Last updated on: 5/20/2022 | Author: ProCon.org

Pro & Con Quotes: Should Abortion Be Legal?

PRO (yes)

Pro 1

Levi Strauss & Co., a company perhaps best known for jeans, stated:

“As the pandemic has shown so clearly, public health issues are workplace issues. Business leaders are responsible for protecting the health and well-being of our employees, and that includes protecting reproductive rights and abortion access. 

Access to reproductive health care, including abortion, has been a critical factor to the workplace gains and contributions women have made over the past 50 years. Further restricting or criminalizing access will jeopardize that progress and disproportionately affect women of color, putting their well-being at risk and impeding diverse hiring pipelines. Women in some states would have fewer rights than women in others, and our country would be consigned to a more unjust and inequitable future….

We know this is a fraught conversation; it’s not something we enter into lightly. But women make up 58 percent of our global workforce, and in recent years, numerous employees have expressed to leadership their growing alarm over the rollback of all forms of reproductive care….

Given what is at stake, business leaders need to make their voices heard and act to protect the health and well-being of our employees. That means protecting reproductive rights.”

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Levi Strauss & Co., “Protecting Reproductive Rights – A Business Imperative,” levistrauss.com,” May 4, 2022

Pro 2

Richard A.S. Hall, Professor of Philosophy at Fayetteville State University, stated:

“Let me say outright: A woman has an inalienable moral and legal right to abortion at any stage of her pregnancy. No politician, judge, nor cleric, and certainly no man, ought to tell a woman what she ought or ought not to do with her body.

It is sufficient justification for a woman to abort her fetus if she desires to do so, even if her desire is nothing more than a whim. Abortion is strictly a matter between her and her gynecologist with even her husband or whoever impregnated her having no say in the matter.

Abortion is a moral issue and should not be a legal or political one. More fundamentally, it is a metaphysical issue over whether a fetus is a bona fide person with rights, among them, preeminently, the right to life. But resolving this issue depends on what constitutes a person — what it is to be a person, and at what stage, if any, does the fetus become a person.

Now there is no scientific resolution to this issue only a metaphysical or philosophical one. What, then, constitutes personhood? I think most would agree that the minimal qualifications for being a person are consciousness, and the capacities for communication through language or other means and for introspection.

A fetus at any stage of its development obviously lacks these and other personal attributes and so does not qualify as a person in any sense; consequently, it lacks any moral or legal rights since such belong exclusively to persons.”

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Richard A.S. Hall, “Richard A.S. Hall: Abortion Should Remain Legal and Maximally Available,” fayobserver.com, Oct. 26, 2021

Pro 3

Kamala Harris, then US Senator (D-CA), stated:

“47 years after Roe v. Wade and we’re still fighting to ensure women and trans people can make their own choices about their bodies.

We cannot go back to the days before Roe v. Wade where people were dying from unsafe abortions. Reproductive health is on the ballot in 2020.”

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Kamala Harris, twitter.com, Jan. 22, 2020

Pro 4

Ylonda Gault, Director of Editorial Strategy and Services at Planned Parenthood and author of Child, Please, stated:

“If our constitutional right to safe, legal abortion is not upheld, more than 25 million Americans of reproductive age could lose the freedom to decide when and if to have a child…

This is not complicated or political. When you have bodily autonomy and the freedom to get the health care you want, need and deserve, your whole world changes and you are able to thrive…

My abortion is a part of me, my story. And I have no shame that I made the best decision for myself, my family and our future.”

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Ylonda Gault, “I’ll Never Be Ashamed of My Abortion,” nytimes.com, Jan. 22, 2020

Pro 5

Willie Parker, Abortion Provider and Board Chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, stated:

“I remain a follower of Jesus. And I believe that as an abortion provider I am doing God’s work. I am protecting women’s rights, their human right to decide their future for themselves, and to live their lives as they see fit…

The people who pass the new laws [to restrict access to abortion] concern themselves with fetuses, but these are humans I am caring for—real people, not merely biological organisms with the potential to become such. These individuals have full, messy imperfect lives—and hopes and dreams that will or won’t come true. Aren’t they entitled to the authors of their own stories, find their own victories and happiness, make their own mistakes, without a congress of legislators dictating what they must do?…

Rather than judge them, I give them what they came here for—as expertly, safely, quickly, and painlessly as I can—and I send them home so they can resume the lives they want, and not lives that some authority may want for them.”

