoguery').
(18) "Woman's body, woman's choice!"
(19) "We really don't know when life begins."
(20) "The fetus isn't really human or a person."
(21) "We're not pro-abortion we're 'pro-choice'."
(22) "Prayerfully pro-choice."
(23) "Abortion is a [complex, difficult, agonizing]
decision."
Slogans that Avoid the Issue By Attacking Pro-Life Activists.
(24) "You anti-choice fanatics do not represent the
mainstream."
(25) "Pro-choice is in the majority."
(26) "You're all against birth control."
(27) "Anti-choice fanatics hate their own sexuality."
(28) "You're all anti-woman. All you care about is the
fetus."
(29) "You're inconsistent because you're for the death
penalty."
(30) "You're inconsistent because you're all warmongers."
(31) "You people are all lawbreakers."
(32) "Anti-choice people are violent fanatics."
(33) "You anti-choice people are single-issue fanatics."
(34) "Men have no right to speak out against abortion."
(35) "Hitler and his Nazis were anti-choice, too."
FIGURE 16-2
DEBATE DRILL SHEET
[A medium text size on your computer's 'view'
setting is recommended, otherwise, the tables may be discombobulated.]
#1) 21 >
19 > 12
> 7 >
30 > 13
> 1 > 34
#2) 18 >
24 > 14
> 27 >
8 > 29
> 35 > 3
#3) 13 >
9 > 29
> 34 >
21 > 5
> 31 > 25
#4) 27 >
3 > 21
> 12 >
24 > 35
> 2 > 17
#5) 4 >
22 > 3
> 26 >
20 > 13
> 8 > 11
#6) 15 >
29 > 12
> 4 >
34 > 10
> 17 > 28
#7) 2 >
15 > 10
> 18 >
20 > 4
> 30 > 33
#8) 17 >
31 > 2
> 30 >
6 > 22
> 1 > 25
#9) 5 >
23 > 28
> 19 >
7 > 24
> 6 > 22
#10) 12 >
33 > 26
> 23 >
19 > 32
> 4 > 11
#11) 1 >
20 > 28
> 31 >
14 > 35
> 32 > 26
#12) 11 >
23 > 20
> 4 >
9 > 14
> 2 > 25
#13) 16 >
6 > 29
> 11 >
1 > 7
> 18 > 23
#14) 32 >
8 > 15
> 1 >
33 > 5
> 16 > 27
#15) 27 >
16 > 13
> 33 >
6 > 14
> 35 > 32
#16) 25 >
34 > 18
> 26 >
8 > 17
> 21 > 5
#17) 3 >
7 > 10
> 22 >
9 > 28
> 24 > 30
#18) 16 >
1 > 31
> 3 >
10 > 15
> 19 > 9
Each of the lines shown on the Debate Drill Sheet represents about
thirty minutes of an actual debate. The numbers in the boxes represent a
sequence of anti-life arguments which correspond to the numbers in
Figure 16-1, the listing of the most popular anti-life (pro-abortion)
slogans.
As the Debate Drill Sheet shows, a pro-life debater will usually be
led on a nearly random path of pseudo-logic by the pro-abortionist.
Begin with the first line on the Debate Drill Sheet, reading from
left to right. Formulate your response to the appropriate pro-abortion
slogans as you go along. When you have finished replying to the first
slogan, check the section (or chapters) on that specific slogan to see
if you have covered all of the points you wanted to. Then proceed to the
next slogan.
By the time you have finished all of the lines on the Debate Drill
Sheet, you will have practiced rebutting each pro-abortion slogan four
times and will have taken the most important steps towards becoming an
effective pro-life debater.
Chapter Overview.
The remainder of this chapter examines the most popular anti-life
(pro-abortion) slogans.
A cursory examination reveals that the primary purpose of every
one of these slogans is to divert attention away from the grisly
reality of the issue being discussed abortion.
All pro-abortion slogans attempt to divert attention by one of four
primary mechanisms;
(1) by focusing on accepted values such as freedom and justice;
(2) by portraying women as helpless victims;
(3) by using misleading metaphysical arguments that needlessly
complicate
the issue ('mystagoguery'); and
(4) by attacking pro-lifers individually or in general (ad hominem
attacks).
Those slogans marked with an asterisk (*) in Figure 16-1 are commonly
used by members of the pro-euthanasia movement as well.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #1
"We demand the freedom to choose!"
An Ideal Slogan.
"Freedom to Choose" is an ideal slogan. Freedom is what
this country was founded for, and remains our basic guiding principle.
Who could be against 'choice,' freedom and apple pie?
The "freedom to choose" slogan is short, catchy, and
appeals to the patriot in all of us. It is constantly used to sell
products made by major manufacturers ("America's Choice!"
"The Right Choice!" "The Choice for Today!").
The Purpose of the Slogan.
This slogan has two sides to it. While appealing to the lover of
freedom in all of us, the pro-abortionists simultaneously imply that
pro-life activists are somehow anti-freedom and anti-American by calling
them "anti-choice."
However, this slogan is promoting anarchy, not "choice." If
one took the slogan "Freedom of Choice" at face value, the
"Freedom to Choose" supersedes all other freedoms. Clinic
bombers could claim the "Freedom to Choose" bombing clinics.
Rapists could claim the "Freedom to Choose" rape. Those who
dislike homosexuals could claim the "Freedom to Choose"
beating up sex perverts.
Many pro-abortionists will be sharp enough to stress that the above
examples involve a victim. This gives the pro-lifer the opportunity to
stress that abortion has a victim, too and death by dismemberment or
slow salt-poisoning is a far worse fate than being raped or beat up.
Conclusions.
The logical conclusion is that, in order to avoid total anarchy, all
choices cannot be legal or protected as a right.
In the United States, we have more than 250,000 laws, orders, and
ordinances of every type governing activities from parallel parking to
capital murder, and each one of these restrictions limits our
"Freedom of Choice" to some extent.
When seen in this light, the slogan "Freedom of Choice"
loses all of its allure and practical meaning.
Pro-lifers are "pro-choice" too when it comes to getting
pregnant. However, we can never uphold the right to kill someone else.
And that is the real meaning of "pro-choice:" Anything
goes, even murder!
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #2
"Abortion is my Constitutional right!"
Really?
This pro-abortion slogan, like most others, uses word association in
an attempt to link the grisly and cowardly act of abortion with a
document that is hallowed by almost all Americans: The Constitution of
the United States. The tacit statement made by this slogan is that
anyone who opposes abortion also somehow opposes the United States
Constitution. In fact, many pro-abortion groups, including Planned
Parenthood, have flatly stated in their propaganda advertisements that
pro-life activists are literally "attacking the
Constitution."[6]
An Effective Response.
Some pro-life debaters carry a miniature booklet that contains a copy
of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the purpose
of tripping up pro-abortionists who employ the "Constitutional
right" slogan.
They wave this little book in the air and challenge the pro-abortion
debater to show them where in the Constitution or its Amendments the
so-called 'right' to kill another person is mentioned. The pro-lifer may
also request that any member of the audience show or tell them where the
words "abortion" or "privacy" are located in the
Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
If the "right" to abortion does exist in the
Constitution, why wasn't it discovered until nearly two centuries after
the document was written? Could it be that all of the hundreds of
Federal and state government agencies missed it for all of those years?
Is it really rational to assume that thousands of competent judges
missed it as well? And why did the United States Supreme Court find
itself unable to find exactly where in the Constitution this 'right' was
stated? Finally, If there is a 'constitutional right to abortion,' why
has the Supreme Court backed away from this position with its Webster,
Rust and Casey decisions?
In 1973, the Court had miraculously discovered in the Constitution a
sweeping new right that had gone unnoticed by Congress, the legislatures
of all 50 states, all previous Supreme Court Justices, and everyone else
for 197 years.
Roe v. Wade stated, in effect, that not one of the fifty
state legislatures had ever understood the Constitution correctly in the
area of abortion.
Of course, in 1973, the good Justices were a just a bit foggy about
just where in the Constitution this shiny new right could be
found Justice Blackmun said that "We feel that the right [to
abortion] is located in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal
liberty," but it might be instead "... in the Ninth
Amendment's concept of personal liberty."
