Pro-Abortion Slogans and How to Handle Them

CHAPTER 16 — PRO-ABORTION SLOGANS AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM

American Life League

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 unwanted pregnancy will endanger the mother's mental health; good acceptance of the infant by the mother, especially if she has the father's support; and minimal to moderate psychosocial disadvantages for the child."[29]

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #15

"Outlawing abortion will instantly create a new class of millions of criminals!"

General Concepts.

If you have a miscarriage you could be prosecuted for murder. Even a miscarriage could be investigated as a criminal offense. Amazing as it sounds, you could be prosecuted for manslaughter!

Full-page Planned Parenthood propaganda advertisement on page A28 of the April 27, 1981 Washington Post.

The general idea behind this slogan is that women will always get abortions, so, if abortion is criminalized, pro-lifers will force them to get illegal back-alley abortions. In other words, the pro-abortionists are saying that if a law is commonly flouted, the law should be discarded.

Since this slogan worked so well in helping get abortion legalized, the pro-deathers are now using it to push for the murder of newborn babies. For example, Dr. Frank M. Guttman of Canada, at a June 1978 meeting of the Canadian Pediatric Society, "... suggested that legal mercy-killing and infanticide is necessary because it is happening anyway and legalizing it would encourage more respect for the law."[30]

These are stupid and anarchistic arguments.

Using the same logic, illegal murder should be legalized, because we have 25,000 murders every year. We now have as many illegal rapes (200,000) every year as we did abortions before Roe v. Wade, so we should make rape legal! If a pro-abortionist argues that murder and rape involve a victim> the pro-lifer should point out that abortion has victims, too the preborn baby and, frequently, the mother.

Philosophy.

If a law is passed and people willfully break it and injure or kill themselves in the process, their injuries are due to their own illegal and irresponsible behavior. If a motorcyclist ignores a helmet law and scrambles his brains in a crash, his injuries are solely due to his own negligence. If a junkie shoots up and dies of an overdose, he is solely responsible for his own fate.

And if a woman is so ignorant or hardened that she will knowingly risk her own life to kill her innocent child, then her injuries are her own fault not the fault of the people who passed the laws making abortion illegal! If she is truly innocent of knowledge about the nature of her unborn child and dies because of an illegal abortion, the double death is heartbreaking but those who are ignorant of the dangers of driving without a seatbelt or hiking near cliffs or using illegal drugs often pay with their lives, as well.

When it comes to nature, ignorance is definitely no excuse. As ancient wisdom tells us, "God forgives always, man sometimes, Nature never."

Women As Victims.

When they use the "millions of criminals" slogan, the pro-abortionists are once again playing heavily upon their self-assumed 'victim' status. But pro-lifers must remain alert and be determined not to be duped into accepting the role of 'victimizer!'

The pro-abortionists commonly paint a vivid picture of prisons crammed with suffering women who have had illegal abortions. This is a scenario that has never happened, and it never will happen.

In a 1981 study entitled "Women and Abortion," performed at the American Center for Bioethics in Washington, D.C., attorney Paul Wohlers found that the courts enforcing abortion laws before 1973 without exception viewed women as victims, not criminals. Before Roe v. Wade, 17 states provided for minor fines or short terms of imprisonment for obtaining abortions, but no woman was ever prosecuted under such laws. The abortionists were prosecuted not the women![31]

Even prolific, high-profile illegal abortionists knew full well that legal punishment was directed at them, and not at the women. Portland, Oregon illegal abortionist Ruth Barnett, who performed 40,000 clandestine abortions by her own count, acknowledged that "Nowadays and ever since I began my practice and before, the threat of punishment is aimed at the abortionist, not the patient."[18]

If the Roe v. Wade decision is ever overturned, this will once more be the case, as the individual state abortion laws are merely returned to their pre-Roe status. The abortionists will be prosecuted, not the women.

Paradoxically, this is a favorite slogan of the same people who chant that abortion is "perfectly legal." Once again, the pro-abortion double standard is at work here: They want pro-lifers to stop trying to end abortion because it is legal, but were perfectly willing to break the law themselves when it was illegal.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #16

"Banning abortion discriminates against poor women and women of color."

Introduction.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

                                         American critic Lionel Trilling.[1]

As evidenced by their actions, pro-abortionists don't care as much for the poor as they do preserving their abortion 'right.' They only trot out the tired old 'women of color' chestnut when they want to play upon their audience's sympathies and look compassionate. Their general objective, they say, is to "relieve poor women especially 'women of color' of the crushing burden of unlimited fertility."

The pro-abortionists are attempting to play the victim yet again.

In reality, they look for women in crisis situations, use them as unwitting tools, and then forget about them when their usefulness has ended.

For some detailed examples of pro-abortion propaganda campaigns centered around the suffering of poor women, see Chapter 17, "Anti-Life Propaganda Stories."

The Role of Wealth and Power.

Pro-abortionists constantly allege that, if abortion is criminalized, only rich women will be able to kill their preborn children.

So what?

Wealth and power have always made breaking the law easier. For example, Teddy Kennedy (D-umb) killed Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and got away scot-free, because he is a Neoliberal and a United States Senator.

Does this mean that murder should be decriminalized, because the poor don't have the money and influence to kill with impunity? Does not being able to kill freely make the poor victims?

Of course not!

The rich will always be able to afford cocaine and other dangerous and illegal drugs, even if it costs a thousand dollars per ounce. Does this mean that we should subsidize dangerous drugs for the poor? Does an inability to purchase the very finest 'crack' make the poor into a class of victims?

Of course not!

Abortion is NOT a 'Good Thing.'

With this "poor folks" argument, the pro-abortionists are once again begging the question by making a basic false assumption, i.e., that Abortion Is A Good Thing. They are trying to paint the poor as 'victims' who would be deprived of a 'basic human right' should abortion be criminalized.

In order to effectively rebut this argument, we must first answer the question: Where does society generally draw the line between unrestricted and restricted availability?

If something is perceived to be a basic and necessary 'good,' i.e., clean drinking water, good food, shelter and health care, the public generally tries to insure that all persons have access to that particular 'good.'

If something is considered by society to be a 'bad,' then there is no public obligation to insure that everyone has access to it. Such 'bads' are alcohol, dangerous drugs, and pornography.

Restricting an evil does not make victims of those who cannot practice it. If abortion is criminalized, the only victims will be the preborn babies of the rich, and the rich women who are ravaged by the physical and psychological trauma of abortion.

Even slavery has been 'justified' by famous people, not because it was a 'right' for Whites to own Blacks, but because, if slavery were illegal, it would be harder on the less-privileged White families! Andrew Johnson once "... wish[ed] to God that every head of a family in the United States had one slave to take the drudgery and menial service off his family."

Now, Who Really Cares About Poor Women?

One concrete example of how little the pro-abortionists care about poor women is given by the example of the United States contraceptive manufacturers.

Several intra-uterine devices (IUDs) and the injectable abortifacient Depo-Provera are considered too dangerous for lily-White American women to use.

However, the contraceptive manufacturers dump these dangerous products on the 'poor women' of more than 80 developing countries, including Indonesia, Mexico, and Kenya.

Another example of the touching 'concern' of pro-aborts for poor women is the fact that, after the Supreme Court's celebrated July 1989 Webster decision giving discretion to the States regarding abortion limitations, some Neofeminist groups (including the Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers) began selling home abortion kits. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) immediately stopped this activity, because its experts considered the kits too dangerous to use safely.

The Neofeminists bought about ten dollar's worth of Mason jars and aquarium tubing, put thirty minutes of labor into sticking them together, and sold them for $79.95 a 700 percent markup!

In other words, they attempted to make a big profit from the women who were suffering the very same misery they were condemning all pro-lifers for causing in the first place!

Abortion: A Racist Institution.

Pro-abortionists love to call pro-lifers "racists" because, as they allege, "criminalizing abortion will hurt 'women of color' the most."

This is a classic example of pro-abortion transference.

The truth, of course, is that abortion itself is racist. Pro-abortionists object strenuously whenever a pro-lifer brings up the fact that abortion is exterminating the Black race. In many instances, pro-abortionists have physically attacked pro-lifers during debates when they show charts demonstrating this fact.

Figure 16-3 shows that Black women obtain abortions at more than twice the rate of White women. This is entirely consistent with Margaret Sanger's campaign to eliminate "human weeds."

FIGURE 16-3
ABORTION RATIOS FOR BLACK AND WHITE WOMEN

AVERAGE PERCENT OF PREGNANCIES ENDING IN ABORTION, 1973-1988

                                           White: 23.3         Black: 56.6

Reference: United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1990 (110th Edition).

Now the womb of the black woman is seen as the latest battleground for oppression. In times past, the blacks couldn't grow kids fast enough for their 'masters' to harvest. Now that [black] power is near, the 'masters' want us to call a moratorium on having babies. When looked at in context, the whole mess adds up to blatant genocide.

                                                                       Erma Craven, chairwoman, Minneapolis 
                                                                       Commission of Human Relations

I believe Margaret Sanger would have been proud of us today if she had seen the directions that we have most recently in this organization taken.

                                                                       Faye Wattleton, President, 
                                                                       Planned Parenthood, 5/2/79

What the pro-abortionists really want in most cases is not only 'safe and legal abortion,' but also a reduction in the number of poor and non-White people in this country. This is also entirely in keeping with the philosophy of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who desired "A race of thoroughbreds."

This racist goal was commonly discussed in pro-abortion publications until their public relations experts wisely decided to hush them up. For example, in a looseleaf workbook entitled "Organizing for Action," published as recently as 1974, the National Abortion Rights Action League claimed that "Legal abortion will result in a reduction in welfare rolls."[32]

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #17

"We [pro-abortionists] are being oppressed by rich, lavishly-funded anti-choice groups."

Don't We Wish!

This is the one pro-abortion slogan that pro-lifers wish was true!

However, the total combined annual budget of the National Right to Life Committee and all of its hundreds of chapters, Human Life International, American Life League, and all of the other hundreds of national and local pro-life groups in the country is about 22 million dollars. Not a single penny of this comes from the United States government in the form of tax dollars.

Compare this to Planned Parenthood, which alone has an annual budget of about 250 million dollars about 30 percent of which is your tax dollars! Add to this the $200 million annual budget of other anti-life groups like the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and others, and you have the following comparison in annual budgets;

               Budget of pro-abortion groups: $450,000,000
                     Budget of pro-life groups: $22,000,000

This means that the anti-life groups have twenty times as much money as the pro-life groups!

So who's "rich and lavishly funded?"

Foundation Power.

The pro-abortionists also tend to ramble on about "right-wing foundation money." For example, one representative of the 'Religious' Coalition for Abortion Rights has complained that "It is much harder for us to raise the money we need for RCAR's programs than it is for the Moral Majority and New Right groups to finance their simplistic, judgmental campaigns which ignore the real needs of real people."

The figure below consists of a comparison of foundation grants to pro-abortion and pro-life groups during a typical recent year (1983), based on foundation tax records.

This figure shows that U.S. foundations gave pro-abortion organizations eighty-four times as much money as they did pro-life organizations in 1983!

This discrepancy has become even more pronounced in recent years. In 1990, for example, foundations gave pro-abortion groups a total of $22,159,000, and pro-life groups a paltry $164,325, a ratio of 135 to 1!

For the ten-year period 1981 to 1990, the total amount of foundation money given to pro-abortion groups exceeded $200 million. The amount of money given to pro-life groups was about one percent of this total $2 million.[33]

In the four years 1987 to 1990, Planned Parenthood and its affiliate organization, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), received an incredible $37,639,452 from foundations.[33] This is addition to the more than $150 million PP received in tax dollars during the same time period.

1983 FOUNDATION GRANTS TO
PRO-ABORTION AND PRO-LIFE GROUPS

                                                                                                            Total
Pro-Abortion Group                                                                          Grants
Population Council                                                                         $ 9,376,533
Planned Parenthood                                                                          6,859,988
Program for the Introduction and 
Adaptation of Contraceptive Technology                                           2,249,200
'Religious' Coalition for Abortion Rights                                                282,000
'Catholics' for a Free Choice                                                                199,060
ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project                                               169,000
National Abortion Rights Action League                                                 67,650
Abortion Rights Mobilization                                                                  25,000
The Abortion Fund                                                                                24,050
Other pro-abortion groups                                                                2,974,704
                                                                                 TOTAL — $22,227,185

                                                                                                             Total
Pro-Life Group                                                                                   Grants
World Organization Ovulation Method Billings (WOOMB)                 $120,000
National Commission on Human Life and Reproduction                          90,000
Human Life International                                                                         35,500
Human Life Center                                                                                 20,000
All other pro-life groups                                                                                  0
                                                                                      TOTAL — $265,500

Reference: Mary Meehan. "Foundation Power." Human Life Review, Fall 1984, pages 42 to 60.

And, in 1985 and 1986, the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund received hundreds of thousands of dollars from 29 of the 100 largest corporations in the United States: Allegis, American Express, Ameritech, Atlantic Richfield, AT&T, Bell South, Burlington Northern, Capital Cities, Chemical Bank, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Dart & Kraft, Dayton Hudson, Eastman Kodak, Federated Department Stores, General Mills, General Motors, Goodyear, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Manufacturers Hanover, Merrill Lynch, J.C. Penney, NYNEX, Phibro-Salomon, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Standard Oil, and Xerox.

Not one of these organizations contributed a dime to any pro-life group.[34]

Personal Wealth.

On a personal level, pro-abortionists have much more income and spending money than do pro-lifers.

The average family that identifies itself as 'pro-choice' has two working adults and either no children ('DINKS,' Double-Income, No Kids), or just one child. The average pro-life family has a working father, a mother who stays at home, and three or four children. The pro-abortion family, on the average, has an annual income of $20,000 more than the pro-life family. And, since the pro-abortionists usually have few children and don't tithe to churches, they have even more money to lavish upon themselves and on pro-abortion groups.[35]

And if you want to talk 'rich,' take a look at the full-time abortionists, who make an annual average salary of well over $150,000. Just ask any pro-lifer who has picketed an abortionist's home what type of neighborhood that home is in always the most exclusive areas. Also consider the type of car the average abortionist drives. Have you ever seen an abortionist drive anything less than a Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar, or Rolls?

Manpower.

It is also interesting to examine the total number of persons who work full-time on each side of the abortion issue. On the pro-abortion side, we have Planned Parenthood with more than 10,000 workers in all of its more than 500 affiliates and offices; NARAL and NOW with more than 1,000; and members of groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way, American Atheists, and many other organizations working full-time or part-time to advance the pro-abortion movement.

The total equivalent full-time non-medical staff working to promote abortion exceeds 35,000 in this country. Add to this an equivalent of 3,000 full-time 'doctors' and abortion clinic staff, and you have a total of nearly 40,000 full-time persons working solely to advance abortion in the United States alone.

On the pro-life side, we have perhaps 300 salaried persons in national and state Right to Life chapters, another 100 in American Life League, Human Life International, and Americans Against Abortion, and perhaps 500 more in other national, state, and local pro-life groups. Add to this total maybe 300 equivalent full-time and part-time positions in multi-issue groups like Concerned Women for America and the Eagle Forum, and we arrive at a total of about 1,200 persons working full-time for pro-life.

This means that full-time pro-life workers are outnumbered 35 to 1 by the pro-abortionists.

Why, then, are the pro-aborts so consistently losing ground at the grass-roots level?

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #18

"It's my body."
"Woman's body, woman's choice!"
"Keep your laws off my body!"

Whose Body?

Introduction. 

Pro-lifers agree that a woman does indeed have the right to control her own body. Pro-lifers also support 'reproductive freedom' for women.

However, the right to privacy and control over one's body does not in any way imply the right to destroy another person's body. And a woman has already exercised her 'reproductive freedom' when she has conceived (except in those extremely rare cases where rape or incest results in pregnancy). She has already reproduced; the question that remains is whether or not to kill.

It is true, of course, that the baby is inside the mother's body. But this no more makes it a part of her body than being inside a car makes one a part of the car. Even other living creatures inside a woman's body say tapeworms or other parasites are by no stretch of the imagination part of her body. They are physiologically entirely separate and distinct living creatures.

The Pro-Abortion Response. 

Most pro-abortionists, when confronted with this logic, will argue that the baby is totally dependent upon the mother. They are implying that this allows the mother the "right" to dispose of her baby.

An analogous situation involves astronauts in space. They are totally dependent upon their vessel for everything their air, water, food, and all of their other needs. If they should exit the vehicle unprotected, they would be nonviable, and would die in seconds. This also holds true for a nonviable fetus. Yet no thinking person would argue that the astronauts are only one part of their space vehicle, and, as such, are disposable!

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) brings up another interesting point.

Say we have a test tube with a recently-fertilized human egg or human embryo in it. Would this fertilized egg or embryo, which is suspended in a nutrient gel, then be a part of the glass test tube or Petri dish upon which it depends for its sustenance?