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Willie Parker, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, 2017

Pro 6

Heather Busby, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, stated:

“Contraception can fail. The best plans do not always work out. And when that happens, abortion is an essential part of health care. Abortion allows women to plan and space their pregnancies, which improves their physical, psychological and economic well-being. Evidence shows that people who are able to obtain an abortion are better able to maintain a positive future outlook and achieve their aspirational life plans. Conversely, evidence clearly demonstrates that if a pregnant person seeks an abortion and access to that care is delayed or denied, they are at greater risk of experiencing adverse health and economic outcomes…

For people with certain health conditions, an unintended pregnancy can be devastating, if not dangerous. And even with a planned pregnancy, unexpected tragedies can arise. Imagine the woman who gets a cancer diagnosis and must decide between continuing the pregnancy or life-saving chemotherapy. And what about the parents who discover in the second trimester that the fetus has severe anomalies and has no chance of living outside the womb? Abortion is essential health care for them…

Abortion is health care. It is life-saving. And when it is needed, it must be accessible.”

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Heather Busby, “Abortion Is Healthcare,” tribtalk.com, Jan. 23, 2017

Pro 7

Illyse Hogue, President of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) stated:

“Nothing made me more pro-choice than being a parent. To force someone to be a parent against their will when we know how hard it is already for people who want to be parents is just wrong.

Before I had my abortion, I think like most Americans, I had presumed that should I ever face that decision, that service would be available to me — and it was. And like most Americans, I was grateful it was available to me — and then I moved on.

I didn’t become an activist around reproductive rights as a result of my own abortion, but because doing human rights work around the world showed me that when women have access to family planning and can have a seat at the table, we can have change — and for the better. Forcing women to have children against their will became synonymous to me with the idea of patriarchy, someone saying that I would always be lesser than.”

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Illyse Hogue, “NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue Shares Her Abortion Story,” teenvogue.com, Jan. 17, 2017

Pro 8

Ellen R. Shaffer, Co-Director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH), stated:

“Access to safe abortion is a key factor in preventing deaths and disability among women due to pregnancy-related causes. Each year, an estimated 22 million women and girls have an unsafe abortion, almost all in the developing world. As a result, 47,000 lose their lives and millions more suffer serious injury. The economic and social costs of unsafe, delayed, or illegal abortions include maternal mortality, long-term complications from damage to reproductive organs, pelvic inflammatory disease, and secondary infertility, as well as potential harm to a woman’s existing children.

Countries’ health systems incur huge costs in managing these preventable injuries, and their economies suffer from diminished economic participation.”

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Ellen R. Shaffer, “Bernie, Tom, Time for The Talk. About Abortion…,” huffingtonpost.com, Apr. 25, 2017

Pro 9

Susan Bevan, National Co-Chair of Republican Majority for Choice (RM4C), stated:

“I am pro-choice because, as a lifelong Republican, I believe that individual rights should be paramount—and that this extends to the rights of individuals to make personal decisions about reproduction. As a mother, of course I am pro-life, and I believe that the government’s role in creating and enforcing reproductive health legislation is to protect individuals’ ability to access all options. While this is the truly Republican thing to do, it is also the right thing to do. The government must not be involved in personal healthcare decisions. Those who oppose contraception and abortion are free to make that choice for themselves and their families, but not for others…

Those under the supposedly “pro-life” umbrella falsely believe that outlawing abortion prior to fetal viability will reduce the rate and occurrence of abortions. Decades of data show that this is simply not the case.

The actual impact is an increase in later term abortions that risk the life and health of the mother—a decidedly anti-life result. In addition, these efforts are explicitly unconstitutional and a waste of both time and tax dollars in defense of a losing cause, diverting attention from the real work our Congress needs to do to run our country. We know—both from the recent testimony of hundreds of Texan women and from the statistics provided by the CDC and other health organizations—that these kinds of unnecessary intrusions into the private relationships between individuals and their physicians are dangerously out of line with any efforts to promote or protect life. They are similarly out of line with a genuinely conservative philosophy of limited government.”

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Susan Bevan, “Susan Bevan,” catholicsforchoice.org (accessed May. 5, 2014):

Pro 10

Barack Obama, 44th US President, stated:

“Today, as we reflect on the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to the decision’s guiding principle: that every woman should be able to make her own choices about her body and her health. We reaffirm our steadfast commitment to protecting a woman’s access to safe, affordable health care and her constitutional right to privacy, including the right to reproductive freedom. And we resolve to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, support maternal and child health, and continue to build safe and healthy communities for all our children. Because this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams.”