This unseemly thrashing around in search of an abortion right that
had heretofore remained undetected for more than 200 years was
subsequently exposed by the Legal Times; "Looking back on
that argument, [Sarah Weddington] laughs as she recalls that Justice
Potter Stewart asked her where in the Constitution she found the right
[to abortion] for which she had so fervently argued. "Any place we
find it will be okay with you, right?" Stewart asked Weddington."[7]
Not only was there no constitutional basis for the abortion
"right," but the very case set up by the pro-abortionists was
phony. Norma McCorvey ("Jane Roe") claimed that she was raped,
but later admitted that she lied. This incident demonstrates how rare
the real "hard cases" really are. Pro-abortion author Marian
Faux acknowledged that "It certainly was not [Sarah] Weddington's
first choice to use a kind of trumped-up defendant, but if no one else
turned up, she realized it might be her only option."[8]
The pro-abortionist may acknowledge that the 'right to abortion' is
not explicitly stated in the United States Constitution, but that the
Supreme Court nevertheless extrapolated it from existing rights
(primarily the 'right to privacy'). The pro-lifer may then point out
that the Justices did not even know where to find either of these
rights.
When the Supreme Court overturned a Connecticut law prohibiting the
sale or distribution of artificial birth control devices with its 1965 Griswold
decision, Justice Potter Stewart, in his dissent, said that "With
all due deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the
Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case
ever before decided by this Court."
Rights Bestowed By a Tiny Minority.
Seven Male Judges.
The so-called "Constitutional right to abortion" was
created by a tiny minority (seven men) in what both pro-life and
pro-abortion legal scholars widely deride as the most badly researched
and sloppily written Supreme Court decision of all time Roe v. Wade.
This decision was written not to correct some civil rights violation
or to adhere to Constitutional standards. It was written purely to
placate the Neofeminists.
The atrociously-written opinion states that the abortion 'right' is
based upon the 'right to privacy' found in the Fourteenth Amendment (the
Fourteenth Amendment, by the way, was written at the time most states
had strict anti-abortion laws, and it did not mention abortion at all).
The pro-life debater should ask if his or her opponent can find this
"right" anywhere in the Constitution or its Amendments.
Tearing Down the 'Right to Kill.'
In any case, the landmark decision Webster v. Reproductive Health
Services, handed down by the Supreme Court in July 1989, invalidated
the concept of an unfettered 'Constitutional right to abortion.' This
'super-right' simply no longer exists.
Ultimately, pro-abortionists will try to dress up baby-killing in the
patriotic, freedom-loving phrase "right to choose." When this
happens, the pro-lifer should ask them when they have ever heard of a
baby choosing to die!
If everyone has a Constitutional right to control their own bodies,
what about the right of the baby to control his or her fate? Perhaps we
could make up our own slogan to counter the pro-abortion one;
RIGHT TO CHOOSE, THAT'S A LIE!
BABIES DON'T CHOOSE TO DIE!
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #3
"Abortion is perfectly legal!"
Chills!
This slogan should send chills up and down the spine of any American
who possesses a sense of history.
For centuries, killers have hidden behind the law to perpetrate their
atrocities. The person who is making this statement is echoing the words
spoken by Adolf Hitler more than half a century ago when he began to
exterminate Gypsies and the handicapped.
Exposing the Weaknesses.
A person who uses this slogan is making the fallacious assumption
that whatever is legal is moral. This attitude, of course,
springs from the Humanist belief that there is no God, and that the
highest moral standard is the legal framework constructed by man. For
the Humanist, there can be no "higher law."
A pro-lifer can expose the weakness of the "perfectly
legal" argument by pointing out that, many times in the past, man's
laws have just not been good enough. They have been used to implement
genocide, and they have been used to grease the skids for the
extermination of many groups of people considered to be
"inconvenient."
Good Questions to Ask.
The pro-lifer can use the principle of parallelism (described in
Chapter 29, "Debate Tactics") to trip up his opponent by
asking one or more of the following questions;
• "Do you approve of the slaughter of Jews in Nazi
concentration camps? After all, that was perfectly legal under German
law. The Reichstag [German legislature] legalized the wholesale
killing of Jews and others in 1938."
• "Do you approve of the condition of slavery that existed
in this country before the Civil War? After all, owning Black people
was perfectly legal the Supreme Court said so in its Dred Scott v.
Sanford decision of 1857, a decision, by the way, that was never
reversed."
• "Do you approve of apartheid in South Africa? After all,
that is perfectly legal under South African law."
If the pro-abortionist also supports homosexual 'rights' (a virtual
certainty), the pro-lifer may also ask;
• "Do you approve of "discrimination" against
homosexuals? After all, the Supreme Court recently held in its Bowers
v. Hardwick decision that such 'discrimination' is legal."
It is curious indeed that the same pro-abortionists who use the
"perfectly legal" slogan usually have no compunction about
breaking the law if it advances their own cause. Try asking them their
opinion of the hundreds of thousands of women who broke the law every
year by getting abortions before 1973. If they support these women, they
are being inconsistent if they also imply that anything that is legal is
"settled."
Those people who are immoral and/or break the law always seem to know
their own rights to the very last letter while systematically
violating the rights of everyone else who does not agree with them.
Don't Let Genocide Happen Here!
The pro-life movement has truly lost the battle for life if the
American public begins to think like the pro-abortionists. After all, if
a person can admit that preborn babies are human beings and that
it is all right to kill them when it is legal then no category of person
is safe any more.
Genocide is right around the corner!
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #4
"You can't legislate morality!"
The Central Argument.
Ignoring Realities.
Any person who uses this slogan is extremely naive about the
realities of living in a society.
Of course people can legislate morality! We do it all the
time! Legislating morality is the primary intent of every existing or
proposed law. Legislating morality extensively is absolutely essential
to the survival of any society.
The Purposes of This Slogan.
What a person who uses the "legislating morality" slogan is
really saying is this: "I don't want anything to interfere with the
practice of my immorality!"
A purpose of this slogan which is used by virtually all anti-life
groups is to try to cast abortion, euthanasia, pornography and other
issues as Church/State conflicts. In summary, the thinking behind the
slogan asserts that anyone who tries to outlaw some immoral act is doing
so out of a purely religious motivation. Thus, such persons are trying
to establish a religious belief as the law of the land, and such
activity is (of course) blatantly unconstitutional.
Anti-lifers are also using this slogan to nurture a residual
anti-Catholic bigotry in some people. The "legislating
morality" slogan tries to convince such people that the Church is
attempting to control society, and that the inevitable result of this
meddling (if it is not opposed by "freedom-loving Americans")
will be an oppressive, brutal dictatorship run by the Pope and/or grim
fundamentalist preachers, where any behavior that does not comply
strictly to Biblical standards will be dealt with by barbaric
punishments such as stoning and dunking.
If this seems far-fetched and paranoid, consider the statement by
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) General Counsel Julianne Ross
Davis, who attacked the American Family Association after it opposed NEA
funding of obscene and sacrilegious art; "The American Family
Association has a 24-point political agenda it would like to see
attained by the year 2000. It includes the elimination of democracy,
elimination of public schools, advocates that astrologers, adulterers,
blasphemers, homosexuals, and incorrigible children be executed,
preferably by stoning. That's one of our enemies. This is true."[9]
Anyone who would like to see the kind of world that anti-lifers
allege will evolve with Christians in control should read the propaganda
classic The Handmaid's Tale. Those who possess strong stomachs
and low blood pressure should see the movie, which has been used in
pro-abortion fundraisers all over the country.
The Christian Basis for Legislating Morality.
In the United States, there are more than 250,000 laws and ordinances
in force, representing more than 10,000 different local, city, county,
state, and Federal jurisdictions. Every one of these
quarter-million laws makes a moral judgement that certain behavior is
not to be tolerated from murder, espionage, and forcible rape to
double-parking and running stop signs.
Most of our country's important laws are based on the Ten
Commandments and Judeo-Christian tradition, and many of these directly
legislate morality for the good of the individual and society.
As the United States Supreme Court majority declared in its McGowan
v. Maryland decision, "Nearly every criminal law on the books
can be traced to some religious principle."