Logic would demand, of course, the response that it is not a part of its glass surroundings.

Another way make an audience see the fallacy in the "woman's body" slogan is to challenge a pro-abortionist to name one other part of a woman's body that detaches itself and leaves after a period of time in the same manner that the baby does.

Woman and Child: Separate Natures.

If the baby were part of the woman's body, it should bear the same characteristics as the mother. After all, geneticists can identify the person from whom a cell came just by looking at its genetic structure.

In order to highlight the fact that the baby is a separate being, consider these facts;

• all mothers are obviously female. Half of their children are male.
• the mother and baby frequently have different blood types.
• the baby can be a different race from the mother.
• every cell in the mother's body has a set of chromosomal characteristics 
  that is entirely distinct from every cell in the baby's body.
• when the fetus anchors itself to the uterine wall, there is a concerted attack 
  by white blood cells to defeat it, and the fetus must defend itself. The 
  mother's immune system recognizes it as "non-self." Therefore, it is not part 
  of her body.

The Parasite Argument.

Abortionist Warren Hern uses classic Newspeak when he insists on page 14 of his book Abortion Practice that "The relationship between the gravid female and the feto-placental unit can be understood best as one of host and parasite."

When pro-abortionists insist that "the fetus is a parasite," they are acknowledging its separate nature because parasites are never part of their host's body. If the fetus is simultaneously a parasite and part of the mother's body, that would mean that the mother is a parasite as well!

Neofeminists will howl at this comparison.

Obviously the pro-abortion "preborn as parasite" line of reasoning is illogical.

Biology recognizes that all parasites are separate creatures that depend upon the host creature for survival. The human fetus is not a parasite; this term is used by pro-abortionists to dehumanize those they would like to kill.

The 'Violinist' Again.

Pro-abortionists will sometimes advance the 'violinist' argument when asserting that they are sustaining their preborn children, just as they do when pushing the "mandatory motherhood" slogan (#12). Once again, they will draw the hypothetical (and impossible) scenario of a woman waking up from a sound sleep and finding herself 'hooked up' by a life support machine to a famous violinist who requires the use of her body to keep him alive. In other words, the woman is involuntarily sustaining him.

The pro-abortionist will then state that the woman has every right to simply walk away and let him die.

The 'violinist' argument for abortion is just as inappropriate for illustrating the "woman's body" slogan as it is for the "mandatory motherhood" slogan, and for the same reason.

To begin with, the hypothetical women was involuntarily 'hooked up' to the violinist. She had no idea that this was going to happen; she is, in other words, a true prisoner of medical science. However, pregnant women have been allowed to exercise their free will when choosing to have intercourse (except in the rare cases of rape or incest). Additionally, 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 scenario that has no parallel in medicine or in Constitutional law.

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 members of the audience if they would volunteer to be hooked up to a mother, father, husband, wife, child, or other loved one for a period of nine months if it would save their life.

Not many people will answer "no" to a question posed in this manner.

Inconsistencies in Rights to the Body.

Extending the Principle ... 

It is obvious to thinking pro-lifers that the "woman's body" argument is used by anti-lifers in many fields, but only when it suits their own purposes. This shows that the pro-aborts and all of their contemptible ilk do not really believe in this slogan.

For example, the primary goal of retired Michigan pathologist Jack ("The Dripper") Kevorkian is to advance the right to kill born human beings. Therefore, he uses precisely the same language that the pro-aborts employ when he claims that "Everyone has a right for suicide, because a person has a right to determine what will or will not be done to his body."[36]

David Thorstad of the pervert organization North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) wants to have sex with underage boys. Therefore, he claims that he is fighting for "... the rights of children to control their own bodies."[37] Of course, what he really means is that he is fighting for his right to control children's bodies, just as men who support abortion are fighting for their right to control women's bodies.

... But Only So Far. 

Of course, the Neoliberals will only allow people to control their own bodies when it suits their own purposes. If such control flies in the face of their agenda, suddenly the "right to control one's own body" means little or nothing.

Take capital punishment for example. The same people who push so hard for abortion and euthanasia under the rationale that "people ought to be able to control their own bodies" vigorously oppose even the execution of those few inmates who want to be put to death.

There have been dozens of instances of such interference by anti-death penalty groups, who curiously are uniformly pro-abortion.

Oregon killer James Isom steadfastly said that he preferred death to life in prison until September 1992, but anti-death penalty groups did not want him to have control over his own body. Terry Wright, spokesman for the Oregon Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, alleged that "We certainly are concerned about Mr. Isom's wishes. We just don't feel as a coalition that we can sit by and let this execution occur."[38]

The same situation occurred almost simultaneously in Oregon's neighboring state Washington, where convicted child molester and killer Westley Alan Dodd urged his attorneys to use whatever means were available to hasten his own execution.

Teresa Mathis of the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, whose organization fought long and hard against Dodd's execution, said flatly that "It doesn't matter whether this person wants to die or not. We don't think it's the right thing to do."[39] Invoking the tired idea that any 'crime' committed by society makes everyone in that society guilty of the 'crime,' she simpered that "I'm not willing to be a killer."[39]

It makes one curious as to whether or not Mathis thinks that she is a killer of unborn babies (an abortionist), since Washington State funds tens of thousands of abortions each year.

A second example of Neoliberal denial of the principle of "controlling one's body," of course, involves children. When it comes time for a 12-year old girl to decide whether or not to have an abortion, the American Civil Liberties Union and many other groups fight tooth and nail to protect her 'right' to kill her own child because, as they say, "minors must have the right to control their own bodies and destinies." But when a single 12-year old wants to use her body to pray in school, the full weight of the ACLU will come down against her.

The degree to which Neoliberals will allow people to control their own bodies depends upon how closely the activity in question upholds Neoliberal ideals.

It's as simple as that.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #19

"We really don't know when life begins."
"The fetus is just potential life."

NOTE: More detailed information on this subject can be found in Chapters 69, 70, and 71 of Volume II, which address the life, humanity, and personhood of the preborn.

"We Really Don't Know When Life Begins."

The [pro-life] opposition will hammer away at life and murder themes — matters of theology and faith, rather than fact and reason. Dispose of these as quickly as possible (avoid the "When does life begin?" discussion) ...

Looseleaf workbook "Organizing for Action." National Abortion Rights Action League, 1974, page 31. "Introduction to Debating."

Introduction. 

This is truly a contemptible slogan, and it should be treated as such. What this slogan really means is: "I DON'T CARE WHEN LIFE BEGINS!" Pro-lifers have a golden opportunity to nail their opponents on this one.

Generally, if anyone says that they don't know when life begins, they are admitting that abortion might be taking life, but that they really don't care one way or the other.

Pro-lifers will often encounter a pro-abortion debater who will assert that (1) we don't know when life begins and then, when pressed, will say that (2) life begins at birth. Ask him or her how the two are compatible: How do they know that life begins at birth if they don't know when life begins?

Tell a Parallel Story. 

It is very useful to paint 'word pictures' for an audience. This tactic has several advantages. It aids understanding, it gets attention, and it causes people to remember a message for a longer period of time.

The principle of parallelism allows an audience to consider the following situation, which uses precisely the same logic.

A demolition crew prepares to knock down an old and decrepit apartment building in an inner-city area. A crew member approaches the foreman and asks if they should check inside the building to insure that no transients have taken up residence there. But the foreman says "We don't really know if anyone is in there. Go ahead and knock it down!"

Err On the Side of Life. 

A Boeing 747 jetliner packed with 400 people doesn't take off if the captain suspects the existence of the tiniest malfunction. And has any pharmaceutical firm marketed a drug without properly testing it?

In matters of public safety, we always err on the side of life!

Our society does not allow behavior that may take life, even if the chance of such an occurrence is small. We are not allowed to discharge firearms in the general direction of a freeway just because human life might not be taken. We are not allowed to poison Halloween treats on a supermarket shelf, just because human life might not be taken. And we have many local laws and ordinances that forbid smoking in crowded areas, because second-hand smoke may be injurious to others!

Yet abortophiles are saying that abortion should be allowed just because we might not be taking human life (since they really don't know when life begins, after all).

A pro-lifer can easily tie up his debating opponent by getting him to define precisely when life begins, and then by asking him what the difference is between a fetus one day before this mythical dividing line and one day after. This tactic is particularly illuminating if the pro-abortionist says that life begins at 'quickening.'

Pro-Abortion Debating Tactics.

It is very instructive to see how the National Abortion Rights Action League tells its debaters how to handle pictures of aborted preborn babies, as shown in the quote below. Notice how the pro-abortion debaters are told to dehumanize the preborn.

Notice also how they allege that the baby looks like jelly which is natural, since it was just dismembered and sucked through a cannula with the diameter of a straw! Of course arms and legs are often indiscernible after an abortion! It might be fun to challenge pro-aborts to stick their fingers into a meat grinder or food processor and see if they still look like fingers.

This passage highlights the basic dishonesty of the pro-abortion position. Try showing a color slide of a living ten-week old preborn baby to an audience in order to highlight this dishonesty.

Another set of questions involves the opposition. Has your audience seen anti-abortion propaganda? Are you debating a Right-to-Lifer? Is the opposition bringing slides or pictures? Try to insist that they not be allowed to ... Find out if your opposition is bringing audio-visuals. Try to insist that you will only speak if they do not.

Explain that you are equally repulsed by the [pro-life] photos, that you are human and love children and babies as much as anyone else ... The pictures they [the audience] have seen must be discredited. They have been magnified so much as to remove the facts from scientific perspective. Really, in early stages, the fetus is smaller than a fingernail, can fit into a walnut shell, and is much like menstrual flow to the naked eye. We would be repulsed by a magnified picture of an eyeball in formaldehyde also.

It is an advantage to have visited an abortion clinic. Your enthusiastic first-hand account of the process can be impressive. Describe how quick and safe the procedure is, how pleasant the clinic, how relaxed the patient, how the conceptus looks at ten weeks — a small bloody mass, very jelly-like, about an inch long, and weighing about 3/4 of an ounce. Absolutely no arms and legs — no "baby" at all![32]

"The Fetus is Just Potential Life."

The Nobel Committee [for Physiology and Medicine] notes that life begins with the activation of ion channels as the sperm merges with the egg in fertilization. All cells have electrical charges within and outside the cell and the difference is known as the membrane potential. Fertilization changes the potential to prevent other sperm from joining the fertilized egg.

The Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology and Medicine, quoted in The New York Times, October 7, 1991.

Debunking the Slogan. 

A pro-lifer can clarify and refute the "potential life" slogan in a simple three-step process;

(1) establish that "potential life" represents entities that simply do not exist;
(2) show that the fetus is not dead; and
(3) conclude by the process of elimination that it therefore must be alive.

Bogus Definition. 

"Potential life" is merely a bogus term cooked up by the Supreme Court to prop up its insupportable Roe v. Wade decision. The decision is universally derided by biologists and fetologists. It is also leaned on heavily by pro-abortionists who insist that "life" is a metaphysical term, not a biological term. In other words, every woman can decide for herself whether or not her 'fetus' is alive.

Every entity on the face of the earth, animate or inanimate, is either "alive" or "dead" (of course, the descriptive verb "dead" does not necessarily imply that the entity was previously alive). Bacteria, cattle, and people are alive. Clouds, rocks, and corpses are dead. There is no 'in-between' term, because either an entity possesses the spark of life or it does not. Just as a woman cannot be "potentially pregnant," an entity cannot be "potentially alive."

The argument that there is some in-between area between life and death is used by pro-abortionists and pro-euthanasiasts today just as enthusiastically as Nazis and slaveowners used it in the past.

Given that all things are either alive or dead, the pro-lifer must now compel his opponent to concede that the fetus is not dead. After all, if it were dead, the natural miscarriage process would occur, and the woman would lose the child. Therefore, she would not need an abortion in the first place!

The Proof Is In the Reading. 

It is obvious to experienced pro-life debaters that abortophiles have become so hardened in their thinking that no amount of evidence will convince them that the preborn are living beings.

Pro-abortionists can be extremely anti-intellectual and very anti-technological at the very same time that they are accusing pro-lifers of "having their heads in the sand."

The pro-abortionists, of course, don't really care when life begins. This argument is a red herring, and no amount of evidence that the preborn are alive will cause a close-minded pro-abortionist to give up his or her precious right to kill.

Many leading pro-aborts have said as much. For example, Judith Pasternak of the American Civil Liberties Union's "Reproductive Freedom Project" said that "But these [fetal surgery] techniques and this success are new indeed, so dazzlingly new as to blind us, perhaps, to the fact that the moral premise of abortion remains unchanged. The "issue of abortion" remains the issue of the right of the woman to choose whether or not to carry something in her own body. No technological advances can rob her of her right to choose whether or not to keep it there."[40]

Even the evidence presented in medical textbooks will not sway the average pro-abort, but can be used to show an audience that they are extremely close-minded.

Greenhill and Freidman's Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics states flatly that "The term "conception" refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops. The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life."

Other medical texts that use language identical or similar in content to the above are Otto and Towle, Modern Biology; Patten, Foundations of Embryology; Arey, Developmental Anatomy; Moore, Clinically Oriented Embryology; Luria, 36 Lectures in Biology; and Potter and Craig, Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant.[41]

The above embryology/fetology texts are used by 80 percent of all of the medical schools in the United States. It is instructive to challenge a pro-abort to produce any medical textbook that asserts either that "life begins at birth" or that "we don't know when life begins."

Abortionist or Exorcist? 

Some pro-abortionists insist that they and they alone confer existence upon their preborn baby by some nebulous process of "acceptance." In other words, if a woman simply does not want the pregnancy, the baby ceases to exist.

If a pro-abortionist subscribes to this view, ask why such women need an abortion for a baby that doesn't exist. If every woman could decide for herself when life begins by using a metaphysical process, she would need an exorcism for an unwanted pregnancy, not an abortion!

If the fetus were dead, it would not be growing, sucking its thumb, taking in and efficiently processing nutrients, and excreting. After three weeks, its heart would not be beating and its brain would not be functioning.

The Roots of Oppression. 

As mentioned above, many abortophiles say that the mother makes the preborn baby into a human person merely by wanting it.

This is a completely dishonest argument. In many cases where drunk drivers have killed viable third-trimester wanted preborn babies, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and other pro-abort groups have weighed in on the side of the drunk driver, and have stated in their amicus (friend of the court) briefs that no harm has occurred because the preborn child was not a human being.

This position is totally inconsistent with the pro-abort argument that the mother confers humanity upon the preborn baby merely by wanting it.

In any case, history has vividly demonstrated to us that the mere fact that a certain group of people can withhold the humanity of individual members of another group of people is obviously the very root of oppression.

Hitler did it. The American slavers did it.

And now the pro-aborts are doing the very same thing.

Conclusion. 

The natural conclusion of the above analyses is that the fetus is indeed fully alive in every meaning of the term. Anyone who holds otherwise is being either deliberately dishonest or is deceiving themselves.

A pro-lifer might want to ask his pro-abortion opponent if he believes in the morality of fetal organ transplants for Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and other disorders. It is also illuminating to ask him if he thinks that fetal organ experimentation is ethical. He will usually be compelled by his philosophy to answer "Yes."

The pro-lifer should then outline the obvious conclusion that fetal tissue used for such purposes must be alive it would be useless if it were dead! How can live tissue come from a non-living organism?

The obvious conclusion, once again, is that the preborn are alive.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #20

"The fetus isn't really human."
"The fetus isn't a person."

NOTE: More detailed information on this subject can be found in Chapters 69, 70, and 71 of Volume II, which address the life, humanity, and personhood of the preborn.

"The Fetus Isn't Really Human."

The Definition of "Human." 

Geneticists and biologists define a "human being" as a member of the genus Homo Sapiens by the most fundamental and reliable measurement imaginable his or her chromosomal characteristics. Take any cell from an unborn baby eye cell, skin cell, liver cell and any microbiologist can tell you that it is human by examining its chromosomes.

Perhaps the pro-abortionist who asserts that the fetus really isn't human is a National Enquirer enthusiast you know, "Woman Raped by Aliens, Gives Birth to 46 Monsters" but, in reality, no human woman has ever actually given birth to anything other than a human being.

Pro-Abortion Tactics. 

Despite genetic evidence, pro-abortionists will rely almost exclusively on basic physical appearance to deny the preborn their humanity.

For example, the National Abortion Rights Action League issued a 1974 debate manual that asserted;

We should not be surprised to find a human fetus looks like us; rather we would be amazed if it resembled an elephant. But a dead body also looks very much like us, yet does not prevent us from cutting that body, as in an autopsy, since the person is no longer there as the person is not yet there in the case of a fetus.