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Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on Roe v. Wade Anniversary,” whitehouse.gov, Jan. 22, 2014

CON (no)

Con 1

Matthew Loftus, family and Christian missionary physician, stated:

“The sanctity of the human body my parents impressed on me has fueled my missionary work as a family physician and teacher in East Africa, where I do my best every day to care for those in need and help others learn how to do the same. This sanctity has also driven most of my political opinions to the left of my parents. I think the state should generously subsidize the necessities of life and health such that children can be born into safe and secure families.

However, I’ve changed almost nothing in my basic position on the political question of abortion: It should be illegal under nearly all circumstances to kill a baby in the womb because doing so deprives a human being of the right we afford to any other human being.

As devastating as pregnancies created by incest or sexual assault are, and as challenging as genetic malformations can be, the circumstances of one’s conception are not used to justify ill treatment postnatally — so why would we discriminate prenatally? Rather, we assume that any disadvantage to a breathing child caused by poverty, violence or poor health are meant to be reckoned with by means of extra generosity and care…

There is only one circumstance in which I think it is permissible — even right — to kill a baby in the womb: when the existence of that baby is killing the mother and removal is the only way to save her life.”

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Matthew Loftus, “When an Abortion Is Pro-Life,” nytimes.com, May 20, 2022

Con 2

Adam K. Mortara, lawyer, and Jonathan F. Mitchell, lawyer, writing on behalf of Texas Right to Life, stated:

“In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), seven members of this Court invented a “right” to abortion and imposed it on the nation, despite the fact that there is no language in the Constitution that even remotely suggests such a right, and despite the fact that there was no pedigree for it apart from the justices’ personal beliefs that pre-viability abortions should be legal on demand…

The members of this [US Supreme] Court can say that abortion is constitutional right as many times as they want, as if they can somehow speak a constitutional right into being and perpetuate its existence through incantation. But they will never persuade the people of this country who have read the Constitution and know full well that the Court is making it up….

One can imagine a scenario in which a woman has chosen to engage in unprotected (or insufficiently protected) sexual intercourse on the assumption that an abortion will be available to her later. But when this Court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change her behavior in response to the Court’s decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy….

Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse. The only time abortion is needed to ensure women’s ability to “control their reproductive lives” is when a pregnancy results from non-consensual behavior as in cases of rape, or when a pregnancy is endangering her life.”

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Adam K. Mortara and Jonathan F. Mitchell, “Brief of Texas Right to Life As Amicus Curiae in Support of the Petitioners,” supremecourt.gov, July 29, 2021

Con 3

Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, and Alexandra DeSanctis, staff writer at The National Review, stated:

“In addition to voting rights, suffragists championed abolition, equality in education, equal pay for equal work, and the right to life for the unborn.

Unlike many radical feminists of the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, these women realized that abortion does not empower women.

Since 1973, abortion has eliminated more than 60 million children and harmed millions of mothers in the process. Giving women the right to vote was once considered radical, but today we often take it for granted.

We hope someday to see a world in which embracing the dignity of every human life, both those of women and of their unborn children, is no longer considered a radical idea.”

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Jeanne Mancini and Alexandra DeSanctis, “Early Feminists Were Right About Unborn Human Life,” dailysignal.com, Jan. 3, 2020

Con 4

Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, stated:

“While most Democratic candidates for president have embraced extreme abortion positions, the majority of Americans haven’t. There is a broad national consensus that the current abortion system is wrong and must be rolled back…

Nearly three-quarters of Americans view abortion as a factor in their presidential vote. Nearly two-thirds want to vote for a candidate who supports restricting abortion after the first three months of pregnancy, including 44% of Democrats…

The national consensus is clear: Extreme abortion views have no place in American society, and they should have no place in either political party. Those of us marching in Washington this week [at the 47th annual March for Life], along with countless others turning out for hundreds of local marches, will bring this message of justice and unity. We speak for the unborn and the American people.”