A few examples;
•Thou Shalt Not Kill: laws against murder, attempted murder,
manslaughter, negligent homicide, attempted suicide, mutilation of
both living and dead persons, possession of unregistered firearms,
drunkenness, drunken driving, reckless endangerment, kidnapping, and
use of illegal or dangerous drugs.
•Thou Shalt Not Steal: laws against robbery, fraud, shoplifting,
stealing, larceny, theft, and embezzlement.
•Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: laws against libel, slander,
and perjury (lying under oath).
Justice Potter Stewart's common-sense approach in McRae v.
Matthews summed up the situation: "That the Judeo-Christian
religions oppose stealing does not mean that a State or the Federal
Government may not, consistent with the Establishment Clause, enact laws
that prohibit larceny."[10]
It is very interesting to watch the reaction of a pro-abortionist who
has been challenged to name a single law that does not
legislate morality to some extent!
What About 'Anti-Discrimination' Statutes?
Other laws, established for the protection of certain classes of
people, impose a specific morality on society in general. Examples
include anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, and a particular bone
of contention is so-called 'gay rights' legislation.
'Gay rights' laws impose on society a morality which most people
consider repugnant and invalid, as evidenced by eight recall referenda,
including Oregon's successful ballot measure to overturn Governor Neil
Goldschmidt's Executive Order banning discrimination against
homosexuals. Why don't the anti-life people complain about the injustice
of having a certain (im)morality thrust upon the public with the force
of law?
Obviously, they don't complain because the morality being imposed in
this case is either their "morality" or a
"morality" that they agree with!
This is a classic case of the anti-life 'double standard.'
Anti-lifers only object if Christians try to foist Christian morality
off on them while the anti-lifers are simultaneously trying to
impose their immorality on us (not to mention pushing
their immorality on the hundreds of millions of preborn babies that they
have killed worldwide)!
Anti-Christian Bigotry.
One of the most common tactics used by the anti-lifers is to paint
the pro-life movement as purely Catholic. In this manner, they can then
assert that banning abortion is a breach of church/state separation, and
would be (in the case of abortion) foisting off one religious viewpoint
regarding when life begins on an unfortunate and unwilling populace.
Chapter 62 of Volume II includes a figure with excerpts from early
meetings of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Some of
the quotes made by the founders of this organization demonstrate beyond
the shadow of a reasonable doubt their intense hatred of religion in
general and Catholics in particular. These quotes outline a strategy
that has been used by NARAL and others very successfully to paint all
Catholics as anti-American foreigners who want to subjugate all decent
people and make them toe the Papist line.
The pro-abortionists, while decrying bigotry themselves, are clearly
the most virulently bigoted people of all. They mock and ridicule
fundamentalists and Catholics constantly, and then turn around and
snivel about bigotry against 'people of color' and homosexuals.
In any case, the pro-life movement is comprised of leaders and people
from every faith and some from no faith at all! Some examples;
•Methodists Paul Ramsey, Stanley Haverwas, Albert Outler, and
Donald
Wildmon;
•Lutherans Richard Neuhaus and John Strietelmeir;
•Congregationalists Harold O.J. Brown;
•Jews Rabbi Chaim Lipschitz, David Novak, Hadley Arkes, David Bleich,
and Baruch Brody;
•Atheists Nat Hentoff (The Village Voice) and Christopher
Hutchins (The
Nation).
For a more complete explanation of the abortion positions of more
than 150 United States church denominations, see Chapters 42 through 44
in Volume II, "Church Positions on Abortion."
Whatever tack the pro-life debater takes, he should always expose his
opponent's anti-Catholic (or anti-Fundamentalist) bigotry, and show how
he is stereotyping pro-lifers. After all, the Neoliberals preach that
bigotry and stereotyping are unacceptable, and their slogans give the
pro-lifer many opportunities to show an audience the pervasive hypocrisy
of the anti-life position.
The One-Way Double Standard.
Pro-abortionists say that they do not want to cram their philosophy
down our throats regarding the question of when life begins, and that
everyone should be able to make up his or her own mind on this important
question.
The pro-abortionist who makes this claim is taking advantage of
general ignorance about the actual state of abortion legislation in this
country.
There have been at least a dozen cases where abusive husbands or
drunk drivers have killed late-term wanted babies. In one such
Michigan case, the baby killed was two weeks overdue.
In these cases, the mothers have testified that they believed with
all their hearts that their unborn children were alive, human, and real
people, and were very important to them. These mothers also stated that
they believed that their preborn children were already full members of
their families and of society before they died.
However, in each case, courts ruled that no crime was committed and
that no damage was caused, and the mothers could therefore collect no
damages in any of the cases for the deaths of their children. The
assailant or drunk driver invariably got off scot-free in these trials.
In each of these cases, the state, with the direct assistance of the
American Civil Liberties Union and the backing of the National Abortion
Rights Action League, the National Organization for Women, and the
National Abortion Federation, has directly opposed the mother; her
beliefs are overridden, ignored, and even ridiculed by the
pro-abortionists for obvious reasons.
After all, if they admit that the preborn children who were killed
have any value or significance whatsoever to anyone (even to the
mothers who wanted them), they will be confessing their own culpability
as participants in the American Holocaust.
So any pro-abortionist who says that he is not trying to "cram
his philosophy down the throats of other" is either inexcusably
ignorant or a liar.
I'm Personally Opposed ...
A pro-life debater may have the great good fortune to encounter a
politician-type pro-abortionist who trots out the old tired self-excuse,
"I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I don't want to impose my
morality on other people."
The pro-lifer can quickly put him in an impossible jam by asking the
simple and direct question "Why do you personally oppose
abortion?"
The pro-abort will either be forced to answer the question, in which
case the pro-lifer can expose the hypocrisy behind his thinking, or he
will refuse to answer the question, which makes him look close-minded.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #5
"Don't foist your morality off on me!"
Introduction.
Pro-lifers should not be offended by this slogan. Of course
we're trying to "foist our morality" off on other people! Is
this not the purpose of all activism, debate and public discourse to
convince others of the morality and correctness of one's views? If a
pro-lifer is trying to foist his morality off on others, his
pro-abortion debating opponent is equally guilty of trying to foist his
(im)morality off on the pro-lifer!
This slogan is a scaled-down variant of Slogan #4 ("You can't
legislate morality!"). The pro-abortionist is addressing a
pro-lifer personally here, instead of criticizing the pro-life or
Christian movements in general.
Analysis of the Slogan.
Of course, a pro-abortionist who uses this slogan is not really
objecting to pro-lifers trying to "foist their morality" off
on him, because that would imply some sort of coercion on the part of
pro-lifers or cooperation on the part of the pro-abort, neither of which
is likely to happen. What the pro-abortionist is really saying is
that he objects to the pro-lifer's mere presence and his audacity in
taking a stand for life. Nothing would please pro-abortionists more than
to have the pro-life viewpoint outlawed entirely, and the
pro-abortionist, when using this slogan, is simply telling pro-lifers to
"shut up!"
This is usually a last-ditch slogan, and if the pro-abort uses it,
the pro-lifer can be assured that he is winning the debate. The slogan
can be answered by using the process of clarification: "What do you
mean by that?"
The pro-abortionist will then usually begin to waffle and imply that
pro-lifers really have no right to speak on the subject of abortion.
After that, the discussion could fly off in any direction, so pro-life
debaters must be prepared for any eventuality.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #6
"Who will decide you or the State?"
A Classic.
This is an absolutely classic slogan. It is subtle and persuasive to
the uninformed, because it sums up the pro-abortion philosophy in a
single sentence and makes the listener think along lines totally
unrelated to abortion.
This slogan will appear more and more in the post-Roe era. In
fact, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and other
pro-abortion groups have made it the official slogan of today's
anti-life movement. Even the pro-euthanasia movement uses it frequently.
This slogan is intimately related to Slogan #4 ("You can't
legislate morality"), and the approach to rebutting it is similar.
The Pro-Abortion Objective.
The pro-abortionist who uses the "Who decides?" slogan is
trying to paint a picture in his listener's minds: A picture of an
oppressive government and Big Brother supervising all bedroom activities
in other words, a blatant and widespread invasion of privacy.
The pro-life debater must use the principle of parallelism
aggressively to debunk this appealing slogan.