Back to the central issue of personhood and rights; other non-persons (pigs, cows) have toenails, heartbeats, and the capacity to feel pain (some say a fetus can only feel pressure, not pain, but we're not sure), yet these factors alone do not prevent the destruction of such entities.[32]

Other pro-abortionists attempt an even more extreme reach of 'logic' in order to deny the preborn any protection whatever. Population controller Garrett Hardin uses an inaccurate pseudo-scientific argument and a simply silly comparison in order to impress lay people; "A set of blueprints is not a house; the DNA of a zygote is not a human being. There is no moral obligation to conserve DNA if there was, no man would be allowed to brush his teeth and gums, for in this brutal operation hundreds of sets of DNA are destroyed daily."[42]

A Progressive Acquisition? 

A pro-abortionist might assert that 'humanity' is a mere progressive acquisition instead of a fixed biological quality, i.e., one becomes human sometime between one's conception and birth. In other words, at some undefined point in time, a fetus becomes instantaneously human.

Alternatively, abortophiles may say that the fetus begins its existence with no humanity and gradually acquires it until it is 100 percent human. The purpose of this position is obvious: As long as the preborn are anything less than 100 percent human, they are equal to something that is not human in the least, and can easily be disposed of.

These pro-abortion arguments are absurd, even under casual inspection. If one begins with a human sperm and a human egg, what else can the product be except human? Pro-abortionists would have us believe that, after fertilization, the germ cells somehow lose 100 percent of their humanity and then miraculously regain all of it at some magic undefined moment before birth.

This argument has no foundation in biology or in logic.

Nobody follows this line of 'reasoning' when they are talking about rats, mice, whales, or cattle. Nobody has ever spoken of the progressive chimpanzification of a chimpanzee, or of the progressive hippopotamusification of a hippopotamus, because nobody has a vested interest in pushing a ridiculous social agenda involving chimpanzees or hippos.

"The Fetus Isn't Really a Person."

Two-Thirds of a Loaf. 

Some individuals and groups acknowledge the life of a preborn baby and its humanity, but still deny its personhood.

This is a desperately dangerous attitude. When we acknowledge that we are killing human beings for whatever reason but deny them personhood, literally no one is safe!

The Nazis fell into this trap. They acknowledged only that they were destroying "human weeds" and "life not worth living," but officially classified their living human victims as "non-persons."

The slavers also fell into this trap. They acknowledged the obvious life in their slaves (after all, dead slaves don't work), and their obvious humanity (other species weren't intelligent enough to follow orders), but drew the line at their personhood. Slaves were, according to the United States Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, officially "non-persons."

Where Will This Thinking Take Us? 

It is relatively easy to discern where this line of reasoning inevitably leads. To grant life and humanity to an individual, but then withhold his personhood, is the most powerful tool of oppression and genocide.

Inconvenient and (almost) invisible preborns are the easiest to dispose of, so they have become the first to be eliminated. The killing ground has now inevitably expanded from the uterus to private hospital rooms and out-of-the-way nursing homes. Finally, entire classes of 'imperfect' human beings will lose their personhood because they don't measure up to the high standards of the decisionmakers.

It is advisable not to laugh at these predictions: this process has happened before! And, if we are not vigilant and fearless in battle, it will inevitably happen again!

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #21

"We're not 'pro-abortion.' We're 'pro-choice.' Nobody really wants abortion, because it's always so tragic. We just want freedom of choice to follow our own consciences."

Why 'Pro-Choice?'

Let me digress for a moment on the question of "pro-choice," as they euphemistically call themselves now. I reject that phrase, that euphemism. It is misleading. It is dishonest. It implies that in the issue of abortion there is an ethical choice whether to have an abortion or whether not to have an abortion; and how can you be against choice? Of course, the joker in that deck is that abortion is not an ethical choice, and therefore that is not an ethical choice at all, and therefore there is no such thing as pro-choice in abortions.

                                                              Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson.[43]

Introduction. 

The very term 'pro-choice' shows that the pro-abortionists don't really believe in their own position. They know that the word "ABORTION" conjures up vivid pictures of a bloody, cowardly act of outright murder, and so they desperately dodge the much more accurate term 'pro-abortion.'

On the other hand, many pro-life activists are content with the term 'anti-abortion,' because it more accurately describes a movement that opposes in moral principle the selfish acts of murder than go on all around us.

The Original Strategy. 

It is obvious that the abortophiles would not have made it as far as they did if they had been honest and had assumed for themselves the more accurate "pro-abortion" label.

This fact is acknowledged by many anti-life strategists. The following quote by leading Humanist writer Tom Flynn reveals the fascinating background behind the decision to go with the 'pro-choice' label;

But times had changed; the personhood argument on which the "New Morality" case turned still the most logically consistent moral defense of abortion had become a tougher sell. Then inspiration struck.

Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to convince millions of people that abortion was licit. Perhaps abortion could be reduced to a secondary issue and subordinated to some value that already enjoyed wide acceptance. This was the genesis of "pro-choice," which quickly displaced the movement's earlier, explicitly pro-abortion platform. It was a packaging breakthrough. Why struggle with deep moral conflicts if a quick appeal to pluralism will co-opt millions into supporting abortion rights despite their continued feeling that abortion is wrong?

"Nobody is for abortion," at least one speaker will intone at any pro-choice rally. The implication is that decent people will always disdain it. That is precisely the attitude we should be fighting to change ... Secular humanists need to dispute the pro-choice litany that "Nobody is for abortion." We must be for abortion ...[44]

A Chilling Precedent.

Not surprisingly, the pro-abortionists are precisely echoing the language of our country's pre-Civil War slavers, who insisted that they were not "pro-slavery." The slavers did not want anyone else to "foist their morality" off on the slave owners. As William O. Douglas insisted, they didn't want others to "legislate morality." All they wanted was "freedom of choice" to "follow their own consciences."

Truly Pro-Abortion.

The Image. The major pro-abortion groups have an ideal self-image that they would like to project for the public: That of beneficent, neutral observers passively monitoring abortion from the political sidelines, bereft of any relevant ideology or interests.

If this is true, why are they all pushing abortion so hard?

In reality, so-called 'pro-choice' groups show that they are truly pro-abortion by their actions. As Neoliberals like to say, "What you are speaks so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying!"

Forced Funding for Abortions ... 

Pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women insist that others, even those who object to abortion, pay for them with their tax dollars. Every major 'pro-choice' group has gone on record and demanded that taxpayers be forced to pay for free abortions.

Is this 'pro-choice?'

... And Even Forced Abortions. 

Not one so-called 'pro-choice' group has ever condemned China's policy of forced abortions many of which are performed in the last trimester and forced sterilization and mandatory birth control. This obviously means that the pro-abortionists approve of this forced-abortion program.

When a debating opponent objects to this logic, a pro-lifer should point out that the pro-abortionists invariably claim that those pro-lifers who do not vigorously condemn clinic bombings are, by their mere silence, approving of it.

In fact, Planned Parenthood and many other pro-abortion groups attacked the Reagan administration's Mexico City Policy and demanded that funding be restored to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which designed and carried out the Chinese forced abortion program.

Incredibly, many major pro-abortion organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW), have gone on record as approving of China's forced abortions, and even have suggested designing a similar coercive program for the United States!

Consider the anti-choice statements made by pro-abortionists in Figure 16-4.

Do any of them sound 'pro-choice?'

FIGURE 16-4
ANTI-CHOICE STATEMENTS MADE BY PRO-ABORTIONISTS

We are going to have to face as China has faced the policy of controlling the size of families, and to assume that we can go on without facing this responsibility is totally irresponsible ... I consider the Chinese government's [population control] policy among the most intelligent in the world ... it is a policy limited to the heavily overpopulated areas and it is an attempt to feed the people of China. I find it very intelligent.

Molly Yard, former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), on the March 1989 "Oprah Winfrey Show."

China's population is so enormous that if they didn't control it, they wouldn't be able to feed their people. The Chinese government doesn't coerce people. They use education. It's very clear when you're there. You can't miss it. Even if you can't read the language, you can't miss it.

Molly Yard at an April 7, 1989 press conference, quoted by Mary Meehan. "Women as Guinea Pigs." National Catholic Register, April 30, 1989, page 4.

What is moral about denying family planning funds to China, which is what the United States has done, because the Chinese have a policy of allowing abortions and encouraging a one-child family? What is moral about insisting that our point of view should be adopted by the Chinese when the only responsible policy they can have is to control family planning?

Molly Yard, in her keynote address at the 1990 NOW National Convention. Quoted by Debra J. Saunders, Los Angeles Daily News. "NOW's Shrillness Becomes Embarrassment to Feminism." August 7, 1989, page D4.

The main difference between China and other densely populated developing countries ... may be that the Chinese have had the foresight to make projections of their population and resources and the courage to translate their findings into policy.

Lester R. Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute, New York Times, May 8, 1985.

[China's coercive population-control program is] remarkably vigorous and effective [and China should be acknowledged] as a leader in a grand experiment in the management of population and natural resources.

Zero Population Growth (ZPG) founder Paul Ehrlich. National Geographic Magazine, December 1988, page 922.

The propriety of the methods used to discourage children is a fair question. But outsiders should not make ringing statements about it without understanding the reality of the problem China faces.

New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, quoted in "The Week." National Review, September 20, 1985, pages 12 and 14.

[We recommend] (1) mandatory abortion for any unmarried girl found to be within the first three months of pregnancy, and (2) mandatory sterilization of any such girl giving birth out of wedlock for a second time.

1969 White House Conference on Hunger panel on "Pregnant and Nursing Women and Infants," headed by Planned Parenthood's Dr. Alan Guttmacher and Dr. Charles U. Lowe of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's National Institutes of Health (NIH).

If parenthood is a right, population control is impossible. If parenthood is only a privilege, and if parents see themselves as trustees of the germ plasm and guardians of the rights of future generations, then there is hope for mankind ... Though coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, it need not be forever ... Its dirtiness can be cleansed away by saying it over and over without apology or embarrassment.

Garrett Hardin. "Parenthood: Right or Privilege?" Science Magazine. Also quoted in "'Voluntary' Sterilization?" ALL About Issues, March 1983, page 30.

We are making birth control compulsory because we have compulsory death control, and we have found you can't have one without the other ... Having compulsory death control, we must have compulsory birth control, limiting every family to two children.

Colorado governor Richard Lamm, quoted in "'Voluntary' Sterilization?" ALL About Issues, March 1983, page 30.

Each country will have to decide its own form of coercion and determine when and how it should be employed. At present, the means available are compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion. Perhaps someday a way of enforcing compulsory birth control will be feasible.

Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, former President, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Medical World News, June 6, 1969.

Is adolescent pregnancy a disease? We have laws regarding other epidemics. We have mandatory immunizations, but we have no law prohibiting motherhood before the age of 14 in our supposedly-civilized society. We ought to mandate against continuing pregnancy in the very young say, those less than 14 years.

Minnesota abortionist Jane Hodgson at May 28-30, 1980 National Abortion Federation conference in Washington, D.C., quoted in Mary Meehan and Elizabeth Moore. "Forced Abortion Suggested at Clinic Owner's Conference." National Right to Life News, June 2, 1980, pages 1 and 13.

Target: Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

There are now more than a thousand pro-life crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) that offer women faced with a problem pregnancy clothing, money, housing, groceries, and any other help that they may need.

As soon as they heard about these centers, pro-abortion people immediately condemned them as 'fraudulent clinics.' Molly Yard of the National Organization for Women has vowed to "close every one of these so-called crisis pregnancy centers." Pro-abortion people have picketed the CPCs, taken them to court in attempts to drive them out of business, and several have even burned down under mysterious circumstances.

The pro-abortionists have, at a cost of over two million dollars, succeeded in closing down exactly six CPCs over the time period 1986 to 1990. During this same time frame, 250 more CPCs began operating.

In other words, the pro-abortionists want to forcibly destroy any choice but abortion. This is the true meaning of 'pro-choice.'

No Informed Consent. 

Every major 'pro-choice' group opposes any and all informed consent laws as a matter of course (for further information on how pro-abortion groups oppose informed consent, see Chapter 14, "Anti-Life Unilateral Pluralism").

Making a choice when in possession of only half of the available information is not really a choice; it's being led to the slaughter as ignorant cattle.

Is this 'pro-choice?'

Whenever any legislature or individual proposes any law or bill or initiative that will provide informed consent, a one-day waiting period, or even a dignified burial for aborted preborn babies, the pro-abortionists go insane with anger or indignation. They feel compelled to shoot down even those measures that would have no impact whatever on abortion, just to be on the safe side.

For example, Missouri's Women and Infants' Caregiver Act would have ensured that all women considering abortion receive counseling from the state on prenatal care and abortion alternatives. This bill would not have restricted access to abortion in the least, but pro-abortion organizations and individuals fanatically fought it in the state legislature and stated that it was "... an extreme bill that would cripple women's access to reproductive services."

Massachusetts legislators introduced a bill that would have created a public education program to educate pregnant women about fetal development and the impacts of drug, alcohol, and tobacco abuse on their preborn babies. This bill would have lowered the number of infants born with low birth weight and other disabilities and would have led to better prenatal care. This bill had broad support from physicians and other medical professionals, but the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts bitterly opposed it.

A New York law would have provided grants to non-profit organizations for the purpose of providing information on alternatives to abortion. But the abortion lobby, led by New York NOW, called the bill "a violation of free speech" and "a imposition on the right to privacy."[45] How a bill to help people talk about something was "a violation of free speech," of course, was a question that went unanswered.

Celebrating Abortion. 

It is very strange that 'pro-choice' groups insist that abortion is 'tragic,' and yet, to commemorate the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, they have lavish "Rejoice for Choice" celebrations all over the country, dances, cakes, chocolate and wine-tasting extravaganzas, and similar upper-crust parties. This hardly sounds like a group of people that thinks abortion is 'tragic.'

Doesn't this sound pro-abortion?

Madonna's Problem. 

There is other, ample proof that pro-abortion groups want to stamp out every choice except abortion. For example, when Madonna released her (perhaps unintentionally) pro-life hit single, "Papa Don't Preach," pro-abortion Neofeminist attorney Gloria Allred demanded publicly that she; "... make a public statement noting that kids have other choices, including abortion. Or, if she doesn't want to make a statement, then she has the responsibility to make another record supporting the opposite point of view [abortion]. This song has me very concerned ..."

Pro-Life Doctors to the Back of the Bus. 

With the eager backing of every pro-abortion group in the country, many medical schools used to grill prospective applicants on their views and then refuse admission to all candidates who dared express any opposition to or uneasiness about abortion. Many obstetrics-gynecology graduates were refused residencies for the same reason. This atrociously biased state of affairs had to be corrected by a United States Supreme Court decision.

Pro-abortion groups still try to deny physicians their right not to perform abortions. All pro-abortion groups oppose medical 'conscience clauses' for doctors and nurses. In fact, many pro-abortionists have stridently insisted that any medical professional who holds a pro-life view is, by definition, incompetent and must immediately get out of medical practice![46]

The official position of the American Public Health Association, the National Abortion Federation, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is that preborn child killing be a mandatory component of all OB/GYN training. As an example, the University of Washington Medical School requires all ob/gyn candidates to kill at least 36 preborn children in a local Planned Parenthood abortuary. A tightly-worded "religious exclusion" directsvthat those doctors who have religious reasons for not performing abortions must counsel women to have abortions.[47]

Most significantly, Rep. Pat Schroeder (D.-olt) has amended the "Freedom of Choice Act" to insure that all conscience clauses for doctors and nurses were eliminated. In other words, those medical personnel whose religion or personal beliefs do not include the killing of the preborn would be thrown out of their jobs.[48]

How's that for 'pro-choice?'

Women's Unions Not For All Women. 

College and university Women's Unions pledge to be places "for all women of every race, age, ethnicity, ability, class, sexual orientation, religion ...," or words to this effect.

However, more than thirty of these Unions, when confronted with pro-life women who wanted to join, immediately amended their charters to read that all members must support "reproductive choice." In other words, pro-life women need not apply.

How's that for freedom of choice and expression?

No Pro-Life Feminists. 

So deeply entrenched is abortion in the Neofeminist psychology that no true Neofeminist can even comprehend the existence of such a creature as a "pro-life feminist."

The same Neofeminists who claim to represent all women ruthlessly shut out anyone who does not exactly parrot their views.

Neofeminist Pamela Erens recently wrote in Mother Jones that "Most feminists, predictably, can't stand them [pro-life women]. Anti-abortion feminist groups have been banned from ERA rallies, rebuffed in their attempts to join consortiums of women's groups, and forbidden to meet in campus women's centers. The rift has been present since the earliest days of the women's movement. Pat Goltz, the member of Ohio NOW who founded FFL in 1972, was asked and then forced to give up her NOW membership because of her anti-abortion activities. NOW's president Molly Yard says that she would meet the same fate today. "I don't know how someone can be a feminist if she's not for a woman's right to her own life," she says. Seventeen years later, seven-term congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio is consistently refused endorsement by women's organizations because she opposes abortion, even though she has been a leading supporter of the ERA, pay equity, and aid for poor and elderly women."[49]

The Most Certain Refutation.