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Carl Anderson, “Waiting for a Moderate Democrat on Abortion,” wsj.com, Jan. 21, 2020

Con 5

Created Equal, a group that seeks to end abortion through social action, stated:

“The claim that preborn children are part of women’s bodies flies in the face of modern science. Preborn children are dependent upon their mothers, but they are not part of them. They have their own blood type, bone structure, and genetic code. In fact, the notion that the preborn is part of the mother would result in inane conclusions—such as the mother having four arms, four legs, and, in the case of a preborn boy, even male genitalia.

We also know there are limits to ‘choice.’ The autonomy of any one person does not permit her to infringe on the rights of, or endanger, another. For example, the right of a man to do what he wants with his body does not permit him to rape women. And a woman’s right to do what she wants with her hands ends when she uses them to drown her children.

Choice, then, is not absolute. Indeed, some choices are wrong: rape, murder, abuse, etc. Since we would not allow a mother to kill her born children by choice, we must not permit her to kill her preborn children for the same reason.”

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Created Equal, FAQs about Abortion,” createdequal.org (accessed Apr. 28, 2017):

Con 6

Samuel B. Casey, Managing Director & General Counsel of the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project, stated:

“I am pro-life because abortion inhumanely kills children (including members of my own extended family), physically and psychologically harms their mothers, and emasculates their fathers by depriving them of their paternal identity and responsibilities without due process of law.

It is poverty to say a child must die so that we may live as we wish. The undisputed scientific fact that human life begins at conception and the widely-held philosophic understanding that life is an undeserved gift from God and an inalienable right of every human being from our conception to our natural death forms the foundation of marriage and the human family, as well as the basis for the equal protection of the laws, the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States Declaration of Independence, and the commitment in America’s Constitution to our ‘posterity.’ Over the past 44 years, one-sixth (60,000,000) of the American population has been killed by elective abortion. Twenty-five percent of African-Americans are killed in the womb. Abortion is the leading cause of death in America.

Who in good conscience can be in favor of that? In Mother Teresa’s infamous words: ‘Any country that accepts such abortion on demand is the poorest of the poor.'”

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Samuel B. Casey, “Q&A with the Scholars: The State of U.S. Abortion Law,” lozierinstitute.org, Jan. 24, 2017

Con 7

Democrats for Life of America stated:

“We believe in the fundamental worth, dignity, and equality of all people. We believe that the protection of human life is the foundation of human rights, authentic freedom, and good government. These beliefs animate our opposition to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, embryonic stem cell research, poverty, genocide, and all other injustices that directly and indirectly threaten human life…

We believe in the legal protection of unborn life and a comprehensive approach to reducing the number of abortions in America and around the world.”

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Democrats for Life of America “We Are Pro-Life and Democrat,” democratsforlife.org (accessed May 1, 2017):

Con 8

Randy Hultgren, US House Representative (R-IL), stated:

“Since the Supreme Court’s sweeping Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 overturned hundreds of laws in states across the country, more than 55 million unborn children have lost their lives to abortion — about one-third of the millennial generation…

It’s disturbing that, for more than four decades, our nation has been complicit in this gross violation of human rights. With the advent of the ultrasound and improved prenatal care, science has shown in vivid detail the life inside of a mother…

When we tell one another that abortion is okay, we reinforce the idea that human lives are disposable, that we can throw away anything or anyone that inconveniences us.”

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Randy Hultgren, “Americans Should Not Have to Pay for Abortions through Obamacare,” Red Alert Politics website, Jan. 21, 2014

Con 9

Rand Paul, US Senator (R-KY), stated:

“I am 100% pro-life. I believe life begins at conception and that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. It is the duty of our government to protect this life as a right guaranteed under the Constitution. For this reason, I introduced S. 583, the Life at Conception Act on March 14, 2013. This bill would extend the Constitutional protection of life to the unborn from the time of conception.

It is unconscionable that government would facilitate the taking of innocent life. I have stated many times that I will always support legislation that would end abortion or lead us in the direction of ending abortion. There are many ways we can work toward this ultimate goal and items we can hope to accomplish in the near term. I strongly oppose any federal funding of abortion and will attempt to stop the flow of tax dollars to groups who perform or advocate for abortion…

I would strongly support legislation restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade. Such legislation would only require a majority vote, making it more likely to pass than a pro-life constitutional amendment.”

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Rand Paul, “Sanctity of Life,” paul.senate.gov (accessed Apr. 30, 2014):

Con 10

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church) stated:

“Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God. Church members who submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions may lose their membership in the [Mormon] Church.”

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “Abortion,” lds.org (accessed Apr. 29, 2014)