He may begin by stating that the government does indeed have a
legitimate interest in some activities. Rape is one instance. A rapists'
union could use the slogan "Who decides?" just as logically as
the pro-aborts. In fact, organized pedophile organizations like the
North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) use precisely
the same slogan as they lobby to have the age of consent for sexual
activities lowered to four years!
The Basic Question: Murder!
Every government that has ever existed, including Communist
governments, has had an interest in protecting its citizens even its
preborn citizens, as shown by its body of caselaw.
Therefore, governments must intercede to legislate against murder
(after all, the paramount purpose of any government is to protect
its citizens). This is not an unwarranted invasion of the murderer's
privacy it is simple good sense.
With the insidious slogan "Who decides?," the
pro-abortionists are trying to lump together abortion, contraception,
and all other sexual activities in an attempt to allege that, if one is
banned, all will be banned. The pro-lifer must clearly separate abortion
from all other activities due to its nature as an act of outright
murder.
Pro-abortionists will inevitably complain that "the government
has no business in the bedroom."
This is true, of course, but all a pro-lifer has to do is point out
that abortions don't take place in bedrooms!
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #7
"Abortion should be a decision between a woman and her
doctor."
All We Need Is a Fireplace ...
The "woman and her doctor" slogan craftily presents a
'homey' image of an intimate and caring consultation process that is in
fact extremely rare in actual practice. Pro-abortionists who employ this
slogan know that it implies that pro-lifers who oppose abortion are
meddling in one of the most sacrosanct professional relationships in
American society: That of the doctor and his patient.
In reality, more than 98 percent of all abortions are performed for
non-medical reasons, despite the phony name "therapeutic."
Less than one percent of all abortions are complex enough to
require the attentions of a physician before the procedure itself, as
shown in Chapter 87 of Volume II, "Statistics on Abortion."
Dr. Bernard Nathanson and other reformed abortionists have accurately
likened the procedure to cosmetic surgery.
Stand Aside, There's Money To Be Made!
When a woman visits an abortion mill, the usual procedure is for a
'counselor' to talk with her in an attempt to steer her towards
abortion, and then send her name to the nurses who will 'prep' her for
the kill. As several former abortionists have described, the first time
she sees the doctor is when she is lying on her back, half-naked, with
her feet in the stirrups.
In truth, the abortionist has no reason to see the woman who has
hired him to kill her child until he walks into the room.
Mega-abortionist Edward Allred has boasted about his "assembly
line" abortion mills and has said that "We try to use the
physician for his technical skill and reduce the one-to-one relationship
with the patient. We usually see the patient for the first time on the
operation table and then not again. More contact is just not
efficient."[11]
What this multimillionaire abortionist means, of course, is that
"More contact will cost me money." Dr. Beverly McMillan,
another former abortionist, speaks from experience when she describes
how abortion mills are nothing more than money-makers for unscrupulous
businessmen who cut every corner possible, including those in the area
of patient safety.
The Champions of 'Women's Rights' Strike Out.
When it comes to dealing with the messy aftermath of late abortions,
the 'doctors' who claim that they are for women's rights usually leave
their female nurses to do the dirty work of disposing of the babies and
calming hysterical women.
As one nurse wrote in the American Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynecology; "Nurses. The experience of participating in any
abortion procedure goes directly against the medical emphasis on the
preservation of life. On the gynecology hospital floor, amnio abortions
are viewed by the nurses as the most upsetting experiences which occur
and a symbol of abandonment by the medical staff. The ward nurses'
comments speak clearly to the point of being left to cope with an upset
patient who delivers late at night ... The nurses found the physical
contact with the fetus particularly difficult; it reminded them of the
"preemies" just down the hall and made them uncomfortable
about their own potential future pregnancies."[12]
One would think that, if the abortion decision were really
between a woman and her doctor, the abortionist would guide her through
the entire process. But such a picture does not represent reality. The
(usually male) abortionist works for a few minutes, collects his money,
and leaves the scene while the lowly (usually female) nurses clean up
after him.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #8
"If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with
a child?"
This slogan is literally one of the most popular pro-abortion
bumperstickers, and its aim is to con people into thinking that 'choice'
is a Good Thing For Everyone. By using it during a debate, the
pro-aborts hope to subliminally link the key words "trust,"
"choice," and "child" in the listener's mind.
This slogan sounds perfectly logical until one dissects it and thinks
about it. What it actually represents is a classic bit of nonsense:
"If you won't let me kill my children when I want to, I won't be a
good mother to the ones that I don't kill!"
The best and clearest way to refute this slogan is to draw a parallel
by pointing out that it is perfectly analogous to a rapist claiming that
"If you can't trust me to rape women, how can you trust me to have
an enduring relationship with one?"
This slogan is a perfect example of 'mystagoguery,' or attempting to
render the basic question so complicated or absurd that it is literally
painful to think about.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #9
"Pro-family, pro-child, pro-choice."
Weak 'Logic' Real Weak.
This is another popular pro-abort bumpersticker, generally placed
between the ones that claim that "THE GODDESS IS ALIVE AND MAGICK
IS AFOOT" and demand that "WOMEN TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!"
The "pro-family/child/choice" slogan is so weak that even
uninformed members of the general public don't usually accept it. But
the pro-aborts are so addicted to catchy phrases that reflect their
worldview that they simply can't give it up.
"Pro-Child?"
When a pro-abort uses this particular slogan, a pro-lifer can expose
it for the nonsense it really is by asking him or her how many children
they have, and how many kids their friends have. In many cases, they
will refuse to answer the question, saying that it is irrelevant. The
pro-lifer can point out that this refusal to answer is in fact the most
eloquent answer.
He might also like to point out that pro-lifers have an average of
3.4 children per family, and that pro-aborts have an average of only 1.3
children per family, as shown in Figure 16-5, which is contained later
in this chapter.
How, then, can the "pro-choice" philosophy also be
"pro-child?" especially when "pro-choice" means the
extermination of 1.6 million children per year?
This is analogous to the Nazi Party proclaiming itself to be
"Pro-Juden," or the Ku Klux Klan claiming that it is
"pro-minority!" If a pro-lifer makes this comparison during a
debate, it will probably provoke outrages shrieks of protest from knee-jerkers,
but it certainly will make the point.
If there are any children watching the debate, it is also useful to
ask these kids as a class how they would feel if their parents were
"pro-choice." Ask them how it would feel to know that they had
no intrinsic value to their parents when they were unborn, and that, if
they were deemed 'inconvenient,' it would have been a death sentence.
Ask these kids how many brothers and sisters they don't have as a
result of abortion, and then ask them how 'pro-choice' can be
'pro-child' at the same time.
"Pro-Family?"
Give Us a Break! The allegation that abortion is somehow salubrious
for the family is absurd on its face.
What does a husband feel when he wants a baby and knows that his wife
is 'pro-choice' and can get an abortion without his consent or even his
knowledge? What does a child think when he knows that he exists in a
'pro-choice' family only because he was wanted by others not
because he had any intrinsic value at all? What do both parents think
when they know that Planned Parenthood or some other abortion chain can
kill their grandchildren and that they can be jailed or have their
daughter removed from their care by the voracious "child
services" stormtroopers if they protest?
In reality, of course, pro-abortion women care only about themselves.
They are utterly selfish creatures who simply cannot understand that an
abortion decision could impact anyone but themselves. And so they
completely disregard the idea that an abortion in a family could be
traumatic for their husbands or other children (if any).
Trauma for Fathers.
Just as childbirth is not a trivial issue for a woman, abortion is
not a trivial issue for a man. University of Maryland psychologist
Arnold Medvene says that "Abortion is one of the major death
experiences that men go through. It resurrects very important, very
primitive issues, memories, and feelings."[13]
The reaction of Louise Tyrer, vice-president of medical affairs for
the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, was typical of the utter
callousness that pro-abortionists display towards any rights other than
their own; "But it doesn't matter how much men scream and holler
that they are being left out [of the abortion decision]. There are some
things that they are never going to be able to experience fully. I say,
'tough luck.'"[14]
This is comparable to a man telling a woman who has been raped
"tough luck, babe."
How on earth can this kind of attitude be called
"pro-family?"
The Danforth Decision.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on father's rights in its Planned
Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth decision of July 7, 1976.
Among other findings, the Court held that any requirement that a
husband or parent be informed about a wife's or minor's abortion is
unconstitutional.