Pro-aborts like to try to "prove" that pro-lifers are not really what they say they are by trying to tangle them up in the "Seamless Shroud."

In other words, you aren't really "pro-life" unless you're against old-growth logging, vivisection, nuclear power, leather in shoes, homophobia, racism, sexism, hunger, and on and on ad nauseam.

Pro-lifers can use a little verbal karate to turn this nasty little trick around on the pro-aborts.

The most certain way to refute the "pro-choice" slogan in a debate is to ask the pro-abortionist what he or she does to help mothers carry their babies to term. After all, that's what the term "pro-choice" implies: Support for all of the choices the mother might make. If the pro-abort is an activist whose efforts are entirely directed towards making sure abortion remains "safe and legal," then her actions are not consistent with her words.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #22

"Prayerfully pro-choice."

'Prayerfully Pro-Choice?!?'

Amusing Oxymoron. 

One of the most irritating (yet amusing) oxymorons of all is the trite slogan 'prayerfully pro-choice,' which is the "brain" child of the 'Religious' Coalition for Abortion Rights. The apparent objective of this slogan is to convince the public that you can murder your children and still be a 'good Christian.'

Pro-life activists have seen RCAR members pass out scores and even hundreds of placards with this slogan on it to every pro-abort in sight (including, presumably, a large percentage of atheists and anti-theists) during major rescue missions and at pro-abortion rallies.

It is amusing indeed to see a person holding a sign saying "prayerfully pro-choice," while cursing and swearing at pro-lifers.

Chapter 42 summarizes the abortion positions of the 232 major denominations in the United States and shows that pro-abortion 'churches' are definitely a small and vocal minority. Chapter 80 of Volume II discusses the underhanded tactics and disreputable nature of the organization that calls itself the 'Religious' Coalition for Abortion Rights.

The Importance of Religion to Activists. 

It is quite obvious to thinking activists on both sides of the abortion fight that religion is far more important to pro-lifers than it is to pro-aborts. After all, aren't the pro-abortionists the ones who are always screaming "Keep your religion out of my crotch," "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries," and calling us "Bible-beating fanatics?"

According to an April 13-16, 1989 New York Times/CBS poll of 1,412 adults, people become more pro-life as religion becomes more important in their lives;[50]

Religion's Importance to Person                         Pro-Life                 Pro-Abortion
Protestants
     "Extremely" or "very" important                              66%                            39%
     "Somewhat" or "not" important                               34%                            61%
Catholics
     "Extremely" or "very" important                              72%                            28%
     "Somewhat" or "not" important                               28%                            72%

Keep in mind also that many or most 'religious' pro-abort activists are "children of a looser God;" their God is either some artificial New Age conglomeration or a wimpy, fuzzy-wuzzy, feel-good 'Jesus' a 'mush god' who is too kind and nonjudgmental to ever send anyone to Hell. Their ideal God is the 'Jesus' of Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ," a confused and tortured character who is deeply and obviously flawed, just like them.

The abortophiles rely upon Christ's mercy in this life; unfortunately for them, they will have to face His justice in the next.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #23

"Abortion is a [complex, difficult, agonizing] decision."

Introduction.

 ... the moral aspect of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives. It must be determined by objective standards.

                                                                Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio.[51]

What a pro-abortionist is really saying with the "complex decision" slogan is that any act is justifiable if even a token amount of thought or contemplation goes into planning it.

A pro-lifer can use parallelism to point out how this argument could apply to any crime. For example, serial murderers certainly think a lot about their crimes as they plan them. This is how they often elude the authorities for years. Does this make serial killing excusable? Jeffrey Dahmer plotted his atrocities with great care, but he didn't get off at his trial. Rapists may agonize over their feelings and then plan their ambushes of unsuspecting women carefully. Does this excuse the crime of rape?

The pro-lifer might also mention one or more issues dear to the Neoliberal heart. For example, the South African government certainly does a lot of planning and thinking about its apartheid policy. The pro-lifer can ask his opponent if this validates apartheid. And Hitler certainly thought a lot about exterminating the Jews. Does this legitimize the First Holocaust?

In summary, no amount of thinking and agonizing about a crime or a sin makes it right or ethical!

Difficult? Not For Everyone!

In any case, many women are extremely cavalier about killing their own children. The Alan Guttmacher Institute says that more than one-third of all women obtaining abortions were not using birth control at the time they conceived. This means that these women are using abortion as birth control! Every abortion clinic worker can tell you about 22-year old women who are on their third, fourth, or even fifth abortion, and couldn't care less about it!

As one abortion clinic director recently claimed; "'Women don't do this [abortion] lightly.' I'm sick and tired of hearing this. 98 percent of the women do do it lightly in here, but I never say that. And they do it lightly. They think of abortion like brushing their dime teeth, and that's OK with me."[52]

Other quotes from pro-abortion sources reveal that many women have always regarded abortion as no more significant than "brushing their dime teeth;"

I do dislike a certain type of modern young woman who indulges promiscuously, uses contraceptives rather reluctantly, preferring repeat abortions, which she regards as lightly as tossing down a cocktail or a glass of whiskey.

British abortionist William Robinson, The Critic and Guide, 1921, page 24. Quoted in Colin Francome. Abortion Freedom: A Worldwide Movement. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984, page 75.

Abortion is so routine that one expects it to be like a manicure: Quick, cheap, and painless.

Sallie Tisdale, abortion clinic nurse. Harpers Magazine, October 1987, "We Do Abortions Here."

How come they [right-to-lifers] don't get upset over a little kid having its tonsils out? That's worse than having an abortion any day!

"Abortion Eve," 1973 comic book by Chin Lyvely and Joyce Sutton, promoted by Planned Parenthood, page 20.

There are many different reasons why women get abortions. And they are all valid.

"Women Are Not Incubators!: The Assault on Abortion Rights." Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, Revolutionary Worker, November 6, 1989. Also distributed as a special reprint booklet by the same title.

Neofeminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich wrote revealingly about the fallacy of "agonizing before abortions.' She showed that pro-aborts are just using this as a front; for the hard-core Neofeminists, at least, no more thought goes into an abortion than getting a manicure; 

Quite apart from blowing up clinics and terrorizing patients, the anti-abortion movement can take credit for a more subtle and lasting kind of damage: It has succeeded in getting even pro-choice people to think of abortion as a "moral dilemma," an "agonizing decision," and related code phrases for something murky and compromising, like the traffic in infant formula mix. In liberal circles, it has become unstylish to discuss abortion without using words like "complex," "painful," and the rest of the mealy-mouthed vocabulary of evasion. Regrets are also fashionable, and one otherwise feminist author writes recently of mourning, each year following her birthday, the putative birthday of her discarded fetus. I cannot speak of other women, of course, but the one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks ...[30]

Celebrating Abortion.

Not only is abortion not a difficult decision for many women, but many pro-abortion groups actually celebrate it!

One example of the psychological aberration is a pamphlet issued by the renegade group 'Catholics' for a Free Choice (CFFC) entitled "You Are Not Alone." This pamphlet includes two instructions for conducting pseudo-religious ceremonies (more closely approximating witchcraft, actually) that literally celebrate and "affirm" the abortion decision.

Predictably, no CFFC pamphlet includes a ceremony for affirming the right to choose life.

An even more extreme example is Rebecca Altafut's article entitled "Abortion With Dignity," appearing in the February 26, 1987 issue of the New Haven Advocate. This article discusses the 'many gifts of abortion,' including a recommendation that women use it as a fertility self-test! According to Altafut, another 'gift' of abortion is the bald acknowledgement that women who use abortion "have no need for birth control."

According to two experienced abortionists/authors, Drs. Selig Newhardt and Harold Schulman, Altafut's "fertility self-check" is very common among unmarried women; 

Our discussions with unmarried women have revealed one pattern recurring over and over again. A young woman will have an unexpected sexual encounter with no contraceptive precautions. She will then worry herself into a frenzy waiting for the next menstrual period. When the flow comes, she will breathe a great sigh of relief and forget the entire episode. But some time later the same sequence will be repeated, and the worry-relief cycle will be relived. After three or four such episodes the patient begins to wonder about her ability to conceive. She really should have "gotten caught," she thinks, yet she did not. Soon she is unconsciously trying to prove her fertility, and usually she succeeds ...[53]

This theme is reiterated many times by the Neofeminists. For example, pro-abortion author Katha Pollitt has written that; "Moralists, including some that are prochoice, like to say that abortion isn't or shouldn't be a method of birth control. But that's just what abortion is a bloody, clumsy method of birth control."[54]

So pro-lifers must not be fooled by the handwringing and crocodile tears of the pro-abortionists when they claim that "abortion is a difficult decision for women!"

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #24

"Anti-choicers are completely out of the mainstream. They in no way represent the public because their views are so very extreme. They are nothing more than a very small but very vocal minority."

Who Is Really 'On the Fringe?'

In every generation there exists a group of people so filled with bigotry and self-righteousness that they will resort to any means even violence to impose their views on society. Today, such fanatics dominate a movement ironically called 'the Right-to-Life,' a movement which threatens the most basic of human rights.

Planned Parenthood propaganda pamphlet, issued by "The Justice Fund," 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019.

Introduction. 

Very few comprehensive studies have addressed the characteristics of pro-abortion and anti-abortion activists, and how these traits compare to the general American public.

However, the most comprehensive of these a 1980 study by sociologist Donald Granberg of the University of Missouri shows conclusively that pro-life activists are much closer in nature and thought to the general public than are pro-abortion activists in both their background and attitudes.[35]

Analysis of Conclusions. 

This conclusion should not be surprising, in light of the fact that many or even most committed pro-abortion activists are wrapped up in one or more tangential life issues: witchcraft, homosexuality, atheism, and Communism, which are hardly interests shared by the average member of the public.

Anti-life activists in general are society's outcasts and misfits, collecting and aggregating on the grey fringes, never a part of the mainstream but trying desperately to change everyone else to fit their mold.

The Methodology.

Granberg's study involved polling 750 activists from two of the most pre-eminent anti-abortion and pro-abortion activist organizations in the United States: The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).

It would be relatively pointless to compare the characteristics of the more "radical" groups on both sides of the issue, i.e., Operation Rescue and the National Organization for Women. Members of Operation Rescue believe strongly enough in their cause to take direct action and risk personal loss, while members of NOW are on a permanent loud grandstand before the public. As such, neither of these groups would compare at all to the general public, whose members are usually not enamored of the idea of sitting in jail or whipping a crowd into a frenzy.

NRLC and NARAL generally represent the more 'civilized' factions of both sides, and use the same strategy and tactics in their efforts to achieve their goals.

Granberg received a total of 901 responses as follows;

NRLC members: 428 (57% of those mailed)
NARAL members: 473 (63% of those mailed).

The Conclusions.

Figure 16-5 summarizes the responses received by the study managers. The two main conclusions that can be drawn from this survey are abundantly clear;

• NRLC members are more like the public than NARAL members in 17 of 
  30 total categories. In the most critical area social attitudes NRLC was 
  more like the general public in 7 of 11 responses.
• NRLC and NARAL members are more similar to each other than they 
  are to the general public.

FIGURE 16-5
COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND ABORTION ACTIVISTS

                                                                                                                     Most Like 
Characteristic of Activists                  Public         NRLC        NARAL        Public

Demographic Characteristics
    Number of brothers and sisters             3-4              3-4                 2              NRLC
    Number of children                               2.1               3.4               1.3            NARAL
    Married members                                61%              87%             55%         NARAL
    Members separated or divorced          12%               2%              1%            NARAL
    College graduates                                16%             58%              83%          NRLC
    Family incomes over $50,000               4%              11%              17%          NRLC
    Considers self 'working-class'              46%             14%               7%           NRLC
    Women consider self 'homemakers'     56%              81%             28%          NRLC
    Women work full-time outside home    44%             19%              72%          NRLC
    Members 30 years old or younger        32%            16%               3%           NARAL
    Members 65 years old and older          16%              5%               1%           NARAL
    White members                                    86%            98%              98%           TIE
Political Affiliation
    Registered and active Republicans        23%             41%              18%         NARAL
    Registered and active Democrats         38%              23%             52%          NARAL
    Self-described 'political liberal'             25%               7%              68%          NRLC
Religious Affiliations
    Roman Catholic                                  25%               70%            15%          NARAL
    Jewish                                                 2%                 3%             17%           NRLC
    Atheists/agnostics                                7%                 1%              40%           NRLC
    Person considers religion important     58%               87%             20%           NRLC
Attitudes Toward Social Issue
    Agree that euthanasia is a right            60%                3%             89%          NARAL
    Oppose capital punishment                 43%               56%            77%            NRLC
    Favor gun control                               55%               63%            78%            NRLC
    Favor the Equal Rights Amendment     61%               9%             93%          NARAL
    Women should be held equal
        to men in business, government,
        and industry                                   62%               72%            94%            NRLC
    Homosexuality is wrong                     82%               87%            12%             NRLC
    Adultery is wrong                              88%               92%             47%            NRLC
    Premarital sex is wrong                      41%               88%             6%             NARAL
    Divorce should be more difficult         44%               80%             4%              NRLC
    Military spending
        should be reduced                         15%               13%            52%              NRLC
    Government should work
        to reduce poverty                          43%               26%            51%            NARAL

References: (1) Donald Granberg. "The Abortion Activists." Alan Guttmacher Institute's Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1981. (2) Donald Granberg. "The Abortion Controversy: An Overview." The Humanist, July/August 1981. (3) Donald Granberg. "What Does It Mean To Be 'Pro-Life?'" The Christian Century, May 12, 1982, pages 562 to 566. (4) Donald Granberg and Donald Denny. "The Coathanger and the Rose." Transaction/Society, May/June 1982, pages 39 to 46. (5) A summary of this study may be found in the January 23, 1985 issue of National Right to Life News, pages 6 to 7.

Conclusion number (2) is not particularly surprising to veteran pro-life activists, who have tried for years to budge the comfortable masses of people in their churches off the center line. Many pro-life and pro-abortion activists can dialogue with each other better than with members of the general public, because they speak the same language and have the identical "passion for activism."

In fact, many pro-life groups recruit aggressively from local pro-abortion groups as well as from the churches and from the general public.

It is also interesting that NRLC and NARAL members both have more education and higher income that the public in general. Both organizations are very unlike the American public in several important ways. For example, they are both lily-White (98%), a source of puzzlement and frustration to many of their members.

A Confirming Survey.

More than half a million abortophiles converged on Washington, DC in May of 1992 for the biggest "March for Death" of all time.

The Washington Post did the pro-life Movement a huge favor when it conducted a random poll of 881 of the pro-abort demonstrators and compared the results to those taken in a national survey on abortion attitudes that the paper conducted the same week.[55]

The results of these surveys are shown below, and confirm that the characteristics of pro-abortion activists are even more extreme and 'out of touch with the mainstream' than pro-lifers had guessed.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #25

"Pro-choice is in the majority. Public opinion polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal."

NOTE: For a more complete treatment of this subject, see Chapter 76 of Volume II, "Public Opinion Polls on Abortion."

Introduction.

All pro-abortion slogans are based upon incomplete or misleading information. Of all the pro-abortion slogans, the "pro-choice majority" one makes the most clever use of statistical disinformation.

Pro-abortionists constantly tell themselves (and anyone else foolish enough to listen) that almost everyone 'mainstream' is 'pro-choice.'

The most common figure bandied about is 80 percent or 85 percent 'pro-choice.' Many pro-abortion publications and organizational mottos reflect this view, i.e., "The Majority Report," "Fund for the Feminist Majority," and "Voice of the Majority," as if trying to reassure themselves that their own mottos are true.

The purpose of the "pro-choice majority" slogan is direct and simple to summarize: it seeks to convince the American public that pro-lifers are, indeed, a "small and vocal minority."

RESULTS OF WASHINGTON POST SURVEY OF PRO-ABORTION MARCHERS [55]

Characteristics of Respondents                         Marchers          Public
Female                                                                       78%                 51%
Age 18-29                                                                  47%                17%
Residents of Northeast                                                 99%                20%
Adults married                                                             30%                68%
Adults with children                                                     26%                 82%
Catholic                                                                      15%                 26%
Jewish                                                                         21%                  2%
Registered Democrats                                                  59%                37%
Registered Republicans                                                 5%                  34%
Self-described "liberals"                                                79%                25%
Self-described "conservatives"                                       4%                 67%
Household income $50,000 or more                             35%                 4%

Respondent's Attitudes Towards Abortion        Marchers           Public
Abortion Should Be Legal For;
    Saving the mother's life                                            99%                 87%
    Birth defects                                                            97%                63%
    Rape and incest                                                     100%                79%
    Families who can't afford another child                    96%                 39%
    If parents don't want another child                           95%                 32%
Should parents be notified of a teenager's abortion?
                                                               Yes               5%                 80%
                                                               No               93%               18%
Should husbands participate in abortion decisions?
                                                               Yes              2%                  63%
                                                                No             96%                 33%

Summary of the Polls.