This decision stripped fathers of any legal right whatever to protect
their own preborn children. The father therefore has less of a right to
protect his own child than abortion referral agents have to
arrange its death, the abortionists to kill it, or the State to declare
his slightest opposition unconstitutional and punishable. His
relationship to his own child is deemed much less important than his
relationship to a piece of property say a car stereo.
On the other hand, the Danforth decision enforced
"mandatory fatherhood" for those men who did not want a
child. In summary, a father has literally no voice whatever in the
decision to have or not have a child. And this glaring and hurtful
inequality is ignored by the same Neofeminists who are demanding
equality themselves.
In his dissent, Justice Byron White stated that "It is truly
surprising that the majority finds in the United States Constitution, as
it must in order to justify the result it reaches, a rule that the State
must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a
potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it
mature into a live child."
But I Want a Pretty Body ...
According to a national poll, more than half of all fathers including
married men are not even told that their child has been
aborted.[15] In one case, a father desperate to save his child filed
suit to stop the abortion of his baby, and found that the only reason
his wife wanted to kill their child was so that she would look good in a
bikini when they went on summer vacation![15]
When challenged about the trivial nature of such abortions,
pro-aborts will either duck the question or stupidly assert that a
woman's self-image is much more important than the life of her child. In
other words, every case is a "hard case" to a
pro-abort.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #10
"Right to Life, that's a lie! You don't care if women die! We
won't go back to the days when thousands of desperate women died every
year from abortions performed by quacks in unsafe, unsanitary back-alley
butcher shops!"
NOTE: For a more complete treatment of this subject, see Chapter 59
in Volume II, "Maternal Deaths Due to Abortion."
The Primary Argument.
Pro-abortionists who insist that thousands of women died annually of
illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade have absolutely no
statistical backup for their claims and they usually know it!
Consider the following quote by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the
original founders of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion
Laws (later the National Abortion Rights Action League), and the
operator of the biggest abortion clinic in the nation for years;
"How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal?
In NARAL, we always said '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that
I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too
if they stopped to think of it. But in the 'morality' of our revolution,
it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to
correct it with honest statistics?"[16]
The actual Centers for Disease Control figures on deaths caused by
abortions, both legal and illegal, for those years immediately before
and after Roe v. Wade are as follows;
1970:
90 deaths.
1971:
83 deaths.
1972:
90 deaths.
1973:
57 deaths.
1974:
54 deaths.
1975:
49 deaths.
Corollary: "Pro-Lifers Don't Care About Women."
Why Do They Bring This Up? Pro-abortionists will do anything
to shift the focus of attention away from the bloody slaughter of
millions of innocent preborn babies. They will insist that pro-lifers do
not care about the women, only the babies.
Beware of this red herring!
This is another good example of pro-abortion transference or negative
attribution, a tactic described in Chapter 13. Since they don't really
care about the women themselves, pro-abortionists try to salve
their own consciences by alleging that everyone else is just like them
in this respect.
The Rebuttals.
If pro-lifers don't care about women, why do we
operate twice as many Crisis Pregnancy Centers (2,000) than there are
abortion clinics (1,000)? Have you ever heard of an abortion mill
housing a woman, buying her groceries, helping her find a job, or paying
her medical expenses?
Of course not!
Most abortion mills are in their bloody business for the money,
not the ideology. The very fact that the clinic workers just take the
woman's money, abort her, and push her out the door is vivid proof of
this.
One effective tactic during a debate is to ask the members of the
audience to prove this to themselves by calling local abortion mills and
asking for help with rent or grocery money. Then have them call a Crisis
Pregnancy Center and ask a CPC counselor the same question.
More than 550 women have died of so-called 'safe and legal' abortion
since 1973, as described in Chapter 59 of Volume II, "Maternal
Deaths Due to Abortion." That's one of the reasons that
pro-lifers care about the women. Another is that most of these women
have no idea what they are getting into when they are herded like cattle
into the abortion mills. Pro-abortionists fanatically resist any and all
informed consent statutes. Many women who are now pro-life activists can
describe their abortion experiences first-hand.
And, the ultimate answer to this anti-life slogan, the one that no
pro-abortionist can ever answer: Of the more than 30 million
abortions committed in the United States since 1973, half have killed
little preborn women!
How can pro-abortionists say that they care about women's lives when
they fervently approve of and support the slaughter of more than
fifteen million little unborn women?
The Truth About "Butcher Shops."
The Tales They Spin ...
The "butcher shop" slogan is meant to paint a frightening
picture of suffering women who are at the mercy of drunken quacks in
places and eras when abortion is or was illegal.
A typical lurid "scare scene" was recently painted in the
magazine Mother Jones (oddly enough, by a man); "It's hard
for today's young women to imagine abortions in dark, dirty rooms that
smelled of Clorox, done by doctors who breathed bourbon fumes and copped
a feel before they got to work, and warned you not to scream or they'd
walk out and leave you alone in the middle of nowhere. Or self-aborting
alone in your college dorm room, scared to tell anyone, watching your
metal wastebasket fill up with blood, flushing the fetus down the
toilet, terrified that it would clog the plumbing and you'd be found
out. Or being rushed to the hospital hemorrhaging from a perforated
uterus, only to be interrogated by police officers demanding to know
where you got the abortion ...[17]
Chapter 59 of Volume II describes the story of Ruth Barnett, the
prolific illegal abortionist who scoffed at stories like the one
described above; "In the movies, they always depict the fallen
woman sneaking up a dirty, rickety stairway to a dismal room or making
her way, furtively, into a dark alley that leads to a decrepit shack
where some alcoholic doctor or untutored butcher performs the abortion.
"A clinic such as mine was not that way at all. It was a bright,
cheerful place where women's problems were handled quickly, efficiently
and with dignity, no matter what the circumstances of the
patient."[18]
Chapter 59 of Volume II ("Maternal Deaths Due to Abortion")
includes many quotes from pro-abortionists who know that their stories
of back-alley abortions are false, but that they are the most effective
tool they have in their unholy fight to keep baby-killing legal.
In fact, anti-lifers who are trying to gain the 'right' to snuff out
the lives of born human beings through euthanasia are now using
the identical language that worked so well for pro-abortionists. For
example, one doctor recently said that "Legalization [of
euthanasia] will give security to doctors and patients because they'll
know their rights and it will take away those behind-the-curtain
cases."[19]
The Spoiled Mentality.
Pro-abortionists also tell us that a typical woman does not arrive at
the abortion decision lightly; that she agonizes over her choice for a
long period of time, consults with her friends and clergyman, and then
grits her teeth and goes through with it because she has her back
against the wall and has absolutely no other way out.
This is not a typical case, although it does occasionally happen.
Many women celebrate abortion; they applaud abortion; they have abortion
parties and literally abort each other. This must lead a
thinking person to ask: How can the Neofeminists be worried about the
menace posed by untrained "quacks" if they also consider the
abortion procedure to be so simple and safe that they can allow their
friends to do it to them?
The answer to this question, of course, is that stories of
"back-alley" abortions make unbeatable propaganda. And what
are a few lies for people who are wholeheartedly involved in genocide?
The underground illegal abortion networks are still operating for two
reasons; because some women prefer to be aborted by friends, no matter
what the status of abortion laws are, and because others are
'practicing' for the day when abortion is illegal again.
A recent article in American Medical News described an illegal
'abortion party' at a woman's house in stomach-wrenching detail. What
was so sickening about the article was not the goriness of the abortion
(which was not mentioned), but the indifferent way in which the snuffing
out of a baby's life was treated by all present at the abortion. For
these women, the abortion was not a thing to be agonized over, not a
thing to regret in any way, but instead merely an opportunity to 'share
an experience with friends.'
The article centers around Maria Romero, an unmarried 20-year old
woman who has been fornicating with her boyfriend. When asked how she
could have become pregnant while using birth control, Romero just
shrugged, grinned, and said "Sometimes I'm kind of lazy about using
my cervical cap."
In a horrible parody of a baby shower, the article describes how
friends brought gifts to her home on the appointed abortion day. One of
the women brought a dozen tiny pink roses.