What Do The Polls Show? What do the public opinion polls really say?

The old saying should perhaps be amended to say "lies, damned lies, and public opinion polls." Nowhere is the potential for statistical manipulation and chicanery greater than in the conducting and reporting of public opinion polls and surveys.

There are two ways in which polls may be doctored to yield 'pro-choice' results.

(1) Polls Taken By Pro-Abortionists. 

Of more than 400 major polls taken since 1973 on the subject of abortion, the only polls that have ever shown a solid 'pro-choice' majority have been conducted or commissioned by pro-abortion organizations or by the heavily pro-abortion news media.

Anyone who believes these polls would probably also believe statistics originating with the R.J. Reynolds Company or the American Tobacco Institute concluding that smoking is good for your health.

(2) Poll Manipulation. 

Those polls that do not reflect a pro-choice majority are manipulated by pro-abortion propagandists, and are then reported in a manner that supports their views.

For example, the most common ploy by the National Abortion Rights Action League is to classify anyone against all abortions as 'anti-choice,' and claim that everyone else is 'pro-choice.'

This would mean that most committed pro-life activists, who believe that there should be an exception for the extremely rare cases where the mother's life is truly in danger (by application of the 'double effect'), would be classified as 'pro-choice.'

Under this definition, even Pope John Paul II would be classified as "pro-choice!" This is how NARAL and other pro-abortion groups can claim with straight faces that "America is 80% pro-choice."

How They Do It: Poll Chicanery.

The usual figure quoted by the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood is that the American public is 75% to 80% 'pro-choice.' The figure below shows exactly how the pro-abortionists manipulate such polls. Under their criteria, even those people who would only allow abortion to save the life of the mother are 'pro-choice.'

The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the country's trade union for abortionists. It is also heavily involved in public disinformation and pro-abortion propaganda. In a June 1986 booklet amusingly entitled "The Truth About Abortion," the NAF baldly states that "nearly 8 out of 10 Americans support legal abortion."

It bases this conclusion upon the results of a 1985 Gallup Poll that asked the question "Do you think abortions should be legal under all circumstances, only certain circumstances (i.e., to save the mother's life or rape and incest), or illegal in all circumstances?"

The results of this poll, and a graphical explanation of how the National Abortion Federation dishonestly manipulated the results, is shown below.

HOW PRO-ABORTIONISTS MANIPULATE POLL RESULTS

WHAT THE PRO-                                                      THE ACTUAL 
ABORTIONISTS SAY                                              POLL RESULTS

                                                                                       ABORTION
                                                                                       SHOULD BE 
                                                     [22%]                      LEGAL UNDER
                                                                                     ALL CIRCUM- 
                                                                                        STANCES

                                                                                        ABORTION
                                                                                        SHOULD BE
                                                                                       LEGAL ONLY
'PRO-CHOICE'                                                          UNDER CERTAIN
                                                      [56%]                  CIRCUMSTANCES
                                                                                   (I.E., LIFE OF THE
                                                                               MOTHER AND RAPE
                                                                                      AND INCEST

                                                                                        ABORTION 
'ANTI- CHOICE'                           [22%]                        SHOULD BE 
                                                                                           ILLEGAL
                                                                                        UNDER ALL
                                                                                  CIRCUMSTANCES

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #26

"You're all against birth control."

The Purposes of This Slogan.

Today abortion is the most widely used birth control method in the world.

                                                                                          David Robertson, M.D.[56]

The "anti-birth control" slogan is unmitigated nonsense, of course, and is another example of the use of transference by the pro-abortionist who is trying to accomplish two tactical debate objectives;

(1) To assert that banning abortion will mean banning all contraceptives, 
      and, of course,
(2) To divert attention away from the real topic of debate abortion. 

Remember that pro-abortionists will do almost anything to muddy the waters so that listeners will become confused.

Stick to the Subject!

Introduction. 

When the topic of birth control is raised in a debate, the pro-lifer must immediately bring the debate back to the original topic. If this is not accomplished, the pro-abortionist will continue to try to divert the subject of the debate with every imaginable red herring, such as capital punishment, the homeless, nuclear war, ad nauseam.

However, if the pro-lifer decides that it is tactically prudent to address the issue of birth control, he might point out the following facts.

Positions of Pro-Life Groups. 

The largest pro-life groups in the United States have repeatedly stated that they take no position whatever on birth control, and expend no energy opposing it. These groups include the National Right to Life Committee, Americans Against Abortion, Women Exploited by Abortion, and the American Life League.

In fact, no pro-life group in existence actively condemns all birth control indiscriminately. If the pro-abortionist insists that this is true, ask for the name of such a person or group.

Pro-abortion groups want to stereotype pro-lifers in two ways by asserting that they are against birth control: (1) they would have the public believe that pro-lifers are all anti-ecological maniacs out to cram the earth with people, thereby alienating environmentalists, and (2) they would have the public believe that pro-lifers are all anti-birth control, thereby alarming the vast majority of the public that does use it.

Leading pro-abortionists will go to extreme lengths in such scare campaigns. For example, Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, claimed that; "Step by horrifying step, our government is commandeering control of our bodies, our reproduction, our most private choices. Unless we act now, this dangerous trend won't stop at abortion. It won't even stop at eliminating contraception. Compulsory pregnancy, forced caesareans, surveillance and detention of pregnant women these are the chilling, logical outcome of laws that reduce women to instruments of the State."[57]

Many pro-life activists use natural family planning for 'birth control.' NFP is the safest and most effective known method of regulating birth, outdated pro-abortion propaganda notwithstanding.

For more information on natural family planning, see Chapter 128 of Volume III.

Natural vs. Artificial. 

Many pro-life groups, including Human Life International and Catholics United for Life, do oppose artificial (non-natural) forms of contraception. These groups know that contraception inevitably leads to abortion.

Why does this happen? At first glance, it would seem that women would experience fewer pregnancies if they were on contraception.

However, the opposite is true, and is even admitted by pro-abortion groups. Women who use contraception are much more likely to get abortions. This is due to the fact that contraceptive methods are nowhere near as reliable as their manufacturers claim. In fact, two-thirds of all women who currently obtain abortions were using contraception when they conceived!

Even the National Abortion Rights Action League acknowledges that 

Of course contraceptives should be more widely available and promoted; however, in the present state of contraceptive technology, and given the continuing possibility of human error in the use of even the best methods, abortion is needed as a backstop; its use is not preferable to contraception, but once a pregnancy occurs, it is the only means of birth prevention.[32]

And none other that Dr. Malcolm Potts, former Medical Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said that "As people turn to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall, in the abortion rate."[58]

Pro-lifers also oppose the use of the low-dose oral contraceptives and IUDs, because they are abortifacients. And because thousands of women have died due to the side effects of artificial contraception. And because Margaret Sanger and many other experts including the inventors of the birth control pill have acknowledged the obvious link between contraception and abortion.

After all of the quotes and statistics have been bandied about, the bottom line for many pro-lifers regarding contraception and abortion is this: Simply stated, there is a profound difference between preventing the beginning of a new life and ending that life once it has already begun.

The Final Point.

The pro-abortionist who brings up the topic of birth control is obviously trying to divert attention from the focus of the debate, which is abortion.

The pro-lifer might want to emphasize the differences between contraception and abortion by quoting a 1963 Planned Parenthood pamphlet entitled "Plan Your Children;" "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile, so that when you want a child you cannot have it ... Birth control merely postpones the beginning of life."

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #27

"Anti-choice fanatics hate their own sexuality. They are members of an extreme anti-sexual movement."

Say WHAT?

This is a particularly comical statement, originating as it does from a group of people who do everything imaginable to destroy their own sexuality. They desperately fight to pervert and crush the natural product of their own sexuality fertility. They pop pills, insert wires into their uteri, use 'rubber goods,' jams and jellies and when all of this junk fails, they kill the child they are carrying.

And then they say that we hate our sexuality!

Classic Transference.

This slogan is a classic example of pro-abortion transference, and is particularly easy to expose. The pro-lifer should simply ask his opponent if he (she) has been neutered, has had an abortion, or uses birth control and then ask him (or her) why. If the pro-abort refuses to answer on the grounds that such information is a 'private matter,' the pro-lifer may simply state that his (or her) silence has answered the question in the affirmative.

It is interesting to note that a comprehensive survey by sociologists at the University of Missouri has shown that couples who consider themselves "pro-life" have an average of 3.4 children, while those who consider themselves "pro-choice" have an average of just 1.3 children.[35] If, despite their best efforts, pro-lifers do not win the abortion 'battle' in the courts or legislatures, all they will have to do is wait in a couple of generations, they will simply outnumber the anti-lifers by a huge margin.

The University of Missouri survey on children may be the most accurate indicator of just who "hates their sexuality!"

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #28

"You're all anti-woman. All you care about is the fetus. You're all just fetus-fetishists."

'Fetus Fetishists?'

Introduction. 

This is another anti-life slogan that is easy to expose and refute.

There are now more Crisis Pregnancy Centers (2,000) in this country than there are abortion clinics (1,000). At any given time, pro-lifers have more than 30,000 women and girls with unwanted pregnancies living in their homes.

Has anyone ever seen the abortion clinics providing housing, money, and food for women with unwanted pregnancies?

Of course not! Pro-abortionists are victims of the "Give-a-child-a-hammer-and- everything-looks-like-a-nail" mentality. Have too many kids? Get an abortion. Can't afford a child? Get an abortion. Health poor? Get an abortion. Rape or incest victim? Get an abortion!

It is interesting to challenge female members of an audience to call up an abortion mill and tell the abortuary workers that they are not considering abortion, but need help with groceries and housing. Then have them call a Crisis Pregnancy Center and pose the same question and compare the results. This little exercise will prove to all but the most hardened pro-abort that abortion is merely a business to the mills and that they are not in it for 'women's rights.'

On Eliminating 'Choice.' 

Pro-abortionists can be notoriously shortsighted and unimaginative, and therefore can offer only the one 'quick and easy' "solution" to every problem, regardless of the fact that every woman is different and may need something other than abortion. Just as the average pro-abortionist seeks instant gratification, he or she also seeks instant solutions to problems involving responsibility by the use of instant un-pregnancy (abortion).

This is why pro-abortionists have embarked on a campaign to shut down Crisis Pregnancy Centers. This is why they have gone on record as opposing adoption. This is why they will not even recognize the existence of Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS). This is why they ferociously oppose any kind of informed consent. And this is why you will never find them trying to help a woman through an unwanted pregnancy.

The pro-abortionists appear to be literally incapable of seeing beyond abortion.

Misogynists?

Most pro-life activists are either women or married to women. Many of the largest pro-life groups in the country including the National Right to Life Committee, Catholics United for Life, Americans Against Abortion, American Victims of Abortion, Women Exploited by Abortion, and American Life League are headed by women. How can one logically label a woman "anti-woman?"

Additionally, pro-abortion groups and people demand abortion for any reason whatever. So now we have abortion for sex selection and in the vast majority of cases (90+ percent), the sex "disposed of" is female. No pro-abortion group has yet condemned this practice. In fact, some pro-abortion organizations, including the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and Planned Parenthood, heartily approve of sex-selection abortions.

Finally, pro-lifers are trying to save all unborn babies half of which are little unborn women. How is that "anti-woman?"

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #29

"Anti-choicers are inconsistent because they support the death penalty."

Introduction.

One of the favorite slogans of the pro-abortion movement is that pro-lifers are inconsistent (the most deadly Neoliberal sin), because they favor the death penalty.

However, Dr. Paul Cameron's interesting 1984 study shows that few pro-lifers really do believe in the death penalty, and that the pro-abortionists are being consistent in that they favor death for the born as well as the unborn, and the guilty as well as the innocent, as shown below.[59]

COMPARISON OF PRO-LIFE AND PRO-ABORTION ATTITUDES TOWARDS CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

   Statement                                                                       Agree
                                                                                                         Pro-
                                                                           Pro-Life             Abortion
Capital punishment should
     never be used                                                     26%                    6%
Capital punishment should be
     used for a heinous crime                                      54%                   83%
Would you be an executioner?                                  8%                    22%

The vivid differences between capital punishment for the preborn and capital punishment for adult murderers are shown in Chapter 92 of Volume III, "Capital Punishment."

The split between "liberalism" and "Neoliberalism" is buttressed by the results of extensive surveys that show pro-lifers in general being more concerned about social issues child abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, hunger, racism, and even overpopulation than pro-abortionists. In fact, according to Gallup polls, pro-lifers are much more likely to oppose the death penalty than pro-abortionists.[60]

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #30

"Anti-choicers are inconsistent because they are all warmongers."

NOTE: Further information on this topic can be found in Chapter 123 of Volume III on the 'Just War' Theory.

First Response.

This slogan represents yet another pro-abortion 'red herring.' There is no reason at all for the topic of war to come up, unless a pro-abortionist brings it up as part of a smokescreen that he ardently hopes will change the subject.

If a pro-lifer considers it tactically prudent to dwell on the topic of war for a short period of time, he might begin by having a little fun while getting his audience to think about the illogical nature of pro-abortion slogans; "We aren't 'pro-war.' Nobody is 'pro-war.' We're 'pro-choice.' We realize that war is a tragic situation, but sometimes nations get into a tough situation and have no other choice. You shouldn't condemn those nations that exercise their right to choose war in a difficult situation. That is being judgmental and uncompassionate."

Abortion and War: First Cousins.

It can be useful to point out that war and abortion are similar or even identical in many ways. War kills millions of people at a time. Abortion kills millions of people one at a time. War damages the economies of nations. So does abortion. War wounds. So does abortion.

This analogy is only useful to a point. Pro-life debaters must keep in mind that it is very dangerous to get into a discussion about the threat of Communism and the pros and cons of a strong national defense. They are then merely playing their opponent's game and discussing a subject unrelated to abortion.

The pro-life debater must score some quick debate points and get back to the topic of abortion as soon as possible.

Abortion: The War On the Innocents.

Casualties of the Abortion War. 

Abortion is not commonly thought of as war. It is more often considered to be a steady and efficient extermination of the unwanted.

It is carried out behind closed doors, and few notice the carnage. There are no aircraft roaring overhead. There are no grim-faced soldiers rushing up hillsides. There are no devastated cities and blasted countrysides.

But abortion is a war nonetheless and a war that dwarfs any war that has gone before. Abortion is far more devastating than any armed conflict. It has claimed one billion lives worldwide in the last twenty-five years one-half of the last generation! By comparison, all wars fought in the world in this century have killed only one-fifth as many people.

Europe, which has survived a dozen major wars, including two World Wars, is now dying due to uncontrolled abortion and a non-replacement birth rate.

Here in the United States, abortion is killing the Black race at a rate nearly three times that of the White race.

In short, abortion is the most devastating plague to strike mankind since the beginning of time. And the irony of it all, of course, is that it is an entirely self-inflicted plague.

The Impacts on Our Country. In the United States, we have lost about one million combatants in all of our wars since the Declaration of Independence was signed more than two hundred years ago. Yet, in a tenth of the time, we have killed 30 times as many preborn babies. This means that abortion kills United States citizens at 300 times the rate that war does!

Chapter 123 of Volume III ("The 'Just War' Theory") summarizes the costs of United States Wars and abortion in terms of fatalities, injuries, and monetary losses.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #31

"Anti-choicers are all lawbreakers."

NOTE: Further information on illegal pro-abortion activities can be found in Chapter 18.

Overview.

This slogan is a Planned Parenthood favorite. However, most pro-abortionists frequently use it in order to cast an ill light on the entire pro-life movement.

There is no doubt that pro-lifers are breaking the law with rescue missions. We can't deny that. However, we must point out that, aside from about fifty clinic bombings by individuals unrelated to organized pro-life groups (some of which have been proven set by pro-aborts), all illegal activities by pro-lifers are (1) peaceful and (2) not committed for personal gain.

Let's Agree With Planned Parenthood.

One of the best ways to reply to this slogan is simply to state that we are in agreement with the philosophy of Faye Wattleton, Planned Parenthood's former president, when she said that; "Action outside the law, or even in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change."[61]

Pro-Abortion Lawlessness.

Point Out the Hypocrisy. 

Pro-life debaters can take this opportunity to reveal to their listeners just how little the pro-abortionists cherish the law, as shown in the following examples.

Underground Railroad. 

Before 1970, pro-abortionists ran an 'underground railroad' called "Jane" to assist women in obtaining illegal abortions, and they have promised to reactivate it if abortion is criminalized again. In fact, pro-abortion clergymen banded together in 1965 under the name "Clergy Consultation Service," and helped women obtain illegal abortions while claiming that they were "following a higher law!"

Home Abortion Kits. 

The Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers began selling $79.95 'home suction aspiration kits' in mid-1989, immediately after the Webster decision in July 1989. They call these illegal devices "menstrual extraction kits." As Lynne Randall, director of the Atlanta FWHC said, "Since there won't be enough courageous doctors to break the law, this could be the safest illegal abortion possible."

Illegal Abortions. 

Virtually all long-time abortionists and female pro-abortion activists either performed abortions or obtained them when they were illegal and proudly boast about these clandestine abortions!

Perhaps the most decisive way to respond to the "lawbreaker" slogan is simply to ask an opponent how many illegal abortions took place before 1970. He will probably quote his favorite inflated number of one million annually, which can then be used against him.

If the pro-abortionist is an older woman, it is possible to place her in an impossible position by asking her if she had an illegal abortion or assisted others in getting one. If she did, the prolifer can paint her as a lawbreaker and a hypocrite. The pro-lifer could also ask her if she condemns women who procured illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. If she refuses (and she most certainly will), the pro-lifer can point this double standard out to the audience.

Pro-Abortion Violence. 

While members of Operation Rescue have accumulated more than 80,000 arrests, pro-abortionists have engaged in significant violence and civil disobedience themselves, accruing more than 1,000 arrests for murder, attempted murder, terrorism, rape, assault, resisting arrest, and unlawful trespass (just a few of these incidents are described in Chapter 19, "Anti-Life Violence," and are shown on an accompanying map).

The pro-life debater should have his opponent either condemn his lawbreaking pro-abortion allies or show his hypocrisy by refusing to condemn them.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #32

"Anti-choice people are violent fanatics. Look at all the clinic bombings, and all the people killed. And yet these hypocrites insist upon calling themselves "pro-life."

NOTE: For more detailed treatment of this slogan, see Chapter 19, "Anti-Life Violence."

'Anti-Choice Violence.'

Clinic Bombings. 

There have been about fifty abortion clinic bombings in this country since 1980. Some of these buildings have been totally destroyed, and others merely defaced. But all of the attacks were aimed at the buildings, not at people and every bombing but one has taken place when the buildings were unoccupied.

It's hard to believe, but some particularly dishonest pro-abortion activists insist that clinic bombings have resulted in numerous fatalities. This is a classic example of how tightly and close-mindedly they hold onto their cherished (and grossly inaccurate) stereotypes. No one has been killed by abortion clinic bombings, which have all been aimed at "products of construction" not people except for one case: the four 1985 Portland, Oregon mail bombs. In this case, the bomber was never found but it is very curious indeed that each abortion clinic worker who was asked to take a lie detector tests refused on the grounds of privacy, of course! On the other hand, dozens of pro-lifers willingly took the tests.

The 'Inside Jobs.' 

Half of all abortion clinic bombings and most bomb threats have never been solved, and many are considered by authorities to be 'inside jobs.' For example, pro-abortion activist Frank Mendiola of Los Angeles was caught phoning in bomb threats to his own abortion mill and even to his own home. The heart-rending "Silent No More" tale of Mendiola's twin sister dying horribly of an illegal abortion was shot down as well when it was discovered that he had no sisters at all!

No Conspiracy. 

Many leading pro-aborts insist, in the fact of all evidence to the contrary, that there is some kind of "nationwide conspiracy" of "anti-choice terrorists" who "seek to deprive women of their most basic rights."

Once again, this is a nice-sounding slogan, but it has no basis in fact.

On March 12, 1985, Stephen E. Higgins, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) stated before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States House of Representatives that "In summary, based on our investigations to date, these crimes appear to have been primarily the work of small groups or individuals who are acting out of a strong personal opposition to abortion. They are members of no "Army," they belong to no one faith, and most appear to have little or no connection to established pro-life organizations."

Jack Killorin, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, confirmed this view when he observed that "Overwhelmingly, the fires tend to be the work of a loner. A lot of these people convicted have never had any visible or traceable connection to anti-abortion activity ... [Investigators have uncovered] no sign of support from anti-abortion organizations for this kind of activity. Many of the bombers rejected the organization. They thought of it as weak, impotent, not serious-minded. These are the kinds of things you hear when you talk to them."[62]

On the Other Hand: Pro-Abortion Violence.

While pro-lifers direct their violence towards bricks, pro-abortionists kill and maim people born and unborn on a regular basis.

More than 550 women have died from so-called 'safe and legal' abortion since 1973. In many cases, the abortionists simply walk away from women who are dying of botched abortions. For a list of the names of more than 150 women who have died from so-called "safe and legal" abortion, see Chapter 59 of Volume II, "Maternal Deaths Due to Abortion").

There have been more than 500 documented instances of pro-abortionists physically assaulting pro-lifers. They have run pro-lifers down with their cars; beaten them with baseball bats (which seems to be the weapon of "choice"); threatened them with guns; jabbed them with bacteria-filled hypodermic syringes; punched, kicked, and spat on them; and, in several instances, HIV-positive sodomite clinic workers have even bitten pro-lifers!

Just a few of these incidents of extreme pro-abortion violence are shown in a map and table in Chapter 19, "Anti-Life Violence."

If a pro-abortionist insists upon talking about violence, the pro-lifer must relentlessly bring the focus of the debate back to the real violence that is taking place inside the abortion clinics every day. Since the subject of violence has been broached by the opposition, it is ethical to describe in the most horrible detail possible a prostaglandin, salt-poisoning, or D&E abortion, which burn, decapitate, and dismember babies, and then ask if they are violent. The best 'procedure' of all to describe is the ghastly dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion, where a second- or third-trimester baby's brains are sucked out by the killer to insure that the child will die. These and other procedures are described in Chapter 61 of Volume II, "Methodology and Aspects of Abortion."

The pro-life debater should really go for the "gag factor" during these descriptions.

Finally, show the pro-abortionist and the audience the current "box score:"

'Kills' by pro-life persons: 1
'Kills' by 'pro-choice' persons: 30,000,000+

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #33

"You anti-choice people are single-issue fanatics."

Introduction.

So What? This is a classic "So what?" slogan.

What's wrong with being 'single issue?'

The "single issue" accusation reveals that the pro-abortion mentality despises anyone who does not willingly conform to its agenda. The pro-abortionists are so obviously annoyed with pro-lifers because the pro-abortion movement is definitely not 'single-issue;' abortion is merely one segment of a vast movement that seriously intends to destroy not only unborn children, but the family and the church as well.

The 'Seamless Garment.' 

In any case, a pro-abortionist using the "single issue" slogan is obviously trying to tie the pro-lifer up in Cardinal Bernardin's "Seamless Garment." This unworkable theory asserts that one can't really be pro-life unless he subscribes to the entire Neoliberal version of the pro-life agenda. In other words, in order to be truly 'pro-life,' 

• you must be against capital punishment, 
• you must be for animal rights,
• you must be actively 'peace and justice' (and especially anti-U.S.
  'interventions'),
• you must be actively anti-nuke,
• you must be pro-civil rights (especially homosexual 'rights'),
• you must be a strict vegetarian,
• you must be anti-apartheid,

  — and on and on. It is easy to see what the pro-abortionist is trying to do; he is trying to make the pro-lifer look like a hypocrite, and is trying to find him guilty of that most loathsome of Neoliberal sins: Inconsistency!

Experienced pro-life debaters know that even if they have adopted interracial children, worked against AIDS and hunger and war, wear no leather, and are strictly vegetarian, any pro-abortionist will be able to find some trivial fault with their lifestyle and will then triumphantly sneer "and you call yourself "pro-life?"" It is simply not possible for anyone who is against abortion to be 'pro-life' in the eyes of a pro-abortionist.

On a national scale, pro-abortionists are striving to get the pro-life movement to dilute its efforts by getting involved in a plethora of incidental issues.

Tangling the Cloth. 

This pro-abortion tactic can be used very effectively against pro-aborts.

It doesn't seem to matter to pro-abortionists that it would be physically impossible for any person, no matter how talented or motivated, to be involved in a large number of social issues unless they were paid to do it full time. It is possible for a pro-life debater to tie his opponent up by asking him how much time he spends on issues other than abortion. Even if the pro-abortionist contributes effort to several other causes, it is always possible to find several that he is not involved in, and this of course disqualifies him from being a proper member of the Neoliberal 'Seamless Garment.'

It is very important to recognize that a person can do one (or maybe two) things well, or a larger number of things sloppily. A person who concentrates on the anti-abortion battle and really works at it will do infinitely more good than a person who works just a little bit at a half-dozen different issues.

Don't get sidetracked! 

Abortion is the preeminent issue of our generation, and pro-life activists must be proud of being single-issue! This is America's greatest cause! As Franky Schaeffer has said, "If you put on the clothes of the Seamless Garment, the pro-life movement is finished!"

Yet More Transference.

The "single issue" slogan is yet another fine example of pro-abortion transference. Nobody is as single-issue as pro-abortion groups!

For example, at the April 1989 'March for Death' in Washington, D.C., every participant was urged to make a pledge to vote for or against politicians based solely upon their abortion stands. At many pro-abortion conventions since 1989, all participants have been required to sign a pledge to the same effect.

As pro-abortion writer Marlene Fried says; "Single-issue politics is not new in the abortion struggle. It has in fact been the politics of NARAL [the National Abortion Rights Action League] and Planned Parenthood, major mainstream groups that dominate the pro-choice movement."[63]

The 'single-issue' charge, of course, is only employed if it is a Neoliberal ox that is being gored. For example, the 1980 Democratic Party platform contained the plank: "The Democratic Party shall withhold financial support and technical campaign assistance from candidates who do not support the ERA."[64]

This is a prime example of the anti-life double standard at work again!

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #34

"You're a man! You have absolutely no right to speak out against abortion, because you can't get pregnant."
    ALTERNATIVELY:
"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

How to Refute These Slogans.

Overview. 

The above handy, all-purpose slogans are used in an attempt to intimidate men into giving up their most basic rights of free speech. They use the same logic that would ban churches from speaking out against abortion due to an alleged violation of the separation of church and state.

Male pro-lifers must get hung up in defending their gender; they will just look as if they are trying to justify themselves. These slogans are just more pro-abortion red herrings. The pro-lifer must dispose of this bogus argument quickly and get back to the topic. There are several ways to do this, as described in the following paragraphs.

Gender is Irrelevant to Truth. 

The validity and truth of an argument has nothing whatsoever to do with a person's gender, age, race, or any other variable. If a statement or argument is true, then it is true it matters not who is saying it! Anyone who disputes this assertion is, by definition, a sexist.

Unborn Men are Victims Too. 

Of course men have a right to speak out against abortion! After all, half of the babies being killed by abortion are little unborn men.

One-Way First Amendment. 

It is grossly hypocritical for pro-abortionists to approve of men speaking for abortion while attempting to ban them from speaking against it.

There are plenty of men speaking out for abortion like Teddy Kennedy, Bill Baird, Bob Packwood, and thousands of others. They can't get pregnant either, so why aren't the pro-abortionists telling them to mind their own business?

Also, isn't is odd that most clinic escorts are men? And how strange it is that seven men on the United States Supreme Court gave the pro-abortionists their precious 'right to kill' in the first place? We never hear the Neofeminists complaining about that, do we?

Sterile Harpies. 

Strangely, the "abortion as sacrament" slogan is used frequently by elderly grandmother-types who are hired by Planned Parenthood and other anti-life groups to give them a harmless and kindly image. These women are, for the most part, past menopause; what gives them the right to speak out about abortion, since they can't get pregnant either? Come to think of it, many younger pro-abortion women have had themselves neutered, or use the Pill or IUD or NORPLANT or Depo-Provera they can't get pregnant either! What gives them the right?

If the pro-abortionists want to be "consistent" about this slogan, only those persons of either sex who are fertile and not on any kind of birth control should be able to speak out either for or against abortion. But it is generally futile to expect pro-abortionists to be consistent or logical, for that matter.

No Rights for the 'Unaffected.' 

Using pro-abortion logic, only South African Blacks would be allowed to speak out against apartheid, because only they are affected by it. Only homosexuals could speak out about anti-sodomy laws, because only they are affected by it. Only Jews would be allowed to speak out about the original Holocaust, American Nazis, and anti-Semitism, because only they are affected by it. Only men would be allowed to talk about professional baseball, football, and basketball, because only they are involved in playing the games.

Of course, pro-aborts will reply with the tired slogan "Injustice against anyone is injustice against us all," which is nonsense, but which can be used by the pro-lifer as well: "Millions of dead children affect us all."

This principle also shows that pro-abortion women who participate in so-called "peace and justice" groups are hypocrites, because only men fight in wars, and the vast majority of people who die in actual battle are men. By this logic, these women should have no voice in opposing warfare, and should be prohibited from even holding an opinion on it (if they assert that women die in wars as well, tell them that half of those who die in abortions are little unborn men).

Whose Free Speech? 

Finally, the laws of this country guarantee that we can speak out publicly for or against anything despite the wishes of those who would dearly love to stamp out all viewpoints that they do not like.

The United States Constitution gives men the right to speak out against abortion. Anyone who uses the "men prohibited" slogan should be asked if he or she has heard of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Go On the Offensive!

As with all the other pro-abortion slogans, this one gives the pro-life debater a golden opportunity to go on the offensive and show his listeners how weak the anti-life position really is.

The pro-lifer can 'attack' by calling into question the basic motivations of pro-abortion men. After all, Roe v. Wade did more for men's 'rights' than it ever did for women's rights. When abortion was illegal, men had to be careful about their sexual relations. If they made a woman pregnant, they would be liable for support of that child.

It is amusing to point out how atrociously the leading male "champions of women's rights" treat women. The best examples, of course, are the U.S. Senate pro-abortion leaders from both parties: Teddy Kennedy [D-umb.] and Bob ("Quick Lips") Packwood [R-Oreg.].

The situation is radically different now. Four feminist authors accurately describe how men enslave women directly and indirectly through the institution of legalized abortion;

He can buy his way out of accountability by making "The Offer" for "The Procedure." The man's sexual role then implies exactly nothing: No relationship. How quickly 'women's right to choose' comes to serve 'man's right to use.'

Juli Loesch. "Abortion: A Question of Survival." WIN, August 1, 1980, pages 15 to 28.

If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic or social status, they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience. Of all the things which are done to women to fit them into a society dominated by men, abortion is the most violent invasion of their physical and psychic integrity. It is a deeper and more destructive assault than rape ...

Daphne de Jong. "The Feminist Sell-Out." New Zealand Listener, January 14, 1978, page 18.

Women are still big business for men. Abortion now provides a new multimillion-dollar business in another kind of feminine prostitution. In the first form of prostitution women are paid by men. But when women prostitute themselves to what is called the "baby scrambler," the suction machine for abortion, they give the money to men more often than not ... If women were not so intellectually passive, they would be able to see through this so-called 'liberation.'

Anti-prostitution activist Mary Rosera Joyce. "The Sexual Revolution Has Yet to Begin." In Thomas J. Hilgers and Dennis J. Horan (editors), Abortion and Social Justice. Thaxton, Virginia: Sun Life Publishers, 1980. Pages 224 and 225.

Instead of being empowered by their abortion choices, young women having abortions are confronting the debilitating reality of not bringing a baby into the world; not being able to count on a committed male partner; not accounting oneself strong enough, or the master of enough resources, to avoid killing the fetus. Young women are hardly going to develop the self-esteem, self-discipline, and self-confidence necessary to confront a male-dominated society through abortion.

Bioethicist Sidney Callahan. "Abortion and the Sexual Agenda: A Case for Pro-Life Feminism." Commonweal, April 25, 1986, pages 235 to 238.

Of course, the man isn't really obligated to donate a penny towards the cost of "The Procedure." The woman is left to face what the pro-abortionists call "a difficult and agonizing choice" all by herself. Talk about exploitation of women! Men can now get as many women pregnant as they want to with impunity. And the women, if they have the child, will not be able to collect a cent in child support due to the many legal maneuvers now available to "deadbeat dads."

As Kansas City Royals baseball star George Brett boasted when informed that several of his girlfriends had suffered abortions, "I've had the security of knowing I'm a proven [sexual] performer."[65]

Pro-life debaters should hit this angle hard: Pro-abortion men exploit women! This line of reasoning will strike a raw nerve in a pro-abortion audience (especially among the radical Neofeminist and lesbian types, who generally loathe men to begin with), and is basically unanswerable.

For more detailed information on how abortion exploits women, see Chapter 129 of Volume III, "Neofeminism."

Conclusion.

Finally, the very definition of 'oppression' is to try to strip a group of people of their voice. This means that any pro-abortionist who is trying to strip men of their right to speak out against abortion is trying to oppress men. This is significant, in light of the fact that the Neofeminists are constantly whining that they are "oppressed by men." This assertion is basically hypocritical, since the Neofeminists seem to see nothing wrong about oppressing those who disagree with them on the abortion issue.

PRO-ABORTION SLOGAN #35

"Hitler and his Nazis were anti-choice, too."

Purposes of the Slogan.

Once in power, the Nazis made "motherhood" into an official honor and abortion became a symbol of degeneracy.