After assembling, the women then chatted and drank cappucino for a
while. Finally, they got down to 'business.' Carla Martinez, a lay
person with no medical experience, aborted Romero with a home 'menstrual
extraction' kit. Despite Romero feeling a little pain, the procedure is
described as safe and almost trivial in nature.
After the abortion, Martinez said that "There are some people
who want to see it so they can see there are no body parts, that it's
not a baby," and Romero gushed happily that "I think that it's
wonderful to share the [abortion] experience with my friends."[20]
The existence of 'abortion parties' like these pokes rather large
holes in a number of pro-abortion myths that 'pro-choicers' are morally
superior to Operation Rescue types because they respect the law; that
they care about women's health; and that abortions occur only after long
and painful soul-searching.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #11
"Abortion is safer than childbirth."
NOTE: More detailed information on this topic is contained in Chapter
59 of Volume II, "Maternal Deaths Due to Abortion."
Play It Again ...
Once again, so what?
The pro-lifer can trap his opponent in an unbreakable trap simply by
having him clarify his statement. Why is he asserting that
abortion is safer than childbirth?
The general logic underlying this dubious and invariably
unsubstantiated claim can be exposed by the principle of parallelism: If
the only concern was for the (born) woman's welfare, then every
pregnant woman should get an abortion!
In fact, there are some pro-abortionists and abortionists out there
who actually claim that all abortions are medically necessary
just because the mother does not want the baby. Abortionist Jane Hodgson
revealed the true pro-abortion mentality when she stated under oath that
In my medical judgment, every pregnancy that is not wanted by the
patient, I feel there is a medical indication to abort a pregnancy
where it is not wanted. In good faith, I would recommend on a medical
basis, you understand, that, and it would be 100% ... I think they are
all medically necessary ... Occasionally we will advise these women to
carry their pregnancy to term, but most of these are medically
necessary because I am considering the woman's physical, mental,
emotional and social and welfare and family and environment and all
that ... I am concerned with the quality of life, not physical
existence.[21]
This pro-abortion "childbirth vs. abortion" argument is
therefore nothing more than a verbal feint, and is precisely analogous
to saying that every woman over the age of 30 should have both breasts
removed due to an increased chance of dying from breast cancer!
The Truth, Please.
In reality, the death rate for childbirth is 5.4 per 100,000
pregnancies, and the death rate for abortions is 33% higher at 7.2 per
100,000 pregnancies. This is due to two reasons.
First, the figure usually quoted by pro-abortionists for abortion
mortality is about 3.0 per 100,000. However, this number does not
include women who die of abortion-related complications after
they leave the abortuary. If these deaths are factored in, the actual
abortion mortality ratio is about 7.2 per 100,000.
Secondly, the standard pro-abortion figure for childbirth mortality
is about 10.0 per 100,000. However, this figure includes deaths from
miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies (which are not relevant), and
deaths from abortions! Once these deaths are removed, the actual
childbirth mortality ratio is about 5.4 per 100,000.
The actual chances of a woman dying of various causes during her
lifetime are shown below;
MOST COMMON CAUSES OF WOMEN'S DEATHS, RANKED BY DEGREE OF
HAZARD[22]
Heart Disease --- 22.5% (1 out of 4)
All cancers, except breast --- 13.3% (1 out of 8)
Mountain climbing (15 years)* --- 8.99% (1 out of 11)
Smoking (30 years)* --- 3.79% (1 out of 26)
Breast cancer --- 2.43% (1 out of 42)
Hang gliding (15 years)* --- 1.71% (1 out of 58)
Car/aircraft accidents --- 1.52% (1 out of 66)
Alpine hiking (15 years)* --- 0.90% (1 out of 111)
Murder --- 0.72% (1 out of 139)
Scuba diving (15 years)* --- 0.45% (1 out of 222)
Suicide --- 0.42% (1 out of 238)
Alpine skiing (15 years)* --- 0.30% (1 out of 333)
Parachuting (1,500 jumps)* --- 0.36% (1 out of 278)
Snowmobiling (15 years)* --- 0.195% (1 out of 513)
Drowning --- 0.165% (1 out of 614)
Bicycling (15 years)* --- 0.018% (1 out of 5,630)
X-country skiing (15 yrs)* --- 0.015% (1 out of 6,667)
ABORTION (two)* --- 0.014% (1 out of 6,944)
CHILDBIRTH (two children,
including Cesarian deliveries)* --- 0.011% (1 out of 9,260)
Note: The mortality figures marked with an asterisk (*) apply only to
women who participate in the respective activities.
'Necessary' Precautionary Measures.
If a pro-abortionist insists upon alleging that abortion is safer than
childbirth, the pro-lifer should show that, under this logic, every woman
should avoid any activity that is more dangerous than childbirth or
abortion to safeguard her life and health. She should stay in her house
and avoid traveling by any means whatever, and should get her breasts and
all reproductive organs surgically removed as soon as possible preferably
by age 15, before trouble has a chance to begin.
She should avoid all bodies of water like the plague and should never
take a bath or shower during her lifetime, since more women die in baths
than from abortion and childbirth combined. And, of course, if the
pro-abortionist smokes, tell her that she is 356 times more likely to die
of smoking-caused diseases than she is of childbirth. If her real motive
in recommending abortion is safety, why is she smoking?
Abortion: Contributor to Maternal Health?
Planned Parenthood in particular likes to claim that "maternal
health has improved 53% (60%, 70%, pick a number) since Roe v. Wade."
The purpose of this statement, of course, is to imply that the
availability of abortion has made it safer to have children, and that, if
'anti-choice fanatics' succeed in 'turning the clock back,' it won't only
be the women who are seeking back-alley abortions that will start dying. All
women will be at risk!
Strangely enough, the statement that maternal health has improved 64%
since Roe v. Wade is absolutely true but, not unexpectedly, it is a
typical pro-abortion half-truth. What pro-aborts fail to reveal is that
this improvement in maternal health is merely a continuation of a trend
that began long before abortion was legalized, and that it has absolutely
nothing at all to do with the increased availability of abortion!
As the chart below demonstrates, the rate of the average annual
improvement in maternal health has increased marginally from 4.4 percent
per year to 5.0 percent per year over identical 13-year periods before and
since Roe v. Wade, respectively. This change of sixth-tenths of one
percent is certainly too small to be statistically significant, and is
certainly due more to advances in maternal care than to some invariably
undefined relationship to a change in abortion availability.
DECREASE IN MATERNAL DEATH RATES SINCE 1960
Deaths Due to
Deaths Per
Year
Childbirth
100,000 Births
1960
1,240
29.1
1973
391
12.5
1986
250
4.4
Average annual decrease, 1960-1973:
4.4%
Average annual decrease, 1964-1986: 5.0%
Reference: United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the
United States. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing
Office, 1990.
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #12
"No mandatory motherhood!"
Forced Motherhood?
Demented and sadistic are words that describe the conduct of this
bully of a man who seeks to use the law to inflict physical or mental pain
on women via forced pregnancy. [Pennsylvania state legislator Steven]
Freind treats women as if their purpose in life is to be receptacles for
men's sperm.
Chris Niebrzydowski, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the
National Organization for Women.[23]
Introduction.
This slogan is a cherished favorite of American
Communists, and is so shaky in its logic that it is not even popular with
the Neofeminists. However, it sometimes comes up (pro-abortion authors
have even used it in the titles of their books), and it sounds good (at
first), so it is best to be prepared for it.
Curiously, the same pro-aborts who sneer that pro-lifers should change
permissive abortion laws if they don't like them are the first to scream
at the top of their lungs when pro-lifers put their suggestion into
action.
The general picture pro-abortionists will try to paint with the
"mandatory motherhood" slogan is that of a woman-hating,
man-dominated society which has forced women into the roles of
housekeeper, concubine, and breeder. With this slogan, the pro-aborts are
yet again trying to portray themselves as victims and lay a heavy guilt
trip on the pro-lifer and, of course, the audience.
Don't buy it!
Meaning of the Slogan.
The literal meaning of the slogan
"mandatory motherhood" would be forced impregnation on a
systematic basis (i.e., institutionalized rape). The pro-lifer should ask
his opponent if this is what he/she means, and then ask for examples.
Compare this position, which advocates rape, to the traditional pro-life
position that a woman must carry her child to term only after she
becomes pregnant.
Every pregnant woman in the United States has chosen to be a
mother by engaging in intercourse except the tiny percentage of those who
are the victims of rape and incest. There is nothing "mandatory"
about it.
Mandatory Abortions?
One vivid pro-abortion extrapolation of the "mandatory
motherhood" slogan is the assertion that, if a country bans abortion,
the next step is to have mandatory abortion: i.e., "abortion
on command" in place of "abortion on demand." When the
pro-abortionists use this slogan, they are trying to prop up their
'pro-choice' facade by setting up and then defending a 'straw man' in this
case, a situation that could never exist.
This, of course, does not make a particle of sense. The state has laws
against murder, robbery, and rape. If we accept the pro-abortionist's
strange 'logic,' we can expect any time now to be forced to murder,
rob, and rape against our wills. Perhaps we should leave murder, robbery,
and rape up to personal "choice," because of some remote
possibility that they may be mandated in the future!
The pro-lifer should ask his opponent how the forced-abortion program
of the People's Republic of China fits into this logic. He should also ask
the pro-abort which states mandated abortion before 1968, when it
was a criminal act in every state.
Since a Human Life Amendment would place preborn life on a full and
equal basis with born life, the pro-abortion argument above would
mean that we could also have forced murder of born human beings.
Since a law that would ban abortions is based solely on the sanctity of
life, an anti-abortion country cannot then enact laws that require
women to obtain abortions.
The "mandatory motherhood" slogan is used once again to muddy
the waters and confuse listeners. However, it can be turned around and
used to score a lot of points in the context of a debate.
The 'Violinist' Argument.
When pursuing the "mandatory motherhood" slogan, pro-aborts
will often bring up the hypothetical situation involving a violinist, just
as they often do when defending Slogan #18 ("It's my body!").
The "violinist" story goes something like this: Suppose a
woman wakes up one day to find herself 'hooked up' by machine to a famous
violinist. This violinist will die if he is unhooked from the woman who is
involuntarily sustaining him. Does the woman have a right to be 'unhooked'
from the violinist, in light of the fact that she was connected to him
involuntarily?
Obviously, the pro-abortionist will answer "yes," and then
make the connection between the violinist and the preborn child.
However, the 'violinist' argument for abortion is illogical. The first
and most important point to be made is that the woman was involuntarily
'hooked up' to the violinist. She had no idea that this was going to
happen; she is, in other words, a prisoner of medical science. The salient
point of this story does not transfer to that of a mother and her preborn
child because that mother chose to have intercourse (except in the
case of rape or incest). And, if she was using some method of
contraception, she knew (or should have known) that these methods fail
frequently and that there is always a chance of getting pregnant.
Secondly, the 'violinist' story fails because it is a fictional and
impossible scenario that has no parallel in medical science. Once again,
the pro-abort is using a 'straw man' type of situation that could never
exist in practice.
Finally, the 'violinist' story assumes that the woman will be 'hooked
up' to the musician permanently (i.e., for the rest of her life). The
pro-lifer can use this to his advantage in a debate by asking the audience
if they would volunteer to be hooked up to a relative, child, or loved one
for a period of nine months if it would save their life.
What About "Mandatory FATHERhood?"
Pro-abortionists can see only one side of the issue theirs. Those who
habitually employ the "mandatory motherhood" slogan simply do
not see that the legal system is currently oriented towards
"mandatory fatherhood." Instead of forcing pregnant women to be
mothers, pregnant women can force men to be fathers simply by not
aborting. And men, fearful of seeming "misogynist" or not
"politically correct," meekly submit to this sexual inequality.
In other words, a man can be forced by a woman to support a child he
does not want for 18 years or more but if he does want the child,
the mother can kill it without even consulting him.
Every sidewalk counselor has seen many men fidgeting and sweating it
out at the abortion mills as their wives or girlfriends abort a child that
they wanted very much but could do absolutely nothing to protect.
The people who say that they care so much about women are show nothing
but utter contempt and hate towards men who want to nurture their own
children. As Louise Tyrer, president of medical affairs at the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America said, "It doesn't matter how much
men scream and holler that they are being left out. I say tough luck. It
is the woman's body that is pregnant, and the Supreme Court has clearly
given the woman the right to make the decision."[14]
How on earth can the Neofeminists complain that men are callous and
uncaring when they have attitudes like this?
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #13
"What about ... ? (rape, incest, deformities, economics,
etc.)"
Introduction.
The most effective way of refuting the "what about?" slogan
is by parallelism (a debating tactic described in Chapter 29). This
consists of simply applying the same logic to born human beings.
For example;
• We don't kill the guilty rapist, so why should we kill the innocent
child resulting from the rape?
• We don't kill teenaged Down Syndrome children why should we kill them
when they're unborn?
• You say you can't afford another child? Why don't you just kill the
children you have now? That would really improve your financial
situation!
What About Fetal Abnormalities?
Perfection: A Survival Trait.
The National Abortion Rights Action
League and other pro-abortionists sometimes produce photographs of
hideously deformed and crippled preborn or even newborn children (their
favorite is anencephalic babies) in order to buttress their argument that
defective preborns should be exterminated.
However, when one group of people decides that another group of people
is somehow inferior or is not worthy of life, they are falling into the
trap of eugenicist thinking.
The terrible danger with the "eugenics" argument is that,
once we begin to loftily judge which children are fit to live and which
are not, we have no way in the world of stopping the slaughter.
The most difficult step in this process is the very first one; when the
first step has been taken, all subsequent steps are based on the logic
"It's been done before, so it must be all right."
The Nazi doctors started by killing one little child baby boy Knauer
and quickly progressed to the mass slaughter of entire classes of people.
In the end, they were even killing children with slightly deformed ears
and those children deemed "difficult to train."
The Anti-Eugenics Argument. The main arguments against abortion for
eugenics are these:
(1) The best way to derail the pro-abortion 'eugenics' argument is to
ask whether or not handicapped (P.C. term: 'differently abled')
individuals have less of a right to live than those people who are
perfectly healthy. The answer to this question must be 'no.' The next step
is to point out to the pro-abortionist that he is deciding which preborn
babies will live or die based solely on whether or not they have
handicaps. Conclude by stating that this is the core mentality
supporting any kind of discrimination.
(2) Once it is judged acceptable to stop 'defective' persons from being
born, it is a short step to ending the lives of 'defectives' that are already
born. This is already occurring in this country: more than 2,000
'defective' newborns are being quietly put to death in the United States
every year. Some 'doctors' have referred to this as "A second chance
at abortion," as described in Chapter 110 of Volume III,
"Infanticide."
(3) What a dreadful message this eugenicist thinking conveys to
surviving children! They will deduce that they would have been discarded
(or still might be) if they did not measure up to their parent's standards
of perfection. In other words, they are being judged as material goods,
not as persons with intrinsic worth.
For further information on eugenics programs and the philosophy of
eugenics, see Chapter 105 of Volume III.
What About Rape?
A pregnancy conceived by forcible rape would probably head the
list as the most often unwanted, but it is such an unlikely event that it
is not really relevant to an understanding of the reasons why women define
certain pregnancies as unwanted.
Pro-abortion writer N. Lee. The Search for an Abortionist.
University of Chicago Press, 1969, page 149.
'Mandatory Motherhood.'
Pro-abortionists often bring up the specter of
what they call 'authentic mandatory motherhood:' A woman being raped and
then being 'forced' to bring her child to term.
Sophie's Choice.
One way to highlight the fallacy of this pro-abortion
argument is to ask a person to imagine himself thoroughly examining two
newborn babies one conceived within a loving marriage and one conceived as
the result of a brutal rape and then ask which would be considered more
human. If these two babies were laid side by side, could anyone identify
the one who was a conceived by rape?
Of course not!
Then why select one baby for extinction based solely upon the
circumstances of his or her conception?
If pro-abortionists favor abortion for rape based solely upon the
circumstances of the conception, then perhaps they should be consistent
and advocate abortion for all preborn babies conceived out of wedlock.
After all, there has always been a stigma attached to being what we used
to call a "bastard."
If fact, this is very nearly the case with illegitimate children now
more than 80 percent of all abortions are committed upon single women who
became pregnant through fornication.