                                   Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States (RCP). [66]

The proof (or rebuttal) of any comparison is found primarily not in the differences between the two, but in the similarities.

There are two goals that pro-abortionists hope to achieve by using the transference-type "anti-choice Nazis" slogan.

The first purpose of this slogan is to obscure the many similarities between the Nazi and pro-abortion movements by making false and illogical accusations against pro-lifers. This is a necessary tactic, because the similarities between the perpetrators of the Nazi and American Holocausts are so striking;

• both pro-abortionists and Nazis employ the identical pervasive use of 
  propaganda and deceptive language (Newspeak);

• both use the identical rationalization and philosophy of those who 
  perpetrated the atrocities;

• the early leadership of both Holocausts was provided by medical 
  personnel;

• both movements pervasively dehumanized their victims and their 
  opponents; and

• both movements were founded and grew as a result of the identical 
  anti-life, Hegelian philosophy of their leaders.

The second purpose of the "anti-choice Nazis" slogan, of course, is to cast pro-lifers in the role of brutal stormtroopers who want good White women to breed lots of babies so that they can be slavish workers who mindlessly uphold the repressive policies of the almighty State (or words to this effect). Simultaneously, the pro-aborts hope to associate themselves in the minds of the public with the most pitiful and well-known victims of recent times; the Jews, who were experimented upon and slaughtered like cattle, and whose bodies were stacked like cordwood by the Nazis.

The Utilitarian Worldview.

The "anti-choice Nazis" slogan is catchy, but, unfortunately (for the pro-aborts), it is entirely untrue.

To begin with, the German Nazi Party bore all of the characteristics of a left-wing organization. Consider the name of the party: Nazis, short for National Sozialisten, or National Socialists!

Fascism is and always has been a leftist ideology. So is National Socialism (Nazism), whereas international Socialism is generally referred to as Marxism. Adolf Hitler himself said on October 7, 1933 that "It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation, that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole."[67] This is a brilliantly concise summary of "collectivism" (the German term), or Socialism as it is now known.

Compare this philosophy to our latter-day attitudes, spoken in almost the same words by world-famous Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner; "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic rights. But they are the rights of the individual and were listed at such a time when the literatures of freedom and dignity were concerned with the aggrandizement of the individual. They have only a minor bearing on the survival of a culture."[68]

The Nazis progressively exerted a greater and greater degree of control over the people, and eventually used the fledgling German film industry to launch an extensive and pervasive propaganda campaign directed at the people. The primary focuses of this campaign were individual rights and autonomy, the "right to privacy," and the "freedom of choice" (Auswahlfreiheit). In reality, these personal rights were actually being eroded to an unprecedented degree.

History of the Nazi Abortion Program.

Introduction. 

When pro-abortionists allege that the Nazis were "anti-choice," they are mouthing a classic half-truth. Hitler and his eugenicist physicians banned abortion only for pureblooded Aryan women (who were a minority within German borders at the time).

Although the Nazis banned abortion for Aryan women, they enthusiastically peddled and promoted abortion for non-Aryans. In fact, the Nazis mandated legalized abortion in several European countries for the first time. They recognized that abortion could be an extremely effective population control tool.

The following paragraphs briefly trace the history of the German abortion program.

The Planning Begins. 

In his 1924 book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that the government had seven chief responsibilities. One of these was "to maintain the practice of modern birth control. No diseased or weak person should be allowed to have children."[69]

As early as the Summer of 1932, the leaders of the Nazi Party met in Munich to discuss population policy as it would be applied to non-Aryan peoples. Demographic and agricultural experts warned that the "tremendous biological fertility" of the Eastern European regions must be dealt with by the implementation of a rigidly-enforced depopulation policy, whose elements remarkably resemble the current coercive Chinese population program described in Chapter 50 of Volume II, "Forced Abortions."[70]

In 1933, the compulsory sterilization law for the mentally handicapped and crippled went into effect. On October 8, 1935, the Erbgesundheitgesetze "hereditary health laws" were promulgated. One of these laws legalized abortion for "just the hard cases" rape, incest, and if either parent had a hereditary disease that might lead to deformation of the fetus.[71]

Hitler's Personal Views On Abortion. 

Over and over again, pro-abortionists tell us that Adolf Hitler enacted restrictive laws for "the protection of motherhood." This is absolutely true but only for Aryan motherhood. Once again, the pro-abortion liars are only telling a small portion of the story.

Adolf Hitler, if he were living today, would make a superb pro-abortion propagandist. His views exactly paralleled those of the modern-day abortionists, who have tried to hard to exterminate the Black race ever since Margaret Sanger's early birth control programs.

Hitler believed that rights only belong to those strong enough to defend them just as American pro-abortionists do. He wrote in Mein Kampf that the weak or small had "no inalienable right to life" (Lebensrecht) just as American pro-abortionists do.[69] Those physicians who dared resist Hitler's program of abortion on demand for women of unfit race were labeled "reactionary" and "enemies of women," while those who supported the program were called "sensible" and "friends of women" the identical words used by American pro-abortionists today.[72]

Poland's Martyrdom. 

The German Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") swept into Eastern European countries in 1939. The Nazi eugenicists and population planners were not far behind the tanks.

After the 1939 invasion of Poland, the "Reich Commission for Strengthening of Germandom" (RKFDV), an SS (Schutzstaffel) organization, issued the following policy statement on November 25; "All measures which have the tendency to limit the births are to be tolerated or to be supported. Abortion in the remaining area of Poland must be declared free from punishment. The means for abortion and contraceptive means may be offered publicly without police restriction. Homosexuality is always to be declared legal. The institutions and persons involved professionally in abortion practices are not to be interfered with by police."[73]

Until this time, abortion had been illegal in Poland. The Nazis introduced "safe and legal abortion" for the first time for the specific purpose of limiting the future Polish population. It is absolutely fascinating to note that the key slogan of this program was "Freedom of Choice!" (Auswahlfreiheit).

The German Ministry of the Interior reviewed and approved of this program in May 27, 1941, and on October 19 of the same year, the Polish population program was put into action. Hitler's July 23 decree, described below, extended the identical policy of "contraceptives and abortion on demand" to the other parts of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.[74]

Eastern European Offensive. 

In mid-1942, "Operation Blue," the German offensive in Eastern Europe, was succeeding brilliantly.

In July of 1942, Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician, and Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary, conducted a tour of the Soviet Ukraine for the purpose of reviewing population demographics. Bormann subsequently reported to Hitler that "In view of the large families of the native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible."[75]

On July 22, Brandt and Bormann proposed a restrictive population policy to Hitler, and on the very next day, the Fuhrer approved it. The resulting eight-paragraph secret order was, as one historian stated, "perhaps the most extreme policy statement ever issued from the Fuhrer-Hauptquartier [Hitler's headquarters]."[76]

The population control policy included a paragraph that stated; "When girls and women in the Occupied Territories of the East have abortions, we can only be in favor of it; in any case we should not oppose it. The Fuhrer believes that we should authorize the development of a thriving trade in contraceptives. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply."[77]

The Whole Package. 

A short April 27, 1942 statement by Berlin population and demographics expert Professor Heinrich Wetzel (reproduced below in its entirety) summarized the entire Nazi population control program. Notice carefully the striking similarities this program has to the one that has been implemented in the United States by pro-abortion groups.

Every propaganda means, especially the press, radio and movies, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and lectures, must be used to instill in the Russian population the idea that it is harmful to have several children. We must emphasize the expenses that children cause, the good things that people could have had with the money spent on them. We could also hint at the dangerous effect of childbearing on a woman's health.

Paralleling such propaganda, a large-scale campaign would be launched in favor of contraceptive devices. A contraceptive industry must be established. Neither the circulation and sale of contraceptives nor abortions must be prosecuted.

It will even be necessary to open special institutions for abortion, and to train midwives and nurses for this purpose. The population will practice abortion all the more willingly if these institutions are competently operated. The doctors must be able to help out, in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. Voluntary sterilization must also be recommended by propaganda.[78]

By this time, the Nazis recognized that personal and professional consciences were often deeply troubled by the practice of widespread and easily-available abortion. Heinrich Himmler soothed these troubled consciences by issuing a decree in March of 1943 that is remarkably similar to those promulgated by our own American Medical Association; "The Russian physicians or the Russian Medical Association, which must not be informed of this order, are to be told in individual cases that the pregnancy is being interrupted for reasons of social distress."[79]

The Aftermath of Murder. 

After the war, the Nuremberg Trials brought most of the Nazi war criminals involved in Germany's population control programs to justice. Between October of 1947 and March of 1948, the United States Military Tribunal prosecuted the leadership of the RKFDV in its 'Case 8.' One of the charges was that "Protection of the law was denied to the unborn children of the Russian and Polish women in Nazi Germany. Abortions were encouraged and even forced on these women."[80]

One of the RKFDV documents entered into evidence by the U.S. prosecution stated that "It is known that racially inferior offspring of Eastern workers and Poles is to be avoided if at all possible. Although pregnancy interruptions ought to be carried out on a voluntary basis only, pressure is to be applied in each of these cases."[81]

The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal indicted and convicted ten Nazi leaders for "encouraging and compelling abortions," an act which the Tribunal characterized as "a crime against humanity."[81]

As with their other crimes against humanity, the Nazis protested that "we were just following orders." Lieutenant General Richard Hildebrandt, the SS (Schutzstaffel) Chief of the RKFVD's Race and Settlement Office in Berlin, stated that "Up to now nobody had the idea to see in this interruption of pregnancy a crime against humanity."[81]

He was given a 25-year sentence.

Other officers of the RKFVD were meted sentences ranging from ten years for Fritz Schwalm, a "Racial Examination Officer," to life imprisonment for Ulrich Griefelt, the organization's Chief Executive Officer.[81]

Other documents submitted into evidence included a July 13, 1943 German military report referring to "an intensification of countermeasures" against Ukrainians, including the "forcible abortion of pregnant women."[82] Other women within the borders of Germany itself were forcibly aborted as punishment for attempting to avoid forced labor in German factories.[83]

It's Only a Matter of Time ... 

When the United States holds its "Nuremberg Trials" for abortionists and euthanasiasts, the same excuses will be given by those who have committed latter-day crimes against preborn humanity.

And they will carry just as little weight as they did with the Nuremberg judges.

References: Pro-Abortion Slogans.

[1] Quotes are from Jonathon Green's The Cynic's Lexicon. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1984, 220 pages.

[2] Warren Hern, M.D. Abortion Practice. New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1984. Page 323.

[3] Kathy Keeton. Woman of Tomorrow. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pages 172 and 173.

[4] "Women Are Not Incubators!: The Assault on Abortion Rights." Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, Revolutionary Worker, November 6, 1989. Also distributed as a special reprint booklet. Page 7.

[5] Ellie Smeal of the Fund for a Feminist 'Majority,' at a talk entitled "RU-486, NORPLANT, and Title X." Recorded live at the 1991 national conference of the National Organization for Women, July 5-7, 1991 in New York City, New York.

[6] Full-page Planned Parenthood propaganda ad entitled "When I was fifteen, Planned Parenthood saved my [quality of] life." This ad was distributed to dozens of major national publications in 1985, including Time and Newsweek Magazines.

[7] Legal Times, March 4, 1985, page A35.

[8] Marian Faux. Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision That Made Abortion Legal. MacMillan, 370 pages.

[9] National Endowment for the Arts General Counsel Julianne Ross Davis, quoted in "AFA Sues NEA General Counsel." The Wanderer, December 6, 1990, page 2.

[10] United States Supreme Court. McRae v. Matthews, 421 F.Supp.533.

[11] Abortionist Edward Allred, quoted in The San Diego Union, October 12, 1980. Also quoted in Anthony Perry. "Doctor's Abortion Business Is Lucrative." ALL About Issues, December 1980, pages 10, 14, and 15.

[12] Nancy B. Kaltreider, Sadja Goldsmith, and Alan J. Margolis. "The Impact of Midtrimester Abortion Techniques on Patients and Staff." American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, September 15, 1979, pages 255 to 238.

[13] Tamar Jacoby. "Doesn't a Man Have Any Say?" Newsweek Magazine, May 23, 1988, pages 74 and 75.

[14] Quoted in John Leo. "Sharing the Pain of Abortion." Time Magazine, September 26, 1983, page 78. For more information on men's role in abortion, see the book by Arthur Shostak, Gary McLouth and Lynn Seng. Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love. Praeger Publishers, 1984.

[15] Marie Shelton. "Abortion Often Causes Guilt, Regret, Poll Finds." Sacramento Bee, March 19, 1989, page A7.

[16] Bernard Nathanson, M.D. Aborting America. Doubleday, 1979, page 193.

[17] Brett Harvey. "The Morning After." Mother Jones, May 1989, pages 28 to 31 and 43.

[18] Ruth Barnett. They Weep On My Doorstep. Beaverton, Oregon: Halo Publishers, 1969. Pages 9, 36, 39, 40, 46, 70, and 107.

[19] Michael Fumento. "The Dying Dutchman: Coming Soon to a Nursing Home Near You." The American Spectator, October 1991, pages 18 to 22.

[20] Janice Perrone. "Controversial Abortion Approach." American Medical News, January 12, 1990, pages 9 and 18 to 20.

[21] Abortionist Jane Hodgson, Transcript, August 3, 1977, at 99-101, McRae v. Califano, 491 F.Supp. 630 (E.D.N.Y. 1980), rev'd sub nom. Harris v. McRae. 100 S. Ct. 2671 (1980).

[22] United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1990 (110th Edition). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Table 115, "Deaths and Death Rates, By Selected Causes: 1970 to 1988." Also see "Killer Sports." U.S. News and World Report, January 15, 1990, page 67.

[23] Chris Niebrzydowski, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women, after passage of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1989, which was authored by state legislator Stephen Freind. Quoted in the Greensburg [Pennsylvania] Tribune-Review, October 4, 1989.

[24] Grace Olivares, from "Separate Statement," in Population and the American Future: The Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. Page 161. Quoted in Father John Powell, S.J. Abortion: The Silent Holocaust. Argus Communications, Allen, Texas 75002. 1981, 181 pages. Page 109.

[25] National Abortion Rights Action League. "A Speaker's and Debater's Guide." 1974, 54 pages.

[26] United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1990 (110th Edition). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Table 115, "Deaths and Death Rates, By Selected Causes: 1970 to 1988." Also see "Killer Sports." U.S. News and World Report, January 15, 1990, page 67.

[27] H. Forssman and I. Thuwe. "One Hundred and Twenty Children Born After Application for Therapeutic Abortion Refused: Their Mental and Social Adjustment, and Educational Level Up to the Age of 21." Acta Psychiatrica Scandanavica 42(1966), 71. This study is described in Samuel A. Nigro, M.D. "A Scientific Critique of Abortion as a Medical Procedure." Psychiatric Annals, September 1972.

[28] Hook, K. "Refused Abortion: A Follow-Up Study of 249 Women Whose Applications Were Refused By the National Board of Health in Sweden." Acta Psychiatrica Scandanavica [Supplement] 1963; suppl 168:3-156.

[29] Carlos Del Campos, M.D. "Abortion Denied Outcome of Mothers and Babies." Canadian Medical Association Journal, February 15, 1984, pages 361 and 362.

[30] Barbara Ehrenreich. "Hers" column in The New York Times, February 7, 1985. Quoted in Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer. A Woman's Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486. Four Walls Eight Windows Press, Post Office 548, Village Station, New York, New York 10014. 1992, 271 pages.

[31] Paul D. Wohlers, J.D. "Women and Abortion: Prospects of Criminal Charges." The American Center for Bioethics, 1982. A complete review of all state laws regarding the prosecution of women for abortion.

[32] Looseleaf booklet entitled "Organizing for Action." Prepared by Vicki Z. Kaplan for the National Abortion Rights Action League, 250 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. 51 pages, 1974. See especially the sections entitled "Organizing a Speakers Bureau," and "Introduction to Debating."

[33] Lynn K. Murphy. "Report on Foundational Giving to Sexuality Education and Abortion." April 2, 1992. Information is extracted from several recent editions of The Foundation Grants Index, published by The Foundation Center, 312 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California.

[34] William T. Poole. "How Big Business Bankrolls the Left." National Review, March 10, 1989, pages 34 to 37.

[35] Information on the comparative characteristics of pro-abortion and pro-life activists may be found in Donald Granberg. "The Abortion Activists." Alan Guttmacher Institute's Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1981. Donald Granberg. "The Abortion Controversy: An Overview." The Humanist, July/August 1981. Donald Granberg. "What Does It Mean To Be 'Pro-Life?'" The Christian Century, May 12, 1982, pages 562 to 566. Donald Granberg and Donald Denny. "The Coathanger and the Rose." Transaction/Society, May/June 1982, pages 39 to 46. A summary of these studies can be found in Raymond J. Adamek. "Abortion Activists: Characteristics, Attitudes and Behavior." National Right to Life News, January 31, 1985, page 7.

[36] "House Committee Votes to Force Doctors to Kill Unborn Children in Latest Version of Child Murder Bill." American Information Newsletter, March 1991, page 4.

[37] David Thorstad of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), quoted in John Leo. "Cradle-to-Grave Intimacy." Time Magazine, September 7, 1981, page 69.

[38] G.B. Veerman. "Public Interest." Willamette Week [Portland, Oregon], September 3-September 9, 1992, page 9.

[39] Teresa Mathis of the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, speaking of Wesley Alan Dodd, quoted in Marcia Wolf. "Dodd's Death Watch Begins." The Columbian [Vancouver, Washington], December 1, 1992, page A3. Mathis was also quoted on Channel 2 News (10:00 PM Edition), Thursday, October 7, 1992.

[40] Judith Pasternak, Reproductive Freedom Project, ACLU Foundation, New York City, quoted in "Worth Quoting." National Right to Life News, February 3, 1983, page 19.

[41] The actual statements made in the medical textbooks are as follows. Bradley M. Patten, M.D. Foundations of Embryology (3rd Edition, 1968), New York City: McGraw-Hill. Pages 8 and 43: "It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resulting mingling of the chromosomal material each brings to the union that culminates the process of fertilization and initiates the life of a new individual. Every one of the higher animals starts life as a single cell the fertilized ovum. The union of two such sex cells to form a zygote constitutes the process of fertilization and initiates the life of a new individual." Leslie Arey. Developmental Anatomy (7th Edition, 1974). Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Publishers. Pages 8 and 55: "The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual." K.L. Moore. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (2nd Ed., 1977). Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Publishers. Pages 1 and 12: "Zygote. This cell results from fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm and is the beginning of a human being ... Development begins at fertilization, when a sperm unites with an oocyte to form a zygote. Each of us started life as a cell called a zygote." J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Freidman. Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Publishers. Pages 17 and 23: "The term conception refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops. It is synonymous with the terms fecundation, impregnation, and fertilization ... The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life." J.H. Otto and A. Towle. Modern Biology. New York City: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1969, pages 30 and 144. "A human being develops from a mass of living material no larger than a pinhead, material contributed by both parents and capable of living and growing for a lifetime ... This genetic makeup was established at the beginning of your life, when a haploid egg and a haploid sperm combined to produce a diploid zygote, your first somatic cell." Salvadore E. Luria, M.D. 36 Lectures in Biology. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press, 1975, page 146: "The zygote is the starting cell of the new individual." E.L. Potter, M.D., and J.M. Craig, M.D. Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 3rd Edition. Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975, page vii: "Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition."

[42] Garrett Hardin, professor of biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Redbook Magazine, May 1967. Also quoted on page 101 of Ruth Barnett. They Weep On My Doorstep. Beaverton, Oregon: Halo Publishers, 1969.

[43] Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, at his address at the 1980 National Right to Life Committee Convention. Quoted in Father John Powell, S.J. Abortion: The Silent Holocaust. Argus Communications, Allen, Texas 75002. 1981, 181 pages. Pages 83 and 84.

[44] Tom Flynn. "'Pro-Choice:' Wrong Turn for Abortion Rights?" Free Inquiry ("An International Secular Humanist Magazine"), Winter 1991/92, pages 6 and 7.

[45] "Abortion Lobby Opposes Alternatives Proposals." Life Insight (publication of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities), September 1991, page 2.

[46] One example of such a demand can be found in Marc D. Stern's article "Abortion Conscience Clauses," in the November 1975 edition of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, pages 571 to 627. Further information on pro-abortion opposition to 'conscience clauses' can be found in Germain Grisez and Joseph M. Boyle, Jr. "The Liberty to Stand Aloof." The Human Life Review, Winter 1979, pages 80 to 88.

[47] "Child Killers Trying to Force Obstetricians and Gynecologists to Learn and Perform Abortions." American Information Newsletter, March 1991, page 4.

[48] Sarah Sullivan. "Kevorkian: The Rube Goldberg of Death." Cornerstone, Volume 19, Issue 93, pages 14 and 15.

[49] Pamela Ehrens. "Anti-Abortion, Pro-Feminism?" Mother Jones, May 1989, pages 31 and 45.

[50] This study is explained in Jack Willke, M.D. "Capital Punishment." National Right to Life News, August 8, 1985, page 3. Also see "Opposition to Abortion Rises with Religious Commitment." The Wanderer, May 18, 1989, page 2.

[51] Pope John Paul II. "The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World" (Familiaris Consortio), November 22, 1981, Section 32.

[52] Marilyn Buckham, director of the Buffalo GYN Womenservices Clinic, quoted in the Revolutionary Communist Party's Revolutionary Worker, March 6, 1989.

[53] Selig Newhardt, M.D., and Harold Schulman, M.D. Techniques of Abortion. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1977 (Second Edition), Page 120.

[54] Katha Pollitt, New York Times. January 21, 1988 "Hers" column. Also quoted in Jason Deparle. "Beyond the Legal Right." Human Life Review, Summer 1989, page 38.

[55] "Anatomy of a March." Washington Post, April 6, 1992, page A20. For demographic characteristics of the general population, see United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Reference Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. 1990 (110th Edition), 991 pages. Table 18, "Projections of the Total Population By Age, Sex and Race: 1989 to 2010." Initial table, "State Rankings," pages xii and xiii. Table 50, "Marital Status of the Population, By Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1970 to 1988." Figure given for the public includes those adults over 18 who are married (55%), widowed (6%), or divorced (7%). Table 440, "Voter Registration Registered Voters, 1980 to 1988, and Registration Deadlines and Residency Requirements, 1988."

[56] David Robertson, M.D. Sex Education: A Teacher's Guide. The Canadian Ministry of National Health and Welfare, Volume 4, pages 24 and 25.

[57] Faye Wattleton. "Reproductive Rights are Fundamental Rights." The Humanist, January/February 1991, page 21.

[58] Malcolm Potts, M.D., Medical Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, in 1973. Quoted in Andrew Scholberg, "The Abortionists and Planned Parenthood: Familiar Bedfellows." International Review of Natural Family Planning, Winter 1980, page 298.

[59] Paul Cameron, Ph.D. The Family Research Institute study on the attitudes of pro-abortionists and pro-lifers towards capital punishment is described in Jack C. Willke, M.D. "Capital Punishment." National Right to Life News, August 8, 1985, page 3.

[60] James Davison Hunter. "What Americans Really Think About Abortion." First Things, June/July 1992, pages 13 to 21.

[61] Wattleton was a signer of the Planned Parenthood written manifesto entitled The Human Right to Family Planning, 1984. This 'manifesto' advocated breaking the law in order to bring about social change.

[62] Jack Killorin, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent. Quoted in "Arson Fires Not Linked." Life Advocate [Publication of Advocates for Life Ministries, Portland, Oregon], September 1992, page 21.

[63] Marlene Fried. "Pro-Choice Agendas After Webster." Against the Current #23, page 18.

[64] W. Shepherdson Abell. "Abortion a Moral Issue, Not Dogma." Human Life Review, Fall 1981, page 111.

[65] Kansas City Royals baseball star George Brett, on the abortions his girlfriends have suffered. Quoted in Newsweek Magazine, July 17, 1989, page 13.

[66] "Women Are Not Incubators!: The Assault on Abortion Rights." Propaganda by the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States (RCP), Revolutionary Worker, November 6, 1989. Also distributed as a special reprint booklet of the same name, page 17.

[67] Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. Written in 1925 and released by Trans Ralph Manheim Publishers, Boston, 1943, pages 257 and 404-405. Also released by Houghton, Mifflin of New York in 1971, pages 214 and 215.

[68] H.W. Koch. Hitler Youth: The Duped Generation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. Page 10.

[69] Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Knopf, 1971. Page 180.

[70] Hermann Rauschning. The Voice of Destruction. New York, 1941, pages 34 to 38. Also: Joseph B. Schechtman. European Population Transfers, 1936-45. New York, 1946, pages 266 and 296.

[71] Gitta Sereny. Into That Darkness. New York, 1974, page 62.

[72] Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Washington, 1949-1954. Transcript at IV: 1,081 to 1,084. Nuremberg: NO-3,512.

[73] Ihor Kamenetsky. Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe. New York: 1961, chapter on "German Lebensraum," page 171.

[74] Paul Hilberg. The Destruction of European Jews. Chicago, 1961, page 642. Also: Nuremberg trial transcripts at NG-844. Also: Alexander Dallin. German Rule in Russia, 1941 to 1945. London: Winchester Books, 1957, page 457.

[75] Dallin, page 141. Also see Kamenetsky, page 143.

[76] Dallin, page 141.

[77] Leon Poliakov. Harvest of Hate. Syracuse, New York, 1954, pages 272 to 274. Also see Kamenetsky, pages 197-199.

[78] Poliakov, pages 272 to 274. Also: Nuremberg trial transcripts at NG-2325.

[79] Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Washington, 1949-1954. Transcript at V:109. Also: Richard Stites. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia. Princeton, 1975, pages 264, 265, 355, 385 to 388, and 403 to 405.

[80] Nuremberg Trial Transcripts at IV: 1,077, V: 112; and IV: 1,076, 1,081, and 1,090.

[81] Michael Schwartz. "Abortion: The Nazi Connection." Newsletter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, August 1978. Page 1.

[82] William Manchester. The Arms of Krupp. New York, 1964, page 486.

[83] Dallin, pages 435 and 458.

Further Reading: Pro-Abortion Slogans.

Randy Alcorn. Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments. 
Multnomah Press, 10209 SE Division Street, Portland, Oregon 97226. 1992, 300 pages. A truly excellent book that covers all of the salient points of rebuttal to 39 standard pro-abort slogans. There are five parts to the book, by clusters of slogans: Arguments concerning life, humanity, and personhood; arguments concerning rights and fairness; arguments concerning social issues; arguments concerning health and safety; arguments concerning the "hard cases;" and arguments against the character of prolifers.

John Ankerberg and John Weldon. When Does Life Begin?: And 39 Other Tough Questions About Abortion. 
Brentwood, Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers, 1989, 252 pages. This book is one of the best primers the pro-life movement has, because it contains everything that a new activist needs to know. It has four logically laid-out sections: (1) the basic question on when human life begins; (2) answering pro-abort slogans; (3) a Biblical and theological analysis of abortion, and (4) what Christians and churches can do to stop the American Holocaust.

Beryl Lieff Benderly. Thinking About Abortion. 
New York: Dial Press, 1984. Reviewed by Jenny Westberg. This book is a good introduction to pro-abortion philosophy (which is to real philosophy what Velveeta is to Brie). Grab this book on a rainy day and enjoy hours of fun counting contradictions.

Baruch Brody. Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View. 
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1975, 162 pages. Mr. Brody was a pro-abortion activist who began this book with the twin objectives of examining both pro-life and "pro-choice" slogans for logic and valid assumptions. By the time Mr. Brody had finished his book, he was pro-life. This should tell you something. An excellent book for anyone who wants to be able to refute pro-abortion slogans and catchwords effectively. The book is old but still perfectly applicable, and demonstrates that mindless anti-life trivia never changes.

Catholic Twin Circle. 
Six-part series on how the most popular pro-abortion slogans lack logic and foundation. November 12, 19, and 26, and December 3, 10, and 17, 1989. Catholic Twin Circle may be subscribed to by writing to 12700 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 200, Studio City, California 91604, telephone: 1-800-421-3230.

Celeste Michelle Condit. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. 
University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1990, 233 pages. The author, while blithely ignoring the central arguments of the abortion debate, nevertheless provides an interesting sketch of how the main arguments used by both sides have helped to shape public policy, and how these arguments have changed as the battle has changed character.

Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. Abortion in Perspective. 
Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174. Telephone: (703) 586-4898. An analysis of the empty philosophy behind all of the pro-abortion rhetoric. This book allows the activist to understand where the pro-aborts are "coming from," and thus allows a more effective and reasoned response.

Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. In My Mother's Womb: The Church's Defense of Natural Life. 
Hardcover, paperback. Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586-4898. An eloquent defense of the Catholic Church's defense of human life. An examination of abortion's languages and perspective, the unborn, contraception and bio-engineering. Also covered are the Church's perspective on new technologies, including in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, fetal experimentation, and genetic engineering. See especially Chapter 1, "Abortion and Church Teaching," pages 7 to 25, "Abortion and Bio-Engineering," pages 82 to 88, and "In Vitro Fertilization," pages 143 to 159.

Marian Faux. Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision That Made Abortion Legal. 
New York: Macmillan, 1988. 330 pages0. Reviewed by Maggie Gallagher on page 45 of the July 22, 1988 issue of National Review. This book is interesting primarily because it is so profoundly trivial in nature when compared to those written on the same subject by Judge Noonan, Dr. Nathanson, Judge Hekman, and many others. The author purports to 'examine' the infamous Roe v. Wade decision from the pro-abort's viewpoint. However, since the decision and the pro-abort view are both insupportable, most of the book addresses not the decision or its underpinnings, but instead parrots tired slogans 'justifying' abortion and trivia about the day-to-day life of the plaintiffs (i.e., one of the pro-abort lawyers was very vain about her hair). It also repeats all of the old slander about pro-lifers and adds some new pro-abort slogans (example: pregnancy is an 'injury' to all women). Interestingly, the author's name is French for "false."

Jean Staker Garton. Who Broke the Baby?
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, Inc. 108 pages. Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174. Telephone: (703) 586-4898. Reviewed by Norman B. Bendroth on page 18 of the May 19, 1980 issue of National Right to Life News. The author examines in great detail the most popular pro-abortion slogans and reveals them all to be what they really are: Attempts to confuse the issue and divert attention away from the grisly murder of babies. One of the best and most detailed treatments of anti-life slogans in print today.

Garrett Hardin. "Abortion for the Children's Sake." In Abortion and the Unwanted Child  
(C. Reiterman, editor). New York: Springer, 1971. Population controller Garrett Hardin has toned down his virulent pro-abortion rhetoric since the early 1970s, but this book captures him at his raving best (worst?). The title alone gives some idea of how out of touch with moral reality he really is. Hardin is probably the most persistent sloganeer that the pro-aborts have.

Peter Kreeft. The Unaborted Socrates: A Dramatic Debate on the Issues Surrounding Abortion. 
Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586-4898. This book shows that all arguments for and against abortion are reduced to one primary position: that the unborn are or are not persons. It is also a valuable debating tool in that it shows pro-lifers how to master the Socratic method of clarifying issues and their underlying themes through logic and directed questioning.

Lawrence Lader. Abortion II, Making the Revolution. 
Boston: Beacon Press, 1973. The definitive work on early (1960-1970) pro-abortion strategy by the king of the abortion propagandists. Lader was a close friend of the 'leading lights' of the early pro-abortion movement, including Betty Friedan, Margaret Sanger, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

Bernard M. Nathanson, M.D. The Abortion Papers: Inside the Abortion Mentality. 
Idea Books, Post Office Box 4010, Madison, Wisconsin 53711. 1985, 192 pages. A former prolific abortionist exposes the anti-Catholic bigotry of the pro-abortion movement, discusses the role of the blatantly biased media in obtaining abortion on demand, and explores what .the science of fetology has revealed about the unborn child. This enjoyable book is written in George Will's wry and acerbic style.

National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Legal Abortion: A Speaker's and Debater's Notebook. 
71 pages, June 1978. Superb insight into the anti-life philosophy and how it shrinks from reality by using propaganda, Newspeak, and profuse slogans.

Marvin Olasky, Daniel T. Oliver, and Robert V. Pambianco. Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy: Funding False Compassion. 
Capital Research Center, 1612 K Street NW, Suite 704, Washington, DC 20006. 1991, 390 pages. There are basically three sections to this book. The first covers generalities, and shows the hard numbers demonstrating that corporations give the vast majority of their largesse to liberal-left groups. The second and third parts, which make up the bulk of the book, give detailed profiles of contributors and recipients, which will be extremely useful to pro-lifers researching this area.

Stephen Schwarz. The Moral Question of Abortion. 
Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990. Reviewed by Dr. William A. Marra on page 53 of the Winter 1991 issue of ALL About Issues. A searching examination of the slogans posed by the pro-abortion movement. Highly recommended for debaters.

Lori Van Winden. The Case Against Abortion. 
144 pages. Order from Liguori Publications, One Liguori Drive, Liguori, Missouri 63057-9999, telephone: (314) 464-2500. Reviewed in the National Right to Life News, January 22, 1989, page 19. Outlines in detail pro-life rebuttals to the twelve most popular pro-abortion slogans and shows how they are flawed in logic, scientific fact, and morality. Includes a pro-life primer on the basics of abortion: fetal development, abortion techniques, and their subsequent harmful physical and emotional effects.

© American Life League BBS — 1-703-659-7111

This is a chapter of the Pro-Life Activist's Encyclopedia, published by American Life League.