Since nearly half of all children born in the last twenty years have
been conceived outside of marriage, the challenge to an abortophile to be
consistent on this matter will strike a chord with many people under the
age of twenty. The pro-abort will protest that the rape was a forced
conception, while children born out of wedlock are the products of
"lovemaking between two consenting individuals," but the point
will have been made that the preborn child conceived as a result of rape
would be sentenced to death by the abortionists because of matters totally
outside his or her control.
Related Arguments.
It is interesting to ask a pro-abortionist if he or
she favors the death penalty for rape. Oddly enough, pro-abortionists are
usually anti-capital punishment and will almost certainly answer
"No." Then ask them then why they favor the death penalty for
the innocent unborn baby!
The pro-abortionists in this country and every other country where
abortion is legal used the 'hard cases' of rape and incest to 'drive
the wedge' that eventually opened the door wide to unlimited abortion.
They promised that they only wanted abortion for the 'hard cases,' and
then inevitably pushed for more and more exceptions to this rule until
they achieved abortion on demand for any reason: Convenience, sex
selection, financial "necessity," and so on.
This is the basis of the strategy of gradualism or incrementalism as
described in Chapter 7.
Lying to Obtain Abortions.
History has shown us that when the exception
of abortion for rape is established, the rape rate in the affected area
suddenly and mysteriously escalates by a factor of at least ten. The
plaintiff in the Roe v. Wade decision, lesbian Norma McCorvey,
admitted that her story about being raped was a lie. Chapter 79 of Volume
II, "Rape and Incest Exceptions for Abortion," describes how it
has been established that more than 95 percent of all claims of rape to
obtain abortion funding are outright lies.
If a rape exception is allowed, how do we verify that these women
really were raped? By medical records? By the conviction of an assailant?
What if a woman wanted an abortion and lied about being raped? A lot of
men would be falsely accused by selfish women who are thinking only of
themselves.
The Numbers.
If all of the 'hard cases' for abortion fetal deformity, rape, incest,
mother's life, mother's health, and mother's age are added up, they
represent less than three percent of all abortions! In other words,
more than 97 percent of all abortions are performed for social
reasons in other words, abortions for convenience!
Chapter 87 of Volume II ("Statistics on Abortion") includes a
summary of the average numbers of abortions performed for various reasons
in the United States since 1968. This chapter also includes a poll of the
aborting women themselves regarding why they obtain abortions. During a
debate, it is very useful to note the incredibly small number of abortions
performed for the so-called 'hard cases.'
PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #14
"Every child a wanted child!"
A Frightening Philosophy.
To talk about the 'wanted' and the 'unwanted' child smacks of
bigotry and prejudice. Many of us have experienced the sting of being
'unwanted' by certain segments of our society ... One usually wants
objects and if they turn out unsatisfactory, they are returnable ... Human
beings are not returnable items.
Grace Olivares.[24]
The "wanted child" slogan is truly hideous, because it
assigns worth to a human life based purely on the whim of another person
in this case, a child's mother. Naturally, this logic could also be
applied to born children just as easily as it could to preborn
children. The pro-abortionist who uses this slogan is therefore indirectly
advocating the disposal of unwanted born children.
This slogan, of course, assumes that there is such a thing as an
unwanted child. A pro-abortion person will say that "You read all the
time in the papers about battered children." To this, the pro-lifer
might reply that there are no such things as unwanted children; there are
only unwilling parents. It is curious that twenty years of legalized
abortion has certainly not eliminated child abuse that's why you read
about it in the papers all the time!
Broken Promises.
Promise Them Anything, But ...
The pro-abortionists promised the public
in 1970 that legalized abortion would lead to less child abuse because it
would eliminate unwanted children. In fact, they promised that legalized
abortion would immediately solve just about every serious social problem
in existence.
For example, in its 1974 "A Speaker's and Debater's Guide,"
the National Abortion Rights Action League stated flatly that "Legal
abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, battered children,
child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction,
and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful
parenthood."[25]
The Reality.
Every pro-lifer knows just how much legalized abortion has
allegedly "decreased" child abuse and drug addiction. Our
country suffers greater levels of these evils now than it ever has in its
history.
Yet the pro-abortionists are still trying to foist their empty
promises off on us.
The rate of child abuse in the United States is now three times
higher than it was in 1973, when abortion was legalized (see Chapter
41 of Volume II for more detailed information on the child abuse
connection to abortion). The numbers given in Chapter 41 are already
adjusted for population growth. Thus, abortion obviously has not resulted
in fewer 'unwanted children,' as the pro-abortionists promised it would.
This statistics associated with this drastic increase in child abuse
are shown below.
THE INCREASE IN CHILD ABUSE SINCE ROE V. WADE [26]
Children Killed
Total Instances
Year
By Child Abuse
Of Child Abuse
1972
356
418,000
1988
1,125
2,340,000
INCREASE
216%
460%
Only Unwilling Parents ...
There is, of course, no such thing as an 'unwanted child.' There are
more than one million couples ready and willing to adopt babies in this
country and there are thousands of couples perfectly willing to adopt
physically and/or mentally handicapped children of any age or race.
Chapter 39 of Volume II, "Birth Defects Support Groups," lists
the names and addresses of more than 100 organizations that specialize in
adoption and assistance for children with every imaginable handicap or
disease.
Before abortion was legalized, there were still long lists of those
waiting to adopt babies and not just perfect little White babies, either.
There is something insidious about labeling a living being 'unwanted,'
and then contemptuously disposing of it as a piece of trash. Would
pro-abortionists who speak of 'unwanted children' simply kill an 'unwanted
kitten' or an 'unwanted dog?' Of course not! Strangely, their feelings for
animals are deeper than their feelings for their own children.
And now, of course, born people are being classified as
"unwanted" and "burdens" by the pro-euthanasia people,
all of whom are pro-abortion!
Who will be next?
Will it be you, because your political and social
attitudes are not 'correct?'
Practically Speaking ...
United States Studies.
Scientific studies have shown that the easy
availability of abortion has not decreased the number of 'unwanted
children' in this country. According to comparisons of the 1973 and 1976
National Surveys of Family Growth, there was a "statistically
nonsignificant" difference between the numbers of 'unwanted children'
in 1973 and 1976.
The results of the surveys, contained in the January 21, 1980 issue of
the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's publication Advance
Data, concluded that "The substantial proportion of births which
became wanted after conception (53 percent) is evidence that an unwanted
or unintended pregnancy does not necessarily mean an unwanted child."
The Scandinavian Studies.
The results of the United States studies had
been previously confirmed by two major Scandinavian studies and a
comprehensive survey of the literature.
The first study is often quoted in part by pro-abortionists to buttress
their views, but their quotes are invariably selective.
Forssman and Thuwe studied 120 children born after their mother's
requests for abortion were refused. The researcher followed these 120
children for 21 years, or until they left home and struck out on their
own.
The study found that these 120 children were born into situations that
were much worse than the control group. Most of the children were raised
by their mothers only, and many of these mothers had severe problems with
alcohol or drug addiction. Despite these obstacles, Forssman and Thuwe
concluded that "No significant difference was found between subjects
and controls in regard to criminal behaviour, drunken misconduct,
educational subnormality, the number taking university entrance
examinations, the number who entered the university, the fitness of the
boys for military service and the number married before age 21."[27]
A second researcher, K. Hook, combined the results of six major studies
of refused abortions to show that 71 percent of the 6,298 American,
Swedish, and New Zealand women who had been denied abortions completed
their pregnancies, 16 percent subsequently miscarried, and only 13 percent
(one out of eight) journeyed elsewhere to have an abortion.[28]
Hook also conducted the only truly comprehensive study on the effects
of denied abortion on the resulting children. He followed 249 children of
Swedish women denied abortion for 7 to 10 years. 73% of these women were
satisfied with the way everything had turned out, and 12% had given their
children up for adoption.[28]
Hook also found no difference between the number of subsequent
pregnancies among those women who had been denied an abortion and those
who had not.[28]
Finally, Carlos del Campose surveyed the literature on the subject of
children born to women refused abortion for various reasons and concluded;
"Thus, the literature shows a generally comparable outcome of
pregnancy, delivery and puerperium [the period immediately following
childbirth] between women who were denied abortion and controls; no
evidence that a continued unw |